Buy "ASP.NET Unleashed" instead - it is very comprehensive, and has plenty of examples, each one teaching a simple principal.

To be fair, this Wrox book does cover the subject of what ASP.NET is and how it differs. But I can find that out from the web. Altogether, rather disappointing.


Another usless Wrox Book   October 17, 2002
 10 out of 12 found this review helpful

I have known Wrox to produce good books but this is on par with the JavaScript book that I couldn't give away and ended up being recycled.

This book is very much the same. I want to step up from ASP/VB/MTS to ASP.NET; I want examples showing me how to do things the new way, then I want an explanation of how this new way just worked. This book book does not do that.

You get a whole section on something and no explantion of how it fits in to something you might want to do : without context the information is meaningless. Everytime I start working through the book I find my mind wandering and I end up doing something else : like the ironing!! And I hate ironing.

An example of this disjointed approach is to mention a subject - such as HtmlControl Base Classes - and then give a list of methods, but no indication when, where or how they should be used. This is another example of a book that is helpful if you already know what you are doing but can't remember the exact syntax. Except the help files with the .net SDK already do this.

Downloading the samples and getting them to work is non-trivial as well. I wanted to put them in the wwwroot directory but you can only unpack them in their own directory. And the installation didn't like my SQL 2000 - a readme file is hidden in a sub directory somewhere to help with this, but to be honest I can't be bothered with it.

Only time will tell if this book will end up in the recycling bin or be useful but half way through it looks like ending up with my empty bottles.


A good reference but not a tutorial   May 14, 2002
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

I bought this book to get into the guts of .net having read much of the overview material available. It certainly goes into great depth, but I was a little disappointed with the "real programmers use notepad" approach.
Having coded in every thing from FORTRAN and C++ to ASP and VB over the last 20 years I'm no stranger to text editor and 3 pass compiler scenario but I felt that, given the excellent Visual Studio environment, the majority of developers would be using the IDE for serious development.
Having said that the range of material covered is expansive and I'm sure I will keep refering to the book, however I am still looking for a book that covers ASP/ADO and Visual Studio wit hreference to .Net


Good, but little focus on Visual Studio   April 23, 2002
 3 out of 6 found this review helpful

A very good book, lots of detail. Slightly difficult to read (not suprising, it's a complex topic!)
Also, some more focus on writing apps with the visual studio would have been helpful. Using a RAD environment will probably effect some design decisions - more use of Datasets, for example?


A complicated subject made easier by Wrox - well done   March 23, 2002
 10 out of 11 found this review helpful

The language takes some getting used to but I have found the book easy to use for reference and a good study guide. I have often bought Wrox books on web development but this has to be the best so far. A very comprehensive book with lots of code content and examples and well researched. I recommend this one to buy.