Instant ASP.NET Applications(with CD)

by Greg Buczek

Paperback: 1008 pages
Publisher: Osborne McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 0072192917; Bk&Cd-Rom edition (October 26, 2001)

This is the ultimate collection of ready to use code and expert techniques for developing ASP.NET applications. The book covers all the new features, syntax, and structure of ASP.NET and presents solutions for a wide range of ASP.NET applications, including company intranet applications, an online store, chat rooms, and more. The bonus CD-ROM contains all the source code from the book, ready-to-run.

From the Back Cover: The Ultimate Collection of Ready-to-Use Code and Expert Techniques

Develop enterprise-class Web applications more efficiently with ASP .NET, the most advanced generation of Active Server Pages. Learn to build a vastly diverse class of applications using event-driven programming. Create a personalized experience for your visitors by taking advantage of ASP .NET's numerous features. Combine standard HTML elements, ASP .NET Web controls, and event-driven code to produce quickly generated Web pages that can be infinitely updated. Instant ASP .NET Applications will show you how to develop with this powerful, unified Web development platform.

Key Topics Covered in Instant ASP.NET Applications:
• Dynamic interactive functionality
• Web services
• Online stores, rotating products, shopping carts, and CRM
• Useful applications like IE Online Campus and Web Logs
• Data sharing through the Web
• Complete Web site content management
• .NET Framework-compatible server-side coding
• Visitor queries and tabulated results
• Powerful solutions for company intranets.

On the Value-Packed CD-ROM: Ready-to-use Web development solutions All source code used throughout the book

About the Author: Greg Buczek is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer and a Microsoft Certified Trainer. He is the Webmaster of more than twenty-five Web sites, where he strives to bring dynamic, data-driven content to the Internet. He is the author of Instant ASP Scripts, ASP Developer's Guide, and Instant ASP Components.

Customer Reviews
Need to write code today? This is the book..., February 25, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Phoenix, AZ
I own copies of several of Greg's previous books for one reason. He writes about creating applications NOW and he writes in a style that I find very friendly and accomodating; that is, he doesn't assume that I know everything about the product and related software before I read the book. This book is full of good examples that can be used - as you are writing code. The examples are well-developed and easily adaptable to other types of applications. The information presented is very readable. Thanks for another great book, Greg! You're actually helping me get my job done - and I need that!

Skip VS.NET, February 20, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Montalvo, CA
I don't use and I don't plan on using Visual Studio.NET to develop ASP.NET applications. I think it is way too weighty and pricey for what it offers. Instant ASP.NET did it for me. It showed me using so many different applications how to create ASP.NET without having to have VS.NET. That is a great plus. You can do so much using any text editor. The book covered stuff like creating a sports site, using email, banner ads, visitor tracking, school pages, bookmarks, chat, job boards and tons more. The book is well worth the money. This is the stuff that you never learn in a class or pick up from other books.

Good if you are building a store, January 30, 2002
Reviewer: Gregory A. Beamer
I see five stars for this book, and wonder how anyone who has compared this book to other books on the market can rate it this high. My guess is the use needed to develop the same type of application as presented in the book, and was glad the application was easily completed with copy and paste. Rather than focus on that, I will tell my own personal beefs. On the positive side, this tome has great shelf presence. Wieghing in at over 1k of pages, gives it a great thunk factor (the sound the book makes when it hits the desk). This is deceiving, however, as the book uses a rather large font and contains copious code samples, which stretch it out farther. I am not saying that there is not a lot of content, just that this book would have been a lot smaller with some publisher's font selection.

Also positive is the fact that the writer does use Codebehind files for some of the content. I applaud this, as so many books on ASP.NET fail in this department. It is hard to determine that CodeBehind is used in many of the pages until you look at the code on the CD. If you plan on learning from this book, you will most likely be disappointed. Admitedly, that is not the focus, so I am not deducting anything for this factor. There is the obligatory introductory material, but it is largely a reference on controls. My biggest beef is much of the material is a lesson in how to drag and drop in Visual Studio .NET, or, rather, that the only thing you need to do for much of the code listings is drag and drop. If you are using the .NET Framework, sans Visual Studio .NET, you may actually type in the code, and prove me wrong.

I also have a problem that a great deal of the code is not completely in line with best practices. Like most ASP.NET books, the main thrust is writing ASP.NET much like ASP, which is not the best way to enter the .NET world. A large portion of the book is aimed at E-Commerce sites, although many of the examples can apply somewhere else. While I have some disagreements with some of the methodology used here, I can see where a person needing an E-Commerce site, or at least some of the same types of pages as a fictional E-Commerce site, can get a lot of value from this book. As such, I am rating it slightly below average, as I see some utilitarian value. I would say this is actually about 2.5 stars, if I were allowed to go in half stars.

Invaluable ASP.NET resource, December 11, 2001
Reviewer: dmcguirt from North Sydney, NSW Australia
This is the fourth "Instant ASP" book (others being Instant ASP Scripts, ASP Components and the ASP Developers Guide) that I have purchased by the author Greg Buczek. I find that each book is invaluable in my application development and as a reference source. If you want to get into the nuts and bolts of how ASP.NET works, then buy a WROX book. If you want instant code to build your ASP.NET applications quickly, this is the book.

It gives plenty of examples and sample code that works. As a lot of the code is repetitive (e.g. making the connection to a data source, using the data grid, or the calendar control, etc.), it really drives home the concepts and helps in understand how ASP.NET works. I am sure that Greg may not like me telling this but he actually responses to emailed questions sent to him about his code. I have built many full blown application using sample code in Greg's "Instant" books. Now I can build them using ASP.NET.

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