Rating: 
Summary: Not your usual O'Reilly book
Review: As an O'Reilly publication I was slightly disappointed with this book until I realized that most of the problem is probably due to the newness of the subject as opposed to quality of the authors and editors. The content is very good and covers quite a bit of programming ASP.Net applications. It gives solid coverage of a large number of topics. The biggest problem is the content is not much more than can be found in the ASP 'quick start tutorials' on the Microsoft site. Ease of reading and the examples being explained in significantly greater detail than the tutorials are the books greatest advantage over the tutorials - aside from being able to take it anywhere.The 900 page book would probably fit into a little more than 500 pages if it weren't for the constant code duplication throughout. In the first few chapters every example (including the HTML) is duplicated in both C# and VB.NET. In later chapters they do not duplicate the HTML but much of the code is still shown in both languages. This is nice to be able to illustrate the differences between the two languages but it gets quite repetitious after the first few dozen times. I found myself skipping over large sections of repeated code where the biggest difference was in the trailing semi-colons. In a couple of cases I skipped over more than 10 pages befroe finding the code explanations. Even the small code snippets being expalined were often duplicated. Over all it is a solid book and is useful in its more detailed explanations and samples. Despite the claim that no prior experience is needed with ASP pages it would definitely be a plus. If you are new to ASP.Net and want a good introductory text then this would be a solid book for you but it by no means should be your only book. I gave it four stars because only 3 would have been equal to a 6 on a 10 point scale and that would have been too low, a solid 3 1/2 is more realistic.
Rating: 
Summary: Best intro to ASP.NET - Excellent
Review: This book is simply excellent. It starts with the core fundamentals, and builds your expertise from there. Every aspect of ASP.NET is covered in detail. The authors begin with a simple HTML based "hello world" program and quickly build up the asp.net capabilities. They show integrated code and the (preferred) code-behind. The event model is explained in detail. Each of the major controls is shown and the validation controls are described in detail. The authors also show debugging techniques and proper coding idioms. Every example is shown in both VB.NET and C#, which I found very helpful. This helped me see the similarities in the language and clarified areas that might otherwise be confusing. The book includes a lengthy section on interacting with data, including a primer on ADO.NET and list-bound controls. The section on custom and user controls is excellent. They spend 3 chapters on Web Services, and provide a comprehensive overview of this topic. Finally, the book is rounded out with chapters on caching and performance, security and deployment and configuration. The writing is clear and crisp, and despite the fact that there are two authors, it reads as if written by just one. The material is delieverd with clarity, and the authors provide unbelievable support on their web site, where you can obtain the source code and also ask questions directly of the authors! All in all, I was very impressed by this excellent introduction to ASP.NET, and I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: Gold Mine!
Review: This book is a gold-mine - explaining well the .NET concepts. As an experienced ASP developer, it gave me good background to understand the differences between ASP and ASP.NET. The examples are structured to build on each other and are well thought-out. I had a question about one of the examples and posted it to Jesse Liberty's web site (url included in the book). He answered it right away! Great book!
Rating:
Summary: Best intro to ASP.NET - Excellent
Review: This book is simply excellent. It starts with the core fundamentals, and builds your expertise from there. Every aspect of ASP.NET is covered in detail. The authors begin with a simple HTML based "hello world" program and quickly build up the asp.net capabilities. They show integrated code and the (preferred) code-behind. The event model is explained in detail. Each of the major controls is shown and the validation controls are described in detail. The authors also show debugging techniques and proper coding idioms. Every example is shown in both VB.NET and C#, which I found very helpful. This helped me see the similarities in the language and clarified areas that might otherwise be confusing. The book includes a lengthy section on interacting with data, including a primer on ADO.NET and list-bound controls. The section on custom and user controls is excellent. They spend 3 chapters on Web Services, and provide a comprehensive overview of this topic. Finally, the book is rounded out with chapters on caching and performance, security and deployment and configuration. The writing is clear and crisp, and despite the fact that there are two authors, it reads as if written by just one. The material is delieverd with clarity, and the authors provide unbelievable support on their web site, where you can obtain the source code and also ask questions directly of the authors! All in all, I was very impressed by this excellent introduction to ASP.NET, and I recommend it highly.
