Customer Reviews

ASP.NET Unleashed (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(89)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

To begin with, this book isn't clear about what language is covered throughout the book. It seems it's trying to hide that it covers only Visual Basic. If you're into C#, you have to translate the examples yourself although these translations are ridiculously simple about 29 times out of 30. That 30th time, a certain amount of C# experience or extensive newsgroup searches will be needed.

If you want a decent VB reference you can go for this book or simply use the free .NET Framework SDK Documentation. The advantage of having this book at hand is that it sheds some light on the topics with its own examples.

As a tutorial to read from cover to cover, I think the author could have done a better job. If you read e.g. pages 84-131, you will read about the same text repeated four times with the exceptions being the search-and-replace that seems to have been performed on some words. I'm exaggerating a bit here, but not that much. I guess that's the price of having one author managing to write a 1400 pages book on a new technology all by himself, pressured by time. This isn't to be seen as critics against Walther though, he seems to be very knowledgeable on the subject.

I could recommend this book to VB programmers wanting something more than the free Microsoft documentation for ASP.NET. This is not a strong recommendation though. Have a look at the alternatives as well.

I've bought the Wrox books and the 21 Days book, but this book is by far the best!

ASP.NET Unleased covers advanced topics that aren't even mentioned in the other books. The introductory chapters on Web Controls are great, but the book really gets down to business when discussing database access and ADO.NET.

The book also has great chapters on the IE WebControls (like the TreeView and TabStrip controls), GDI+ (for generating graphics on the fly), and two excellent chapters on building custom server controls.

For my money, the others books I've read don't even come close. If you are only going to buy one book on ASP.NET, this is the book.

This books covers pretty much all aspects of ASP.NET in good detail. The examples are well documented and many apply to common everyday problems. I've only two problems with the book:

1. All the source is in VB.NET. I thought the book would offer the examples in both VB and C# or at least offer an online copy of the source in C#. But I admit this is my fault since I didn't check more carefully before I bought the book.

2. The author constantly keeps refering to the samples "on the CD accompanying the book." I find this very annoying since there's NO cd accompanying the book! I'm not sure how this could've escaped the editors and the publisher. Either they knew there would be no CD and didn't care to revise the material or they didn't ship the CD. Having the source on CD is not a big deal since you can get it online, but it's just a matter of respecting the readers.

I believe I have purchased just about every book covering ASP .NET from Amazon since the inception of .NET.

That's a lot of books! Unfortunately, MOST turned out to be real duds or overly simplified - not much good for building real applications and ASP .NET sites. Too many authors were just trying to meet deadlines and produce one of the first books on the subject to hit the market - most are paper weights if anything.

This book is by far the best. Leaves the other reads in the dust. This book , however, is not for programmers just beginning .NET programming. It covers many real world applications of .NET and applies real world solutions. I've only owned the book for 4 days and it has already answered many of my lingering questions that the previous books did not cover.

Simply THE BEST ASP .NET book out there! I'm not a paid endorsement either. More so a frazzled programmer trying to learn the new platform quickly and apply to projects at my work place. I'm currently building a new LIMS application for the product test lab at my work place. The application is 100% ASP .NET.

Where the other books were a disappointment, this book's organization and content display the author's cohesive thought process. His pride in producing a quality book shows through!

I look forward to future releases from this author.

Prior to purchasing this book, I resisted purchasing a major book on ASP.NET. My reasoning was simple. I would look at the number and quality of pages related to ADO because ADO is my main area of interest. Most other books had less than 100 pages of rather simplistic material. This book has close to 300 pages.

The chapters that I have studied are easy to follow. The samples are well designed and nicely achieve their intended purpose. Because of the size of the ADO section, it comprehensively covers topics that are not even mentioned in other books.

Unlike Wrox books, this book identifies a single author. While it would be virtually impossible for one person to do all the work associated with such a book. The chapters that I have studied appear as if one person did write them. The chapters are well organized, reference each other, do not duplicate information, and have a similar style. Those are factors that you do not usually see in books with multiple authors.

Their Web site is great.

Seldom does the writing of a book inspire me to take the time to create a review. But I have found myself saying that I wished I had started with this book so many times, that I thought I might be able to save some of you some time and effort.

This is an excellent reference for learning ASP.NET. Of all of the books I currently own (Professional ASP.NET, ASP Programmer's Reference, Programming Data Driven Web Applications with ASP.NET and Professional ASP Website Programming) this book stands FAR ahead of the crowd in terms of staying clear and within the scope of learning all of the essentials of ASP.NET development.

