Rating: 
Summary: ASP.NET Developer's CookBook Review
Review: After a little wait I got a copy of the cookbook. Unlike traditional books, the cookbook provides us with solutions for solving real world problems. For example, if a developer wants to know how to send e-mails with attachments he/she can quickly go to that page by referring to the TOC or the Index and get the right code. I quickly scanned through the TOC and it looks great. Almost all the concepts of ASP.NET have been covered comprehensively. Moreover, the content has been well organized. I didn't test any codes so far since I want to be the first in the world to review this cool book. But when I went through the hot pages of this book, I noticed a problem of unnecessary repetitions. If you go through the comments section of chapter 21, you can be able to see that the first sentence is repeated up to page 348. I wonder how the tech editor missed to detect it. Instead of repeating the sentence, it can be given commonly at the beginning of the chapter. The code samples are indeed great. In fact, I am learning some new things from this book like retrieving emails from POP3 mailbox etc. I should say that chapter 22 on Graphics is an added bonus to the readers of this great book. It is nice to note that code samples can be downloaded from the Author's website and are provided in both Visual Basic .NET & C#. But the publisher should also give a CD along with these kinds of code intensive books so that readers can quickly get the relevant code/codes for use on their projects. Another notable limitation (Please apologize me if this is a feature of this book) is that the book didn't have a single screenshot of any examples. Only 5 figures are given on pages 124-126. I don't know whether any developer will use the tool LLBLGEN. But frankly speaking, I learned about the usage of this tool from this book. Great learning! Overall, this book is 101% valuable and should be on the shelves of all the ASP.NET developers' kitchen - Both current and future.
Rating: 
Summary: Currently, the most PRACTICAL book on ASP.NET in the market.
Review: After carefully following the launch of .NET over the last 2 years, this is the first year that we at our company decided to start developing applications using .NET for clients. After going through all the books out there that cover the same basic topics giving you very little extra knowledge (guess - 70% of books in the market cover the same topics in the same inadequate fashion), I ran across 4-5 books that take you to the next level. This book takes you to the highest level possible in ASP.NET. How does this book help you in taking you to the highest level of expertise as an ASP.NET developer? After mastering the basic concepts and trying to design and develop some basic database driven websites, you will quickly understand the limitations of ASP.NET as it stands right now. The .NET framework comes with all the namespaces, classes with methods and properties you can imagine but you still have to code a lot of event handlers before you can accomplish anything beyond the most basic website. And you also have to write a lot of code to connect different classes and eventually integrate everything. At this point, you realize that it would be great to have access to such code without having to write so many of these event handlers or integration code yourself. That's where this book comes in. It is meant for the advanced user and it doesn't spend any time describing any of the basic concepts. It just goes straight to addressing 210 different practical problems you may be faced with. Each recipe is very simple - there is a very short description of the problem (usually 1-2 lines), a description of the technique to apply, the working code, and some very helpful comments on the topic (1-2 paragraphs). These 210 recipes should cover a majority of the problems (maybe 60%) you are likely to encounter when doing ASP.NET programming. You can download all the source code from The ASP Alliance's website. There have been some complaints that the code doesn't work. After encountering the same problem, we realized that most of these problems trace back to the unpredictable nature of Visual Studio .NET 2003 (that's the version we are using on a Windows Server 2003 machine). We haven't tried all the recipes yet but the ones we tried haven't had anything majorly wrong with the code. Sure, we had to customize it for the particular application we were writing and we did spend a lot of time setting up the Visual Studio .NET 2003 environment to work right with our Windows 2003 Server OS. But we actually didn't have to wrestle with incorrect code from this book. If you have reached the stage where you are ready to just find code snippets that fit different situations and you are tired of writing tons of event handlers (we are), grab a copy of this book. It also happens to be one of the most inexpensive book in the market. It is kind of surprising that the most valuable book is also the most inexpensive. In a nutshell, after buying this book I have been able to handle our .NET projects with peace of mind. I was quite stressed out before I found this book. I hope you benefit from this book too. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: Bits and pieces required in most web applications.
