Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours, Complete Starter Kit (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If you are familiar with creating HTML web pages but aren't familiar with creating dynamic, data driven web applications, you should consider learning ASP. And Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours, Complete Starter Kit is the perfect learning tool. The Starter Kit provides the unbeatable combination of programmer/author Scott Mitchell and the step-by-step learning method of the best-selling Sams Teach Yourself series. The accompanying CD includes Visual Web Developer 2005 Express, a lightweight, easy-to-use and easy-to-learn web development tool, and all projects developed in the book's examples.

About the Author

Scott Mitchell has authored hundreds of articles on Microsoft Web Technologies since 1998. In addition to his vast collection of online articles, Scott has written five previous books on ASP/ASP.NET, including Sams Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0 in 21 Days; Designing Active Server Pages; ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code; ASP.NET Data Web Controls and Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 24 Hours. Scott has also written a number of magazine articles, including articles for Microsoft's MSDN Magazine and asp.netPRO. Scott has been a speaker at numerous ASP/ASP.NET user groups across the country and at ASP.NET conferences.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 696 pages
• Publisher: Sams (April 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672327384
• ISBN-13: 978-0672327384
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #442,256 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The Sams Teach Yourself Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All-In-One Microsoft Web-Development Basics, Nicely Done, August 12, 2007

By	David Gurgel (Roseland, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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ASP.NET is the heart of Microsoft's web-development platform. ASP.NET includes a large set of web-page controls and database access controls that are executed by a server-side engine. Just drag and drop these controls on a web page from the Visual Studio IDE (or its free, stripped-down version, Visual Web Developer), add a small amount of code (VB, C#, or other) to handle a few events, and you have a web application that handles almost any task, including heavy duty database access. Publish the ASP.Net pages on any web server with .NET support. When a user with any browser requests an ASP.NET page, the web server passes the request to the ASP.NET engine, which fills data requests and performs other processing chores, and then returns information to the user via the web server as standard HTML. ASP.NET is one of the top technologies used for major web sites. Any site showing pages with a ".aspx" extension is an ASP.NET site. As decribed below, it is hard to learn much at all about ASP.NET without exposure to a full set of Microsoft web development technologies.

If you want to quickly learn the basics of the complete suite of Microsoft tools (briefly described above) for programming web applications, this book by an experienced author and expert ASP.NET developer will serve you well. The included CD has all the Microsoft tools that you need - (1) Visual Web Developer Express, an integratged development environment for page design, code editing, testing, and project administration with most the of the important features of the professional Visual Studio environment, (2) an integrated web server that mimics Microsoft's IIS (a production-grade server) but will run even on XP Home Edition while IIS will not, (3) Visual Basic 2005 Express version, which is today the most common language for writing Microsoft code, (4) SQL Server 2005 Express Version, a starter version containing the basic funcitonality of the full SQL Sever 2005, which is one of the top three relational databases used for major websites.

So just add a computer with any version of XP or Windows 2000 or 2003. You will not need another reference to learn the basics of ASP.NET, VB, or SQL Server since this book is written for those with no prior experience with these Microsoft products. I would say that if you have never written any code, then perhaps a Teach Yourself VB book or other first programming book would be a better starting point.

I have many years of system administration and programming experience and used the book as a refresher before updating some simple but important applications that I wrote five years ago using older versions of the Microsoft web development servers and tools. I completed the first application update without other references except for a brief look at security issues in a SQL Server book.

For years I have made entry-level software engineers in my small technology company use an earlier version (by a different author) of Teach Yourself ASP.NET. This book is even better, although I would have preferred a book that taught the basics of publishing a site with IIS as well. As pointed out earlier, the author chose to use the web sever built in to Visual Web Developer since Microsoft no longer supports IIS on its entry-level OS version.

There were only a few typos. The twenty-four hours grew to about thirty-five as I slavishly completed all of the examples in the text.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Overall an excellent introduction, June 28, 2006

By	Ken Dove "Fitness Freak" (Calgary, AB. Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a person new to ASP.NET I found Scott's book to be exceptionally low on the frustration scale while being an excellent introduction. Many computer books are rife with typos and oversights on the part of the author that cause newbies to tear their hair out when their project doesn't perform as the author intended. Scott has been extremely careful and I believe I only found two typos in the entire book that caused me to scratch my head for a few minutes trying to figure out what went wrong.

Do take your time going through the first 21 chapters as Scott moves pretty fast in chapters 22 to 24. You'll be lost if you don't take the time to pick up the basic skills. It will also be a little difficult for those who have no past experience with Visual Basic, although this is not a flaw with the book (Scott gives you all the code you need) just an observation.

Overall I was very impressed with this book. Returning to the world of web development after a hiatus of five years (I used to do brochure development with Dreamweaver and Flash) and having no previous experience with dynamic web pages other than a little php, I feel that I'm well on my way to acquiring the skill sets needed to develop fully functional e-commerce sites. I don't think there could be a better starting point than Scott's book. Well done!

Finally, Scott's support of his book is second to none. Twice I found myself stuck and couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong. I sent Scott an email and in both cases he responded within hours!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for Beginners, August 21, 2006

By	Charles F. Sims "Frank" (Indianapolis, IN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have been developing in MS ACCESS, VB, and SQL SERVER for several years; but I had no prior experience in web development. This book was great at laying a foundation for web-development. Each hour is a new piece of the web development puzzle. The author assumes you know nothing; while this may be frustrating for experienced developers, it does a lot of hand-holding for the novice web developer.

It is critical to note that is the reader's responsibility to take all the information and put it together and apply the information to your project. The Photo Album application the author has you build in the final section of the book will help facilitate some of that for you.

Overall I think it a great start for beginners. I'm now migrating to more intensive books. Good job Scott!