Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: Outstanding book. Contains clear explainations, great examples, and is very easy to come up to speed on ASP.NET development from ASP. Unlike other books, no need to read front to back. This book is organized so that you can read the section/chapter for the material you are interested in and then start applying the concepts immediatley. There is no CD-ROM in the book (as mentioned in serveral chapters.) However, the authors's web site does have the complete code in .zip format. I purchased the book for the great example on how to render GDI+ in a web page.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best to come out so far covering ASP .NET...
Review: I believe I have purchased just about every book covering ASP .NET from Amazon since the inception of .NET.That's a lot of books! Unfortunately, MOST turned out to be real duds or overly simplified - not much good for building real applications and ASP .NET sites. Too many authors were just trying to meet deadlines and produce one of the first books on the subject to hit the market - most are paper weights if anything. This book is by far the best. Leaves the other reads in the dust. This book , however, is not for programmers just beginning .NET programming. It covers many real world applications of .NET and applies real world solutions. I've only owned the book for 4 days and it has already answered many of my lingering questions that the previous books did not cover. Simply THE BEST ASP .NET book out there! I'm not a paid endorsement either. More so a frazzled programmer trying to learn the new platform quickly and apply to projects at my work place. I'm currently building a new LIMS application for the product test lab at my work place. The application is 100% ASP .NET. Where the other books were a disappointment, this book's organization and content display the author's cohesive thought process. His pride in producing a quality book shows through! I look forward to future releases from this author.
Rating:
Summary: Finally a Book a Web Developer Can Love.
Review: Like many Web Developers out there I find many of the books out there to be either poorly written or missing examples. Steven Walther made sure this is not "one of those books". Over the last week and half I have enjoyed the readability and concise and informative examples that this book offers. This book brings you up to speed on .NET with examples you can use as basis in your business right away. This book is a must have for the Developer looking to implement on .NET this year. The only disappointment I had with the book was that it did not come with an accompanying CD. I will be keeping this book close at hand as we move our products and our terabyte of health care data to the .NET platform this year. Thanks to Mr. Steven Walther for making my job easier this year.
Rating:
Summary: First Rate Book.
Review: Prior to purchasing this book, I resisted purchasing a major book on ASP.NET. My reasoning was simple. I would look at the number and quality of pages related to ADO because ADO is my main area of interest. Most other books had less than 100 pages of rather simplistic material. This book has close to 300 pages. The chapters that I have studied are easy to follow. The samples are well designed and nicely achieve their intended purpose. Because of the size of the ADO section, it comprehensively covers topics that are not even mentioned in other books. Unlike Wrox books, this book identifies a single author. While it would be virtually impossible for one person to do all the work associated with such a book. The chapters that I have studied appear as if one person did write them. The chapters are well organized, reference each other, do not duplicate information, and have a similar style. Those are factors that you do not usually see in books with multiple authors. Their Web site is great.
Rating:
Summary: Stranded on a desert island and needed 1 book! This is it!
Review: I've reviewed a lot of .NET books and this one by far is the most useful book. There are other books that are also very good but this one goes way above with code examples and very easy reading. This book is like 1200 + chapters but STeve W. does such a good job, its actually fun to read! Basics to advanced stuff, its all here
Rating:
Summary: Very comprehensive, detailed. Great example code.
Review: If you're ready to get going with ASP.Net, this is the book
you want to buy! Face it, there's a ton of information to
get up to speed on and yet you can't spend every hour of
every day reading .Net books (or can you?). You have to
choose and hopefully choose effectively. I was in the middle
of a couple of other ASP.Net books but once I started
reading this one, those books just didn't seem to have the
same attraction. It reads like a Grisham novel for .Net
mavens, you can't put it down! What I really like about it is that it gets down to the
minutest details that many other books just skip right over.
ASP.Net is a radical overhaul of the platform and there are
just so many details to know. This book points them out with
clear, simple and understandable examples; yet you don't
feel like your time is being wasted. That's often been my
frustration with many books. Out of the blue I'll read
things in the code that's there's been no explanation for; sometimes key facts aren't even given an explanation. I'm
unsure why this happens; perhaps the authors are limited to
a certain number of pages or perhaps they're just not paying
attention. This does not happen in "Unleashed." You're
carefully brought along, detail by detail. Each example
stands on it's own, addresses one particular point. Seemingly minor yet important facts like "One significant
limitation of ASP.Net pages is that they can contain only
one <form Runat="Server"> tag" are mentioned. The author
doesn't assume you don't care about these simple details.
This book is chock full of such particulars. On the other
hand, the book spends chapters exploring such advanced
topics as GDI+ and web services. This book is well worth spending your time and money for.
And, for all my friends reading this: No, you can't borrow
it, get your own!
Rating: 
Summary: No CD-ROM or download site as advertised.
Review: I received the book and it did not contain a CD-ROM(as advertised)and I could not find the download site as advertised on the back of the book.
I have emailed customer support and as of yet have not received any response.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent beginner and reference book
Review: I received a preview copy of this book for free. And I am now going to order the finished copy because I think it is such an excellent book. Very well layed out, covering a broad number of .net topics. Examples are all well written and easily understood. This is definitely an excellent beginning book, as well as a good reference book for looking up code snippets on how to implement specific features of .net
Rating:
Summary: Great book makes mastering ASP.NET easy
Review: I've bought the Wrox books and the 21 Days book, but this book is by far the best! ASP.NET Unleased covers advanced topics that aren't even mentioned in the other books. The introductory chapters on Web Controls are great, but the book really gets down to business when discussing database access and ADO.NET. The book also has great chapters on the IE WebControls (like the TreeView and TabStrip controls), GDI+ (for generating graphics on the fly), and two excellent chapters on building custom server controls. For my money, the others books I've read don't even come close. If you are only going to buy one book on ASP.NET, this is the book.
Rating:
Summary: Indispensable!
Review: Definitely the best book on ASP.NET that I've come across so far. Well-written, easy to understand, and at an appropriate level of complexity. The examples are relevant and useful. I highly recommend this book, and intend to use it as my primary ASP.NET reference.
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