Customer Reviews

Murach's ASP.NET 3.5 Web Programming with VB 2008

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I'm my job I review hundreds of books a year. I only publically comment on the really good ones and this one is super !

If I were going to teach a course on ASP.NET Development in VB, this is the book that I would use. It's complete, well written, up to date with all the latest ASP.NET technology, and aesthetically pleasing !

Joe Stagner
www.MisfitGeek.com

I purchased this book after reading the excellent reviews. I have decent html knowledge, and some limited asp 3.0 skills. I wanted to start using asp.net 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. I found myself quite confused with the first one page project in the book. This was because the project is presented as if the reader already has VB 2005 experience. I found similar reviews to Murach's ASP.net 1.1 web programming book. If you are looking for entry level use of VS 2005 with ASP.net this unfortunately is not it. I was hoping to see explanations of different controls in the toolboxes, etc. I will keep this for future reference and keep searching for a good beginner's book.

This book is not sure who it is intended for. It states it is for Training and Reference. It is not a training book and as a refence book it leaves much to be desired. If you know anything about ASP.NET the first 300 pages will bore you (so will most of the rest of the book). Whether you know ASP.NET or not parts of the last 200 pages assume you are an expert and even states topics the author raises won't be covered since it is assumed you are already familar. Leaves you wondering who the book is really for.

I feel that most of the content in this book is covered better in Scott Mitchell's ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 hours from Sams, even in one of the two ASP.NET 2.0 Dummies books if you are a beginer. If you are experienced with ASP.NET you will be better served looking at O'Reilly's ASP.NET 2.0 A Developer's Handbook by Wei-Meng Lee. IMHO

The paired pages are not well done. The left hand page supposedly has the description; the right hand page, always referred to as a 'figure' even if it is all text, has: (a.) a summary of the description; (b.) a table; (c.) a very few lines of code, often out of context; (d.) a screen shot; or some combination of these. The description invariably immediately refers to the figure but then lists what you should get out of the 'figure'. On more than half the paired pages there is no need to read the the right-hand page.

An additional complaint with the book is that the granularity required to produce the paired pages is often to granular to convey a complete idea in context, often when this happened the balance of the idea is not presented in the next paired page but later in the chapter as is continually stated by the author, making the book seem disjointed on many occassions.

There is good information in the book but 800+ pages is a lot to wade through to find those nuggets; it works better as a reference than as a training book but even as a refernce it falls down due to the disjointed, incomplete idea presentation. A couple of things in this book not yet found in the others I've read is the new ability to have accelerator keys (Alt+'key'), User & Server Controls.

Before you commit your money and your time tothis book you should evaluate where you are on the ASP.NET learning curve, what you want out of an ASP.NET 2.0 book and whether this book will fit your needs. I think there are better books availble to learn ASP.NET from, regardless of your experience.

At the moment this book is my absolute favorites about Web Programming with VB 2005. If you are interested in this topic, I can only recommend this book. Great Book. Easy to Read.

Let's just say it contains enough nuts and bolts to help build a web project as I'm sure other reviewers will agree. In it's own right I back up some of the comments made about this book being great as a quick and incomplete refrence. Don't let me discourage you.., it's a great place to start, however, for more advanced topics.., I recommend a specialty book. I gave it 5 stars because it is still well written, and you will see too that it's a great beginners book!

As an experienced VB.NET programmer without any formal ASP.NET experience, I was very happy to explore all of the items in this book, particularly the sections regarding the construction of an e-commerce website. Overall it is an excellent book, especially for first timers like me.
Unfortunately some of the basic "tricks" that need to be used when interfacing form controls to databases were not covered, and I had to resort to help on the internet for that. But that is the price one pays for staying up with the latest version of software. Doubtless there are other books that cover this subject in more detail.
For those who want a thorough introduction to ASP.NET 2.0, this is a very valuable book, and well worth the money.

In short: simple and clear explanation, practical code examples, good coverage of ASP.NET 2.0 features, and the paired page presentation format makes the book an easy read.

This is certainly one of the best programming books that I have ever come across. Highly recommended.

The book goes into a lot of theory and gives a lot of good background, but I needed to learn this today and get something coded up for the boss by tomorrow. I couldn't wait until I finished Chapter 4 like it says on the cover. I ended up getting what I needed from Evangelos Petroutsos "Mastering Visual Basic 2008", Chapter 26, and had something up and running in just a few hours. The format of the book sounded good when I read the other reviews, but I changed my mind after a few pages. The right hand page just reiterated what the left page said, sometimes with relevant pictures. But, in the long run, it just seemed to make the book twice as big as needed.

Found the book very easy to read. Book offers clear, concise and exhaustive coverage of all aspects of ASP.NET 3.5. Murach has been my favorite programming book publisher for years.

I picked this book up at my local store the price is better than many others on the same scale. The information included is a great start for beginners and will be a nice desk book for people who already know ASP.Net but want to learn 3.5 or need a book that covers a wide array of topics.