Customer Reviews

Essential ASP.NET With Examples in C#

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I recently read the excellent "ASP.NET Essentials with Examples in C#" by Fritz Onion, published by Addison-Wesley as part of the company's excellent .NET Development Series. Having been working with ASP.NET for more than two years, I tend to be a bit more skeptical of new ASP.NET titles when they take an omnibus approach, attempting to preview an entire technology in one book, rather than a specific part of a platform or the application of it.

This is definitely not the case with this new book, as it's a very refreshing overview of ASP.NET for those who have been working with it.

It's been my experience that with most titles taking an omnibus approach, a book will have one or two chapters that really shine, explaining some aspect of ASP.NET development better than most books. This book has several such gems. It features one of the better descriptions of proper surgery of machine.config/web.config that you'll find on the market today. Specifically, each element with an application's configuration file is examined, instead of the lackadaisical "here's a look at the more important ones" approach that so many authors sadly resort to.

It also sports a better description than most books about the ASP.NET worker process (aspnet_wp.exe) and the role of it within the context of an application. The book also does a good job of defining the HTTP pipeline and the importance of authoring custom modules to extend/enhance an application. Really good chapters on data binding and writing custom server controls also stand out. Both beginners and experienced developers will get a lot out of these helpful and very necessary explanations.

The illustrations are very helpful, and Onion takes another rarely-used approach - explaining each and every data member for each interface implemented by ASP.NET, rather than just saying, "Class XYZ implements IASyncResult". The book's focus is giving the professional developer a better understanding of the inner-workings of the ASP.NET platform, not providing some generic code samples.

Author Onion's writing style is pleasant - he doesn't insult more experienced developers by diluting the easier material, and likewise won't render beginners numb with confusion when explaining more technical concepts.

The book's physical binding is solid, with a rugged cover, thick paper, and a spine that won't easily break while resting in your lap while coding or on your stomach while reading (like me!) At a lean 378 pages, the book features 11 power-packed chapters that won't have you forego your normal social habits just to get through it (I finished the book in two nights' time).

However, I found it curious that the book did not cover the obligatory chapter on XML Web services. This surprised me, as it has become a de facto standard for authoring ASP.NET titles to at least mention how to write "Hello, world!". No biggie on this one, just sort of surprising.

But outside of that, the book is a winner, and a must-have for experienced developers who want to augment their knowledge of ASP.NET by being aware what goes on under-the-hood.

Bravo Fritz, for a job well done!

Audience:

This book, Essential ASP.NET With Examples in C#, is intended for .NET developers that want to learn ASP.NET. It expects the reader to be familiar with the basics of C#, the .NET framework, and object-oriented practices. It does not assume any exposure to web development, nor does it cover html or other non-ASP.NET web concepts. This book is about learning the essential concepts; it is not a low-level introductory book or how-to book. This also makes it a good book for those already familiar with ASP.NET that want to learn the concepts better. If you have this background and want to learn the essentials of ASP.NET, then this book is highly recommended. There is also a version of this book with the Examples in VB.NET, so C# is actually an optional requirement.

Pros:

Fritz Onion has been teaching ASP.NET for DevelopMentor from the beta days of ASP.NET and his experience shows. This book is definitely one of the easiest technical books to just sit down and read without getting bored. It explains each concept as one would expect from an experienced trainer, and the flow of the book is smooth. It assumes the reader is sufficiently familiar with the basic concepts and therefore avoids the usual details, while it goes into the underlying concepts deeper than any other general ASP.NET book that is available today. There is also a very good combination of the abstract principles and practical advice that you can use yourself. The quality of the print itself is also very relaxing since its larger than average print with extra white space.

The book starts with the objectives that ASP.NET set out to solve, including the code-behind model of VS.NET, and then proceeds with an in-depth overview of the server control concept, along with the built-in controls. The next chapters, on configuration and the pipeline, are some of the most thorough discussions I've ever seen, and it appears that many others are also recommending this book based solely on these chapters all by themselves. The rest of the chapters tend to be more independent themes, but they continue to be well-written and thorough. I'm very experienced already, and yet I learned some from those on validation, data-binding, and state management, and I can also recommend those on custom controls, caching, and security for those that don't have the experience.

