ASP.NET Weekend Crash Course (With CD-ROM)

by Robert Standefer III

Paperback: 328 pages
Publisher: Hungry Minds, Inc
ISBN: 0764548360; Bk&Cd-Rom edition (October 15, 2001)

ASP.NET is the next generation development platform from Microsoft and is completely built from scratch to offer richer and greater services for web developers. It is a server side technology for dynamically creating web pages. This book is perfect for the existing ASP developer who wants a quick course on the new features of ASP.NET for data access. It is also a great jump start for beginning ASP.NET developers who want to create robust, database-driven web applications. Prior knowledge of ASP is not assumed.

Open the book on Friday evening and by Sunday afternoon - after completing 30 fast, focused lessons - readers will have mastered the skills necessary to begin creating robust, dynamic, data-driven web applications with ASP.NET. In just one weekend, expert developer Robert Standefer leads readers into the new world of Microsoft.NET and enables them to create expert applications quickly and easily.

Book Info: Starting with ASP.NET basics, Robert teaches you what you need to know to begin creating ASP.NET applications quickly, and easily. A must have for any developer building web applications on Microsoft's new .NET Framework. Softcover. CD-ROM included.

From the Back Cover: Get Up to Speed on ASP.NET — in a Weekend! The big day is Monday — the day you get to show off what you know about ASP.NET. The problem is, you're not really up to speed. Maybe it's been a while since you worked with Active Server Pages. Or maybe you're new to Microsoft.NET. In any event, we've got a solution for you — ASP.NET Weekend Crash Course. Open the book Friday evening and on Sunday afternoon, after completing 30 fast, focused sessions, you'll be able to jump right in and start creating dynamic Web content. It's as simple as that.

The Curriculum Friday Evening: 4 Sessions, 2 Hours
• Introducing .NET
• The Evolution of Server-Side Scripting
• Programming Basics
• Setting Up ASP.NET

Saturday Morning: 6 Sessions, 3 Hours
• Working with the .NET Framework
• Choosing a .NET Language
• Understanding XML
• Programming with Visual Basic .NET
• Building the Guts of a Program
• Working with Objects
• ASP.NET versus ASP
• Introducing ASP.NET
• Using Namespaces and Classes
• Building ASP.NET Applications
• Managing Session State
• Building Your First ASP.NET Page

Evening: 4 Sessions, 2 Hours
• Introducing Web Forms
• Working with Controls
• Validating User Input
• Building a Web Form

Sunday Morning: 6 Sessions, 3 Hours
• Understanding Databases
• Setting Up Your Database
• Using the Data Controls
• Understanding ADO.NET
• Working with Data
• Building a Data Aware ASP.NET Page

Afternoon: 4 Sessions, 2 Hours
• Configuring ASP.NET Applications
• Finding and Fixing Errors
• Some Advanced Topics
• Putting It All Together

CD-ROM Includes:
• All sample code from the book
• Assessment software

System Requirements: PC running Windows 98 or later, Windows NT 4 or later. See "What's on the CD" appendix for details and complete system requirements. For more information on Hungry Minds, go to hungryminds.com

About the Author: Robert Standefer III is a professional developer and Senior Software Architect at Virtual Giant, a software and web development company in Dallas, Texas. His latest initiative is moving the company's development platform toward the Microsoft .NET Framework, with application development performed in C# and Visual Basic.NET, and ASP.NET. Robert is an expert in Visual Basic, and Active Server Pages, and has worked on high-level projects for several Fortune 500 clients involving traditional software application development, system integration, and cutting-edge web development.

Customer Reviews
Poorly written and no examples, May 28, 2002
Reviewer: Rick Kamp from Scotts Valley, CA USA
I too wish I had spent more time looking at the reviews for this book before I bought it! This book is 98% marketing hype, and 2% useful examples. You don't get into writing a simple program until Chapter 16! Although the basics are in this book for designing an ASP.NET application, the examples waste a lot of time because they don't work and a beginning programmer will have a hard time figuring out why they don't work.

The new Visual Studio.NET IDE is not explained at all. Without knowing how it builds projects, are we supposed to only use Notepad to edit the examples? I realize it was written using the Beta version of Visual Studio.NET, but it is definitely is going to make someone believe that Visual Studio.Net is too difficult to use to develop real web applications.

Buyer Beware, April 21, 2002
Reviewer: Keith E Todd from Tigard, OR USA
Here is a prime example of the great service Amazon provides and what can happen when you do not use it. This book is horrible, and I have downloaded the April 9, 2002 code updates which still do not work. Had I a read the reviews at Amazon I would have saved myself some money and valuable time.

DON'T but this book, April 2, 2002
Reviewer: Bruce Sklar from Sterling, VA USA
This book is terrible. The code in the book and on the CD doesn't work and the publisher knows that and has yet to correct it.

Crash and Burn!, March 15, 2002
Reviewer: clarksc from Kaysville, UT USA
This book is truly a rare find. Technical books are often daunting to the beginner; occasionally frightful to the Intermediate. But this book takes instructional incompetence to a whole new level I've read enough technical and programming books to know that a few errors are inevitable. I guess I have to cut Rob (the author) some slack. He wrote the book while ASP.NET was in Beta. ASP.NET is now in its first release and most of his more meaty examples, if they ever did work, do not work now.

As of this review date, the author has posted no *important* errata on his book's Web site. I have no doubt he knows how to program well, but writing may not be his bag. Stick to the day job, Rob. Hungry Minds (the publisher) could have saved a few trees by making Mr. Standefer condense his re-caps to the important parts of code. Instead he will spend anywhere from 2-4 pages showing you the entire code listing from the previous chapter(s) (a quick way to get through a chapter). On the other hand, one nice feature about this book is that if you can't get the example to work in one chapter, you have the same example-with different errors-in the next chapter. It's nice that the errors differ from chapter to chapter, so you can find which lines are different and take your best stab at correcting them.

I have a bookshelf at home that holds all of the tech books I've completed. I feel I've wasted money if I buy a book and don't read it cover to cover. Before "ASP.NET Weekend Crash Course" there was only one book I EVER started that I just couldn't finish-now there are two. ...If you are a beginner, take a guide with you. If you are intermediate or advanced, you *may* be able to muddle through the errors, but why? Aside from any errors not working, this book serves as a sort of technical specification. Far too much real estate is given to "How it was done in ASP", which leaves too little room for indoctrinating one on "How it is done in ASP.NET" Granted, part of the complexity for a beginner will also lay in the fact that multiple languages, concepts and technologies are being presented at once. This is not the author's fault. That is the nature of .NET (and specifically ASP.NET).

The author never gives full attention (or enough working examples) to the technologies new to ASP.NET (such as Web Forms, Classes, Data Binding, XML, etc). I have to agree, yet disagree with the customer below. While the book seems to be a re-write of the documentation (with additional fluff), I'd have to say that the documentation is a lot easier to follow (that may not be saying much for this book...

Back to ASP.NET Book Index

Books Subjects

Learning ASP.NET

ASP.NET Reference Manual

.NET Application & Database

ASP.NET Training Course