Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
ASP.NET Developer's CookBook Review, July 5, 2003
After a little wait I got a copy of the cookbook. Unlike traditional books, the cookbook provides us with solutions for solving real world problems. For example, if a developer wants to know how to send e-mails with attachments he/she can quickly go to that page by referring to the TOC or the Index and get the right code. I quickly scanned through the TOC and it looks great. Almost all the concepts of ASP.NET have been covered comprehensively. Moreover, the content has been well organized. I didn't test any codes so far since I want to be the first in the world to review this cool book. But when I went through the hot pages of this book, I noticed a problem of unnecessary repetitions. If you go through the comments section of chapter 21, you can be able to see that the first sentence is repeated up to page 348. I wonder how the tech editor missed to detect it. Instead of repeating the sentence, it can be given commonly at the beginning of the chapter. The code samples are indeed great. In fact, I am learning some new things from this book like retrieving emails from POP3 mailbox etc. I should say that chapter 22 on Graphics is an added bonus to the readers of this great book. It is nice to note that code samples can be downloaded from the Author's website and are provided in both Visual Basic .NET & C#. But the publisher should also give a CD along with these kinds of code intensive books so that readers can quickly get the relevant code/codes for use on their projects. Another notable limitation (Please apologize me if this is a feature of this book) is that the book didn't have a single screenshot of any examples. Only 5 figures are given on pages 124-126. I don't know whether any developer will use the tool LLBLGEN. But frankly speaking, I learned about the usage of this tool from this book. Great learning! Overall, this book is 101% valuable and should be on the shelves of all the ASP.NET developers' kitchen - Both current and future.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An ASP.NET Tour De Force, November 21, 2003
If Lance Armstrong was an ASP.NET developer, this is the book he'd write. There are many many great ASP.NET books, and it'd be impossible to say that one is the 'best'. But I can say for sure that this book hits the ground running and just takes off from there.As far as the recommended audience, I think you need a little ASP.NET experience to really appreciate this book (although if you are a total newbie, it's still a superb resource). Everything in here, Everything, is pure gold. Example after Example after Example of just cool stuff, with great implementations, cleary written x25. There's a lot to ASP.NET and I think you need to read more than a few books before you really 'get' it, but if you are developing professional ASP.NET apps, this book pays for itself by the time you hit page 30. If you aren't into 'cookbooks' and you want an academic discussion of ASP.NET, then this book isn't for you. However, if you want some great practical examples, you'll fall in love with this book quickly.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This will get worn out quickly, January 16, 2004
The .NET Framework can be a pleasure to use but there's so much to use and master that it's an all-too-often event when we start out with something basic only to realise we've forgotten exactly how it's done. For that very reason, the concept of cookbooks exists-references whose sole existence is to refresh the memory and suggest best practices.Cookbooks often suffer from being too subjective. What the public tend to get is a set of tips specific to the author's line of work; very useful in places and sorely lacking in others. What makes this book different is that the whole ASP Alliance community has sourced the material for this book and filtered through Smith and Howard a comprehensive and well-considered collection of some 250 basic techniques. If there is a bias to any given topic, it's because an ASP.NET developer has more problems and solutions to remember in that topic and not because it's the author's area of speciality. Perhaps there's a slight bias to the classic ASP origins of the alliance with all the examples in VB.NET, but C# equivalents can be downloaded from the book's support website as required. The first half of the book looks at the core topics in ASP.NET and ADO.NET-controls, state management, XML, and data handling-while the second covers more generic .NET tasks which are just as applicable to ASP.NET applications as they are elsewhere-text and image manipulation, collections, Web services, and so on. Each topic is given its own chapter and each technique follows the same pattern for easy access. A problem is stated, followed by a brief description of the technique used as a solution and some sample code to demonstrate it. A concise but complete discussion of what has been done is then given along with links and references for further information. Indeed, these links are one of the stand-out features of this book, making it more useful than most other tomes of the same ilk. At the same time then, we are presented with an easy-to-follow, basic working solution for each problem, and are confident that we can use the links to work on a more complex version of the solution should the need arise. If there is a flaw in this book, it's in the decision to make the solutions code-only and not cover using development IDEs at all. Surely a chapter each on the most common tips and tricks for use with, say, Visual Studio .NET, Dreamweaver MX and Web Matrix wouldn't be out of scope for a book such as this? I know I'd much rather use an IDE to generate a basic paging solution for a DataGrid than type it out by hand. You could also debate that there isn't enough `sticky' contextual text in the book itself to inspire readers to give new areas a go without them having already decided that they'll need to anyway, but the simple counter is that ASP.NET Cookbook is a pure reference book and a damn fine one at that. Beginners won't learn ASP.NET development by reading it, but established ones will remember a whole lot they've probably forgotten. Steven Smith, Rob Howard, and the ASP Alliance have been around the block a good number of times and their experience shines through in this book. They've asked themselves what they would most like out of a technique reference and delivered it with panache. If you're an ASP.NET developer, buy two copies-the first will be falling apart from overuse in weeks.
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