Alex Homer's Professional ASP 3.0 Web Techniques (Paperback)

by Alex Homer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
One of the attractions Web development offers to programmers is the endless possibility to learn new tricks, exploit the latest technology, and continually build more efficient sites. In Alex Homer's Professional ASP Web Techniques, programmer extraordinaire Alex Homer shares some of his favorite Active Server Pages (ASP) tips and illustrates how to make the most of the technology cards you're dealt.

This book focuses on ASP 3 programming on the Windows 2000 platform, and Homer makes it clear in the introduction that the reader should already be familiar with ASP and general Web development. He wastes no time getting down to business, showing how to dish up dynamic sites, and opening your mind to the concept of a single-page site that relies on database records to produce an unlimited number of pages of content. The book doesn't follow a definite "bottom up" track. Instead, it flows more like a conversation with the author--complete with a "Plug and Play" chapter comprising juicy tidbits that don't fit neatly in the other chapters.

Homer's examples of implementing cross-browser compatible framesets and sophisticated line and pie graphs of user and site statistics are especially intriguing and useful. All of the techniques are presented with a balanced combination of screen shots, code snippets, and commentary.

The author wraps up this fun book with a "Blue Sky" chapter, in which he shares some of his knowledge of upcoming technologies such as ASP+, XHTML, BizTalk, COM+, and more. This is a fitting conclusion to a very engaging guide to ASP. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: Dynamic page design, browser compatibility, access control, remote administration, error handling, broken link management, user tracking and statistics charting, e- mail integration, XML, certificates, and ASP components.

Product Description
Getting started building a Web site is simple enough-the hardware is cheap, the software is easy to install, and the market of potential visitors is huge. If it's a company Intranet site, you can even run it over the corporate network; with no need for expensive cabling and ISP connections.

The problems come as your site starts to grow and mature. Web sites are supposed to be enticing and exciting (so as to attract new visitors), and contain ever-changing content (to make those visitors come back again). How do you maintain and keep control of a fast-growing and ever-changing site, while still keeping it informative, accurate, and error-free? The answer is automation; and the combination of Windows 2000 Server, Internet Information Server, a server-based data source, and Active Server Pages, makes it possible to design your site so that it's easy to manage and maintain. They even make it easier to add regular new content, and keep the site looking fresh.

Do you know how many visitors your site gets, and who they are? How can you tell which topics your visitors are most interested in, and which areas of your site get the most traffic-and even what times of day are busiest? How do you implement secure access to certain areas, so that you can charge for premium content or prevent access to administration pages? This book tackles all these topics-under the three general headings of controlling, maintaining and monitoring your Web site.

You won't see pages of setup information for Windows 2000 (though we will look at installing SQL Server), or a tutorial for ASP. What you will see is down-to-earth discussion of the issues that webmasters have to face daily, and real code solutions. If you are building or administering a Windows 2000-based Web site, this book should be on your shelf.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 896 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press (February 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861003218
• ISBN-13: 978-1861003218
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,763,700 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The topping of an ASP cake., June 22, 2000

By	"dna-groove" (Israel) - See all my reviews

Some people, so it seems, expected Alex Homer to break ground rules with his knowledge of ASP. He is a wonderful writer and a terrific programmer, but he's also just another joe. This book will not teach you to program better, it'll teach to think better about designing certain scenario where ASP is needed. It'll show you new and innovative ways to solve problems.

It doesn't mean you need to be an expert to understand this book, anyone can understand it. The experienced ones will know what to do to make those ideas work, the newbies will know where to look for information to make these things work. This book is for everybody. It's very useful when you come to a point when you have the technical knowledge, but don't know what to do with it.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Must if you have worked in ASP for 2-3 months, April 1, 2000

By	Akash Aggarwal (USA) - See all my reviews

This is not the book to start with but an excellent resource I would always like to keep with me once I am aware of ASP and want to go further into the details which not everyone knows.

8 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars ASP Tricks OK, April 1, 2000

By	Kalanga Joffres (Halifax, Nova Scotia) - See all my reviews

I have spent a good amount of time working with ASP and other forms of VBscripting. This book has taught a thing or two about ASP, but I believe that it would have been much more useful for me as I was learning to use the technology. I believe this book has little to reveal to experts but it's something very useful to have if you're a casual programmer or teacher.

Homer deals with a great number of common ASP problems, errors and how to make scrips more efficient and reliable.