Rating: 
Summary: By far the most well written text for learning ASP.NET
Review: Seldom does the writing of a book inspire me to take the time to create a review. But I have found myself saying that I wished I had started with this book so many times, that I thought I might be able to save some of you some time and effort.This is an excellent reference for learning ASP.NET. Of all of the books I currently own (Professional ASP.NET, ASP Programmer's Reference, Programming Data Driven Web Applications with ASP.NET and Professional ASP Website Programming) this book stands FAR ahead of the crowd in terms of staying clear and within the scope of learning all of the essentials of ASP.NET development. While this book doesn't bode as well as the Wrox books as a pure reference, it more than makes up for it in the way the author truly understands how to educate. Clear, concise and relevent are the three words that best describe the author's writing style. For those of you who are new to ASP and/or ASP.NET, this is without a doubt the first (albeit not the only) book you should purchase. A truly excellent learning tool.
Rating: 
Summary: Able to compare 5 different books
Review: I have 5 different asp.net books and I hardly use this book. ASP.Net professional is my favorite. This book isn't as well organized. The wrox book has the information I need in the index almost always and this one consistently fails.
This is a good book, but the Wrox book is significantly better. If you are a C# programmer the o'reilly C# book is excellent. I also recommend the wrox visual studio book.
The Wrox group allows you to read their book online, after you have bought the book. I also have asp.net by example. I found that book as good as unleashed. I also have the 21 days book. That is the best if you are very new to programming and will be programming in VB.
Rating:
Summary: good mainly for reference
Review: I bought this book because I was impressed with the author's previous book on e-commerce (Teach Yourself E-commerce Programming with ASP in 21 Days). In that book, he did a mavelous job. I still refer to that book when faced with some ASP problems.
I thought I was going to get a similar tutorial-like coverage of ASP.net in this book. Having used it for the past few weeks however, I discovered that this book was nowhere close to what I expected.
Most of the author's examples were rather short. There were repetitious explanations in many sections of the book. Even the two sample applications lacked any meaningful depth. Some of the examples he gave here were lifted from the author's previous book.
Summary: If you are looking for a book that can serve as a reference, then this should be on your list. But if you want to really delve into what ASP.net has to offer, I think you'll have to look elsewhere. Surprising enough, the Visual studio.net documentation contains a whole lot of useful information.
I am sorry I have to say I was disappointed with this big book; Mr. Walther did not do as much a great job as he did in his previous book on ASP. It is better to be a little late, and do a fantastic job, than be the first to market with a less than excellent product, especially if you have an established name.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book (the best asp.net book)
Review: I read the 21 days book and then data driven web applications book before I read this book. This book is by far the best book I have read on asp.net. It covers many more things (and in a lot more depth) than the other books I read on asp.net. I develop in C# and all of the examples are in VB which kind of [stunk] but It didn't worry me too much because I have experience with VB anway and was able to read VB and write C#. I can't think of anything that Stephen doesn't cover in this book. I found that the examples he uses are well thought out and useful, he doesn't just use the same examples every time. When he covers a subject he covers it very extensively which also makes this book a great reference as well as learning material. I read the 1400 pages from start to finish and feel that I know something about everything in asp.net. He along the way the author presents some good techniques for coding like using data caching. When he makes a statement he backs it up by explaining why which I think is important.
Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: All Stephen Walter's ASP books are excellent. This one is no execption. I highly recommend it to both novices (as a continues reading) and to pros (as a good reference). Stephen has done it again!
Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive
Review: I am struggling between the choice of WROX professional asp.net and this book, the wroxisvery expensive. This is much more cheraper, Hoever, when I compare the books on the bookshop, I find this book cover more things than Wrox. For the verdict, I bought a 21days before, some of the topics are repeated. btw, the examples are too simple, they just show you how to use a component in a simple way/ I am new to asp.net, however, both book is great
Rating:
Summary: Big and Heavy, but a top-notch ASP book nevertheless...
Review: First of all, I hate books that are this big. I have to practically work-out just to use the thing. But it is very thorough. If you only want to buy one ASP.Net book, i think this is a great choice. Here are my gripes though:
None of the code uses code-behind until he explains it late in the book. That is, all of the business-logic code is in the .aspx page with <script> tags. This may allow for simpler examples, but code-behind is by far the superior method (as the author even states) but none of the examples use it. Most of the time you should use code-behind, so the author should encourage readers to type in examples that way. Second gripe is: the author using his own coding conventions that most people aren't familiar (e.g. using _varname for member variables instead of m_varname). This is just sloppy and unprofessionally; I don't really think I'm being picky. Also, this book was written with the expectation that you will code in notepad or a simple text editor. Don't expect any samples of using features within VS.Net. The book instead offers examples of command-line utilities provided with .net. Some may like this others may not; but it may be important to you. This book has great examples though, and it is written very well. I'm glad I bought it and I use it at work often.
