12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Doctor knows best, September 3, 2006
This review is from: Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control and Component Development (Wrox Professional Guides) (Paperback)
Doctor Khosravi knows his stuff and he writes well. He also has a feel for the kind of questions his readers are going to ask first and answers them at the appropriate time. I was very pleased to see him explain how to implement a simple server control on page 16 because that's one of the first things I wanted to know after writing my first server control. It's quite possible his editor should get some credit here also.
He does an superb job of explaining why he's presenting information in the sequence he does. So often I struggle to understand why an author is showing me how to do something I consider trivial (like changing style attributes) before or even instead of something important (like interacting with other controls). I never had that problem with this book.
Server controls are a very complex and potentially confusing subject. The Wrox Profession ASP.NET 2.0 book does a very poor job of explaining them and dedicates far too little space to the subject which is why I bought this book. In comparison, Dr. Khosravi and his editor have done a very good job of organizing the subject. Even thought the resulting book is still a challenging read, I can grasp some concepts that other authors were unable to explain clearly. It may be that Dr. Khosravi had more space or that he was more skilled. I don't care - it worked.
If you are interested in developing custom server controls, which you should be, then this is the best resource you can have on your bookshelf. All ambitious ASP.NET developers should own this book.
Sometimes one very talented mind can acheive more than a host of merely smart ones. This is such a case. If you're ever in Southern California, Doctor, please let me buy you a beer. Cheers.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
good coverage, terrible writing style, October 15, 2007
This review is from: Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control and Component Development (Wrox Professional Guides) (Paperback)
This book covers topics for which content is difficult to find elsewhere and for that I give it the 3 stars. However, the writing style for the book is terrible. Much of the text reads like lawyer jargon and wastes too much page real estate explaining and re-explaining irrelevant items to the topic at hand. Minus 2 stars for the annoyingly awkward writing style.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Prepare to write your own book, July 14, 2008
This review is from: Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control and Component Development (Wrox Professional Guides) (Paperback)
While this book has some valuable content, prepare to do a lot of research. By the time you get through this book, you will have researched so much more than what this book purports to teach and you will be able to write your own book on the subject.
In the Introduction to the book, Wrox Press' standard boiler-plate text states "As you work through the examples in this book, you may choose either to type in all the code manually or to use the source code files that accompany this book" (pg. xxxiv). Well, prepare to download the source code. Half the code is missing from the book. The code snippets that are shown are missing vital pieces, such as attributes that are necessary to make it work. The code that is available is often incorrect or doesn't match up with the book anyway.
In short, you will learn things from this book, but it will take a lot more effort than just reading this book and working through the examples. It would make a good reference book for those times when you need a quick answer. Try to find this book for more than 50% off, because it's not worth even that much.
[Added 2008-07-26]
Well, I'm only at Chapter 13, after having reworked the examples again and again from chapters 1 through 8. That's because the code samples in the book and the source code available from Wrox's web site are so poor.
In addition, I would like to go on record and say that the editors of this book did an absolutely horrible job. The author has a hard enough time trying to get his ideas across and often can't see the forest for the trees. It's the editor's job to bring the author's thoughts into clarity and focus and conciseness. This book has none of that. It makes for incredibly difficult reading.
The index is horrible and references the examples directly, instead of the concepts being taught as they relate to the .NET Framework and ASP.NET. How am I supposed to find something quickly with that index? Consequently, my original suggestion that this would be a good reference book is only half-true—providing you can find what you need, it's a good reference book. As one reviewer noted, however, many examples rely upon earlier examples; and I agree with the reviewer that each concept, perhaps, should have used a different example to make that one concept more concrete.
One other important factor comes back to the code provided for download. It's horribly written. I, for one, like to have my methods and properties and other constructs grouped together in one spot within my classes. In addition, I like to have the properties and methods and other constructs listed alphabetically. This aids in being able to quickly find code constructs within the file while scrolling around. It also just makes for neater code. Shouldn't professional (writing) programmers be practicing what they teach about writing neat code? This code would never pass a "code review" at any professional development organization. (This is partly the author's fault, but the code reviewer for the book had every opportunity to tell the author to clean it up or clean it up him/herself.)
Again, nothing against the author in all of this, this is the editor's job. I would definitely reference the credits page to avoid other books with the same Editors and Proofreaders/Indexers.
Like another reviewer said, you will learn from this book, it will just take you an inordinate amount of time and lots and lots of patience!
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