Customer Reviews

ASP.NET in a Nutshell

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you're serious about knowing all the nooks and crannies of ASP.NET then have this book on standby at all times. I haven't read every page in it yet since it's so much of a reference manual (covers all the web namespaces) but when I'm stuck on something it has in most cases been able to solve the problem for me. I've been turning to this book if I need to know the name of a method or property or what namespace it's located in or if I want a particular functionality but need to find out if such a function even exists. This book has helped me in those areas. You won't get the most benefit from this book until you're at least at a comfortable level with ASP.NET so don't try to learn it from scratch from this book. Have at least one good ASP.NET book under your belt first.
Happy Coding!

I picked this particular book because it was by O'Reilly, and their reference "ASP in a Nutshell" is excellent. However, that other book is by a different author, and ASP.NET is far more complex than classic ASP.

The dilemma the authors faced was that if they wanted to create an excellent reference at a reasonable price, they had to skimp on creating a good tutorial. Well, they succeeded in creating an excellent reference at a fair price. The book is almost 800 pages, and I think they used the space very well. But as other reviewers have noted, if you need a slower-paced introduction, you will need another book. O'Reilly & Associates have apparently realized this, because they also publish "Programming ASP.NET" (which I know little about).

To me, the authors seem to be very knowledgeable. The book is well-organized and doesn't skimp on any ASP.NET topics. They know "classic" ASP extremely well, which is helpful if you yourself are migrating from classic ASP.

C# and other non-VB programmers will notice a slight bias towards Visual Basic .NET, but honestly this shouldn't be a problem for anybody, especially if you were used to switching between VBScript and JScript in "classic" ASP.

If I could change one thing about the book, it would be the introduction to ADO.NET. ADO.NET only bears a superficial resemblance to "classic" ADO, and the bound ASP.NET data controls are completely new. Yet the chapter that covers them is only 23 pages long. The chapter is explicitly written as an overview, but if you have no other printed reference handy the chapter ends up being just a teaser. The examples in that chapter are fairly similar to the ones in the MDSN library, which are quite "lazy". I would have gladly paid another $2.20 for 50 more pages to expand upon the topic. Instead I will have to find some good examples on the web somewhere, or buy another book (not likely).

I don't own any other ASP.NET books, but I can say that if you could only buy one ASP.NET book, this one would be a good choice.

Review: ASP.NET in a Nutshell - A Desktop Quick Reference

ASP.NET in a Nutshell is the fast track way to get up-to-speed on Microsoft's next generation technology for building web enabled applications on the .NET platform.

The book is structured in three sections. Part 1 provides a high level overview of what ASP.NET is and discusses the new features such as Web Services, Server Controls, Data Access (ADO.NET), Security, Configuration, Error Handling, and Validation Controls. Part 2 is a reference to each of the major classes that are available as part of the ASP.NET object model. A chapter is devoted to each of the following classes:

- Page

- HttpApplication and HttpApplicationState

- HttpContext

- HttpException

- HttpRequest

- HttpResponse

- HttpServerUtility

- HttpSessionState

Part 3 provides a reference to the namespaces you'll most commonly come across while developing ASP.NET applications. Of all three sections, I found this section to be the least useful. Although each of the classes has an introductory reference, Most of the information here can be sourced easily from the MSDN documentation. Such a reference would have been better suited to a book on ASP, where the official documentation was somewhat scarce.

The books introductory chapters start out with code examples written in both VB.NET and C#, however as you progress further through the book the samples are provided in VB.NET only. This is not such a bad thing, but I would have preferred it had the authors stuck to one language throughout the book, or give consistent examples throughout the book in both languages.

This is not a book for beginners. For those readers just starting out with ASP.NET or with little to no web development experience, I would suggest reading other titles such as Programming ASP.NET (O'Reilly) or Professional ASP.NET (Wrox Press) before purchasing ASP.NET in a Nutshell.

At the end of the day, ASP.NET in a Nutshell provides a good quick reference to the fundamentals of ASP.NET, with excellent tutorials and "How To's" throughout. Despite the namespace reference providing only a little more than the MSDN documentation, the first two sections more than make up for those 300 odd pages of filler. And If you're willing to live with most of the example being written in VB.NET then this book is definitely a worthwhile purchase.