While this book doesn't bode as well as the Wrox books as a pure reference, it more than makes up for it in the way the author truly understands how to educate. Clear, concise and relevent are the three words that best describe the author's writing style.

For those of you who are new to ASP and/or ASP.NET, this is without a doubt the first (albeit not the only) book you should purchase.

A truly excellent learning tool.

This book is the most comprehensive ASP.NET book I have read (and I have read 5+ ASP.NET books). There are over 180 pages on the ASP.NET Server controls. Almost 300 pages on ADO.NET and how to best leverage the new data list controls. 70 pages on securing your ASP.NET applications (about 50 more than the other books). ASP.NET Unleashed is heads and shoulders above the rest with regards to its coverage of building custom controls (something we should all get used to doing). In addition to the great material mentioned above, you will learn how to build a search page using ASP.NET and SQL Server, send an email from your ASP.NET page, create graphics on the fly, and more. You will be happy to know that there are also TWO full blown ASP.NET applications to pick apart, copy, and learn from!

I have only mentioned *some* of the things covered in this book. As I said, you will not find a more comprehensive ASP.NET book anywhere.

I have taught an ASP.NET university course for a year and half. Having received review copies of 10-15 other ASP.NET books, I have never found any other book as good as this for learning ASP.NET.

I completely disagree with the review that states that Mr. Walther combined the code behind with the presentation layer because he is lazy (it is at least 10x more tedius to create the examples in Notepad). It was done to make the book easier to read. Who wants to have to tie two different figures to see what a program is doing especially when the programs get to be a couple of pages long?

I have not had a single program that took more than a couple of minutes to split into an aspx file and a vb file.

The acid test of any textbook has to be how far it takes you up the learning curve. After a certain point, any further learning may be asymptotic, but if you can at least get to that stage the book has done its job. All I can say is that the Second Edition of ASP.NET Unleashed did it for me.

First of all, I prefer C#. The fact that the book's examples were in Vb.Net presented no problem as all the examples are also in C# on the accompanying CD. All of these can be opened in WebMatrix with ease.

Every example in the book serves as a complete microproject, with very clear and precise concomitant explanations. One thing that became obvious since purchasing this book was that it became the number one reference for a number of tricky little problems encountered. The book abounds with examples that cover many I could point out, but space precludes. However, an article appeared this morning on the problem of filling in large forms and the associated difficulties of paging back and forth or long scrolling. The book illustrates a sophisticated solution using panel controls - very neat indeed.

The main criticism seems to be on 'codebehind'. One review that I read previously on the First Edition put me off. I gritted my teeth when I bought this edition and I am so glad that I did.

This book teaches you what you need to get to the part before the learning curve becomes asymptotic. Codebehind? You can take the examples and split the code into various .cs files ( in my case)and compile them. It's an excellent learning experience: once you have done a few it becomes standard practice. Codebehind isn't an issue.

If you're ready to get going with ASP.Net, this is the book
you want to buy! Face it, there's a ton of information to
get up to speed on and yet you can't spend every hour of
every day reading .Net books (or can you?). You have to
choose and hopefully choose effectively. I was in the middle
of a couple of other ASP.Net books but once I started
reading this one, those books just didn't seem to have the
same attraction. It reads like a Grisham novel for .Net
mavens, you can't put it down!

What I really like about it is that it gets down to the
minutest details that many other books just skip right over.
ASP.Net is a radical overhaul of the platform and there are
just so many details to know. This book points them out with
clear, simple and understandable examples; yet you don't
feel like your time is being wasted. That's often been my
frustration with many books. Out of the blue I'll read
things in the code that's there's been no explanation for;

sometimes key facts aren't even given an explanation. I'm
unsure why this happens; perhaps the authors are limited to
a certain number of pages or perhaps they're just not paying
attention. This does not happen in "Unleashed." You're
carefully brought along, detail by detail. Each example
stands on it's own, addresses one particular point.

Seemingly minor yet important facts like "One significant
limitation of ASP.Net pages is that they can contain only
one <form Runat="Server"> tag" are mentioned. The author
doesn't assume you don't care about these simple details.
This book is chock full of such particulars. On the other
hand, the book spends chapters exploring such advanced
topics as GDI+ and web services.

This book is well worth spending your time and money for.
And, for all my friends reading this: No, you can't borrow
it, get your own!