Book excerpt: SharePoint is obviously a hot technology. But the last year in development technology has seen such major releases as Ajax, ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, and more. These technologies combined have an audience too wide to estimate. However, SharePoint 2003 was built before these new techniques and methodologies were ready for public consumption. And while the newer versions of SharePoint support development using these new techniques, the installed base of SharePoint 2003 is still growing, and migration to SharePoint 2007 is still at least 18 months off. Therefore, developers are hungry to "webify" their existing SharePoint sites and applications. This book is the intersection between contemporary development techniques and SharePoint application development.