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Summary: Perfect ASP.Net starting point
Review: For developers who have little or no experience with ASP.Net or developers who know a little bit about ASP 3.0, this is the perfect starting book to learn ASP.Net. Don't be fooled by "for Dummies" in the title, Bill Hatfield does a great job of teaching you the basic of ASP.Net amd then some. In the first couple of chapters, I learned several tricks to ASP.Net. For example, I didn't know that my ISP could provide me with a Web page that could run ASP.Net. When Bill mentioned it in his book, I checked with my ISP and found that it was true. I thought that I had to have IIS installed on my PC in order to run ASP. For people with Windows XP Home Edition that means upgrading to the XP Professional and that [costs a lot]. None of the other ASP books that I have purchased mentioned this. When you finish this book you will not feel like a dummy any more. The chapters are relatively short and I read the first 3 chapters in the first sitting. Bill Hatfield really knows ASP and this is his second book (ASP 3.0 for Dummies) that has obtained 4 or 5 stars. This is the first book you want to buy on ASP.Net. Then you can follow it up with the more advanced books on ASP.Net of your choice. The cartoons in the "Dummies" series really help to relieve the stress of studying.
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Summary: Solid start to asp.net
Review: Hi allGreat book to get you/me started in asp.net. I didn't have a clue about the whole MS.net technology but Bill explains it all simply and in an amusing way. His web site now works (hope she has had the baby by now Bill!!) and is great for extra info Always loved the for Dummies series along with Wrox they are by far the best programming studies out there and yes, that includes O'Reilly Chao Jon
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Summary: Finally, a book with a real-world example!!!
Review: I am a person who learns by example rather than theory. As a beginner, this book was perfect for just that. The "Classy Classified's" example walks you step by step through a real world application. I do realize that ASP.NET gets way more involved than this book, but this example includes every kind of database manipulation there is. Add/Delete/Modify/Search. It even has password validation. I had no idea what ASP.NET was before I picked this book up, and now I have developed a real world application in less than a week. I would definetly recommend this!
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Summary: An Excellent Book!
Review: I am an HTML developer who works with ASP websites all the time. I do not know ASP nor VB, but I wanted to learn ASP.NET because I know it will be everywhere in a year or so. I've had good luck with the 24 Hours/21 Days series from Sams Publishing so I got that book first. Big mistake. I must have read the first three chapters three or four times and I was still confused. The author assumed a lot of knowledge of VB and ASP and I was totally and completely frustrated. The other day I purchased ASP.NET for Dummies and I absolutely love this book. If you've never written ASP or worked with VB then this is the book you neeed to get. Bill explains everything in a simple way and each code example is explained.
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Summary: Excellent Introduction to ASP.NET
Review: I bought this book based on the amount of positive reviews other buyers have left. I have to say, they are correct. This is an excellent book for those wanting to get started with ASP.NET and Visual Basic.NET!!
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Summary: Worth its weight in gold!
Review: I cannot imagine learning to program web applications in the .Net environment without this book. It is by far the best written, best organized book I have ever used. The examples are well thought out, fully explained and make what would be otherwise difficult concepts very easy to understand. The CD-ROM contains additional materials as well as all of the examples used in the book. I particularly appreciated the database related chapters "accessing" and "updating". I seriously recommend purchase of this book to anyone entering this arena.
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Summary: Will help those wanting to transition from ASP to ASP.NET
Review: I have developed using ASP for about a year, so I wasn't exactly "new" to the whole ASP thing. I already learned how to develop database-intensive websites using "Beginning ASP Databases," ISBN:1861002726 . When .NET became the new thing, I needed something to get me up to speed.
The whole reason I got this book was because I wasn't sure what was the difference between ASP classic and ASP.NET. I got the impression that this book might fill in some gaps. The gaps were created when I attempted to get started using the O'Reilly books but that didn't work. They were more reference-oriented, so I got lost.
This book did a fine job of making me feel comfortable in the transition to .NET by explaining what was the same or similar and what was different. After reading this book, I basically came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to have to learn a new syntax and that with almost no effort, I could write simple .NET pages immediately using my ASP classic foundation with any editor of my choice.
I also learned, to my surprise, that one can still use ASP classic techniques in ASP.NET pages. For example, if you still want to use the old way of form handling, you can.
The author explains common VB.NET syntax, which is great for those familiar with VBScript. Then the author talks very simply about objects, which you'll see in .NET. The author also does a good job explaining the differences between form handling in ASP classic and how it works in .NET. Form validation and server controls (form elements) are then explained.
Up to that point (ch17) in the book, things went well for me. However, I became disappointed when chapter 18 came along, which deals with working with databases.
