Great for .NET controls, not so good with generic Web Services
I thought this was a great book over all as it contains everything you need to know to work with ASP.NET controls. I mean, this is a library (A-Z) on controls. However, I thought working generically with Web Services was lacking. Also, the index for this book was terrible: Word SOAP is not indexed; 'USING' takes you to no-man land, just to name these examples. I will not return this book since I can use it in future Dev work but I did not get what I was looking for -- generic AJAX + ASP I bought it for.
A reference for Asp.net in C#
My teacher at Hofstra University in Long Island , NY, is using it as class book for Asp.net and have all the subjects in the class cover in the book.
The codes in the CD are very useful and until now we found only one code example that wasn't working.
The reason that I didn't give 5 stars is because the book is not a Project-base book.
I recommend this book to everybody, students to professionals, because it has everything that you need to know about Asp.net 3.5 and the codes in the CD are in c# and vb.
Excellent paper quality in the hardcover edition is a plus.
Excellent introduction to Asp Dot Net
As a newby to ASP Dot Net I have bought a number of books to try and get the grips with this technology. I came accross this one by accident but I'm very glad I did. I have not problem recommending this excellent book.
I love Stephens writing style. I also like the way this book is broken down into sections with a huge number of examples and screenshots with just enough explanation to explain a technique or concept.
The companion webside with working examples is a really nice touch and anyone who has bought technical books and found out later that code downloaded doesn't work would be delighted to know that I have not had any issues with faulty code examples.
If you are only going to buy one book on dot net buy this.
a book without support
This book cover many and give you many codes but many of them are wrong and there are no support for you at all. For example this book emphasize on VirtualPathProvider Class and is in both chapter 21 & 34. They're using two different samples but duplicate codes and is not function. If you want to get help from them; Good luck there is no forum, errata.... even you emailed them and there is no responsed at all.
Very Thorough
Almost everything you want to do in ASP .NET is covered in this book with code showing even a novice in .NET development how to write great pages. I would say that the thing I liked most about the book was the very generous amount of code samples. If you are not into typing there's even a CD with all the enclosed book code. Secondly, I was impressed by the straight-forward approach to explaining these concepts. This book will remain on my shelf for future reference!
