16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You've got to get this book!, July 3, 2006
This review is from: Pro ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming (Paperback)
With all due respect to the reviewer who panned the book because, in his opinion, VB is "not the choice of professionals", may I suggest that if the front cover of the book states that it is written using VB, you would do well to expect that it is indeed written in VB. The subtitle specifies "Learn indispensable tactics for building solid, secure, and maintainable ASP.Net 2.0 web applictions using Visual Basic 2005", and Damon accomplishes this goal admirably.
As one who has been programming for decades, but am new to the .Net world, I'm very grateful to the author for the splendid job he has done getting the reader up to speed on the essentials of developing a ready-for-prime-time web application. I've spent hundreds of dollars on ASP.Net 2.0 VB books, and you would be hard pressed to find any other one that so clearly lays out how to take full advantage of the built-in 2.0 technology for things like building shopping carts with a minimum of code and integrating them with the supported user profile structure. I work for a small company where I am the entire IT department and the work load is staggering. If you're like me and you need to come up to speed quickly using best practices for 2.0 VB, then you've got to get this book.
One more thing I have to say - I was totally amazed by the professionalism of the author. I wrote him with an inquiry, and he obviously spent a chunk of time researching to come up with a same-day gracious response (AND rewrote some of the code in the book, zipped it up, and sent it at 2AM!). Which means that not only is he a first-rate author, but a nice guy as well.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Authors Comments, July 4, 2006
This review is from: Pro ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming (Paperback)
After reading through some of the reviews there seems to be some confusion about the book which I assume only comes if you are buying the item online. The tagline for the title is "Learn indispensable tactics for building solid, secure, and maintainable ASP.NET 2.0 applications using Visual Basic 2005." It's fairly difficult to read the tagline on the book unless you magnify the image, so know that the code is written in VB.NET. But if you program in C# you should have no problem picking up the concepts and following the code discussions in the book.
Inside the book you will find discussions and code regarding various aspects of web application programming that come up in just about every project. It is not a book specifically for "beginners" because I assume you have some familiarity with development in ASP.NET using VB.NET. If you are a beginner then I recommend picking up my book in conjunction with a true "beginners" book because my book covers more concrete, real world examples of how to do things whereas a beginner's book normally contains examples geared towards training. My examples focus on building reusable and or repeatable processes that save you time, energy, and money. In other words, things that make sense in the business world and are not just academic.
Here's a breakdown of the chapters in the book and what you will find:
Chapter 1 - Configuration Strategy. Contains an overview of the new configuration tools in ASP.NET 2.0, how to build strongly-typed configuration classes, how to work with custom configuration sections, and how to store configuration settings in a database.
Chapter 2 - Exception Management. Contains an overview of exception management concepts and syntax, how to use global error handling in your application, building custom exceptions, handling nested exceptions, and discusses how to effectively capture and log errors for analysis.
Chapter 3 - Master Pages, Themes, and Control Skins. Discusses some of the new features of ASP.NET including master pages, dynamically changing master pages in code, nested master pages, and how to work with themes and control skins.
Chapter 4 - Developing Reusable Components. Contains information about the new global tag registration and how to develop components using the new ControlState feature. It then delves into an example that demonstrates how to build a custom server control for communicating status and error information to your users in a consistent fashion.
Chapter 5 - User Management Tools and Login Controls for Forms Authentication. Discusses the ins and outs of Forms authentication, how to work with the membership and role objects in code, administering members and roles in the Web Site Administration Tool, and a detailed overview of the new ASP.NET 2.0 login controls.
Chapter 6 - Managing Profiles. Discusses how to configure and use the new Profile object in ASP.NET 2.0 including how ASP.NET handles anonymous profiles, authenticated profiles, and how to migrate an anonymous profile to an authenticated profile. This chapter also demonstrates how you can use the Profile object to target advertisements based on the user profile, and even how to run a shopping cart from the Profile.
Chapter 7 - Building Portals Using the Web Parts Framework. This is a huge chapter that discusses everything you need to know to get up to speed with Web Parts and the demo application that accompanies the text is, in my opinion, pretty awesome.
Chapter 8 - Effective Search Tools and Techniques. Demonstrates how to build a searching framework that makes building search forms quick and easy. When you finish with this chapter, you will have a very powerful query tool for building searches and a simple way to build out the actual search forms themselves. It even goes as far as to demonstrate how to provide users with a simple form for simple search, and an advanced form for more complex queries.
Chapter 9 - Building a Reusable Reporting Framework. Discusses how to make building reports with paging and sorting easier and more efficient.
Chapter 10 - Web Based Wizards. Covers the new Wizard control in ASP.NET 2.0. The demo application for this chapter shows you how to make an "Add User" wizard that incorporates phonetic searching to help avoid duplicate data entry.
Chapter 11 - Uploading Files. Shows you the ins and outs of file uploads including uploading single files, uploading multiple files, and how to store those files to the file system or directly into a database. It also discusses how to retrieve uploaded files from the database and serve them back out to users.
Chapter 12 - Security and Encryption. Outlines the security architecture behind IIS and ASP.NET so you have a full understanding of the security model that runs behind your code. There are also detailed examples showing you how to secure information in your application using one and two way encryption. It does not contain an overview of Code Access Security, however.
Chapter 13 - HTTP Handlers. Contains a detailed overview of the HTTP Pipeline and HTTP Handlers. There are demonstrates of how to process virtual files with URL rewriting, how to build an image generator that automatically resizes images on the fly, and even demonstrates how to build a simple content management system.
So, hopefully that will clear up any confusion about what you're going to be getting when you buy this book.
Thanks,
Damon Armstrong
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