Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) Review

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(More customer reviews)I've picked up copies of Beginning ASP.NET 2.0; Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# & VB; Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005 From Novice to Professional; and Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 Step by Step (the only one I can recommend). With all of these, I struggled to read them and didn't feel as though I learned much, or in the case of the last, failed to get much more than an overview of ASP.NET (albeit a good one).
However, with Imar Spaanjaars' book, I finally feel comfortable with ASP.NET 3.5.
In this book Imar works through the steps of creating of an actual, fully-functional, ASP.NET 3.5 Web site, that's actually not that bad (ignoring some questionable design).
Unlike other books, Imar covers both the Express and commercial versions of Visual Studio, in a very unobtrusive way. In addition, Imar doesn't rely solely on the ASP.NET components, but gives a good deal of actual programming, in both C# and VB (in a very clean, comfortable, way).
While it's true that he references a number of other Wrox books, such as Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer), there is very little that needs to be examined to get a site up and running, that would suit the majority of business needs.
Overall, my faith in the ability of Web developers to write good books has been restored by this tome (and at over 700 pages, tome it is). A Web developer Imar is, and to us, as equals, is to whom he speaks. This is clearly seen in his summaries and tips, at the end of each chapter.
I give this book 5 stars of 5. If you've read the other books and been left sad, confused, and/or angry, this is the volume to pick up.
Note: I will be reading this book twice, once I've finished with Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer). There is so much in this book that bears repeating, and many things that I'm sure I missed in my first read, since it's so full of (valuable) information.

