The first ASP.NET 3.5 book to market and it shows.
I have been doing ASP.NET for a few years now and still find introductory books helpful...this book was the exception. I found the chapters that are suppose to cover a facet of ASP.NET lacked much meat at all. Many of the chapters were under 10 pages and I found that instead of offering anything concrete the author went overboard with the external links to articles, help pages, or other books!
In the books defense it will give you a limited working knowledge in topics like the ASP.NET provider model introduced in ASP.NET 2.0, as well as data enabling your web app. However this still isn't enough for me to rate it any higher. The book may be sufficent for someone with a very limited knowledge in ASP.NET however you'll find there is no depth in this book and after you are done you probably will need to continue searching for more. Leave this book alone.
my-2-cents
Great book for people who are sick of trying to learn Web Page development/design from a book!
I must have purchased 10 books on how to develope a website from the ground up. Within the first 5 chapters, without fail, something integral to the entire website that they take for granted working, wouldn't work for me, and after a week or two of trying to fix the issue, I would normally give up. I repeated this process for about the past 6 months.
Some background on me, I'm 28, I have a BS in computer science, but generally learned nothing in college, of business value anyway. I am lightly familiar with coding/designing, if given enough time I could read the code and tell you about what most things do in C++ or VB, (And their .net equivalents), but ask me to program something, and I wouldn't even know where to start. This is why I am heavily dependant on any programing examples in a book working...
This book is definitely more a designers guide to building a website, but by that, I mean it shows you how to create a website from the ground up, and every short cut possible where you can have Visual Web Developer (VWD) button, or option do the work of coding. This is like a god send for people like me, that want to learn coding, but not as badly as we want to learn how to create .NET websites. I didn't get stuck for more than a few minutes anywhere.
There are no "stories from the trenches" that many books put in just to fill in space and bore you inbetween what you actually want to know. This book is VERY concisely written telling you what you need to know. This book does not go into great depth in any great part, it briefly touches on just about everything you could need to run your own website though and makes recommendations for either websites or books to purchase to get additional information.
In conclusion, this book is great for beginners, and I would, and have recommended it to everyone I know who, similar to me, wants to create a professional looking website, that doesn't have the programing skills to make it happen. I'd imagine though, if you are above beginner level, this book would not be for you.
Great Training Book
Although this book is not as well written as his book on Expression Web it is still a very good training book for Expression Web Developer.
VWD 2008 Express
The title of this book is a little misleading. It deals with Visual Web Developer Express Edition 2008 and does an excellent job of addressing the new features in the 2008 release as well as a valid tool for someone just starting with Visual Web Developer. It takes you through the development of a sample ASP.NET website using Access databases along with user security. It is an excellent reference as well as a tutorial approach for a begginner to intermediate web site creation.
Great tool for ASP.NET designers
This book does a superb job furthering one of Microsoft's intentions of the Expression suite: to bridge the gap between designers and developers.
Even though it is targeted toward designers new to ASP.NET, it is actually quite comprehensive in terms of development. I appreciate how a strong foundation was laid right from the start discussing ASP.NET architecture (including the often misunderstood topics of page lifecycle and state management) in plain, concise terms.
What really excites me about this book is that it does not shy away from the administrative side of ASP.NET--configuring membership, validation, security, etc. Far too many designers and developers alike give blank stares when asked how their site is configured.
I will definitely recommend this book to designers on our team, as it will help our upcoming ASP.NET 3.5 projects go much more smoothly.
Now...if I could just find a book of this caliber that works conversely, helping developers get into the mindset of a designer...
