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

	Title: Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) Purchase Item Manufacturer: Wrox List Price: $54.99 Our Price: $29.06
Customer Reviews:
Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) by Wrox Great Addition for Any Bookshelf
I've got the ASP.NET 2.0 version of this book (both the original and special edition versions) and all of the strengths still hold: It still walks you through all of the common (and some of the uncommon) usage for ASP.NET and provides great examples and code snippets to illustrate points. I'm not an ASP.NET newbie and I still find myself referring to the book from time to time - even in the age of Google - to find a nice, easy-to-understand example of this or that. That said, not much has changed from ASP.NET 2.0 to ASP.NET 3.5, so the important bits are the differences between this book and the previous version. So what is different? ADDED: * Lots about LINQ. Anywhere they discuss data - from databinding to working with XML - they've added info on how LINQ works into the picture. Thre is even a new chapter on "Querying with LINQ." * A chapter on IIS7 with a high-level intro to what it means for ASP.NET. * A chapter on basic HTML and CSS usage. * ASP.NET AJAX has been made a first class citizen with chapters on both the ASP.NET AJAX framework as well as the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. (It was an appendix in the ASP.NET 2.0 book.) * A section on WCF services has been added to the "Building and Consuming Services" chapter. * An ASP.NET-oriented subset of the indispensable Scott Hanselman Ultimate Tools List has been added as an appendix with screen shots and larger discussion of each tool. * An appendix has been added on basic Silverlight. REMOVED: * The introduction to Visual Studio. You won't get an overview of the IDE in the new book. * Basic .NET concept review like the chapter on "Collections and Lists" have been removed. * The chapter on developing for mobile devices using the contents of the System.Web.Mobile assembly. * The appendix on VB 8.0 and C# 2.0 language enhancements (generics, partial classes, etc.). COMBINED: * The ASP.NET 2.0 book separated out the discussions of "ASP.NET Web Server Controls" and "ASP.NET 2.0 Web Server Controls." This is now one chapter that doesn't differentiate by version. For the chapters that the two versions of the book have in common, really the only differences I could find were that the first few "intro" paragraphs for the chapter and the screenshots have been updated. A few sentences here and there have been updated to remove version-specific wording, but the copy is basically the same. I did a page-for-page comparison of one of chapters and almost everywhere it was exactly the same as the previous version, verbatim. That commonality is not a bad thing. It means the new version still has the great content found in the previous version, so if you didn't get the ASP.NET 2.0 book, the 3.5 book will cover you. If you did get the ASP.NET 2.0 book, Wrox also has a Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Upgrade book that just contains the new stuff so you don't have to re-purchase content you already have. Again, the typesetting irked me. The font really needs to be a point or two larger. Also, in the Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition, they used a light gray background to highlight code snippets so it was easy to make the distinction between prose and code. They lost that light gray background in the 3.5 book so the prose and the snippets run together a bit. (They use the light gray now as a "highlighter" for particular lines of code.) Of course, at 1600-odd pages, they might have to start shipping this bad boy on microfiche. In all, still highly recommended.
Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) by Wrox This is THE BOOK TO HAVE for ASP.NET 3.5
If there's one book to own on ASP.NET 3.5 this is it! Unlike some other books that have simply added a couple of additional chapters at the end and a new cover, in Professional ASP.Net 3.5 sections that matter have been accurately updated to reflect the new changes and new chapters have been added where appropriate. This book is very well written, and is full of code examples. At 1674 pages it's a monster, but it's all solid content.
Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) by Wrox An Excellent ASP.NET Book
Bill, Scott and Devin are long-time ASP.NET experts, and the authors of several best selling ASP.NET and .NET books. This latest book is outstanding and provides an excellent end to end resource for almost all things ASP.NET related (UI, AJAX, Data Access, Security, State Management, Deployment, etc). The book is very well organized, with a nice balance of text, code samples, and screen-shots. All code samples are provided in both C# and VB - making it applicable to developers of all language backgrounds. The book does a good job of covering new .NET 3.5 material - with good content on LINQ, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to SQL, as well as the new ASP.NET 3.5 data controls - including the ListView control. It has chapters on ASP.NET AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. It also has some great IIS7 material. One of the things that is particularly useful is that the samples and chapters are written with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008. The book does a great job of explaining both the core ASP.NET programming concepts, as well as showing off how to use the tools to easily take advantage of them. All in all a great book and a fantastic addition to any ASP.NET developer's library.
Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) by Wrox the complete reference
Scott, Bill and Devin do a phenomenal job of covering evrything in 3.5. This massive book can be read cover-to-cover over a couple of weeks or sit on your desk as a reference. The info from these three is rooted in real-world experience. They cover the technical details as well as the how and why of decisions around developing Rich Internet Applications.
Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) by Wrox I was skeptical of quanitity vs. Quality approach, but this title is ALL QUALITY!
