features of asp.net

Question

what are the most important features a web developer should know about in asp.net?
i am asking this question because i am a newbie and i want to learn c#, and i found a lot of books about: ajax,edmx,asmx,custom controls,jquery,wcf,silverlight......
so in what order should i learn them, and what is are the most important ones?

Answer 1

Learn about:

• The page life cycle - here
• User and customer controls - here
• Learn how HTTP works - start here
• Understand the difference between client side and server side code - start here
• Learn about asp.net MVC - here
• HTML, Javascript and CSS (for completeness)

Answer 2

If you're a complete beginner I suggest you first take a look at these technologies:

• html
• css
• javascript/jQuery

Great starters for these can be found at http://www.w3schools.com/.

For getting into ASP.NET (Webforms) start with these tutorials: http://www.asp.net/web-forms/fundamentals.

Edit: from years of experience or when I teach classes the hardest thing to grasp for beginners seems to be ViewState and what harm it can do to your pages total size. Take a look at Taking a Bite Out of ASP.NET ViewState for getting a teaser of what it can cause harm.