Customer Reviews

Developing Microsoft ASP.NET Server Controls and Components (Pro-Developer)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I almost never comment on the work of other authors, but this book is so good, so well written, so well organized and so useful that I simply have to praise it.

This is truly what technical writing should be: clear, concise, well-organized, well presented, with useful exercises.

If you need to learn how to write ASP.NET custom controls, in detail and in depth, this is clearly the book to buy.

I recommend it highly.

-Jesse Liberty

This book is an absolute must for anyone that wants answers to questions regarding server control development for ASP.Net. I don't know of any where else that fully describes the details and requirements of coding solid controls.

The book is fairly complicated but only because control development happens to be complicated. If you are expecting a book that will simplify custom control development this isn't it. If you find a book that simplifies control development and it serves your purposes that is great but you will certainly be missing out on a great deal of the power available. If you are serious about non-trivial control development and are looking for a book that explains custom controls then this book is very nearly perfect.

I have this book open on my desk everyday as it answers questions I have been unable to find answers to anywhere else.

If you are developing controls and you don't enjoy being frustrated or hacking endlessly away trying to get your controls to work properly, buy this book.

Nikhil and Vandana do an amazing job of distilling a fairly complex subject - building ASP.NET Server Controls. They start out by discussing the internals of ASP.NET and server control architecture, move into the nuts and bolts of server controls (rendering, event model, client-side script, processing postbacks, custom state management, etc). There are tons of examples throughout the book. In addition to the tons of examples, there are two full case studies (a data bound templated control and a DHTML based control) at the end of the book. The sample are almost all in C# but I would still advise VB.NETers to buy this book because the principles and insight cannot be found anywhere else. ...

I've been doing server control development for a year now, read various articles, documentation and the WROX book. Upon reading this book, all of the clouds remaining lifted instantly. Not only is this book step-by-step and thorough, but explains behind the scenes happenings and gives incremental examples that build upon each concept explained and really cements the concepts relayed in this text. Despite one of the other comments here, I feel this is the easiest read I've had in a long time although the nature of the concepts here are just simply on the complex side.

This is THE definitive guide to authoring Server Controls!!! A must read...

This book is well written and complete (almost) in content. I have read the server control book by Wrox press and thought it was nice and to-the-point on a lot of issues. In contrast, this book is less of a reference and more of a cover-to-cover read.

I don't care much for the format of the book (it's rather hard to use as a reference), but if you're willing to take the time to read it though, you'll find a wealth of information on the subject, written by two authors who know their subject inside out.

If you are a proficient ASP developer and are familiar with advanced C# progrmming topics like events and delegates, this book gives you a thorough knowledge about server controls. After looking into many ASP.NET books, this is the first book which doesn't waste the reader's time to describe non-related topics.

If your trying to get started creating controls programmatically then this book is a must. It explains when to take advantage of user controls vs. server controls, what methods to override depending on which objects you choose to inherit (Control, WebControl, etc.) It's not just a technical documentation dump, like I had feared. The authors explain with clear and concise examples.

I came to this book with considerable experience in ASP, and with fair experience over the past year with ASP.NET, mainly in C#. I also have some experience with Java and object-oriented programming. I wanted to learn how to create custom web controls, and this is one of the few books on the subject. The authors are members of Microsoft's ASP.NET team, so they know the inside story, and technically, they show their knowledge of the topic.

However, the book basically assumes not only that you know C# thoroughly, but also that you understand the event model that is more along the lines of desktop applications. Chapter three hits you with an abstract discussion of component and event programming that is difficult if you're not already familiar with the topic, and the book never really looks back after that. I struggled through the first thirteen chapters before giving up, not feeling like I have a grasp of how I could build controls. At this point I'll either have to painstakingly go back through much of the book again, hoping to catch on, or else find another resource.

The other problem is that when introducing a topic, the text rarely gives a good explanation of why the topic is important; instead, it jumps into details of interfaces and methods. A good example is in chapter nine, when the book turns to processing postback data. Sure, it's important that the control be able to interact with the data in a form, but what does that mean for the control? An example of how this would work and be important would be key here, but instead, the authors open the section with:

"We'll now look at the postback data processing architecture that enables a control to retrieve form data submitted by a user, update its state, and raise events in response to changes in its state. To participate in postback data processing, a control must implement the IPostBackDataHandler interface and render elements whose HTML name attributes have unique values on the page" (p. 203). The discussion continues with the technical details of implementing the interface. By the time they get to the code sample, it's tough to see how the snippets of code added to the previous example helps handle postback data.

I expect that if you are an experienced C++ and C# applications programmer, you'll find the book a great help and reference. If you're fairly new to programming, or most of your experience is with Web applications, I would look elsewhere (perhaps the O'Reilly book by Lowy, though I haven't read that one so can't endorse it either). I realize that topics like event handling are more advanced, but there should be a book that can convey it understandably to the intermediate-level Web programmer.

This book may be a "must have", but only because of the lack of good books on ASP.NET control programming. It is not bad, but it is far from great. The book does go into a fine amount of detail concerning the "behind the scenes" functionality of controls - a must for serious control development - but often does a poor job explaining those details. It does a good job of "showing" code, but not so great a job at "teaching" code. Many explanations can be inconsistent, unclear, dense, and frustrating...it's often left to you to really determine why and how the code works by backtracking through the book, using MSDN documentation, or looking items up in another book.

Control coverage is good - if explanations had been presented a bit more clearly and consistently, the book would be great.

This is "THE" book on server controls. The contents are very clear and the concepts are nicely explained.
Anyone who wants to develop the server controls must buy this book. I had read book on the same topic from Wrox, but this book overshadows the Wrox book.
The best part is that author gradually takes us from building a simple control to very complex one. In the process, he explains all the concepts. Reading this book was like taking an inside tour of the server controls.
However I think that the companion CD would have been a bonus.