Professional ASP.Net 2.0

This is a nice book for people who have the basic idea of ASP.NET. This Book covers almost all topics for .Net2.0 . It is a very good reference book for newbie. Unfortunately, this book isn't in-depth for lots of topics, basically it just introduces most common cases, and you probably can't find what you want for some topics. (Eg implement Sorting and Pagation for ObjectDataSource, Crystal Report, memory management, ADO.NET in depth, .Net Virtual Machine etc). The source code is another down side for this book. Most of the code doesn't run, also the connection string wasn't right at the first place, I have to spend hours and hours to get it right. In conclusion, it worth to buy, if you just want learn asp.net in a fast way. It will give you the solution for most tasks. Pretty good reference book.

Wrox is a great publisher of quick and massive volumes with multiple authors. I'm a teacher and look for good values that combine clear technical information and a broad range for a low cost. This is a good choice if you have experience with ASP.NET, know your web architecture (query strings, cookies, sessions, etc.), and don't want an extended tutorial. The reasoning for why you use these things wasn't clear but the details on how to use them exceeded most of the current fare which is why I chose to teach from the text recently. The quantity of code that was provided in VB and C# was excellent but the topics were out of order for classroom use. For the ASP.NET beginner, I feel it needs to be supplemented with a more tutorial based text and then this makes an excellent companion volume.

This is a monumental book. Almost sixteen hundred pages of hi-tech stuff. It is not for the faint of heart. It is intended for people who have at least a general understanding of how the web works with particular attention as to how a database driven web site is set up and works. Knowledge and experience with earlier versions of ASP (Active Server Pages) would be very helpful, but so would experience using other technologies such as Cold Fusion, PHP, or Java. Such knowledge is to provide you with the concepts of doing a dynamic web page consisting of a framework or template with the actual data being displayed coming from a database. The book builds on this basic understanding to start with a very simple page and go on to much more complex tasks such as the building XML web services. Along the way every aspect of ASP.NET 2.0 is discussed. ASP.NET 2.0 is the second major release of ASP.NET, Microsoft's main concept for programming dynamic web pages. The focus of the new release is on productivity. A major goal of the development team was to reduce the number of lines of code needed to program a page by two thirds. On the whole they suceeded. In addition, the book contains two CD-ROMs. One is a 180 day trial version of Visual Studio 2005. The other has about a thousand pages from about 15 other WROX books that you may find helpful in looking up background information. The book is in reference format rather than tutorial. It will be very helpful for quite a long time.

A previous reviewer (Sven) mentioned that the book omitted some more advanced topics. 1 of the examples cited was how to access MasterPage properties from a content page. Not only is this information there (page 263), but there are 2 examples, and the specific location is referenced in the Table of Contents as "Working with Controls and Properties from the Master Page" Just thought I'd mention this since I chose to go w/ another book because of that review, only to find as I sit here and browse this book that it does in fact go into a good amount of detail. I hope the one I did order is as good.

Not a stranger to ASP.NET 1.1, I picked up this book in an effort to see what's new in ASP.NET 2.0 as well as have a source on hand with examples and such that I can refer to as needed. I couldn't be more pleased. For those new to ASP.NET, this book runs through everything from the development environment to the structure of an application and uses detailed code snippets to allow you to create simple proof-of-concept apps using the technology being discussed. For the old hands, the new material is covered well and in many cases is compared and contrasted with previous versions so you know what benefits you're getting by upgrading to 2.0. Entire chapters are dedicated to some of the new features like personalization and themes, making sure that both newbies and veterans alike are brought up to speed. Code snippets abound and exist in both VB and C#, so it doesn't matter what language you lean toward, there's something here for you. The writing style is clear and easy to understand so you won't get too bogged down in jargon. Note that this is definitely more of a "how to" type of book than a reference - if you find yourself asking "How would I...?" then this is the way to go. If you already know what you're doing and want the annotated class reference with super detailed information about the trivial inner workings of the framework, you may want to look elsewhere. My only real complaint is the typesetting. The text could have been bumped up a couple of points for those of us who rely on glasses and the like, but the book is already upwards of 1200 pages long and I understand that printing volumes of encyclopedias isn't so effective for transport. If you're into ASP.NET, add this one to your shelf - you'll be glad you did.