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This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to build rich and interactive web sites that run on the Microsoft platform. With the knowledge you gain from this book, you create a great foundation to build any type of web site, ranging from simple hobby-related web sites to sites you may be creating for commercial purposes.
Anyone new to web programming should be able to follow along because no prior background in web development is assumed. The book starts at the very beginning of web development by showing you how to obtain and install Visual Web Developer. The chapters that follow gradually introduce you to new technologies, building on top of the knowledge gained in the previous chapters.
Do you have a strong preference for Visual Basic over C# or the other way around? Or do you think both languages are equally cool? Or maybe you haven't made up your mind yet and want to learn both languages? Either way, you'll like this book because all code examples are presented in both languages!
Even if you're already familiar with previous versions of ASP.NET, with the 1.x versions in particular, you may gain a lot from this book. Although many concepts from ASP.NET 2.0 are brought forward into ASP.NET 3.5, you'll discover there's a host of new stuff to be found in this book, including an introduction to LINQ, the new CSS and JavaScript debugging tools, new ASP.NET controls, and integrated support for ASP.NET Ajax.
To build effective and attractive database-driven web sites, you need two things: a solid and fast framework to run your web pages on and a rich and extensive environment to create and program these web pages. With ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Web Developer 2008 you get both. Together they form the platform to create dynamic and interactive web applications.
ASP.NET 3.5 builds on top of its popular predecessor ASP.NET 2.0. While maintaining backward compatibility with sites built using this older version, the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 in general and ASP.NET 3.5 in particular add a lot of new, compelling features to the mix.
Continuing the path of "less code" that was entered with the 2.0 version of the .NET Framework, ASP.NET 3.5 lets you accomplish more with even less code. New features like LINQ that are added to the .NET Framework allow you to access a database with little to no hand written code. The integration of Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax into the ASP.NET Framework and Visual Web Developer means you can now create fast responding and spiffy web interfaces simply by dragging a few controls onto your page and setting a few properties. This book gives you an in-depth look at both these technologies.
The support for cascading style sheets (CSS), the language to lay out and format web pages, has undergone a major overhaul in Visual Web Developer. The design time support, that shows you how a page will eventually look in the browser, has been vastly improved. Additionally, Visual Web Developer now ships with a lot of tools that make writing CSS a breeze.
However, drag-and-drop support and visual tools are not the only things you'll learn from this book. ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Web Developer 2008 come with a great and extensive set of tools to help you program your web applications. These tools range from the new LINQ syntax that allows you to query data and databases in your web applications, to the vastly improved debugging capabilities that allow you to debug your application from client-side JavaScript all the way up into your server-side code, all with the same familiar user interface, commands, and actions.
Under the hood, ASP.NET 3.5 makes use of the same run-time as version 2.0. This ensures a great backward compatibility with that version, which means that ASP.NET 2.0 applications continue to run under the new framework. But don't be fooled by the fact that the run-time hasn't changed. Although the technical underpinnings needed to execute your web application haven't changed, the .NET 3.5 Framework and ASP.NET add a lot of new features, as you'll discover in this book.
Probably the best thing of Visual Web Developer 2008 is its price: it's available for free. Although the commercial versions of Visual Studio 2008 ship with Visual Web Developer, you can also download and install the free Express Edition. This makes Visual Web Developer 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5 probably the most attractive and compelling web development technologies available today.
This book teaches you how to create a feature-rich, data-driven, and interactive web site. Although this is quite a mouthful, you'll find that with Visual Web Developer 2008 this isn't as hard as it seems. You'll see the entire process of building a web site, from installing Visual Web Developer 2008 in Chapter 1 all the way up to putting your web application on a live server in Chapter 18. The book is divided into 18 chapters, each dealing with a specific subject.
Chapter 1, "Getting Started With ASP.NET 3.5." In this chapter you'll see how to obtain and install Visual Web Developer 2008. You'll get instructions for downloading and installing the free edition of Visual Web Developer 2008, called the Express Edition. You are also introduced to HTML, the language behind every web page. The chapter closes with an overview of the customization options that Visual Web Developer gives you.
Chapter 2, "Building an ASP.NET Web Site." This chapter shows you how to create a new web site and how to add new elements like pages to it. Besides learning how to create a well-structured site, you also see how to use the numerous tools in Visual Web Developer to create HTML and ASP.NET pages.
Chapter 3, "Designing Your Web Pages." Visual Web Developer comes with a host of tools that allow you to create well-designed and attractive web pages. In this chapter, you see how to make good use of these tools. Additionally, you learn about CSS, the language that is used to format web pages.
Chapter 4, "Working with ASP.NET Controls." ASP.NET Server controls are one of the most important concepts in ASP.NET. They allow you to create complex and feature-rich web sites with very little code. This chapter introduces you to the large number of server controls that are available, explains what they are used for, and shows you how to use them.
Chapter 5, "Programming Your ASP.NET Web Pages." Although the built-in CSS tools and the ASP.NET server controls can get you a long way in creating web pages, you are likely to use a programming language to enhance your pages. This chapter serves as an introduction to programming with a strong focus on programming web pages. Best of all: all the examples you see in this chapter (and the rest of the book) are in both Visual Basic and C#, so you can choose the language you like best.
Chapter 6, "Creating Consistent Looking Web Sites." Consistency is important to give your web site an attractive and professional appeal. ASP.NET helps you create consistent-looking pages through the use of master pages, which allow you to define the global look and feel of a page. Skins and themes help you to centralize the looks of controls and other visual elements in your site. You also see how to create a base page that helps to centralize programming code that you need on all pages in your site.
Chapter 7, "Navigation." To help your visitors find their way around your site, ASP.NET comes with a number of navigation controls. These controls are used to build the navigation structure of your site. They can be connected to your site's central site map that defines the pages in your web site. You also learn how to programmatically send users from one page to another.
Chapter 8, "User Controls." User Controls are reusable page fragments that can be used in multiple web pages. As such, they are great for repeating content like menus, banners, and so on. In this chapter, you learn how to create and use User Controls and enhance them with some programmatic intelligence.
Chapter 9, "Validating User Input." A large part of interactivity in your site is defined by the input of your users. This chapter shows you how to accept, validate, and process user input using ASP.NET server controls. Additionally, you see how to send e-mail from your ASP.NET web application and how to read from text files.
Chapter 10, "ASP.NET Ajax." Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax allows you to create good looking, flicker free web pages that close the gap between traditional desktop applications and web applications. In this chapter you learn how to use the built-in Ajax features to enhance the presence of your web pages, resulting in a smoother interaction with the web site.
Chapter 11, "Introduction to Databases." Understanding how to use databases is critical to building modern web sites, as most modern web sites require the use of a database. You'll learn the basics of SQL, the query language that allows you to access and alter data in a database. In addition, you are introduced to the database tools found in Visual Web Developer that help you create and manage your SQL Server databases.
Chapter 12, "Displaying and Updating Data." Building on the knowledge you gained in the previous chapter, this chapter shows you how to use the ASP.NET data-bound and data source controls to create a rich interface that enables your users to interact with the data in the database that these controls target.
Chapter 13, "LINQ." LINQ is Microsoft's new solution for accessing objects, databases, XML, and more. In this chapter you'll see how to use LINQ to SQL to access SQL Server databases. Instead of writing a lot of manual code, you create a bunch of LINQ objects that do the heavy work for you. This chapter shows you what LINQ is all about, how to use the visual LINQ designer built into Visual Web Developer, and how to write LINQ queries to get data in and out of your SQL Server database.
Chapter 14, "Presenting Data: Advanced Topics....

