Programming Microsoft ASP.Net 3.5

This was my first Dino's book. Though this book was not the top-rated ASP.NET book, I took a chance. I am glad I did it, I love the book, I love his writing style. I recommended it to a colleague and he liked it too. I must admit that I have become a fan of Dino. I have couple of other ASP.NET books too. This is the only one that I keep going back to refer.

This book is an excellent source of information about ASP.NET 2.0 to 3.5, for developers new to ASP.NET and experienced ASP.NET 2.0 developers. I picked the book to prepare for the 70-562 exam. Even though the book does not contain verbatim texts and exercises to prepare you for the exam, it contains all the required material and teaches you how to use ASP.NET 3.5. I found very useful the chapters about HTTP handlers and HTTP modules as well as the chapter on the ASP.NET page life cycle. The author uses accessible language to describe complex topics. The AJAX programming part of this book is rather weak. It covers mostly UpdatePanel. This is good enough to get you going from ASP.NET 2.0 and to get you through the certification, but is not sufficient to write good AJAX applications in ASP.NET 3.5. For a deep dive in AJAX I recommend "Developing Service-Oriented AJAX Applications on the Microsoft Platform" by Daniel Larson.

I own Dino's last book (Programming ASP.NET 2.0 Applications Advanced Topics) and this book continues his excellence in writing about advanced topics in ASP.NET. There are many things that he covers that you come across on a day-to-day basis and he explains those topics well. The topics in this book are not simple. That's why sometimes I think people who have reviewed this says it can be a hard read. Well, again that's because the topics are NOT SIMPLE. When you are diving into creating your own custom controls, Virtual Path Providers, Asynchronous Commands & Callbacks, Http Handlers and the rest, of course the language is going to have to be pretty verbose...there's not really a good way around this unless you're going to write a 1000 page Head First type of book that explains it in more simple terms. You will search the internet for a while trying to find this kind of information. I don't know how many times I have opened Dino's book to find what I'm looking for especially when we need to create custom providers, controls and to just really understand the processing of asp.net and all the low-level details that can really become overwelming. Dino does a nice job by not overly explaining things (since you could to way into depth on many of these advanced topics) but also does not leave you short in most of his sections. His examples are more real-world also as well as his explaination and solutions while talking about a topic. I have been at 3 .coms and all of us used his book to figure out how to do a lot of advanced tasks quite literally by him explaining (examples Virtual Path Provider, custom Http Handlers, etc.). He also takes the time to show you diagrams more than any book I've ready on the processes. I appreciate this time he has put in to the books he writes. He doesn't just write, he diagrams a ton in his book and this is important because the concepts here are very dry and you can get lost very quickly in all the things that happen behind the scenes in ASP.NET at a very low level. Anyway, not sure why people are complaining about the expectation of perfection when this book provides a better review of advanced topics than you'll find in any other book as well as the internet itself in a lot of cases. It's pretty much the Bible for our team in terms of advanced topics for ASP.NET. When in doubt open Dino's book.

Sometimes just recover the earlier ground may not be a bad idea at all, if previous coverage was good and thorough. Dino's new treatment of ASP.NET falls into this category. His earlier books on ASP.NET 1.x and ASP.NET 2 did such good job that for ASP.NET 3.5 iteration, what he needs to do is to repeat those good coverage with new material for new stuff. And I think he achieved this task hands-down. But for a book buyer, that can pose a delima. I already had Dino's Programming ASP.NET and to this date I am still referencing it again and again, and should I just pay $40 for just the LINQ and Ajax stuff? It is a hard call. If you are not an owner of Dino's ASP.NET programming books before, buy it and enlighten yourself with Dino's insight. If you are an owner of Dino's previous ASP.NET book, pay close attention to Chapter 19, 20 and 21. Dino's insight on what direction ASP.NET as a web programming platform move forward worths the admission. Ajax is not just a repackaged JavaScript library, it requires rethinking how web programming model should evolve, and Dino seems to understand Microsoft's long term goal.

It's a good book for developers who have past experience with earlier versions of .net. I have always liked referencing Dino's books. The book itself covers most of the features available with asp.net 3.5 version. There is also one complete chapter over Silverlight programming. Although, it would have been better if there would have been further more chapters covering Silverlight. Also missing is any detailed chapter over "REST" feature available with Framework 3.5. Overall the book is really informative.