Customer Reviews

Core Internet Application Development with ASP.NET 2.0

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I recommend this book to experienced developers, although the topics are discussed clearly enough that a patient novice developer will gain much. Because the book assumes the reader has knowledge of basic web technologies, those with a background in earlier versions of ASP.NET or other web development platforms will get the most out of it.

The approach the author took was to give the reader the most pertinent information to bring him or her up to speed quickly. Only the most useful information is presented--which is why the book contains the word "core" in the title rather than "complete." For example, when presenting a new control to the reader, the author discusses only the most-used features of the control. Often, he will mention other, less-used features so the reader knows they are available, but will not provide examples or provide much detail over these non-core features. If you are looking for an exhaustive reference of all the features of ASP.NET 2.0, this is not the book for you. However, if you are looking to learn ASP.NET 2.0, this book will cover 90% or so of the features you will likely use for any project.

The typical presentation of an aspect of ASP.NET 2.0 in this book is to provide a brief description, a screenshot or two, and an explanation of what kind of situations are appropriate for its use. Most items also include example code, with additional screenshots. I especially appreciated that the examples were simple, but clearly demonstrated the use of the item they were explaining. The code for the examples was presented in its entirety, but use of bold text on the pieces being demonstrated made the examples very understandable and helped me go through them more quickly than the typical code example. Also the use of labeling in the screenshots made it easy to see the results of what each code example was doing.

Overall, this was a very efficient way to quickly learn about each feature of ASP.NET 2.0. The book was a surprisingly fast read for a technical manual. Right at the point where I became bogged down with too much detailed information about controls, data sources, etc, the author took a step back and began discussing higher-level topics such as contemporary software design and the appropriate use of layers or tiers when designing a web application. Although I have had experience designing multi-layered or tiered web applications, this higher-level discussion was nice because all the details of ASP.NET 2.0 were very fresh in my mind. I was able to think about application design in a new light now that I understood the capabilities of ASP.NET 2.0.

The book's last few chapters step away from the web applications themselves and discuss the "other" things pertaining to ASP.NET 2.0, such as web services, security within web applications, and deployment of applications. These are useful in that they give a slightly more complete set of information on developing internet applications with ASP.NET 2.0.

Summary -

If you are looking for a way to quickly get up to speed in ASP.NET 2.0, without getting bogged down in too many details, I highly recommend this book.

I read several asp.net 2.0 books, this book always was on my shelf. I would keep this book for long time. It does not bore you with lot of code printouts, but mixed code and theory equally well. the drawings and clear looks attractive on a high quality print of this book. I highly recommend this book for beginners of ASP.NET 2.0

Read the book from start to the end. Not to be harsh, this is not a good book for the beginners, nor for experienced users. For beginners, the book doesn't explain some of the topic clearly, such as Page Life cycle. The way the book explain this topic might scare readers away from learning ASP.NET; for medium level programmers, this book doesn't touch any of the advanced topic, such as building custom controls. Also for the amount of knowledge covered in the book, the size should be reduced to 500 pages. If you want to learn ASP.NET, Beginning ASP.NET 2.0, Pro ASP.NET 2.0, and ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem-Design-Solution are the three definitive books.