ASP.Net Professional Secrets

I happily read "ASP.NET Professional Secrets" by Bill Evjen and friends. The book is authored by some of the more notable and most active personalities in the ASP.NET community today, lending their knowledge and empowering you with a quiver of tricks and skills to build next-gen apps faster and more efficiently. The well-read Evjen's discussions dominate most of the text, although contributions from specialists like Dave Wanta for working with e-mail and Doug Seven in managing data-driven list controls are very helpful.Although the book implies a title written to feature little-known tidbits, the book is a refresher course for the most part for the intermediate-level developer. Code samples are not largely explained line-for-line, if at all, and that's nice for those who've been working with the .NET Framework a little while and can most past the obvious. Such is becoming a recurring trend in ASP.NET publishing, and it's a nice shift for books that don't assume a little-to-no experience level and just get right to the topics at hand.So while the book may not be the saving grace for someone looking to get into Web development using Microsoft technologies for the first time, it is great for someone migrating up from .NET 1.0 and older builds of Visual Studio .NET.Best of all, the sections on XML Web services and mobile apps development (featuring multiple chapters for each topic) are fantastic and give more insight into subjects most omnibus ASP.NET texts only give the obligatory single chapter to. Some depth is provided beyond creating a "Hello World" WebMethod or an obsolete mobile page.And while the book leans towards Visual Studio .NET as the preferred tool for development, it doesn't present the information exclusively with that tool and its proprietary code (i.e., code behind with the InitializeComponent() method). Code examples are simple .ASPX pages with server-side logic coded in-line. This makes for a very pleasant, readable, generic, IDE-agnostic approach. In fact, the book is honest in mentioning that for the web-only developer, in a few areas ASP.NET Web Matrix is superior to its bigger brother, VS.NET.It's an excellent read if you've used ASP.NET for awhile, and will make for a great reference for those inevitable "now I know I saw how to do that somewhere before..." situations we all run into. WHAT I REALLY LIKE- The code isn't painstakingly explained post mortem - an objective is stated and then matched with a sample- All code samples are in both Visual Basic .NET and C#, and written consistently- The sections on XML Web services and mobile programming are must-reads- The book features fantastic quick-read appendices- Evjen's writing is excellent - friendly and helpful - and you'll pick up some great tips. His contributions make up about 85% of the book's chapters, so his positive, helpful tone is well received throughout the book.- You'll find all sorts of tidbits you might not have picked up - Doug Seven's chapter on lis

I really wondered if I could possibly read yet another book on ASP or .NET but this book gave me some valuable tips to pushing my ASP skills to the next level. My clients thank this book since I now deliver faster and more professional work. Not being hung up and learning some good "secrets" was worth the read!