ASP.Net v. 2.0-The Beta Version

ASP.NET v.2.0- is a very informative book that covers a lot of the new features offered in the new framework. Not only does the book cover the usual ASP.NET 2.0 topics but it also throws in extra tips/tidbits. I can't think of anything new to the ASP.NET 2.0 framework that was left out of the book. The book does a very good job of explaining the new features and goes into great detail(as evidenced by the length). The examples compliment the material very well. I think this book is very useful for developers migrating to ASP.NET 2.0. The content is presented in a very straight forward and easy to understand way. The authors were very knowledgeable on the subject and provided great insight. I consider this book to be a great reference guide that I will use in the future. For example, in the Web Parts chapter there is a detailed list of properties that are included in the WebPartManager Class. Next to each property is a description of what the property is. This is a very useful reference to look at when trying to find out what a method/property is used for in a class.

This book covers most of the new features of 2.0. The text is clear and easy to follow. 2.0 allows you to accomplish declaratively what whould have taken many lines of code in 1.1; accordingly, the book contains far more declarative code than procedural code. The procedural code snippets are usually given in VB, but the snippets are simple enough to be understood by the C# programmer. There is almost enough detail for this to be a reference book while you are implementing 2.0 solutions, but the book covers topics so intrinsic to 2.0 that you will probably not need it once you've been building 2.0 sites for a little while.

The book is a peek at version 2 of ASP.NET, which is due out sometime this year [2005]. It talks of the differences between this and version 1. The back cover breathlessly declaims of "Microsoft's latest Web development breakthrough". That is a lot of hype. Version 2 definitely improves upon version 1, but there are no conceptual leaps sufficient to warrant the appelation. As an example, you had to manually edit the XML configuration file. Now there is a GUI tool that you can use. Easier and less error prone. Nice, but predictable. Another improvement is the increased scope of declarative programming. Less procedural code to write and debug. And while it is possible to have bugs in declarative code, those tend to be easier to fix. Then there are master pages, to form a template of actual dynamic web pages. Useful. Somewhat analogous to Cascading Style Sheets. You can see how master pages are a good factoring out of a common look and feel. All of these and other new features deservedly make this ASP a new version. Don't get me wrong. Just don't fall for any hype about breakthroughs.

Very clear, systematic, detailed and illustrative style, examples make the book by Alex Homer a valuable resource for any .NET developer. Book examples can be either run or downloaded from http://www.daveandal.net/books/7278/. I liked the fact that the reader is given an opportunity to download and try to compile and run the examples or simply watch their execution in a web browser pointed to the above mentioned URL. That makes the material presented in the book more illustrative. For example, I started with data binding examples, sorting, filtering and XMLDataSource and Gridview. Security examples actually allow the reader to compare the "old" and "new" login controls, create users. Personalization and theme selection are presented, control enhancements, caching and configuration tool. These online examples definitely give a book an extra value. I tested examples using IE 6.0 and Netscape 7.1 browsers. I also downloaded the examples source code and tried to compile and run them after installing a .NET SDK 2.0 and Visual Web Developer Express 2005. Overall this is a solid reference book with broad and detailed coverage of ASP.NET v. 2.0.

I appreciate the emphasis on the front end in this book. The book does not cover back-end features beyond the data binding. It walks through the front end, talking about the different control types in the first part of the book, and the page logic in the last half of the book. The text is very readable, but often it is overwhelmed by the graphics and code. I also wish the book spent some appendices on a reference portion that could be used after I was finished with the walkthrough style introduction. This book is for professionals. It's not a step by step style walkthrough. It's apparent that the authors intended the reader to have some reasonably solid ASP.NET chops already. I'm happy to see the front end of ASP.NET sites getting the respect of a whole book on the topic. It certainly deserves it.