Cons:

There's not a lot one can say that's bad about this book -- except that its not intended for everyone out there. Its certainly not intended for someone that's not familiar with the basics of .NET and object-oriented practices, nor is it intended to be an exhaustive reference of ASP.NET since it doesn't list or explain every class or method. It doesn't even have the usual chapter on web services, although you could actually argue that's a good thing. This books is also not intended to be a how-to or tutorial based book, but there are examples, and more online. The author never distinguishes between virtual directories and IIS applications, which is a pet peeve of mine, but its hard to find anyone that makes this distinction anymore, even though I feel its of utmost importance.

Buy It:

I give this book my strongest recommendation as a must buy if you want to know the real essentials of ASP.NET. It covers each topic with a style that makes it a joy to read, which is certainly hard to find in technical books. Its also deep enough that everyone is assured of learning something, no matter how experienced you already may be. So if you want to understand the inner concepts of ASP.NET, then this book should definitely be on your bookshelf.

I've ordered this book primarily based on rave reviews of fellow webloggers as well as the fact that every single book from AW .NET series was worth the money. This book did not disappoint.

Fritz has found the right to mix of giving the reader the theory and practical advice. The author assumes that the reader is familiar with .NET and is experienced in application design (I soooo wish more authors would make the same assumption!).

This book gives an experienced developer enough background to be able to make some of the most important design decisions such as when and how to separate presentation logic in custom controls; how to manage state; what data caching option to use etc.

The flow of Essential ASP.NET is absolutely impeccable. Every detail and feature of the technology is introduced at exactly the right place. I liked the flow of the book so much I've used it to put together a presentation on ASP.NET for our team.

A couple of points I wish would be better:

- The book has no description of ASP.NET Web Services - the only major topic omitted.
- There's a few graphics in the book that suppose to illustrate processing sequences. The layout of those graphics could have been done better and didn't really clarify the text they were trying to illustrate.
- The chapter on configuration spends a lot of its text describing how to work with .config files. This topic isn't really specific to ASP.NET and could have been shortened.
- The author gives valuable recommendations on design choices, but most of the advice is directed towards an Internet web application developers. I wish the author would give more consideration to options relevant to Intranet developers.

Overall: highly recommended for experienced developers.

Audience:

This book, Essential ASP.NET With Examples in C#, is intended for .NET developers that want to learn ASP.NET. It expects the reader to be familiar with the basics of C#, the .NET framework, and object-oriented practices. It does not assume any exposure to web development, nor does it cover html or other non-ASP.NET web concepts. This book is about learning the essential concepts; it is not a low-level introductory book or how-to book. This also makes it a good book for those already familiar with ASP.NET that want to learn the concepts better. If you have this background and want to learn the essentials of ASP.NET, then this book is highly recommended. There is also a version of this book with the Examples in VB.NET, so C# is actually an optional requirement.

Pros:

Fritz Onion has been teaching ASP.NET for DevelopMentor from the beta days of ASP.NET and his experience shows. This book is definitely one of the easiest technical books to just sit down and read without getting bored. It explains each concept as one would expect from an experienced trainer, and the flow of the book is smooth. It assumes the reader is sufficiently familiar with the basic concepts and therefore avoids the usual details, while it goes into the underlying concepts deeper than any other general ASP.NET book that is available today. There is also a very good combination of the abstract principles and practical advice that you can use yourself. The quality of the print itself is also very relaxing since its larger than average print with extra white space.

The book starts with the objectives that ASP.NET set out to solve, including the code-behind model of VS.NET, and then proceeds with an in-depth overview of the server control concept, along with the built-in controls. The next chapters, on configuration and the pipeline, are some of the most thorough discussions I've ever seen, and it appears that many others are also recommending this book based solely on these chapters all by themselves. The rest of the chapters tend to be more independent themes, but they continue to be well-written and thorough. I'm very experienced already, and yet I learned some from those on validation, data-binding, and state management, and I can also recommend those on custom controls, caching, and security for those that don't have the experience.

Cons:

There's not a lot one can say that's bad about this book -- except that its not intended for everyone out there. Its certainly not intended for someone that's not familiar with the basics of .NET and object-oriented practices, nor is it intended to be an exhaustive reference of ASP.NET since it doesn't list or explain every class or method. It doesn't even have the usual chapter on web services, although you could actually argue that's a good thing. This books is also not intended to be a how-to or tutorial based book, but there are examples, and more online. The author never distinguishes between virtual directories and IIS applications, which is a pet peeve of mine, but its hard to find anyone that makes this distinction anymore, even though I feel its of utmost importance.

