Rating: 
Summary: Good book, but needs to polish the rough edges
Review: Of all the books on ASP.NET that I've read, this book is undoubtedly the best. But, it has some very rough edges that, when smoothed out in later editions will make it great. For those looking for a reference, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a strong tutorial that does an excellent job balancing depth for the experienced and simplicity for the beginner, this is the book.Specific comments: 1. All examples in C# and VB. his is a plus or minus depending on your point of view. On one hand it's good because you have the option of choosing the language you want to use (or get exposure to both). On the other hand, it takes up a lot of space that could have been devoted further exploration of other topics. 2. Does not try to be a tutorial on how to program with VB or C#. I definitely like this approach. Other books on the market split their efforts between explaining ASP.NET and OOP/C#/VB. They end up being avarage at best for either topic. 3. The examples almost always do a good job demonstrating the topic under discussion. Other books on the market have serious problems in this area. 4. The examples are not consistent. I think that the examples were developed by different people. In one example, it is a step by step tutorial The next example, the examples are rough descriptions followed by source code (hard to follow). Yet another example will have a table layout of object property values. This is my biggest complaint. It would be nice if there was a consistent approach to the examples. 5. The ADO chapters are a bit confusing. A couple reasons for this:
5.a The examples here suffer from varying styles worst of all.
5.b ADO.NET is a big topic that probably deserves a book to itself (how about it O'Reilly? Programming ADO.NET) so the coverage is not enough, and it leaves you with lots of questions. Overall, this book is the best I've found for a tutorial on ASP.NET. And, it has the potential to be another O'Reilly classic.
Rating: 
Summary: Far better than other titles
Review: This book is very thorough for the most part. I am not so much interested in writing ASP.NET web pages, but rather writing controls for use in ASP.NET web forms. The chapter on this topic was the most complete I have read. The biggest reason I recommend this book far and above any other ones on ASP.NET is that all of the examples are presented in both C# and VB. All other ASP.NET books I have seen are very VB centric, which is sad because VB is such a sad and pathetic language. If you want to write ASP.NET web apps in C# and wish to quickly get up to speed, this is the book to do it with.
Rating:
Summary: Good for beginers
Review: Introduction The arrival of ASP.NET has been a great boon to classic ASP programmers. To keep pace with the new technology has always been a challenge to all of us. One of the way to achieve this is to get to know about the new technology, ASP.NET, by reading one of ASP.NET book. "Programming ASP.NET" helps us to get to know all about ASP.NET. This book is written for programmers and web developers who want to build web applications using Microsoft's powerful new ASP.NET platform. All examples are explained in both VB.NET and C#. Simple Statistics
Author(s): Jesse Liberty & Dan Hurwitz Publisher: O'REILLY Pages: 944 Chapters: 20 Table of Contents
Chapter 1: ASP.NET and the .NET Framework
Chapter 2: Hello World
Chapter 3: Events
Chapter 4: Controls
Chapter 5: ASP Control Details
Chapter 6: Programming Web Forms
Chapter 7: Tracing, Debugging, and Error Handling
Chapter 8: Validation
Chapter 9: Data Binding
Chapter 10: List-Bound Controls, Part I
Chapter 11: Accessing Data with ADO.NET
Chapter 12: ADO Data Updates
Chapter 13: List-Bound Controls, Part II
Chapter 14: Custom and User Controls
Chapter 15: Web Services Overview
Chapter 16: Creating Web Services
Chapter 17: Consuming Web Services
Chapter 18: Caching and Performance
Chapter 19: Security
Chapter 20: Controlling, Configuring, and Deploying Applications
Appendix A: Relational Database Technology: A Crash Course
Appendix B: Bug Database Architecture What can you learn from this book? ASP.NET is mostly based on event driven. Chapter 3 gives you an insight to all events that are available in ASP.NET. This chapter discusses about how events are handled in ASP.NET. ASP.NET has a rich set of in built controls apart from the regular HTML controls. Chapter 4 explains about available HTML server controls and ASP Web server controls. Each web server control is explained in detail in chapter 6. Each control is well explained with examples. The controls which are mainly discussed include, Label control, Panel control, Calender control, Image control, Hyperlink control and Button controls. Testing the output in Classic ASP was a very very difficult task. The only way was to put some Response.Write in between lines in which the bug may occur. But, in ASP.NET we have a wonderful mechanism called "TRACE" which enables us to write everything into the browser about the ASP.NET which is processed. Chapter 7 takes you to