Some of the previous comments indicated that the book is weak in its attempts to describe the database techniques. In all of my web design experience, databases are at the heart of everything I have done, so I was disappointed to not get the sense that I could handle all of the database tasks I will certainly run into.
For example, when I tried to connect to an MS Access database on my IIS server using the examples listed in the text, I got an error that the workgroup file is missing or locked, and was not able to connect to the database. The book doesn't address potential problems of this sort. I was able to use the book example and connect to a SQL server database just fine, but quickly discovered the book's lack of information beyond just displaying database data and making simple updates.
Also, you have to have access to Internet Information Server and a database and have permissions to set that stuff up if you want to try working with a database, so you may not be able to get your feet wet anyway.
I have found in my experience that the database stuff can get really complex when the task requires for example that the database display results must be broken down into a certain number of results-per-page, certain amounts of information displayed, sorting results, and of course formatting. As a result of this, I am hunting for a really good book focusing on databases with ASP.NET.
Additionally, I was disappointed with the author's web site. I visited it once hoping to find a lot more information. He lists a discussion forum, CD content download, and Book Corrections, which I thought would be useful. They were not at all useful to me. Especially disappointing is the online forum, which when I last counted, had less than 20 posts.
Overall, I think this book helped reduce the initial worries I had about making the transition. Yes I can now write a .NET page that can collect some information from a form, validate it, and operate on it. Yes I can write a page that can fetch and display some database content. Can I write a database driven website just like I did with ASP classic? No.
In my opinion, data driven websites are where the Internet has headed, and if I am to be a successful web application developer, I must be able to use different technologies (including .NET) to handle all of the data. This book has not given me the knowledge tools to do just that.
I give it 3 stars because it was useful in helping me see that a lot of what I already know can transfer over to .NET.
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Summary: Excellent book for beginners!!!
Review: I have used this book to help teach a beginning class in ASP.NET. I myself was new to this platform when I took on this class. Both myself and my students really appreciated this book. In particular I liked the fact that the author did not assume any knowledge of OO, .net framework, VB.NET, VB, and/or classic ASP. His code samples build in complexity over the span of the book, and I worked through 90% of the examples in the book and found them to be almost entirely error-free. If you already know something about web development, the HTML in this book may not entirely meet your "standards", but that's not the focus of this book. While reading the book may give you a good overview, the real value will come from actually typing the code. There are many ASP.NET books that are for beginners, but this one assumes very little knowledge on your part. I evaluated the "ASP.NET Step by Step" by MS Press, and the "Beginning ASP.NET using VB.NET" from Wrox Pub. as possible candidates for my course text, and while both of these books are exhaustive and excellent, they lack the simplicity and humor of this Dummies book. If you are a programmer who is migrating to the ASP.NET platform, perhaps you will be better served by these other candidates from MS Press and Wrox Pub. However, if you are not a programmer, then this Dummies book is the way to go. As a final piece of advice I would suggest that you supplement this book with other books/articles/online sources that speak more to the theory of topics such as "Web Services", "J2EE versus .net", "SOAP, XML", etc. Overall, I give this book two thumbs up and five stars without hesitation!!!
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Summary: ASP.NET for Classic ASPers
Review: I have written thousands of Classic ASP pages dating back to version 2 and earlier, all done using Visual InterDev and ADO. When .NET rolled out, I immediately installed Visual Studio.NET and was dumbfounded. I got lost in the "code behind" approach of .NET and thoroughly confused about what parts of my Classic ASP pages were and were not compatible. I couldn't even figure out what to do with all the "include files" I had been using for years. I once read that you should create a user control and put them in that, but how do you do it? After struggling mightily for a few weeks, I decided to put it all aside and go back to what I understood. Then I read this book, just on a whim. ASP.NET was demonstrated without Visual Studio.NET in the way. Suddenly, I saw Classic ASP in front of me with very minor modifications. Hey, I understand this! For the first time, the light went on. Seeing object-oriented programming in a way that was familiar to me suddenly made the light go on for a great many things. I finally got it. Now I can confidently create classes, instantiate objects, and all the other object-oriented tasks that once intimidated me. After a few more weeks with this, I may even take another look at Visual Studio.NET! If you are struggling in the same way I was, this is the book to get. Besides, it's cheap. What's to lose?
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Summary: The sample code in this book doesn't work
Review: I purchased this book to learn how to make web forms for Microsoft Access Database, the book clams to come with a working database site named "Classy ad". However the not net framework has changed and the sample site just gives you syntax error when you try to add or update database. The author put out a fix for this but it doesn't work. I have tried emailing the author several times with no reply. I suggest you purchase anther book that has accurate information in it.
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