Rating: 
Summary: For Beginners
Review: The first thing that caught my attention is that this book is 944 pages which made me assume that it must have everything I need to know about ASP.NET. When I received this book I found out why : the code examples are presented in both VB .Net and C#, and you really have to look to distinguish where a C# code ends and VB .NET one begins. When I put this book to the test ( when I started developing my first real web application) this book has helped me some times and failed me some more times. It helped me mainly in data bound controls but failed in security and exception handling. There is superficial coverage of topics such as : Delegates, Threading, Remoting, and Event handling and almost no mention of XML besides XML Web services Chapter 19 which discuses Security and authentication is very primitive and lacks details needed to implement a real form-based authentication web site with database user management, and role based security. This book covers almost everything there is in ASP .Net controls ( validation controls, data bound controls, and user controls), besides that the level of this book is Beginner and is quite frustrating for advanced topics. I still can recommend this book for beginners with no knowledge on the subject, although I prefer ASP .Net unleashed since it is more comprehensive and has almost everything you can think of. Unfortunately, Many less used (although useful) class libraries has no examples in .Net documentation and MSDN . This is an area where also many books lacks.
Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get any better than Jesse Liberty
Review: As a new programmer, and even newer to .NET and ASP.NET this book is a must have for anyone serious about learning ASP.NET. The book covers every aspect of using ASP.NET, and the examples can be used in real world situtations. You can also find Jesse Liberty featured on http://www.appdev.com courses. What are you waiting for, go get this book!!
Rating:
Summary: Best ASP.NET book available
Review: As with the first edition of this book, the second edition continues to be the best ASP.NET book available today. This edition has been updated to include information on the 1.1 version of the .NET framework as well as Visual Studio 2003. Unlike many other ASP.NET books I have seen, you can actually pick this one up and begin writing ASP.NET applications quickly. The book begins with an introduction to the Visual Studio development environment, which is necessary knowledge to be able to effectively write and compile code. This introduction does a very good job quickly describing the most important features of the IDE. For a more thorough introduction to the Visual Studio .NET IDE, pick up a copy of O'Reilly's Mastering Visual Studio .NET. This book then proceeds to discuss each of the ASP.NET server controls in detail. Examples are provided in both C# and VB.NET, with clear preference given to C#. Some of the more difficult concepts are clearly explained, with enough information provide to satisfy more advanced readers. Personally, I found many of the highlights of this book to be toward the end, where an excellent section on data access can be found. This has often been a point of contention with me: most applications today have some amount of data access involved. Unfortunately, most .NET books have only a small (and largely inadequate) data access chapter. The data access section in this book is one of the best I have seen. Even if you know a lot about ASP.NET, you'll probably learn a thing or two from the data access section. The authors also have written an excellent chapter on creating custom controls for applications. There is a very good discussion on creating user controls and custom controls (both of which can be used as re-usable components in web applications). Like the previous edition, this book doesn't disappoint. This is a must have for ASP.NET developers and an excellent tutorial for individuals trying to get their hands around ASP.NET.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommend It
Review: This is an excellent book. In fact, it's the best ASP.NET book I've seen yet. I did find myself skipping around in it a lot more than reading it cover to cover, but, all in all, it's a great book. I often refer back to it as a reference. Also, the code examples are in both VB.NET and C#.
Rating:
Summary: Life Saver
Review: I developed my first .NET project as a consultant the first day the .NET framework was released by Microsoft. I found myself scrambling for a book with helpful examples. A lot of the samples I found on-line and in the first Wrox books did not work. Programming ASP.NET was a real life saver! I still get called back from time-to-time for updates to the .NET site and for other .NET projects. Each time I keep going back to this book as a helpful reference. I disagree with the earlier reviewer, I found it easy to distinguish between the VB and C# examples. I thought it was great that I didn't have to have two separate books for each language. I think the authors have done a great job!
Rating:
Summary: Irritatingly obtuse !!
Review: If you know nothing about ASP.NET, it is certain that you will learn something. However, if you are interested in learning how to build a full blown application, you may find that this book fails to provide the detailed examples you are looking for. To be sure the book starts out with comprehensive examples, but these are for the more simple constructs. Just when you find you are getting to the important subjects - security, forms authentication, configuration, etc. the authors suddenly become extremely vague or lazy. Examples of what I mean? The reader will begin to see much psedo-coding and terse explanations instead of actual examples for things such as posting a form to authenticate a username / password. I conclude from this that the authors must not have experience building these kinds of full-blown applications and do not know how to fully discuss and educate on these subjects. Either that, or they just got lazy and failed to deliver the goods. Either is unforgivable if you are claiming to cover the materials in the table of contents. If I could give this book 1.5 stars insted of 2 I would have. Did it help me? Well, yes, I did learn a few things. Did it provide the information I was seeking when I purchased the book?
NO!! It fails to deliver just when I arrived at the subjects I wanted to learn more fully. So, to net it out... If you are completely new to ASP.NET, this is an "OK" book to cut your teeth on. If you are looking to inform yourself on the more advanced topics of full-blown application development, this book is a waste of your money. Do not purchase it. Now I'm off to search for a book written by folks that do know about forms authentication, configuration, security, etc.
| 
