.NET Zone's Top 10 Articles of 2008

2008 was a year of announcements, some surprising, for the .NET community. Microsoft unveiled Windows Azure & Windows 7 at PDC, development of open source initiatives around jQuery, ASP.NET MVC & Silverlight Control Toolkit continued, and Bill Gates stepped down at Microsoft's Chief Architect. These are just some of the things that have happened over the last 12 months.

As a way of looking back at how the year has been on .NET Zone, we've collected the top 10 most read articles. It paints a picture about what is important to you, and gives us some hints as to what we should be covering as we continue to grow our community in 2009.

1 -

Our most popular article of the year took a look at how jQuery can be used in conjunction with the 'Preview 3' release of Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC framework. It seems that Microsoft agrees with our author about the value of jQuery. They recently announced that Visual Studio 2010 will ship with jQuery bundled inside. Given that the first release candidate of ASP.NET MVC is just around the corner, if you haven't read this article already, it is definitely worth your time. You can read our most read article of 2008 .

2 -

Web application security continues to be a hot topic in the community. from last summer  gives some methods and practices that can help avoid SQL injection attacks in ASP.NET.

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The most popular article in Gil Fink's very popular series about state management in ASP.NET. This part focuses on the use of query strings to maintain state on your ASP.NET pages, and when to use this technique. Check it out .

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LINQ is a very powerful feature in the .NET arsenal. In this story, Alex Miller takes a look at what impact it has had (or could have) in the rivalry between .NET and Java. is a response to an SD Times featured article.

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for ASP.NET developers by Gil Fink, looking at the output cache. Learn how to configure your web application for optimal performance with the help of the caching features in ASP.NET. This was the third post in Gil's caching series.

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Every article or book on developer productivity will recommend getting familiar with the keyboard shortcuts in frequently used application. Using the keyboard will always be faster than using keyboard & mouse in tandem. There is no more frequently used tool in a .NET developer's toolbox than Visual Studio. Learn 13 great keyboard shortcuts, and you will be well on your way to maximizing your own productivity.

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was the introduction to the popular series on client-side state management in ASP.NET. One of four parts to make the year's Top Ten.

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Sam Allen takes a look at the advantages of each approach in this story. Why not check it out for yourself and start a healthy debate in the comments section.

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deep dive into state management in ASP.NET. This time he talks about how to use control state in ASP.NET.

10 -

is a fitting way to round out .NET Zone's ten most read articles of the year. It is another Gil Fink article on using hidden fields as a way to manage state in ASP.NET. This is one of the ways to take advantage of ASP.NET ViewState.

That completes the top 10 most read articles of 2008. Tell us the articles that you would rate highly from the last year and why. That way we can strive to improve the quality of our articles on the .NET Zone for 2009.