Review: After getting a little head start with the ASP.Net, this is the best book so far with some practical examples that can save you a lot of time. It covers all the topics with some examples that you can work on without having Visual Studio dot Net installed on your machine. The book covers some 200 task-oriented topics that cover a lot more than the actual task. I would recommend this book to every ASP .Net developer.
Rating:
Summary: This Cookbook has already paid for itself!
Review: As an aspiring ASP.NET developer, this book fills a void that I've had in my bookshelf since I began learning ASP.NET. I've been searching for months for a concise, in depth resource to turn to when I have those specific "how-to" questions. Unlike many other titles, this book focuses only on solving specific problems - which may save you hours of scouring the web looking for "just the right example." In the first week that I've had the book, I've used the following recipes: sending email with attachments, validating credit card numbers, encrypting and decrypting strings, and creating graphic thumbnails. The code samples are clean and direct, and are available as a .zip download from the book's website. In instances where an error or omission was made in the code, the support team and author have been very quick to respond with corrections and updated examples. As a tool to help the intermediate ASP.NET developer find quick, specific solutions, this book is great. Considering the number of times I've already used it to solve application issues, this book has already paid for itself 3 times over!
Rating: 
Summary: Incomplete - really
Review: I liked the book for the format but my copy is missing many pages! It jumps from page 190 directly to page 239! No they were not taken out of the book, the book binding is perfect - no tears, no rips - just missing! I'm returning it and looking elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: An ASP.NET Tour De Force
Review: If Lance Armstrong was an ASP.NET developer, this is the book he'd write. There are many many great ASP.NET books, and it'd be impossible to say that one is the 'best'. But I can say for sure that this book hits the ground running and just takes off from there. As far as the recommended audience, I think you need a little ASP.NET experience to really appreciate this book (although if you are a total newbie, it's still a superb resource). Everything in here, Everything, is pure gold. Example after Example after Example of just cool stuff, with great implementations, cleary written x25. There's a lot to ASP.NET and I think you need to read more than a few books before you really 'get' it, but if you are developing professional ASP.NET apps, this book pays for itself by the time you hit page 30. If you aren't into 'cookbooks' and you want an academic discussion of ASP.NET, then this book isn't for you. However, if you want some great practical examples, you'll fall in love with this book quickly.
Rating:
Summary: An ASP.NET Tour De Force
Review: If Lance Armstrong was an ASP.NET developer, this is the book he'd write. There are many many great ASP.NET books, and it'd be impossible to say that one is the 'best'. But I can say for sure that this book hits the ground running and just takes off from there. As far as the recommended audience, I think you need a little ASP.NET experience to really appreciate this book (although if you are a total newbie, it's still a superb resource). Everything in here, Everything, is pure gold. Example after Example after Example of just cool stuff, with great implementations, cleary written x25. There's a lot to ASP.NET and I think you need to read more than a few books before you really 'get' it, but if you are developing professional ASP.NET apps, this book pays for itself by the time you hit page 30. If you aren't into 'cookbooks' and you want an academic discussion of ASP.NET, then this book isn't for you. However, if you want some great practical examples, you'll fall in love with this book quickly.
Rating: 
Summary: For beginners only!
Review: If you've been seriously programming for a while in ASP.NET, don't waste your time with this book. Having spent a lot of time searching and reading on msdn.microsoft.com and other sites to enhance my skill set, I bought this book thinking I would find some advanced concepts that I haven't already picked up on my own. There are no advanced concepts, just a bunch of very simple examples, some of which do not even work. I was very disappointed with this book and sent it back the same day it arrived.
Rating:
Summary: Examples don't work
Review: Sample code provided in this book does not work. For example on page 65 sample, there are sooooo many problems in the code that it took me more than half an hour to get it to work. There is a typo at the top, in the directive there is a parameter used which is not supposed to be there, and it is missing a parameter. AND ... This is just on the first two lines of code! The datareader is missing, and the list goes on ... I hate picking a book which is filled with so many errors. I would not recommand it!
Rating:
Summary: Wish I could give a better rating
Review: Someone in another review said that the examples dont work. I cant tell, because I cant even get them to download from the web site. There is a detailed errata, which is a good thing, and the book's content is wonderful. It's always the little things that get you marked down, I guess.
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