Customer Rating: 
Summary: The ONLY book needed for ASP.NET 3.5
Comment: Being a Microsoft fanatic I always want to stay on top of things with Microsoft Technologies.I have been reading a couple of books on ASP.NET 3.5. And having seen this book physically and read the book and, I can definitely say that, this is the ONLY book that any ASP.NET developer would want to have on his desk. Loaded with practical advice. Complete. Comprehensive. Cost effective. Definite BUY.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Addition for Any Bookshelf
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is THE BOOK TO HAVE for ASP.NET 3.5
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Excellent ASP.NET Book
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: the complete reference
Comment: 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.
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