Domain Name Com's Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer)

Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer)

Domain Name Com's - : Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer)

- Uncharacteristically inadequate for a Wroth book.
I am about a third into this and have found the book to be somewhat disappointing relatively to other Wrox books. My areas of concern include the following:
- Lots of editing errors, spelling errors, and references to figures that are not what the descriptions suggest.
- Wrox book strengths are in their good examples. Most of the examples in this book are so trivial as to not demonstrate anything except perhaps syntax.
- Some topics are not explained beyond the listing of the features and settings. Could use more explanation of many of these features and settings, and exactly what they effect. (In fairness, its a big subject, and I am only 500 pages in so some topics may be explained in more depth in subsequent chapters.)

Rating:

- Comprehensive ... maybe, too much so
I use the Wrox Peer 2 Peer books -- such as this one -- basically as documentation. And in that vein, this is a strong entry. But if you're hoping to use this book to learn how to program, you're probably better off with the For Dummies series.

My copy of this book came directly from Amazon. Unfortunately, it was misbound, with an extra 150+ pages from Chapter 3 pasted into Chapter 8. It's little more than an annoyance, but keep in mind your copy may too be misbound when you get it.

Very little of the ASP.NET 3.5 language isn't covered by this book, and its primary benefit is its extensive documentation of LINQ, Microsoft's attempt to extend SQL to all data structures.

However, like most of the Professional books in the P2P series, this book is written in a way that if you do not already have a basic understanding of the control or language being discussed, you will likely be quickly left behind; this book simply describes the control, what it can do, some of its members and an example of how to employ it.

It doesn't generally get into qualitative discussions about which control is best to use in a given circumstance, or compare and contrast similar controls, or show how to use several controls to solve a given problem (i.e., provide "cookbook" examples).

Again, viewed as a technical reference, this book is as good, if not in some ways better, than MSDN's online documentation. Because it is grouped by task (e.g., data, controls, XML, membership / customization, etc.) this book often makes it easier for you to find a control than MSDN does, especially if you are unsure of which control to use or its name.

Viewed as a way to learn a language, it's not appropriate; it isn't structured to explain the approach of ASP.NET 3.5 or how to go about solving specific problems.

Rating:

- Get a phonebook instead; it's free
I find it hard to believe the other reviews aren't plants by the publisher, or by people accidentally reviewing a similarly titled book. The introduction is full of documentation probably dumped from MSDN about obscure directives and their obscurer attributes. It reads like a phonebook. Writing the samples in both C# and VB is just another tactic to fill up 1600+ pages; here's one of the "gems" from the first chapter:

VB

If Page.IsPostBack = True Then
'Do Processing
End If

C#

if (Page.IsPostBack == true)
{
//Do Processing
}

As if the " == true" is not enough of a WTF, the book then goes on to say "In addition to checking for a true or false value, you can also handle postbacks like this," and gives the following example code:

VB

If Not Page.IsPostBack Then
'Do Processing
End If

C#

if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
//Do Processing
}

So the target audience of this book is interested in reading a list of the public key tokens of the assemblies referenced by default in a "web.config" file, but they don't know how to negate a boolean value without someone holding their hand?

Rating:

- Not the best book for ASP.NET 3.5
This book is basically a re-branded ASP.NET 2.0 book. It covers a LINQ and IIS 7 just fine. When reading the book the authors spend too much time covering old 1.1 and 2.0 material instead of digging in deeper to the 3.5 topics.

Buy this book in you need an overview of ASP.NET 2.0 with some 3.5 topics as well but there are better books out there. Usually Wrox book are great, this one just doesn't deliver with ASP.NET 3.5

Rating:

- Excellent reference book for ASP.NET 3.5 (despite typos)
Having read Imar Spaanjaar's Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB, I was expecting a number of good things from this book.

Imar's book is really great in that he shows you how to build a Web application with ASP.NET 3.5. However, with Professional ASP.NET 3.5 In C# and VB, you instead get 1500+ page reference book.

Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, but that does mean that if you want to get started with ASP.NET, pick up Imar's book first, or better still, too.

That said, this also means that if you're the type to read a book from beginning to end, you'll have a real 'joy' reading this book. That's because after a few chapters you'll notice that the author's clearly intended for people to skip around the book. This is evident because they'll discuss something in one chapter, and then reiterate it at the beginning of the next in such a way that suggests they assume you didn't just read this in the last chapter. But, that is good if you consider this as a reference book.

The other thing that will strike you is the number of typos in this book. I wasn't keeping track of all of them, such as words melding together, hard returns where there didn't need to be, incorrect figures, etcetera, but I did make note of, and submit, 29 errors in this book (25 of those from page 579 on - I wasn't keeping serious track before then). If you hear that they've done a special edition of this book, or a second edition, just spend the (extra) money and pick it up. Luckily, the code seems pretty clean.

Having said all that, I still think Professional ASP.NET 3.5 is an excellent reference book, and one that I'll be keeping on my shelf. Almost every one of the 34 chapters had at least one valuable thing in them, and in most cases, they had many. While some topics are skimmed over, they give a very indepth look to existing and new features, providing sources to further reference as needed (most of which are free Microsoft references online).

Together with Imar's Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 In C# and VB, I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in ASP.NET 3.5. I would also recommend this reference book (last time, I promise :) ) to anyone who's worked with previous versions of .NET, and just needs to know how to advance their skills.

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