The ASP.Net 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks (Paperback)

~ Scott Allen (Author), Jeff Atwood (Author), Wyatt Burnett (Author), Jon Galloway (Author), Phil Haack (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

An ASP.NET 2.0 book that just helps you get things done!

This book contains a collection of 101 best practice, object oriented solutions that you can easily adapt to your own projects.

Coverage includes: Working with text, numbers, dates & times Accessing data with ADO.NET Form validation under multiple scenerios Page, Session and application state tips Access control in web applications Producing standards compliant output Enhancing applications with AJAX Working with Email Handling errors and debugging Performance tips and pitfalls And much more!

As a bonus, all book buyers get download access to the code archive which has all the examples in the book in both C# and VB. Back Cover "A comprehensive collection of ready-to-use ASP.NET solutions!"

The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks is a collection of solutions to the most common ASP.NET problems. Let five world-class ASP.NET professionals guide you through countless practical solutions using C# or VB. Learn to: Add interactivity with Ajax and JavaScript. Build a database access layer for improved portability. Sidestep the ASP.NET framework when required. Build data-driven applications quickly with SubSonic. Gracefull handle errors effectively. Work with email: send, parse, & manage attachments. Use component-based development for flexibility. Make your applications search engine friendly. Validate data input on forms. Create a user registration system. Use Master Pages to simplify development. Work with binary content. Improve the speed of your site, decrease bandwidth usage and speed up database queries And lots more...

About the Author

Allen has a master's degree in computer science from Shippensburg University. He's a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer. He regularly serves as an adjunct faculty member at various colleges in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 572 pages
• Publisher: SitePoint (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 098028581X
• ISBN-13: 978-0980285819
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #722,016 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for "Sharpening the Saw", October 30, 2007

By	Travis Illig "Software Engineer" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I just got through reading The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology and I have to say, I liked it.

Anthology is a "cookbook" approach at showing different tips and tricks for working with ASP.NET 2.0. If you've never set foot in ASP.NET land, this isn't for you - it's not a "newbie trying to learn ASP.NET" book. It's more of a "moderately experienced ASP.NET developer trying to sharpen the saw" book.

The voice of the book is fairly informal, which makes it nice - like you're learning tips from a friend, rather than being dictated to. Even some of the code snippets - which are shown in a nice, easy-to-read format - inject humor (watch for the Office Space references in the "Working With Email" chapter). It made the book really easy to get through and understand.

The book covers a large range of topics, from error handling to membership and role providers to form validation. What was a pleasant surprise to see is that it covered a lot of things many other books don't, like project format, source control, and usage of popular third-party libraries (e.g., log4net and SubSonic). There's discussion of non-ASP.NET issues like design patterns and practices, data access layer usage, and basic SQL Server query optimization - things that a reasonably experienced ASP.NET developer bumps into on occasion but may not have had time to delve into. It even addresses differences for users of the Visual Studio Express Editions, who normally get sort of "left by the wayside."

There were really only a couple of minor issues that I found with the book.

First, there's a chapter in there called ".NET 2.0 Core Libraries" that looks as though it's intended to give an overview of, well, the .NET 2.0 core libraries... but in the 30 pages allocated to the topic you can barely scratch the surface, so it generally comes off as slightly schizophrenic, hopping from topic to topic.

The other issue I found is that there are some surprisingly good "nuggets" of information that seem misplaced and, in some cases, outright hidden, in the book and deserved a little more time in the sun. For example, cross-page postbacks were sort of hidden in the "Component-based Development" chapter and asynchronous pages were hidden in the "Working With Email" chapter. Interesting and valuable information that just sort of felt "out of place."

Overall, the content of the book far outweighs any of the minor organizational problems you run into. If you're looking for something to learn from and spark ideas of ways to make better ASP.NET applications, this is a great book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent ASP.NET book, November 17, 2007

By	Brad A. Williams - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After skimming through my new read I must say, SitePoint can write some amazing books! I love how each section is prefaced with a question:

"How do I read data from my database?"
"How do I use source control?"
"How do I require users to log in?"

This method seems to flow easier for me in understanding new development techniques and code.

If you are interested in learning ASP.NET 2.0 using C# or just looking to refine your ASP.NET 2.0 skills then this is a must read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First book I reach for..., January 14, 2008

By	Robert K. Leahey (Frisco, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was a long time (15 year) Windows application developer with no serious web development chops when I landed my first ASP.net project. I purchased this book (along with a couple others), and The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology has thus far been a Godsend for me. It's organized in a very useful problem/solution format, and since I tend to know what I want to do, but not necessarily how to do it in ASP.net, this book ends up being the first one I reach for on my bookshelf.
Additionally, since the chapters are organized by type of problems, ("Membership and Access Control", "Working with Email", etc.) after I find my solution for one issue, I tend to read around the other solutions in that chapter, finding answers to problems I haven't yet run into, but will later.
Well done, guys.