Rating:
Summary: A solid first step.
Review: Having come from a UNIX background, I needed a book that would help me get up to speed in developing web-based applications in the Microsoft world. I bought 4 other disappointing books before finally discovering this one. What I like about this book was that it does not necessarily assume that you have developed in classic ASP. Many books spend too much time comparing and contrasting ASP.NET with ASP. The book is not a "how to program" type book. It assumes that you are an experienced developer who wants to learn how to use ASP.NET. There is not a lot of handholding or a lengthy introduction to the .NET framework. The book gets to business really quickly. I was a bit wary given the size of the book. But surprisingly, there is no frivolous filler just to make the book thick. I found the coverage of ADO.NET to be very good considering that this is a book without ADO in its title. I will eventually buy a good book that gives extensive coverage to ADO, but this one has sufficed for my first project. I especially appreciate that the book shows how to call stored procedures. If you are trying to figure out how to use Visual Studio to write your ASPs, this is not the book for you. This book could be used with just the SDK and not Visual Studio. Nevertheless, I had no problems using the examples from this book in Visual Studio. As a result, I do not use the ADO.NET drag and drop controls simply because I've learned how to do it via the keyboard. The examples are designed to show how each feature works, not to show you how to write a full-fledged application. So, most of the examples mix the VB.NET code in with the HTML. This is fine b/c it saves space in the book and allows you to see easily the point of the example. But, you will most likely not mix your HTML and code in a real life project. Unfortunately, I've seen some who are using this book to learn ASP.NET assume that this is how applications should be written. (There is a section that explains how the code-behind works, but some people do not read cover-to-cover.) I am doing all of my development in C#, but this book covers VB.NET. That is probably a good choice on the part of the author since most people that I've met who are doing ASP.NET development are using VB.NET. I had few problems converting the VB.NET to C#. If you are new to both languages, like I am, you'll spend a little time scratching your head trying to figure out how to covert to C# the code that extracts info inside a Dataset. But, once you poke around a little, it isn't too hard. The end of the book pulls together many of the lessons learned by presenting two full web application examples. This is a good thing since, as I mentioned before, the examples throughout the book are very short and to the point. I like this approach versus the approach of incrementally building on to one very large application from chapter to chapter. Walther's allows you to refer to each chapter or topic as a stand alone entity. I will be keeping an eye on Walther's future books. I enjoy his writing style. He does not waste words, but still makes concepts very easy to understand. He is truly gifted in this respect. So far the only major weak point of this book has to do with the index. When I try to find something that I know that I have read in the book before, my search in the index often fails me. Keep your hi-lighter handy because you'll find yourself flipping through chapters trying to find something that you've read before. Of course, the CD that he refers to was not included with the book, but that is no big deal. I'd prefer to download stuff from a web site anyway. Though I will buy more books on .NET development, this one will be within reach for a good long while.
Rating:
Summary: Decent reference -- Inadequate tutorial -- No C# code
Review: To begin with, this book isn't clear about what language is covered throughout the book. It seems it's trying to hide that it covers only Visual Basic. If you're into C#, you have to translate the examples yourself although these translations are ridiculously simple about 29 times out of 30. That 30th time, a certain amount of C# experience or extensive newsgroup searches will be needed. If you want a decent VB reference you can go for this book or simply use the free .NET Framework SDK Documentation. The advantage of having this book at hand is that it sheds some light on the topics with its own examples. As a tutorial to read from cover to cover, I think the author could have done a better job. If you read e.g. pages 84-131, you will read about the same text repeated four times with the exceptions being the search-and-replace that seems to have been performed on some words. I'm exaggerating a bit here, but not that much. I guess that's the price of having one author managing to write a 1400 pages book on a new technology all by himself, pressured by time. This isn't to be seen as critics against Walther though, he seems to be very knowledgeable on the subject. I could recommend this book to VB programmers wanting something more than the free Microsoft documentation for ASP.NET. This is not a strong recommendation though. Have a look at the alternatives as well.
Rating: 
Summary: FOR WEB HACKS--NOT FOR DEVELOPERS
Review: This book was not written for serious developers. It's targetted to people who write web pages and might need to put a little scripting in them. I must admit that some of my disappointment in this book stems from my overall dissatisfaction with ASP.NET. However, the book does nothing to help me overcome that dissatisfaction. Disappointing.
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