Customer Reviews

Microsoft ASP.NET Step by Step (Step by Step (Microsoft))

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Most of Microsoft's Step by Step books suffer from the same basic problem - they explain the really easy stuff in tedious depth, while skipping over and assuming you already understand the difficult stuff. This book is one of the worst examples of this. Tedious chapters on very basic "security" or "configuration" is given but nothing is really explained when it counts. The configuration chapter has endless tables of parameters and possible values, but all too often says things like "a valid encoding string" without explaining what that is. While really dumb basics like "how to create a virtual directory" are covered (twice, with the same step by step graphics) terms like "you must use free-threaded objects" are thrown into the text very early on with no explanation for the poor novice as to what the heck this means. Screenshots are from beta 2 rather than release candidate so basic screenshots or references to "select Web Class" are incorrect (it's now called "ASP.NET web class"). Easy to figure out, but is this series aimed at novices or not?

Worse than all of this is the fact that apart from a very brief introduction to VS.Net in an early chapter (the quick overview of the different panels all books give) you get half way through the book without ever having opened VS.Net or typed in/written any code. Isn't this series supposed to be aimed at developers? Shouldn't we be getting into "doing" something instead of endless guff about "Notepad.Net" (it wasn't funny the first time) or how passwords should be a certain length if you want to be secure or... well you get my drift.

The other book in this series that I've seen (the OOP Step-by-Step) book is not great (lots of complex material presented in a "type this in" fashion without any real explanation of what's being typed in and why) but at least gets the developer doing something and has some pretty solid code and concepts behind it. This volume just comes across as tedious, repetitive and unsatisfactory for both new developers and experienced ones who want to get up to speed.

In a nutshell, I thoroughly enjoyed reading ASPNETSbS. This was not the first .NET book that I've read, but it was the first book that left me feeling as though I had a strong grasp of the ASP.NET technology as a whole, and how I could apply many aspects of it to delivering commercial-grade applications.

As the title suggests, this book is designed to appeal to readers with varying levels ( steps ) of understanding regarding the .NET technologies; this does not mean, however, that the book is either too light or too heavy. I would rather suggest that it offers an extremely balanced overview of the various pieces that, together, form ASP.NET.

At a personal level, I especially enjoyed the exhaustive journey toward understanding the relationships that exist between the Machine.config, the Web.config and the actual web application itself; from my point-of-view, this was the first book to deliver a *full* overview of those parts of an ASP.NET application.

Of course, all of the regular ASP.NET goodies make an appearance, including: authentication, validation, web controls and ADO.NET.

The section on creating custom controls and using inheritance to extend existing controls was very clear and concise. Good attention was given to explaining the structure of the major classes such as the Control and Page classes. The book more than adequately explains the event model of the Page class, along with its properties, methods and the objects that it contains.

The book mostly uses VB.NET for code samples although C# is shown where there are significant differences between the two. Having said that, this is not a book that is language heavy, because there is a much greater emphasis on the actual Framework components themselves.

There are two fairly light sections on WebServices and debugging, which, while not providing a thoroughly detailed examination of the two, certainly explained enough to make it clear where to head for further inspection.

All-in-all, if - like me - you make your living delivering web applications, I think that you should take a read of this book, if for no other reason than to confirm that you *DO* have an thorough grasp of all the topics that it has to offer.

I feel confident in saying that, if you do choose to read this book, then you won't regret the excercise!

Feature points
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o covered many aspects
o organised in logical steps
o spoke about surrounding tools such as VS.NET
o book has its own newsgroup...

ASP.NET is released and lots of book out there, promising to teach you this new technology. I personally chose MSDN series for .net framework. As they are the closest to this technology.
ASP.net step by step is a really good book for beginners. Unlike some books out there it doesnt jump into bunch of code from the first couple of pages. The book is focused on teaching the fundamentals of ASP.net, there are quite good hints in the book that I found very useful. There are some downsides though.

If you have worked with ASP.net before (in beta days) and developed some small to medium applications with that, you will find the book very easy and I dont believe that it will be very useful for your needs. The other thing is the content and the chapters are very similiar to ASP.net quickstart tutorials that comes with .net framework.
If you havent used asp.net before and you dont like to read tutorials from the computer screen, I say go for it, it s very good resource. Otherwise get a more advanced book that is covering more in depth.

I've been programming for 15 years. One thing I've learned about myself in that period is when I want to pick up a new skill, I learn best from technical books that lead you through sample applications, typing it in along the way. This gives me plenty of time to search help on the in-context examples I'm not clear on. I recently read the OOP with VB & C# Step By Step by Robin Reynolds-Haertle, and thought it was fantastic. It fit my learning style perfectly and I learned & retained a ton.

Since this ASP.NET Step by Step was another in the "Step by Step" series, I bought it with similar expectations. This book in no way compares to the OOP book. It reads far more like a reference, which is not what I wanted, not what I need, and certainly not what I expected from the title.

It does have good information in it, and the author does seem to know the subject well. I read the first 8 chapters, decided not to waste any more time & skimmed the rest. I'm currently searching for another book on the subject to fulfill my need.

I rate it low because the title is deceiving & I didn't learn much, but not a shameful 1 star because it does have good information in it, and I intend to keep it as a reference.

This book is a simple introduction to ASP.NET. The examples are of the "hello world" variety.

I found the book particularly weak in web security which definitely requires more detail. For example, passport authentication gets only one paragraph on p 194.

I bought the book in the hopes of getting good background for the ASP.NET certification exam ( 70-315 ). If passing this exam is your goal, I suggest you look elsewhere. I found Jessie Liberty's book much better ( still far from perfect ), but at least the Liberty book contains some solid technical writing and examples.