I'm afraid I disagree with most of the reviews.

This book is divided in three sections:
1-A "fast-paced introduction to ASP.NET" (ch.1-11, p.1-228)
2-A "detailed reference to most frequently used ASP.NET classes" (ch.12-20)and,
3-A "Quick reference" of the ASP-related namespaces(ch.21-38)

My comments:
1-The fast-paced intro reads rather like a list than an actual intro. I mean you don't really get the picture of what .NET, or the elements described here, is about. And, though it certainly aims at programmers with previous experience, its code examples are not focused on the topic discussed but wastes pages upon pages by showing context code as well(which could have been clearly implied). So if you know the things covered here, it's a waste, if you don't know them you are not going to get any useable info. Finally occupying roughly the 1/3 of the book it could really get off the way.

2-The reference of the most used classes is nothing you couldn't find in the framework's documendation. Yes, it's focused on web-related classes and more handy maybe than the on-line reference but that's not a big deal. The big deal is, though, that it does not give you a better insight into the programming logic they supply. So what's the benefit?

3-The quick namespace reference part is the best one(compared to others). It has a UML formatted diagram of each namespace followed by a short description of its classes each with a list of its methods and properties. The diagrams are good and give you a panoramic view but an index of the UML notation is missing. Also the methods and properties of the classes are just listed and not described so what's the use if you need additional reference resources? It would have been better if this part were more detailed and covered the whole book. This would make it a real reference.

Overall, I found the book confused about its target reader, mixing too much with too little, certainly unbalanced, and the explanations a bit "wooden" and messy,lucking crispness and in the bottom line it is not a book you could use as complete reference by itself.

This is a very robust reference, up to par with the usual O'Reilly title quality. Biggest upset is the fact that 90% of context examples and nearly all of the reference examples are in VB.net - book should have been titled "ASP.net with VB.net in a Nutshell."

I concur with other reviewers on the following points:

1) The organization is good and focuses strictly on the relevant web classes in .NET.

2) The documentation, however, is more or less a repeat of ASP.NET information from MSDN. In a lot of O'Reilly Nutshell books, the authors typically add more insight to the classes they cover that the official documentation does not. With this book, I really did not get that impression.

If you need an offline version of the MSDN documentation, this is great. Another detraction is that the book does not come with a documentation add-in CD like the other .NET in a Nutshell books.

3) The most egregious fault with this book is that the authors do NOT tell you that the book is mostly in VB.NET syntax. I'm trying to learn C# and the book's latter parts is all VB.NET. I really wish the authors were upfront about this, so I could save myself some money. *sigh*

Future ASP.NET Authors: If you're going to write about ASP.NET, please specify, somewhere on the cover or in the introduction, the language you will be using for examples.

C# programmers may be better off reading other ASP.NET books, which usually are in C# (or at least tell you upfront which language is being used).

Messrs Duthie and MacDonald should be commended for their great effort in structuring this text. The entire 800 pages of this book contain all the necessary ingredients that any serious ASP.NET learner would need in balancing his/her knowledge. It includes: web service development, data access, security, custom controls, deployment, error handling and much more.
In highlighting all the essentials, this book provided easy-to-follow practical analyses for all the features it covered. There are well-anticipated examples which guide the reader through the course. This is a very nice book to have around.

This book is destined to be a classic. It is a complete ASP.NET reference. This book also provides invaluable tips and advice on how to get the most out of ASP.NET. The only minor shortcoming of this book is that all of the brief examples in Part II (the Intrinsic Class Reference) are written in VB.NET. I say that this shortcoming is minor because these examples can easily be converted to C#. To include such examples written in both VB.NET and C# would have increased the size of this book by another 30% and offered nothing meaningful to the reader.

If you're a C# developer and you don't feel like converting all the VB code to C# code in your head, don't buy this book. The last 300 pages of reference have all the method signatures and what not in VB syntax. Pretty painful to use as a C# developer.

I'm returning mine and looking for another reference.

I hunted high and low for this title. Lots of titles coming from the established publishers are not worth buying these days, but the "in a Nutshell" series is always a safe bet. In this case it's a great bet if you're coding in VB.net. 90% of the context examples are in VB and nearly ALL of the reference examples are in VB.net - the C# programmer in you will have to keep looking for that one good portable reference.