Sams Teach Yourself ASP. Net in 24 Hours

I really enjoyed this book. It contained the basics of just about everything a beginner would want to know about .NET. Server controls, security, ADO.NET, web services, stored procedures, and more are all included, but be warned! Many of the typos will have you scratching your head, and the lack of information on configuration may leave you digging.For example, when they teach you about web services, they have you build a consumer for your web method and they say it's as simple as clicking a link to the local server in a web reference dialog. The problem? The link they mention apparently didn't make it to the release version, and in order to dynamically detect web services on your server (which is required for the lesson), you need to add a verb to a handler in the web.config file!In addition, almost every example has typos, most relating to a flagrant disregard for letter case.My other gripes are that the examples were VB.NET only not C# (though anyone with a basic understanding of VB and C# can easily convert most examples). The book also lacks important detail, but what can you expect with an introductory text?Despite the downsides, this book is everything I could hope for in an introductory ASP.NET text. It got ME up to speed quickly, and if you're willing to look up details and server configurations on the web or VS.NET documentation, then this book will suit you just fine.

This book has a few typos but if you can overlook those it is full of excellent examples for a beginner learning how to use ASP.Net.I liked it because the examples are complete, while there are at times better ways to do many of the processes that are featured the examples are written in a manner that assures you grasp the concept behind the process. For example on Web Form Server controls it shows the progression of converting an HTML form to a server controlled form handling the button click in the code behind then it goes on to show you how you would dynamically create that form with tr, td objects in the code behind. The book covers a lot of beginner information...server controls, validation, security, reading and writing text & binary files, email, debugging... pretty much all of the stuff you would use in a real world implementation of a conversion to ASP.Net. It even covers installation of a security certificate (which is not ASP.Net specific but very handy for beginners nonetheless).I think it is a very comprehensive beginners book and should be considered for anyone just starting out in ASP.Net. The book also gives some good information on getting your Visual Studio.Net set up and all of the examples are stepped through with the assumption that you are using VSNet for development.My favorite book is the ASP.NET Unleashed so I suggest you consider them both as you will work your way through this book quickly...

I have the Sam's 21 Days book (...)and liked it very much. 21 Days, however, was too early to cover VisualStudio.Net (Beta 2). In fact there is only one brief mention of VisualStudio.Net or its Visual Interdev predecessor in 21 Days. VisualStudio.Net has defaults for project setup, configuration files, code-behind arrangement, file-naming, and many other items that are not covered in the 21 Days book. Many of these items are better covered in 24 Hours, BUT THE SOURCE CODE IS NOT YET AVAILABLE ON THE WEB SITE FOR 24 Hours!! (Many of the examples have lengthy code that is a nuisance to type from scratch.)This will be a very useful book once the code is available.Sep 28 edit - I talked to an editor and sales at Sam's. Source code was lost. Sam's person that got it from author is no longer there. Sam's is working on getting it.Nov 25 edit - STILL NO SOURCE CODE on the SAMS web site. I finally had a junior engineer type up the source code, so that I could have a couple of others do the course. Like the book, hate the typing.Dec. 5 - Email from SAMS today says source code is now available.