a tour on how tracing is achieved in ASP.NET and how you can debug an ASP.NET page from Visual Studio .NET. How many lines of code we might have wrote using Javascript or VBScript to validate HTML controls to make sure that user have entered proper data. With the help of in-built Validation controls available in ASP.NET, now we can validate any HTML control with a simple validation control. Databinding is a new concept to all Classic ASP programmers. What is this Databinding? Chapter 9, has everything about Data Binding. Another frequent task that we use to do using classic ASP was to fetch data from a table. And we used to loop through the recordset mainly to create a HTML table to represent the data in rows and columns. Datagrid does the same thing in ASP.NET. Also datagrid has in-built features such as paging, sorting and editing. Chapter 10 and 13 contains all about Datagrid control, repeater control and datalist control. The main aspect that I liked about this book was its dealing with Web services. Authors have alloted three chapters for web services which narrates about the web service, how we can create web services and how to consume a web service. Chapter 16 has a good example in detail which talks about creating a web service. And in Chapter 17, we can learn about how to consume a web service. With the help of Web services, we can pull data from different web server (web site) with ease. Chapter 18, 19 and 20 discusses about three major features of ASP.NET. And you will get the best from these chapters. Caching has been best explained in chapter 18 with many examples. I really loved this chapter. Security is an unavoidable one in any web application. Chapter 19 explains about the three major aspects of security, such as Authentication, Authorization and Impersonation. What else do you need to protect your Web application. ASP.NET has a rich set of directives. One of the topic in chapter 20 is about the directives which helps us to specify settings that the compiler will use to process the ASP.NET files. You should read this chapter, if you want to know more about directives. Support for this book and downloading examples: The support for this book is awesome. And this book also contains about ADO.NET. We have around 125 pages of information about the new ADO.NET, which is explained in detail in chapters 11 and 12. Well, this book is worth for many reasons such as, its content, online support from authors and online examples. My Rating:
I would rate this book an 8.5 out of 10.
Rating:
Summary: Visual Studio.Net is necessary?
Review: I read all the great reviews, then bought the book and found out you have to have a copy of Visual Studio.Net to use it. I wish they'd make that clear, but take my star rating with a grain of salt I only got to the second example.
Rating:
Summary: Strongly Recommend
Review: Ever since I read Jesse Liberty's "Programming C#", I've been eagerly awaiting the release of his "Programming ASP.NET". I received the book recently and just finished going through the 900 pages. Writing style is very lucid as expected (one of very few technical authors who succeed in this aspect. Another such author is Doug Walther of "XML for ASP.Net"). Though Programming ASP.NET begins with a simple "Hello World" example, by page 20, it has you creating a data table based on a datagrid connected to the Northwind database. This early demonstration of ASP.NET's power leads to an "aha" moment and keeps you going. It is refreshing to have the code work as promised. Unlike other ASP.NET books which address both VB and C# communities but show a marked preference for one or the other language, virtually every example in this book is given in both languages. I read only the C# examples, and reckon about 1/4th of the 900 pages catered to code in the "other" language. There are several screenshots of how to carry out various tasks in ASP.NET that are very useful for beginners. Similarly, screenshots of results from example programs are also very helpful. This book is "self-contained" for any concepts it discusses. You don't need to run to another book to seek clarifications. For me, this is the one book that brought together every aspect of ASP.NET, from hands-on "how to handle the development tool and set up files and directories" tasks, to conceptual issues. And the beauty is the whole discussion doesn't seem disjointed given its scope. I guess this is the advantage of having only one/two authors. The one minor criticism (may be just my personal preference) is, in the chapters on Accessing Data with ADO.NET, I wish there was (i) a short discussion of further abstraction between UI and a database made possible by using XML, and (ii) creating strongly typed datasets from XML schemas (using the xsd.exe tool for example) but likely it is outside the scope of the book to discuss this (in fact creating XML schemas and reading XML data files are addressed in later chapters through examples, so (i) is taken care of. And (ii) is too specific to warrant being a critical point). I strongly recommend this book as an essential reference to ASP.NET.
