Customer Reviews

Beginning Web Programming using VB.NET and Visual Studio .NET

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A word of caution here, this is not a beginners book. More like an advanced or an intermediate book. If this is a beginner's book, then I would hate to see an advanced book. The first 2 chapters were okay, but starting with Chapter 3 it is a real lu-lu! It goes on and on about web controls and custom controls and dynamic control and customized templates and cascading style sheets. I think it would have been best if some of that advanced material had been left out and kept more simple for chapter 3 and concentrated on developing an application that didn't have to rely on all kinds of custom controls and style sheets and all other kinds of stuff. Keep it simple stupid would have been more the order of the day when it came to writing this book.

Truely this is not a beginner's book but rather a foundational book.
I've been studying the .Net Framework for just over a year now. During my studies, I've learned many sophisticated techniques; however, I have not be able to show what I know because I did know how to put it all together. It was like having all the pieces to the puzzle and not having a picture to guide the construction. Consequently, I've been looking for the Picture and this book is it.... a step-by-step guidance on how to integrates all the technologies into one project. This is the "Glue"!

If you're looking for guidance on how to implement the many .Net techniques in a Web Application than this is a Great book! If you are a real beginner please look else where and then come to this book. You will be glad that you did ---> I am!

Bottom Line - The book should be titled Foundational instead of Beginning. If it were, I am sure it reviews would be much higher.

This book provides a good foundation but I took less and less out of it as it progressed. I like the chapters covering header controls and base classes and also the instruction on tables and datasets. The strength of the book is that one can follow along with the clearly written 'Try this out' sections, although these were not without the usual scattering of errors. Ultimately the authors seem to lose interest in the application we are supposed to be writing in this book.

The longest chapter was on XML frankly left me baffled. I've read more comprehensible stuff elsewhere since. All I could do was follow along without really learning. It seemed a complex exercise for a beginners book!

In summary, I learnt some good things from this book but ultimately I found it disappointing.

I can understand that a complete beginner to web design and programming in the .NET Framework would be a little upset with the title as some of the reviews have stated, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel! Those that are complaining now will be thankful later when they need to integrate all of these new technologies to create a finely woven site that impresses its users. I can honestly say that I've read a dozen books on ASP.NET (in VB and C#) and none do the justice to the topic that this book does. Many are rehashes of the same old thing - here's a datalist, here's a datagrid, here's one way to use ADO.NET, etc. It's just so hard to find it all in one place and this book does have most of it between two covers!
Consider having a look at a book like ASP.NET Website Programming (problem - design -solution) which I have read from cover to cover. Now that is an advanced book that covers excellent ground but really doesn't do a good job of explaining the code - if this book was at my fingertips it would have been much, much easier to understand and implement.
So those of you that have some experience with custom server controls, CSS, ADO.NET, and XML will not find the road that hard and will greatly enjoy this read.
Those that want to learn how to implement security correctly using a variety of different techniques throughout the lifecycle or your project will be very excited indeed.

-All the best in your programming endeavors.

I have bought at least a dozen Web Development Books and this book has provided more practical development techniques than all the other books combined. As a previous evaluator has written, this book is the "Glue" the brings everything together. No book on this complex subject can do it all, but this book comes the closest of any I have read.