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I bought both the Beginner and Pro versions of the book. As a 28 year experienced programmer with no experience in ASPX, I needed a book with tons of code examples. This series is the opposite of what (I feel) most programmers need. The authors substitute tons of verbal exposition for working code samples. Worst of all, they barely mention data objects which is by far the most important aspect of C#/VB programming. I wish some ASPX/C# guru out there would produce a book with nothing but code. Chapter headings, yes, and nothing else but thousands of working code examples using database (SQLServer) and objectdatasource and data objects. If the book you are considering stops at coverage of the SQLDataSource (instead of covering the newer and far more useful objectdatasource) the book is obsolete.
Rating: 2 / 5

Today when you want to know more about Asp.Net, due to a relentless number of new features (Ajax, silverlight, Linq, etc…), you have the choice of buying books on each of the topics or more general reference books that try to cover all the topics in one.

Pro ASP.Net 3.5 in C# 2008 falls into the second category. I am not convinced that this is the best direction to take for .Net 3.5. I rather suggest that buying a book on each of the topics you are interested in learning about could prove more useful and thought provoking.

However, if you want to take on a mammoth sized book (more than 1400 pages!) then this is the right reference text book for you.

Another thing I want to comment on before I discuss the actual content is the title of the book itself, which is somehow misleading. The ‘Pro’ part in the title seems to indicate the authors are targeting more than beginners. Yet I think this text is valid for anyone who wants to write ASP.Net applications – newbies and gurus alike.

The introduction covers all the bases by talking about the basics you need to know or the tools you need to have to start an ASP.Net project. In fairness, the very short part about the daily use of Visual Studio is an interesting feature; showing how to write your code and debug it with the IDE is a too often forgotten part in other books.

The chapter organisation is rather disappointing, maybe because this book is essentially an upgrade from the previous ASP.Net 2.0 edition. I don’t understand why the Ajax Toolkit, which is now full part of .Net 3.5, is pushed back to the end of the book? The new rich controls chapter would have been better placed at the start along with the other HTML controls.

I won’t go on further about the details of each chapter, as I said before; this is a reference book, the kind of text you use when you want to find a specific entry from the index, like a good encyclopaedia.

Regarding the code, C# obviously, because this book follows a dictionary approach, you won’t find any complete applications in it, only snippets on all scenarios. This is not ideal as it does not allow you find solutions to your specific problems that easily.

It’s true that this book abounds with code samples. The only chapter where we can see the start of an application is the one on portals with web part pages.

To conclude, I would recommend this book as a good thorough reference text that certainly covers everything you can imagine on ASP.Net 3.5. In that regard the authors have done a great job. However, I don’t think we can sustain anymore similar types of text books that cover everything on .Net in one go. I think individual books on specific topics are the way to go in the future.

Paschal L

Founder & Leader of the Irish User Group http://www.developers.ie

Rating: 3 / 5

good book – as expected. Didn’t read more than 10 page so can’t give comment on content. Sorry lazy guy
Rating: 5 / 5