Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 21 Days (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ideal for anyone new to Web programming on Windows and for anyone making the leap from the older ASP to the new ASP.NET, Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 21 Days offers an approachable guide to the latest in Microsoft .NET technologies. The author's example-packed and accessible presentation style help make this title a success.

In a three-week lesson plan (actually this book has 23 lessons, plus three extra "bonus" weekly sample programs), this text walks the reader through the essential APIs and programming techniques needed to use ASP.NET effectively. For those with some previous ASP experience, this book shows what's different (and better) in ASP.NET. (In fact, every chapter has a section marked "But That's Not ASP!" where the author points out gotchas and tips for navigating the richness and complexity of the new ASP.NET.)

After covering basic Web Forms and controls, the author looks at database support and ADO.NET, then XML, in subsequent sections. He uses an online banking application, which is enhanced after each full week, to show off techniques from each group of lessons. (His final, fanciful "BananaMobile" online application, however, might be a bit off the mark for some business readers.) Along the way, there's good coverage here of Web services and the basics of configuring and deploying ASP.NET applications on live servers. A late section on mobile controls glances at Mobile Web controls.

Like other titles in the Teach Yourself series, every lesson presents the reader with a handful of questions (usually about a half dozen), with thorough answers provided in a reference appendix. In all, this title will make ASP.NET accessible for just about anyone, with or without exposure to the older ASP standard. Clearly written and well organized, the author covers a lot of material but doesn't get bogged down with the somewhat daunting details of .NET. --Richard Dragan

Product Description

Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 21 Days introduces readers to ASP.NET through individual lessons contained in chapters. These lessons begins with a thorough overview of the technology and framework involved, and gradually build into more difficult lessons requiring deeper engineering skills and knowledge. Sam's Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 21 Days is the perfect book to introduce beginner and intermediate readers to the new technologies and frameworks presented by ASP.NET. By guiding readers through short but increasingly complex lessons, this book will give the reader a strong foundation in ASP.NET, and the knowledge to develop their own creative solutions. Readers will delve into the new framework, the C# and Visual Basic programming languages, and techniques to approach difficult problems

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1024 pages
• Publisher: Sams (July 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672321688
• ISBN-13: 978-0672321689
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #416,963 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Teach Yourself ASP.Net with Payne, January 14, 2003

By	Walter Nicolau (Columbia, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 21 Days (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

From the introduction: "Previous programming is not required, but will help immensely" (page 1). Correction: programming experience IS required and will indeed help immensely. "The only must-have prerequisites are a basic knowledge of HTML and some familiarity with your operating system" (page 2). Correction: In order to be able to follow the examples, you need to be familiar with C#, VB, and XML programming languages and understand what .NET delivers and how to install its components on your machine because you will need all these to run your examples, exercises, and projects.

Having said this, I move to state that the master ASP in 21 days does not look like a realistic goal. In fact, if you are a beginner, chances are that by day three you will be thoroughly confused (and maybe even frustrated).

According to my view, the main weakness of this book lies in its overly ambitious scope. Although clearly and coherently written, despite its 900 plus pages, Teach Yourself ASP.Net... barely covers the basics and lets you hanging on at topics that need substantial coverage, for example: web forms, user controls, caching, and business objects, to name a few. It does start on an ambitious note with an impressive agenda but the author soon loses touch with his audience and starts using advanced notions without properly explaining their purpose or entangles himself in some awkward phrases: "The if statement on line 18 checks the CheckBox control's Checked property to determine if the check box is checked" (page 163). The learning process is also slowed down by lack of practicality; after going through ten listings where the "Hello World" or "Hello There" outputs are used, one starts to get a little bored. In all fairness though, the book does contain a few interesting projects, which add to its stronger features.

Another feature that I disagreed with was the usage of VB and C# languages. The author starts by listing examples using both languages but soon abandons C# almost completely in favor of VB.

This is clearly not a book for beginners and one absolutely needs to complement the reading with other books on the subject. As far as the 21 one days goal is concerned, I think that although not incorrect, it is deceiving. It depends on how many hours a day one can set aside for study. If the answer is 24, then, yes, the target is achievable.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good beginning to intermediate work, August 10, 2001

By	[e-mail] (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews

If you are a beginner with ASP.NET, you should find that there is plenty of material to get you up to speed with ASP.NET. Unlike some of the 21 days series, this book gets into some really meaty subjects. The book on data access is well worth the price of admission. In fact, it is easier to read and understand than the code intensive "Professional ASP.NET" book from Wrox, which is not a bad book either. This makes it a better beginners book, hands down.

If you are advanced, you will find a lot of material, esp. if you have not touched on ADO.NET very much. The common ASP.NET mistakes will help some more advanced programmers, although Dan Appleman's VB.NET book is much better at this.

My personal beef with the book is most of the code is written in the ASPX page itself, rather than CodeBehind. The book does cover CodeBehind, but puts it almost as an aside. The separation of code and UI into separate files is one of the primary strengths with ASP.NET, IMHO. This is true of the Wrox book, as well.

After running through this book, I was inclined to lower my rating of Professional ASP.NET a notch. This book is better written, and runs together better. I still like the Wrox book, but I think this one will have more value to a person just getting into ASP.NET. Too much of the Wrox book is not beta 2 compliant (not a whole lot, but more than this book). This book hits closer to home. Good job, Chris.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Certainly not the best beginning ASP.Net book, December 18, 2001

By	"ljp007" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I bought this book because of the reviews it had on Amazon. I learned from this experience that you can't use Amazon reviews as your sole criteria for purchasing a book (that's why you should stop reading now). The author glosses over many of the principles needed to learn the subject. Instead, he briefly discusses code examples (and these explanations many times leave you with more questions than answers) and does not highlight with enough clarity the most fundamental aspects of ASP.net. One of my biggest problems though was the authors total lack of explanation for the end of chapter exercises. If you have any questions (and you will) about how and why the author has coded one of the exercise solutions, you won't find the answer anywhere in this book. Furthermore, many times I found that the exercise problems asked you to perform operations and methods the author didn't discuss in the chapter or any previous chapter for that matter. These problems will really leave you scratching your head. It doesn't deserve one star, but definitely doesn't merit 4.5 (it's current average). I just purchased ASP.Net Unleashed and this is by far a much better book. It would be my recommendation.