In the beginning, the World Wide Web (WWW) was flat. It was an electronic library where academics and scientists posted dissertations and dusty data for reading with clunky, text-only browsers. With the advent of graphical browsers, the consumer oriented Web took off. Content became vastly more colorful. Remember where you were the first time you experienced the exciting blink and marquee tags? (I bet you wish you could forget those gems!) Anyway, the Web has evolved as a rich, interactive, and personalized medium. In the new version of Web (Web 2.0), functional pages aren’t enough. User experience (abbreviated as UX in geekspeak) is hot, and sites are cool. This chapter looks at Microsoft’s tools and technologies for creating and delivering engaging Web content.
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