Customer Reviews

Beginning ASP.NET 1.0 with Visual Basic.NET

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

 

 

This is a great book for those new to creating web applications. It seems to me that the people that gave it a low rating are the ones that were experienced web developers. This book was not intended for them. On the back cover of the book, it clearly explains that it is for beginners who have no prior experience with ASP, VB, XML, OOP, or the .NET Framework.

This book fit my experience level very well. I had only developed one small web application in classic ASP prior to purchasing this book and I did that over a year ago. I have weak HTML skills and very little experience writing web pages period. However, I have done quite a lot of development in Access using VBA so I am not completely new to programming or databases. In fact, I would say my skills in these areas are at least average if not above.

After reading and working through the exercices in this book, I was able to develop a web-based time and billing application with a Jet (Access) database back-end. I was able to do all of the things that I imagined doing when I conceived this project and then some. It works and looks great! Of course, in addition to the book, I also used a lot of great online resources. But the knowledge and skills I gained from the book provided me with a solid foundation that I feel confident I can build upon.

The examples in the book all worked for me with very few exceptions. I found very few errors, which is important especially in a beginner's book. In addition, I love how this book is true to its title and sticks to VB.NET. My previous experience with VBA gives me a bias in this direction which was satisfied completely.

My only criticism of the book is that the examples are a little simplistic and unreal even for a beginner's book. I believe the authors could have been a little more creative and come up with some real-world scenarios that still would have been appropriate for this level. However, this is only a minor detractor and does not diminish the overall effectiveness of the book.

If you are a beginner, buy this book. It is a great deal especially considering the price. I would buy it again if I were starting over. I don't think you'll be disappointed if you use the book appropriately and are as determined to learn ASP.NET as I am. Hope this helps!

First of all, a good number of my undergraduates like this book as it introduces the bare bones required to get something up and running quite quickly. The downside of the book, from my persusal of it, is that it is less even than it could be, or perhaps should be. In many chapters (especially the crucial early ones) examples are often introduced and developed before their key constructs are properly explained. This is simply confusing to naive readers and highly irritating. For instance, the earliest ASP.net script uses "asp:label" without explaining the syntax or semantics for a another few dozen pages.

Unfortunately this is a bit of trend throughout the book and at the very least makes it frustrating. However, once you allow for this, (and it's a big allowance to make) the book is very handy.

It has bundles of scripts that anyone involved in web work will find interesting and useful. You can quibble with some of these (the login scripting for example) contra other books such as Professional ASP.NET, but I suspect this is a byproduct of committee authorship.

The book is clearly aimed at the learner so don't expect Enterprise quality insights into server management. Given the huge range of architectures and technologies available to the developer, producing any 'true' learner book is a considerable challenge. If you need a book for coursework alone, then this will probably meet most of your needs. If you earn your living with the .NET and its companions, then you need some supplementary texts.

The book is for complete beginners who have no previous experience with ASP. Some experience with HTML is helpful but not required. This book will teach you everything you need to know in order to create dynamic ASP.NET web sites.

The first part of the book will familiarize you with the basic functionality of HTML, XML, ASP.NET, the .NET Framework, and Visual Basic .NET. You will learn how each of these technologies can be used together to create flexible web sites.

The second part of the book introduces the concepts of object-oriented programming. All concepts are explained in detail with the help of many real world programming examples.

After presenting the groundwork, the book then progresses to discussing the technologies and techniques that ASP.NET can draw upon to increase its functionality. These include ADO.NET for data source access, XML Web Services for inter-website communication, and Server Controls for facilitating code maintenance and reuse.

The final part of the book presents ways in which you can optimize your ASP.NET sites to increase their speed, security and robustness. It also offers some detailed advice on code debugging.

This book is highly recommended to beginners who want to learn how to start building web applications using ASP.NET.

Many wrox books are great, but this one was a disappointment. As an "classic ASP" developer I found the examples unhelpful and impractical, the information spread out, the request and response object - used constantly in classic ASP - were so poorly explained I still have no idea how they function in ASP.net. I am sure that ASP.NET has many important benefits that make it superior to Classic ASP, but after reading almost 600 pages (!) I feel I do not understand how to achieve the same result I can easily get in Classic ASP. Not recommended.

I have heard that ASP.NET is completely different from ASP, so I decided to go ahead and purchase this book despite the fact that I have been programming ASP for a long time. I have also purchased Professional ASP.NET. If you are an advanced programmer in ASP and VB, I think Professional ASP.NET will give you more than enough knowledge to start programming in ASP.NET w/ VB.NET or C#. From what I can tell, Professional ASP.NET captures much more in depth on each topic. If you are not familier with web-based application & VB language in general, I think this book will help you understand basics.

This book does not look like from Wrox, it got only the bad side of Wrox books - put code on dark background to damage readers' vision.

The usefulness of this book are the examples, while the explanations are not all good. There are 13 authors for this book, the quality of each part of this book differ a lot. Unfortunately, the most importance parts for me: the OOP part and Control part, got the lowest quality. The technology used in these two parts is: put some words there but no real explanation on many important points; simply repeat the sample code to fill out the pages. This is more damaging because of readers' trust on Wrox books, I invested lots of time on this book without questioning, then I found I wasn't going anywhere.

I really like this book for two reasons. First, the authors do not make frequent references to VB6 and "classic" ASP. (They tell it like it is, not how it is different from what it was.) Second, in my experience so far, the code works! I suggest using this book in conjection with Microsoft Web Matrix which is a free download on the Web. There is also a short Wrox book on Web Matrix available as a free download on the Microsoft web site. The thing I like about Web Matrix is that it has its own server built into it. My machine has "XP Home" as the operating system. XP Home will not support the IIS web server software. But with Web Matrix you an write your applications and run them all on one machine, even without IIS or personal web server running on your machine. This book does not include a CD. The code is available on the Wrox website. I think if you see the code you will want the book. Now, if they can just get everyone to show up for the picture!

The book was an excellent book for beginners. I found that it walks through each section step by step with excellent examples. You start out with the basics and proceed into more complicated designs such as using xml and databases. I would definitely recommend this book for someone who is starting out with asp.net as it gives you a good footing into the language.

I have read almost all the chapters of this book. I have been programming with intermediate ASP for past 5 years. The reason I picked up the book was for the easy transition from ASP to ASP.Net and this book help me do that. The book explains ASP.Net 1.0 at the novice level. For serious developers this book can serve as an introductory book for ASP.Net. I have now moved on to Professional ASP.Net book by wrox and many times I have to go back to this book to look into introductory details of the new features of ASP.Net.

The book is well outdated (as of mid-2004).

I'm just finishing the Begining ASP.NET with VB.NET 2003. This was Wrox's suggestion as the follow-on book to really understand website database development. A real waste. The Begining ASP.NET provided the same level of detail.

The book did use SQL Server -- a plus -- which the Begining ASP.NET book lightly covered. But, not enough to justify the expense of buying the book and even more importantly the time to wade through it.