I basically had some real dread about this book. WROX editors have gotten the wrong people to write books outside of their specialty, and have been downright sloppy as I have pointed out in many other reviews in the past. The new owners are trying hard to only get the best attributes of WROX, not the worse, with mixed results on some of their books I looked at. This book trots out some major players: Scott Hanselman major guru and creator of an awesome beyond compare tool list; Devin Rader a very interesting blogger and community participant extra-ordinaire; finally Bill Evjen, INETA founder. My expectation when picking up this book is I expected a ton of info that could be found elsewhere, scattered across many smaller books, under one cover. Asp.net Unleashed spoiled me so I have to assume even at best, it will just duplicate material that Walther's book covers better with no special insight. I was pleasantly surprised!!! I like this book so much I will buy the hardcover the minute it appears. It actually offers quite a few insights other books do not. This book is fabulous! I could write a 20 page review of why everyone must own this and ASP.net Unleashed if they only own 2 books on ASP.net but I will just summarize to save us both a heck of a lot of time and reading. Since the book clocks in at 1,600+ pages I cannot elucidate on all all the gems in this book, so hopefully a few examples will make you realize how good this book is. Debugging, Exceptions and Trace are an area I care about a LOT and boy did they cover the topic well. The subtleties and interactions between Debug.Write/ Trace.Write and some really insightful data about Trace listeners makes this much more useful than the documentation, in ways no one else has tackled before this concisely. Good sections on Server Controls, HTTP Handlers and Modules, WebParts, Provider models, CSS and ASP.net, et al. The scope of this book is fabulous at covering a little about everything but with a lot of insight and attention to detail. And WOW WOW WOW this book actually gives lots of Visual Studio tips. Visual Studio is a labyrinth of options and the good stuff is always hidden so having lots of great Visual Studio tidbits (and screenshots) really enhance this book's value. The weakest part of the book is the Online Resources section. I think it is way too short. I read well over 300+ blogs to keep up with ASP.net a dozen does not do justice to the blogsphere. Sites are of variying quality so Great sites like CodeProject, DaveAndAl.com, 4GuysFromRolla.com, CodePlex, SourceForge need to be highlighted and given some brief blurbs as to how they offer more and what specifically they offer. Given the importance of Open Source, Shared Source, not giving a whole chapter providing brief overviews and links to MS App Blocks, NHibernate, iBatis, LLBGen, Log4net, Mole Visualizer, the Starter Kits, et al. is I think a big oversight. I also think communities (listservers, Groups, Forums, newsgroups, Social Networks with SIGs) are something that need some explanation to people as a FREE help resource. Some summaries of how to find the right ones for your experience level, explaining the organization and etiquette of specialized groups vs. FreeForAlls, explaining which forums are active and responsive and which tend to breed more discouragement and unanswered posts to avoid, etc. The book has a bunch of great explanations of many ideas but .NET is so huge and areas are so deep people need to know how to get answers on things beyond just pointing to a few URLs. A book worth it's salt at covering community even as an Appendix, a dozen pages at least would give a person a much better overview of how to find and maximize value of community to solve ongoing job challenges. To summarize... Great book (I hope they make a hardcover so the book has a longer, stronger reference life without falling apart). A great companion to ASP.net Unleashed that goes deeper in many areas, but sometimes you need concise terse shallow insightful overviews and this book is filled with them. I am major book critic and can be quite harsh when reviewing .NET books, mostly because I really think given the quality of online info, books better bring some major insight and depth not just duplicate what is out there on the web on paper, to be of value. This book is the real deal .... These 3 authors and their editors delivered a book the ASP.net developer will find invaluable, and help them write better code, solve tougher problems, and elegantly understand and apply quite a bit of the richness the Framework offers in real world ASP.net web site building and maintenance. Bravo, Bravisimo!
Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) by Wrox Product Description
Building on the revolutionary ASP.NET 2.0 release, ASP.NET 3.5 adds several key new developer features including AJAX, LINQ, and a new CSS designer in Visual Web Developer 2008. The dramatic reduction in code that developers realized from the more than 50 new server controls in ASP.NET 2.0 now allows developers the time to make their applications more interactive with AJAX, to work with data in their preferred language with LINQ, and to build visually attractive and consistent standards-based sites with CSS. Professional ASP.NET 3.5 helps the experienced programmer put these new technologies into action. Greatly expanded from the original best-selling Professional ASP.NET 2.0, Professional ASP.NET 3.5 covers all the key technologies retained from 2.0 in new depth alongside the hundreds of pages of coverage of the important new 3.5 features. Written by 3 of the most well-known and influential ASP.NET developers who were highly praised by ASP.NET creator Scott Guthrie for their ASP.NET 2.0 books, Professional ASP.NET 3.5 is the book you’ll learn the language from and turn to day after day as you write web applications. And as always, Professional ASP.NET 3.5 features language examples in the book and in the code download in both C# and VB! Key new coverage for ASP.NET 3.5 includes: Thorough coverage of how to implement ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit An introduction to LINQ and many LINQ examples throughout the book side-by-side with the related SQL example to show you the differences between the two Enhanced coverage of XML use in ASP.NET including the new XML Schema Designer Add-on, LINQ to XML, LINQ for XML examples, and XSLTC.exe, a command-line XSLT compiler A new chapter on CSS design for ASP.NET and the Visual Web Developer CSS design tools A new chapter on the ASP.NET lifecycle and architecture best-practices Increased coverage of ASP.NET with SQL Server 2005 and Oracle as the databases Coverage of enhancing your ASP.NET applications with Microsoft’s new Silverlight for stunning video and animation uses Coverage of Scott Hanselman’s famous productivity tool picks for developers to help make you a more productive ASP.NET developer Updated coverage of migrating applications for previous ASP.NET versions Key coverage retained and improved from the ASP.NET 2.0 book: The idea of the server control and its pivotal role in ASP.NET development How to create templated ASP.NET pages using the master page feature Techniques for debugging and handling errors Ways to package and deploy ASP.NET applications How to retrieve, update, and delete data quickly and logically How to implement the cultures and regions features to localize your web site into multiple languages for different visitors An understanding of how to use and extend the provider model for accessing data stores, processes, and more How to keep track of your application's performance and health with monitoring tools Who this book is for This book is for experienced programmers and developers who are looking to make the transition to ASP.NET 3.5.