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61 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clear descriptions of ASP.NET 2.0 class libraries, April 3, 2006
This review is from: Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics (Paperback)
Dino Esposito's book, "Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0, Applications," is best described as a second volume of "Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0, Core Reference" (also Microsoft Press, 2006). Opposing industry trends in computer books, Microsoft Press does not publish a table of contents for potential readers. Unless readers can inspect a copy at a bookstore, as I did, they will have difficulty deciding whether the book has content useful to them.
The two volumes combined are about equal in coverage to "Professional ASP.NET 2.0" from Bill Evjen and four others (Wrox, 2006). Esposito's strategic emphasis is not as significant for the "Applications" volume as it was for the "Core Reference" volume. The second volume mainly covers additional class libraries, such as those for "web parts," that are more likely to be of use in commercial portals and sales sites than in professional, Web-enabled applications. However, it is in this "Applications" volume rather than in the "Core References" volume that Esposito presents such critical topics as the ASP.NET 2.0 resource, role and image management services and the tree and menu controls.
In Esposito's two volumes combined one gets about 1,550 pages at twice the price of about 1,250 pages from Evjen, et al. Besides about 300 more pages, what one gets in return for the extra cost is coverage of some extra topics, such as resources, and generally clearer and more consistent descriptions of ASP.NET 2.0, free from gushing enthusiasms. Esposito also provides tables of properties and methods for the major classes. The items in these tables are the same as those in Microsoft's documentation, as furnished with the Visual Studio tools and available without charge on the Web, but often Esposito's explanations are both clearer and more detailed than Microsoft's opaque and perfunctory style.
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Broad and deep coverage, July 10, 2006
This review is from: Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics (Paperback)
The two books of this series (Core Reference & Advanced Topics) offer broad and deep coverage of ASP.NET.
All the important topics of ASP.NET web sites are covered in a mostly tutorial with a little reference fashion. The books are well researched. The coverage of what really happens during compilation, request processing, and expression evaluation is excellent. The books avoid being an MSDN rehash. By carefully pointing out which ASP.NET versions support which features, the books will be useful for working with any ASP.NET version. No matter what you're working on you'll find something useful in these books. Note that web services are not covered.
The terms "core reference" and "advanced topics" (which MS press is using on all the non beginner books) make no sense at all with these books. If you're serious, you need both books. Think of them as volumes 1 and 2 of a single book.
I do have some issues with these books. The biggest mistake was recommending the use of GDI+ (through the System.Drawing namespace). This is not supported. The System.Drawing namespace page in MSDN states "Classes within the System.Drawing namespace are not supported for use within a Windows or ASP.NET service. Attempting to use these classes from within one of these application types may produce unexpected problems, such as diminished service performance and run-time exceptions."
I didn't enjoy Dino's writing style. It's verbose (at times), he uses odd words to describe things, and was boring even by tech book standards.
The chapter on configuration was difficult. It would have better to cover configuration throughout the book, in the context of what was being configured, instead of a single all configuration and only configuration chapter.
The section of asynchronous pages was confusing and didn't really explain why asynchronous pages improve scalability.
Despite my reservations, there is much that's good about these books. Anybody who's serious about ASP.NET should consider getting both of them.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not the best for custom controls, June 18, 2007
This review is from: Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics (Paperback)
I bought this book specifically for the 100+ pages on creating custom web controls. That is the only portion of the book that I have used.
The book does not come with a CD for the source code examples, and I have been unable to find them online.
That means I have to type in the examples. I normally don't mind, as it helps me learn. But his sample control, SimpleGaugeBar, has code scattered across two chapters (#13 and 14), all in bits and pieces. The code is intermingled with alternate code examples that (I think) he isn't using in the class, plus code from other classes apparently unrelated to SimpleGaugeBar.
The sample control is also buggy. Of course, it's my guess as to the code that is supposed to be contained in the control, because there is no single definitive listing of the code in the book. I suspect the sample code is simply buggy because the event sequencing the control responds to does not match the way the control was coded.
He separated the creation of the internal list of control objects and the styling code into two routines. That's probably a good idea. But, and this is a killer, if you programmatically change the properties of the control, the internal list of control objects is created *before* the new property value is set, and applies styling after the property is set. This will cause the control to fail, because the styling code will refer to objects that were not created based upon the prior property settings.
The styling code also refers to objects in the internal list of controls by array index number instead of by their id. That's bad form and very prone to error.
I'm not a happy customer.
That said, there is a lot of material on custom controls, and I learned a lot going through it. There are not a lot of resources out there that cover this topic in any depth, and this is one of the few. So, muddled, buggy and disorganized as it is on this topic, I would recommend it (until I found something better).
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