Customer Reviews

ASP.NET 2.0 Illustrated

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This recent book by Homer and Sussman gives a pretty comprehensive exposition of ASP.NET version 2.0. You might compare it to another recent text, "ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed" by Walther. That book chose to give its examples in Visual Basic. Whereas Homer and Sussman provide theirs in C#. In terms of C# knowledge, you need a general acquaintance with its syntax, to easily follow this book.

Possibly, the "Illustrated" in the title refers to the copious number of screen captures. Given that you want to make dynamic web pages with ASP, this is very appropriate. Especially when a lot of the text is devoted to explaining the many user interface widgets and associated interactions. Version 2 gives you a rich feature set. Take the Wizard control, for example. It has many possible configurations, where you can decide whether its various subparts are visible or not. And possibly providing custom images for some visible parts. Along with giving style information, where this can be done in a centralised manner across many of your dynamic pages. The latter is done via Master Pages and Themes, and extends the idea of Cascading Style Sheets.

There is also an interesting chapter on making pages for mobile devices and small screen devices. If you know Java, which is the main competing language, then it splits into a dialect called J2ME for mobile and small devices. Whereas ASP.NET seems to hold out the prospect of staying within the main language. But I can't tell from the text if this usage is actually practical. Sun had to make J2ME instead of J2SE [normal Java] out of necessity. Because of the severe resource constraints of gadgets like cellphones. Surely ASP/C# runs into the same constraints?

A very well written book that covers the subject material very well. Well suited for a novice or an advanced developer with plenty of examples. I would certainly recommend this book highly.

Excerpt from C# Online.NET Review (wiki.CSharp-Online.NET):
"As the authors lead the reader through binding, caching, displaying, editing, exposing, filtering, paging, securing, and sorting data--one sees just how successful Microsoft has been in streamlining access to ASP.NET technology."