ASP.net Web Developer's Guide (With CD-ROM)

by Jonathon Ortiz, Mesbah Ahmed, Chris Garrett, Jeremy Faircloth, Wei Meng Lee, Adam Sills, Chris Payne

Paperback: 736 pages
Publisher: Syngress Media Inc
ISBN: 1928994512; 1st edition (December 15, 2001)

Aimed at the working ASP developer who wants to move to Microsoft .NET, ASP.NET Unleashed: Web Developers Guide offers an excellent example-based programming tutorial. With its strong practical focus, this title offers an excellent choice for learning ASP.NET quickly.

Most every computer book uses examples illustrating programming concepts, but this text does an exceptional job at efficiently presenting key examples that will be necessary for anyone moving from ASP to ASP.NET. After a brief tour of the history of ASP since version 1.0 and a quick overview of the advantages of ASP.NET, the author turns to essential APIs and programming strategies. Useful material here includes some valuable techniques for working with session and application objects (and new events available with these classes), plus a nicely comprehensive guide to all the XML configuration settings used in ASP.NET and what they're good for. A series of chapters on the built-in ASP.NET (and simpler HTML) server controls will give you a working vocabulary of basic Web programming techniques.

Later chapters explore specific areas of .NET functionality like ADO.NET, XML support (including a solid introduction to the often bewildering world of XML standards and the classes used to manipulate them in .NET). Coverage of Web services shows off this brand-new option for creating distributed Web applications.

This volume's final sections present three small, complete applications (for a guest book, shopping cart, and message board). Besides illustrating essential ASP.NET APIs and techniques introduced earlier on, the sample code can serve as a basis to add these features to your custom applications.

With such a large number of new ASP.NET APIs to master, this title strikes a great balance between describing essential APIs and real code that shows them at work. In all, its efficient format makes this title a perfect resource for busy working developers who want to get up to speed on the new ASP.NET fast.

Topics in ASP.net Web Developer's Guide covered:
• History of ASP standards (versions 1.0 through 3.0), overview of ASP.NET, tutorial to common ASP.NET namespaces (including the Microsoft Visual Basic APIs, data types, collections, Web services, and XML)
• ASP.NET server controls (and postback support), HTML server controls, validation with validator classes
• Databound list Web controls (including the Repeater and DataGrid components), in-depth description to ASP.NET configuration (including security guidelines), managing state, using global.aspx, the Application object, handling application and session events
• Caching options (output, fragment, and data caching), case study for an address book using ADO.NET, introduction to XML (validating, navigating, and querying XML)
• Techniques for debugging ASP.NET applications (including Visual Studio .NET's debugging support), programming Web services, sample case studies for guest book, shopping cart, and message board, and Visual Basic .NET sample code.

Book Description: Since 1996, ASP programmers have faced one upgrade after another, often with no visible advantages until version 3.x. Now you have the first significant improvement in ASP programming within your grasp—ASP.NET. Your reliance on a watered-down version of Visual Basic has been alleviated now that ASP.NET pages may be programmed in both Microsoft’s new version of Visual Basic or the latest version of C++: C#. ASP.NET allows programmers and developers to work with both VB.NET and C# within the same ASP.NET page. This book will show you how.

About the Author: Jonothon Ortiz is Vice President of Xnext, Inc. in Winter Haven, FL. Xnext, Inc. is a small, privately owned company that develops Web sites and applications for prestigious companies such as the New York Times. Jonothon is the head of the programming department and works together with the CEO on all company projects to ensure the best possible solution. Jonothon lives with his wife Carla in Lakeland, FL.

Wei Meng Lee is Series Editor for Syngress Publishing's .NET Developer Series. He is currently lecturing at The Center for Computer Studies, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore. Wei Meng is actively involved in Web development work and conducts training for Web developers and Visual Basic programmers. He has co-authored two books on WAP. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Systems and Computer Science from the National University of Singapore. The first book in the .NET series, VB.NET Developer’s Guide (ISBN: 1-928994-48-2), is currently available from Syngress Publishing.

Chris Garrett is the Technical Manager for a large European Web agency. He has been working with Internet technologies since 1994 and has provided technical and new media expertise for some of the world’s biggest brands. Chris lives in Yorkshire, England, with his wife Clare and his daughter Amy.

Customer Reviews
ASP.Net is a Wonderful Book, April 1, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Toledo,, Ohio USA
This book is an excellent book. ASP.Net has biggener concepts as well as advanced concepts. It is really a valuable book that you will use over and over

Not Impressed, February 7, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Cairo, Egypt
Another nerd-book on the .NET bandwaggon. Full of typos and nothing to distinguish it from the crowd - sorry :o(

A must book for APS.NET developers, January 21, 2002
Reviewer: Jiansheng Li from Atlanta, USA
This book distinguishes itself from other ASP.NET books in that

1. It categorizes its instruction to the ASP.NET, which helps me to have a clear understanding on each subject such as ASP.NET server controls, configuration files, caching, data access.

2. It provides many easy-to-implement examples to let me to have a hands-on experience on the subject I am dealing with. 3. If you are an XML fun like me, you will find that the instruction and examples about implementation of XML in ASP.NET is super!

Overall, this is a great book on ASP.NET for serious ASP programmers!

Pretty good if what you want is learning ASP.NET, January 7, 2002
Reviewer: Adam C Sills from Chapel Hill, NC
I'll admit first off, I'm a bit biased since I'm a coauthor of this book, but I was rather surprised after I got my copy and started reading it. I've bought many .NET books (covering C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET), and each one has done a pretty good job with at the very least introducing each topic. I haven't found one book yet that actually covers everything start to finish, even the Professional C# book by Wrox, which gives you a taste of everything but lacks in a number of categories (although is still a great reference book).

This book, however, does a very good job of starting at the beginnings of ASP.NET and introducing and explaining almost all factors of web applications in .NET (except web services, which this book lacks a bit on -- it could have many more examples to help out). The other thing this book lacks (and every book I've seen so far) is information on building custom user controls.

Aside from those 2 places I can find this book lacking, this book definitely excels in explaining a good deal of the ASP.NET server controls, configuration files, caching, a good introduction to using XML in .NET, and in general enough examples to fully explain pretty much evertyhing ASP.NET related.

The only other problem I can find are a few typos in the text and some strange HTML tags in a few of the section headers (did we forget to review the output before we printed?).

Overall, I would definitely suggest this book as a quick-read type of book for the semi-experienced .NET programmer to use as a reference manual, and a very good start to building ASP.NET applications to the newcomer .NET programmer.

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