Buy It:

I give this book my strongest recommendation as a must buy if you want to know the real essentials of ASP.NET. It covers each topic with a style that makes it a joy to read, which is certainly hard to find in technical books. Its also deep enough that everyone is assured of learning something, no matter how experienced you already may be. So if you want to understand the inner concepts of ASP.NET, then this book should definitely be on your bookshelf.

I found Fritz Onion's explanation of ASP.NET w/ C# to be very good at what it does. That said, I feel that a few warnings are in order:

- This book is not a programming introduction
- Those totally unfamiliar with web programming may find this book difficult to use
- This book is not a C# tutorial
- This book does not cover any particular area of ASP.NET with incredible detail, it is merely an overview. (For example, this book spends maybe 20 or 30 pages on server controls. For more detail on this particular area, something like "Developing Microsoft ASP.NET Server Controls and Components" from the Microsoft Press might be more appropriate.)

This book provides a great starting point for semi-experienced web developers and traditional programmers to delve into ASP.NET. If you'll be developing in C#, I'd recommend picking up a copy of this book along with the Deitel Developer series C# for experienced programmers. Between those two and the Microsoft VS libraries (if you're developing with Visual Studio), you should be well on your way to developing useful web apps with Visual Studio using ASP.NET and C#. Overall this book gets 5 stars, but it's only good at what it does and it is certainly not a catch-all.

Fritz Onion's "Essential ASP.NET" is one of the best ASP.NET books I have read. It doesn't spend too much time on the mind numbing basics, but also doesn't skip them entirely. You may want to have at least a basic understanding of ASP.NET before reading this book though. Fritz strikes just the right balance between implementation details and discussion. I have read many books where the author says the same thing over and over to make a point. He does an excellent job here, and his book is very readable. You will not get bored reading this book!

What more could you want in a book? This book covers all of the important topics of ASP.NET development - DataGrids, Verification, Http pipelines, ASP.NET architecture. He covers it all! Every real world ASP.NET application developer will gain valuable insight from this book.

If I had to change one thing about the book, I would have liked to see more results of the code. For code samples I didn't understand exactly how they worked, I had to build and run them myself in order to see the results. I would have liked to see screenshots for more of the code samples running. There were these screenshots for the most difficult code sections to grasp and I commend Fritz for having them, but I think there could have been more.

If you only buy one ASP.NET book, buy this one!

This is an excellent book.

Not only did I find this book's logical and well-paced discussion of ASP.NET's architecture very valuable when I was new to ASP.NET, I have found myself going back to it again and again to find answers while I'm working. This is one of the select few books I keep where I can reach from where I work.

Note that this is *not* a book for beginners. It assumes you are already familiar with .NET, and also with the basics of how the web works. I liked that because I had been using .NET for a long time before I first wrote an ASP.NET application, so I was glad it didn't waste any paper covering ground I already knew. Readers whose first ASP.NET application is also going to be their first .NET application will probably want not want to make this the first .NET book they read. Likewise, anyone not acquainted with the basics of how web applications generally work will probably want to start elsewhere. But for experienced developers looking to understand the specifics of ASP.NET, this is the perfect book.

I have several years of experience programming Microsoft Windows and I am new to developing web applications. Having read several other ASP.NET books and written a few web and web service applications, I still did not have a clear conceptual model of how ASP.NET works. In this book, Fritz Onion is able to explain the architecture and mechanism of ASP.NET clearly and concisely with illustrative code examples. This contrasts sharply with other books filled with extensive code examples but provide little unerstanding of ASP.NET itself. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has other software development experience (Windows, C++, Object-Oriented, etc) but new to web applications and ASP.NET.

An excellent book that is extremely easy to read, not because of lack of depth, but because of excellent writing style. The author's ability to take complex concepts and explain them in easy to understand terms makes this book a real pleasure to read.

There is excellent coverage of the architectural concepts behind ASP.Net. The chapter on Http Pipeline provides deep insight into the entire framework, while the chapters on Web Controls and Web Forms explains how and why web development will never be the same.

Having taught ASP.NET for over a year now, I think the book would
be an invaluable resource for students, I like the author's style which is really well thought-out. It is really a delight to read both the books. (There is a VB.NET title for the VB.NET folks)

More importantly the content is delivered addressing the most common student questions along the way. It is a welcome change from books that presume to discuss the subject over hundreds of pages and missing the forest for the trees in the process. For the experienced developers it cements a lot of seemingly loose and disparate concepts.

A must have for ASP.NET developers, be it beginners or the experienced. The book is even more interesting after one has done some hands on ASP.NET programming and then would like to understand what really is going under the hood.

Kudos for a job well done!