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

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(More customer reviews)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!

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This book was written to introduce you to the features and capabilities that ASP.NET 3.5 offers, as well as to give you an explanation of the foundation that ASP.NET provides. We assume you have a general understanding of Web technologies, such as previous versions of ASP.NET, Active Server Pages 2.0/3.0, or JavaServer Pages. If you understand the basics of Web programming, you should not have much trouble following along with this book's content.
If you are brand new to ASP.NET, be sure to check out Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB by Imar Spaanjaars (Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2008) to help you understand the basics.
In addition to working with Web technologies, we also assume that you understand basic programming constructs, such as variables, For Each loops, and object-oriented programming.
You may also be wondering whether this book is for the Visual Basic developer or the C# developer. We are happy to say that it is for both! When the code differs substantially, this book provides examples in both VB and C#.
This book spends its time reviewing the 3.5 release of ASP.NET. Each major new feature included in ASP.NET 3.5 is covered in detail. The following list tells you something about the content of each chapter.

Chapter 1, "Application and Page Frameworks." This chapter shows you how to build ASP.NET applications using IIS or the built-in Web server that comes with Visual Studio 2008. This chapter also shows you the folders and files that are part of ASP.NET. It discusses ways to compile code and shows you how to perform cross-page posting. This chapter ends by showing you easy ways to deal with your classes from within Visual Studio 2008.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4.These three chapters are grouped here because they all deal with server controls. This batch of chapters starts by examining the idea of the server control and its pivotal role in ASP.NET development. In addition to looking at the server control framework, these chapters delve into the plethora of server controls that are at your disposal for ASP.NET development projects.

Chapter 5, "Working with Master Pages."Master pages are a great capability found in ASP.NET. They provide a means of creating templated pages that enable you to work with the entire application, as opposed to single pages.

Chapter 6, "Themes and Skins." This chapter looks at how to deal with the styles that your applications require and shows you how to create a centrally managed look-and-feel for all the pages of your application by using themes and the skin files that are part of a theme.

Chapter 7, "Data Binding in ASP.NET 3.5." One of the more important tasks of ASP.NET is presenting data, and this chapter shows you how to do that with ASP.NET controls.

Chapter 8, "Data Management with ADO.NET." This chapter presents the ADO.NET data model provided by ASP.NET, which allows you to handle the retrieval, updating, and deleting of data quickly and logically.

Chapter 9, "Querying with LINQ." LINQ is a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. This chapter introduces you to LINQ and how to use this new feature in web applications today.

Chapter 10, "Working with XML and LINQ to XML." This chapter looks at the XML technologies built into ASP.NET and the underlying .NET Framework to help you easily extract, create, manipulate, and store XML..

Chapter 11, "IIS7." Probably the most substantial release of IIS in its history, IIS 7.0 will change the way you host and work with your ASP.NET applications.

Chapter 12, "Introduction to the Provider Model." A number of systems are built into ASP.NET that make the lives of developers so much easier and more productive than ever before. These systems are built upon an architecture called a provider model, which is rather extensible. This chapter gives an overview of this provider model and how it is used throughout ASP.NET 3.5.

Chapter 13, "Extending the Provider Model." This chapter looks at some of the ways to extend the provider model found in ASP.NET 3.5. This chapter also reviews a couple of sample extensions to the provider model.

Chapter 14, "Site Navigation." Many developers do not simply develop single pages—they build applications. One of the application capabilities provided by ASP.NET 3.5 is the site navigation system covered in this chapter.

