Programming Microsofta .Net [With CDROM]

On the book: This book was great. It starts out with an overview of some of the most important classes in the .NET framework. Then it provides an excelent introduction to ASP.NET. At the end, it goes into some other cool stuff and how it is implemented in .NET (ADO.NET, XML, remoting, and multithreding). On the author: Jeff Prosise is an excellent writer. He provides background on many things. For instance, in the section on ASP.NET, he starts out by giving information on different aspects of the internet, such as the HTTP protocol and different dynamic web page tecnologies, leading up to ASP and ASP.NET. Disclaimers: If you are a computer, programming, C# or even .NET newbie, this book isn't for you. You should get some background on these subjects before you read this book. For people who are new to .NET, I would reccommend Microsoft's "Introduction to .NET" (or whatever it's called).\ More disclamers: This book has a LOT to do with ASP.NET. In fact, it is over 1/3 of the book. One thing to remember is that the .NET initiative is about the internet ("Anywhere, on any device," as Bill so put it). If you couldn't care less about the internet, you might be spending a lot of money for a lot of stuff you don't need.

I wish I could have read this book earlier. The knowledge extracted from it, would have save me a lot of time (of reading the documentation of .NET or try to start working from scratch). If you are planning to start learning .NET from a theoretical perspective, but also be immediately ready for writing applications, this book is very good for it (fundamentally if you are a web developer). No one could expect that a book of such huge technology as .NET is, could give us all the necessary details that we need to know. In this case, Prosise give us (through a very simple way of telling) the important aerial view that at least I need to understand a technology, without loosing important details. I think that this book give you the kick to start in an excellent way. If you want go deep, now you have all the weapons to know what you want to learn. If you already have read some .NET books and have acquired a good knowledge of the whole framework, this book would not tell you much, but for the starter is perfect.

Prosise tells us in the introduction, "Microsoft .NET is many things, but first and foremost it's a better way to write software in an Internet-centric world". No single volume could begin to be a comprehensive reference on .NET due to the shear number of classes that make up its framework. Jeff does deliver on his promise of teaching us how the pieces work together to allow us to write powerful, sophisticated applications. Overall, I consider this book to be a valuable reference, one that is worthy of the designation of, "Core Reference", by Microsoft Press.This book is not a tutorial; it is part of the Microsoft Core Reference series and goes into too much detail for the beginner. It is however, an excellent reference book for serious programmers, and provides a look at the breadth and depth of the .NET Framework. Author Jeff Prosise divided the book into three parts, Part 1 covers the Essential Concepts, Part 2 covers ASP.NET, and Part 3 covers what he calls "The Cutting Edge".The Essential Concepts span the first four chapters. In the first chapter he introduces the reader to .NET and covers such topics as the Common Language Runtime (CLR), the Framework Class Library (FCL), the Common Intermediate Language (CIL), and the Managed Code languages with special attention given to C#. Jeff also talks about the ILDASM utility tool that permits us to examine the manifest of an Assembly, as well as to disassemble the CIL into assembly language instructions.In the second chapter he discusses classes, structs, interfaces, enumerations, and delegates. He introduces the concept of value types and reference types, and the use of boxing and unboxing to convert between them. He covers fundamental .NET software development concepts such as multi-file assemblies, garbage collection, the global assembly cache and exception handling. In chapter 3 Prosise provides an overview of the Framework Class Library with emphasis on the organization of the members in the library. He examines a selected few of the objects therein to give the reader a flavor for the FCL. In chapter 4 he gets into the rich support provided by the FCL for developing Windows applications. He also introduces Visual Studio.NET. Part 2 focuses on ASP.NET, and spans seven chapters. The emphasis on ASP.NET is indicative of the purpose of the whole .NET environment. Jeff introduces Web Forms in chapter 5, and he explores Web Form Controls in chapter 6. He explains many of these controls in depth, and uses examples to illustrate their operation. In the next two chapters he reveals the intricacies of User Controls and Custom Controls. In chapter 9 he goes into detail about the structure of ASP.NET applications and in chapter 10 he discusses ASP.NET security. Jeff completes this section with an introduction to Web Services. He stresses the importance of Web Services in the future of Information Technology and provides examples of Web Services. Jeff supports the concepts introduce

I am very much satisfied with this book. I would agree with the first reviewer that this book is more concentrated toward ASP.NET rather than the whole .NETI din't have much knowledge about Web Applications or even HTML before reading this book , so this book really clarified things for me. It explains from beginner's point of view.The chapter on Window Forms isn't that good and one thing i didn't like in this book was that it din't use Code-Behind programming Model for the ASP.NET samples its used.If u are beginning to learn Web application development without any prior knowledge of ASP or Web programming , this book is for you.

I've bought several .NET programming books since the first WROX edition of the WROX PROFESSIONAL ASP.NET book came out,so I wasn't sure I needed a book that was a survey (FCL, Winforms, web forms, web controls, ADO.NET, multithreading, Remoting, Security, XML Web Services, et al.), but I took a leap based on the author's previous books. Mr. Prosise has crafted such an amazing book that I now feel like I see the big picture of programming .NET for the first time. This book covers a lot of ground in 800 pages, and while there are things that he could have covered more deeply, in the end I didn't care a lick because he tied all pieces together perfectly so that it wasn't a mess anymore--a MAJOR achievement. I wish more computer book authors wrote half so beautifully. A great book!!!