Rating:
Summary: ASP.NET got me started
Review: ASP.NET is a daunting subject in all its complexity. This clear and straightforward text helped me to organize this complex subject and get started as a .NET developer. There are many step by step examples to work through. Everything is presented in logical order as the structure is built.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent tutorial
Review: An execellent tutorial in ASP.net for both C# and VB.net programmers. Well written, complete, and exceeds expectations.
Rating:
Summary: Get this for ASP.NET with C#
Review: I was looking for a book that thoroughly taught ASP.NET and took the C# language seriously and not as an afterthought. This book is absolutely perfect. It explains the intrinsics of ASP.NET and its theoretical underpinnings. It also has very good practical information with regard to many of the decisions you will have to make in terms of the tools and different approaches you face when programming in ASP.NET. What I liked most of all was that it has every example in C# which most ASP.NET authors seem to shy away from for some bizarre reason. If you want to learn ASP.NET thoroughly with C# syntax I can recommend no other and I have read quite a few.
Rating:
Summary: Microsoft MVP Reviews Programming ASP.NET
Review: There is a lot of hype around the ability to write .NET oriented code in multiple languages. In reality, the need or desire for a developer to write in multiple languages in ASP.NET will be rare. Thus, negating the benefit of writing books that show tidbits of both languages when providing code examples. It clouds the overall tutorial with information that is often not relevant to what the reader is trying to digest. Learning how to implement one .NET language with ASP.NET is hard enough. Learning two is downright painful. That being said, there is quite a bit of good information contained in Programming ASP.NET even if you do have to weed out items you aren't interested in. Here are a few of my favorites:
Debugging: The authors do a solid job of teaching the reader how to utilize the IDE's tracing and debugging features. They walk you through the whole process step by step providing you with some great screen shots and IDE debug reference charts. This is not the best chapter I've ever seen on utilizing the IDE's debugging features but it is better than most books and certainly sufficient for most developers.
ADO.NET: Many ASP.NET books fall short with this crucial subject. Programming ASP.NET covers all the expected areas such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and Stored Procedures. Plus it focuses specifically on the DataSet object and everything it can do from dynamically constructing data sets to utilizing stored procedures to update data with or without transactions. There is a ton of sample code for syntax training in these chapters.
Managing State: One of the more challenging aspects of normal ASP is managing state. In ASP.NET, you are able to manage state without Session variables. There is a nice section on this topic that covers View State and the State Bag. I'd suggest reviewing this in chapter 6 before writing your first full web site in ASP.NET.
Object Caching: This is probably one of the most beneficial chapters in the book. I got a lot out of learning how to cache pages and actual objects such as datasets. The code examples and explainations thereof were just what I needed. I fully expect this to play a key role in future .NET sites I'll be working on.
Security: Number #1 topic of the day these days. Programming ASP.NET dedicates a pleasantly surprising amount of coverage to this topic. You'll learn various levels of windows authentication and how to make the most of them in .NET. You'll also pick up a few tips on configuring IIS and the web.config file.
All in all, Programming ASP.NET was a good read aside from the lack of coverage on XML and the language combination comments I mentioned above. If you enjoy O'Reilly books and the style they are written in, you'll definitely enjoy this one.
However, if you are a beginner with ASP.NET, don't let the combination of C# and VB.NET code throw you off track. If you stay focused on the aspects of ASP.NET, this book can help you out a great deal.
[...]
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best resource for ASP.NET
Review: This was the first book on ASP.NET I purchased. I'm usually pleased with O'reilly books but this one misses the mark.
A better choice for beginners is Murach's ASP.NET by Anne Prince and Doug Lowe or if your interested in something thicker try Microsoft's Programming ASP.NET by Dino Esposito (an excellent resource).
Also a good resource for datagrids is ASP.NET Data Web Controls by Scott Mitchell.
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