Chapter 15, "Personalization.". The ASP.NET team developed a way to store end user information—the ASP.NET personalization system.

Chapter 16, "Membership and Role Management." This chapter covers the membership and role management system developed to simplify adding authentication and authorization to your ASP.NET applications. This chapter focuses on using the web.config file for controlling how these systems are applied, as well as on the server controls that work with the underlying systems.

Chapter 17, "Portal Frameworks and Web Parts." This chapter explains Web Parts—a way of encapsulating pages into smaller and more manageable objects.

Chapter 18, "HTML and CSS Design with ASP.NET." A lot of focus on building a CSS-based Web application was placed on Visual Studio 2008. This chapter takes a close look at how you can effectively work with HTML and CSS design for your ASP.NET applications.

Chapter 19, "ASP.NET AJAX."AJAX signifies the capability to build applications that make use of the XMLHttpRequest object. New to Visual Studio 2008 is the ability to build AJAX-enabled ASP.NET applications from the default install of the IDE.

Chapter 20, "ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit." This chapter takes a good look at the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, a series of new controls that are now available to make AJAX web development rather simple.

Chapter 21, "Security." This security chapter discusses security beyond the membership and role management features provided by ASP.NET 3.5. This chapter provides an in-depth look at the authentication and authorization mechanics inherent in the ASP.NET technology, as well as HTTP access types and impersonations.

Chapter 22, "State Management." Because ASP.NET is a request-response–based technology, state management and the performance of requests and responses take on significant importance. This chapter introduces these two separate but important areas of ASP.NET development.

Chapter 23 , "Caching." Because of the request-response nature of ASP.NET, caching on the server becomes important to the performance of your ASP.NET applications. This chapter looks at some of the advanced caching capabilities provided by ASP.NET, including the SQL cache invalidation feature which is part of ASP.NET 3.5.

Chapter 24, "Debugging and Error Handling." This chapter tells you how to properly structure error handling within your applications. It also shows you how to use various debugging techniques to find errors that your applications might contain.

Chapter 25, "File I/O and Streams." More often than not, you want your ASP.NET applications to work with items that are outside the base application. This chapter takes a close look at working with various file types and streams that might come into your ASP.NET applications.

Chapter 26, "User and Server Controls." This chapter describes building your own server controls and how to use them within your applications.

Chapter 27, "Modules and Handlers." This chapter looks at two methods of manipulating the way ASP.NET processes HTTP requests: HttpModule and HttpHandler. Each method provides a unique level of access to the underlying processing of ASP.NET and can be powerful tools for creating web applications.

Chapter 28, "Using Business Objects." You are going to have components created with previous technologies that you do not want to rebuild but that you do want to integrate into new ASP.NET applications. Beyond showing you how to integrate your COM components into your applications, this chapter shows you how to build newer style .NET components instead of turning to the previous COM component architecture.

Chapter 29, "Building and Consuming Services." This chapter reveals the ease not only of building XML Web services, but consuming them in an ASP.NET application. This chapter then ventures further by describing how to build XML Web services that utilize SOAP headers and how to consume this particular type of service.

Chapter 30, "Localization." ASP.NET provides an outstanding way to address the internationalization of Web applications. This chapter looks at some of the important items to consider when building your Web applications for the world.

Chapter 31, "Configuration." This chapter teaches you to modify the capabilities and behaviors of ASP.NET using the various configuration files at your disposal.

Chapter 32, "Instrumentation." The ASP.NET framework includes performance counters, the capability to work with the Windows Event Tracing system, possibilities for application tracing , and the most exciting part of this discussion—a health monitoring system that allows you to log a number of different events over an application's lifetime.

Chapter 33, "Administration and Management." This chapter provides an overview of the new GUI tools that come with APS.NET that enable you to manage your Web applications easily and effectively.

Chapter 34, "Packaging and Deploying ASP.NET Applications." This chapter takes the application building process one-step further and shows you how to package your ASP.NET applications for easy deployment.

Appendix A, "Migrating Older ASP.NET Projects." This appendix focuses on migrating ASP.NET 1.x, or 2.0 applications to the 3.5 framework.

Appendix B, "ASP.NET Ultimate Tools." Based on Scott Hanse...

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