Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Stunning - Where Do I Begin?
Comment: Over the years I have read over 50 programming books. This easily ranks as one of the best. I am now on page 193 - and have made underlinings or notes on almost every page. First of all, it might be relevant to know that my background is classic ASP - but it's been a few years since I worked with it. Overall, the book flows beautifully and logically. Not only does the overall structure make sense, but the actual detail explanations are crystal clear. This book takes the reader on a logical course to understand all the key aspects of creating ASP.NET web sites (including key details of the Visual Web Developer interface). I am continually amazed at the flow, and the clear explanations of all relevant details. Additionally, I have posted a number of questions on the wrox forum website (look for the one that deals specifically with this book) and Imar - the author - quickly and thoroughly answered all my questions. My thanks to Imar for this work of outstanding quality - a truly helpful addition to the ASP community.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Incredibly helpful book and author
Comment: This is the best programming book I have read thus far and I am reading 4 right now! I have found the author himself to be extremely helpful at p2p.wrox.com and quick to answer my few hang-ups during my reading. Note that the only negative reviews at the time of this writing are from readers who have not gotten [much] farther than the first chapter, but the book is 18 chapters long! There are indeed a few spelling and other textual errors but that is to be expected in some degree of almost any book, and none of them have impacted the technical aspect or effectiveness of this book.
If you want to get a good grasp on the asp.net framework, buy this book... and read it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent tool
Comment: I have been programming in VB.NET and C# for several years and have just recently needed to write a program in ASP. I bought this book figuring it would get me started and i could look up the more complicated stuff online. I was able to read the book in 2 days and feel like I have a solid grasp of what I am doing. Everything is explained well, the examples are great, always written in both languages, and the results are easily seen (some books have examples where the results aren't seen for several chapters). I am actually excited to write the program now and have been looking for other projects that I can do in ASP.NET.
Customer Rating:
Summary: for the beginner web developer
Comment: I have done no sort of programming before- no C, Java, Visual Basic etc...nothing, nada.
And this book still taught me how to do excellent web pages.
If a complete beginner like me can use this book successfully so can anyone else.
This is one of the best instructional books I have ever used, period, regardless of subject, Spaanjaars can both write and teach.
Throughout my six years at university I have constantly been reminded of how rare this combination of skill is.
The exercises are not accumulated together at the end of each chapter, instead they appear throughout each chapter.
You can decide for yourself whether you want to go with VB or C#, or both, all the coding is explained as you go.
Would you benefits from knowing HTML, C# or VB prior to this book? Certainly, you would probably learn quicker, but it is not a prerequisite.
Customer Rating:
Summary: finally over the psychological barrier
Comment: I have worked for many years as a C (C++) programmer, and routinely access various databases (Access, SQL Server, mySQL) using MFC code. I decided at long last to go to the Internet with my quite involved linguistic software, and have messed around when I had spare time for several months not really getting it to work. The two skills I felt like I really needed to acquire into order to be up and running were (1) the ability to access databases securely and reliably from a Web site (logins, etc.), and (2) the ability to call dlls (Web Services) from a Web site. Going into this book, I still had no idea what the corollary of a dll or COM object was. And I still don't know whether I have to rewrite my C++ dlls in C# to get them to work. The book hints that I might not have to. But at least if I am willing to rewrite all 45,000 lines of C++ code in C#, I know how to do what I want to do in principle, and that feels very different from where I was at before.
Part of the reason that I'm further along now is that I was using ASP.NET 2.0. Version 3.5 has added so many widgets to resolve common problems that it really feels to me from the perspective of a rank beginner like an entirely different beast, though undoubtedly under the hood, it's essentially the same. For example, the beginning ASP.NET 2.0 book I read devoted a whole chapter to Request and Response. There are just a couple references to them in this book, and they're not even mentioned in the index. Version 3.5 has been so structured that you apparently don't need to know even these very basic details. I feel a little like I felt when the event loop disappeared into the bowels of the GUI, never to be referred to again. "Can I trust Microsoft to handle that? Can I just go my merry way writing only event handlers?" It's still too soon to tell for certain, but probably I'll be okay.
This is not a reference book. I couldn't easily look up how to add a background image to my master page having forgotten it, and having read it once, I'm now reading it again cover to cover and taking notes to create the reference I need, because I don't even remotely remember it all. And I will need to read the advanced book to get where I want to be.
Instead of a reference, you build a fully functional Web site throughout the course of the book. An exercise in chapter 11 may refer to a page you built in Chapter 4, so you absolutely have to follow the entire book from start to finish or you'll be lost. I do think that this is the best approach to learning ASP.NET 3.5, because I really feel like if I pay attention, I can now write a full fledged Web site. I can't see any other way to cover (in 700 pages) ASP.NET controls, user controls, themes, style sheets, skins, master pages, basic C#, debugging, code behind files, Web services, databases, LINQ, security, base pages, validation, AJAX and deployment... to mention most of the biggies. None of these were even mentioned in my ASP.NET 2.0 books, mostly because they didn't exist, I expect. They are all there is to ASP.NET 3.5. You can get whole books on most of these technologies, but I really feel Spaanjaars gives you a serviceable introduction to each of them. I'm also impressed by the considerable planning that must have gone into deciding what order the various tools should be presented in, and consequently how the site should be built up. For example, Cascading Style Sheets are presented before Master Pages, because it's easier to cover the 8-9 ways of modifying them if you don't yet have a master page.
In summary, this is the first beginning text on dynamic database driven Web sites that got me past that psychological barrier and convinced me that I am going to be able to migrate my complicated life to the Internet. The text is clear and very well organized. And there are precious few errors. (I submitted most of the typos a previous reviewer complained about, because I liked the book so much I wanted it to be perfect. Sorry for the unintended effect Imar.)
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