The testing environment and tools used in this article are as follows:

·         Windows XP Professional (with IIS 5.1 installed)

·         Visual Studio 2008 (with the built-in support for ASP.NET AJAX Extensions)

·         SQL Server 2005

·         ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit

Therefore, to gain a better understanding with the mini blog website project provided in this article, you are required to be familiar with ASP.NET 2.0/3.5 C# programming, SQL Server programming, and ASP.NET AJAX framework. In addition, you are highly recommended to download the source files accompanying this article (see the download URL at the end). Last but not least, for the convenience of those still under the Visual Studio 2005 environment, I tried to utilize the ASP.NET 2.0 compatible controls though I have developed this sample application under Visual Studio 2008. So, with a little modification, you can easily get it through under Visual Studio 2005.