This book covers a lot of topics but it's more like a series of separate articles, each on a different ASP.NET topic, than a step-by-step book.

The "articles" are well written and (for the most part) clearly explain each subject. However, it's not a "step-by-step" book in the sense that most of the other books in the Microsoft Step-by-Step series are. There are no exercises. One chapter does not necessarily lead to the next. As such, it's really a reference book, not a self-learning guide.

It's a good reference book. It goes into less detail than his (Duthie's) O'Reilly book "ASP.NET in a Nutshell" It doesn't cover all the topics of "Nutshell." The "Nutshell" is a true, detailed "find your topic and look-it-up" reference guide while this book is more along the lines of giving a comprehensive treatment of a the most important basics.

If this book was being marketed as a reference I would give it 4 stars. But it's not being marketed as a reference. As a "step-by-step" I can only give it 2 stars. So, I averaged it out and am giving it 3 stars.

By the way, I bought this book because I was using the WROX book "Beginning ASP.NET 1.0 with Visual Basic.NET" (Goode, Kauffman, et. al.) -- which IS, very much, a step-by-step book -- and was disappointed that the WROX book's lessons are 100% non-IDE based. That is, you use Notepad to do all of the ASP.NET applications. This is fine to do and the WROX book does a reasonable job of walking your through that, step-by-step (with the usual array of typos that we all have learned to expect from WROX). But I also wanted a book that showed me how to develop ASP.NET using the VS.NET IDE, which Duthrie's book does.

Though I am disappointed in this book as a Step-by-Step, I find it very valuable as reference. It just needs a title change.

This book is well written and supported by the author at the books site (see CD that comes with book for details) on various web sites(eg. ASPGNVS). It has a fairly even mix of code and explanation. Used in conjunction with "Visual Studio.Net ASP Quick Start Tutorial" (assuming you have them) you will be pleasantly surprised at how they compliment each other. This also assumes you prefer to use a methodical approach to learning ASP.NET. I can see why this is a Microsoft Press Book as they are generally better at getting the important details out. If you come away disappointed with this book then it could mean that you did not work hard enough to see what points the author was trying to convey in each chapter or you tried to consume the book in one or three days. My recommendation is to go with this book if you are new to ASP.NET (or the net framework) and you want to get up to speed on ASP.NET without getting overwhelmed.
The reason why I did not rate it 5 Stars is because of a few typo's(corrections are available at the web site) and the example in chapter 11 regarding accessing and binding data with SQL could have had more information on using the UPDATE command by including it in code(perhaps as a scrolling text bar) rather than adding it in as a comment(Page 309 of the book). But perhaps the intention was to get the reader to apply their own skills at it and get them motivated to code rather than be led by the hand and remain oblivious to how it really works...

Like other reviewers, I too had expectations that this book would be like the Step-by-Step books of past, whose strengths were two-fold.

First, they managed to breakdown large skill sets, such as writing desktop VB apps or automating Word using VBA, into bite-size pieces - focusing on one tool at a time. Second, most of the earlier Step-by-Step books gave interesting, code-along examples right from the first chapter. This was the power and pleasure of the series. "Look, mom! I'm coding!"

This book delivers the first without accomplishing the second, unfortunately. Mcbucho from Cincinnati, Ohio is right. There's nothing worth coding until page 250 or so.

Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps, it's because it takes 250 pages to explain the basics of the ASP.Net Framework, which you need to understand before you can write a half descent web app.

I sure wouldn't want a bunch of coding examples showing every possible manipulation of the myriad of Web.Config elements and attributes. I just want a brief overview, so I know what's there to use, which the book does. I'll figure out how to use them as I go, "Hey what does the <compile> element do? ...(2 hours of tweaking go by)...Cool!"

Perhaps, they used the "Step-by-Step" moniker because it was the best work Microsoft Press has done to date (In my humble opinion), and they wanted to capitalize on the name.

In any event, the book does deliver what it promises to deliver: an overview that breaks down the various parts of creating ASP.Net apps, presented in such a way that a person with a fundamental skill level can understand. I would recommend this book to anyone new to ASP.NET. Just don't buy it thinking that it's the only book you'll need. Don't buy it thinking it will be fun - that will come later.

You would think that, with a title that includes the phrase 'step by step,' this book would help you learn ASP.NET in a step-wise approach including examples and maybe even exercises. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I found this book disappointing.

"ASP.NET Step by Step" contains articles that give a good theoretical understanding of ASP.NET. Had I been looking for this sort of information, I would have found this book more useful.

The content of the book is good. It just isn't right for me.

Recommend: Questionable
Keep for Reference: No

After reading both Visual Basic 6 Step by Step and Visual Basic.NET Step by Step, I had some high expectations for using ASP.NET to build upon the VB.NET instructions. Unfortunately, I found this book less useful. Part of this may lie in the fact that ASP.NET is a topic that lends itself less to Step-by-Step kind of teaching. After having read several books on ASP.NET, I have found some of the others to be easier to follow. I just found the lessons less useful, and sometimes the code never really went too far beyond the basics. While needing just the basics to learn, I wanted to extend the code a bit more.

That said, I did find parts of the book very worthwhile. The author does try to provide the range of options that some commands allow you. And I found several of his examples to be very helpful, enough so that I bookmarked them for specific reference. This books will serve as a good one to grab when I'm looking for some help on a specific topic, especially as I get rolling further into the language in solo use.

Not the greatest on the market, but strong, and useful as we move further into Microsoft's future with .NET.