Rating: 
Summary: No CD with VS add-in
Review: Just bought the 2nd edition and I was looking forward to the CD with the Visual Studio .Net doc'n plug-in, but when I received the book it didn't have the CD. I called O'Reilly and customer support told me that they had decided not to include the CD, and Amazon just has an old image of the cover (O'Reilly has the "old" cover image too then!).I had installed the add-in for other O'Reilly nutshell books (ADO.Net and Windows Forms) and found them to be useful, and thus I was disappointed that this book is not including the CD. Perhaps O'Reilly is planning to sell a plug-in for all of the FCL, and that is why the CD was pulled...
Rating:
Summary: No CD with VS add-in
Review: Just bought the 2nd edition and I was looking forward to the CD with the Visual Studio .Net doc'n plug-in, but when I received the book it didn't have the CD. I called O'Reilly and customer support told me that they had decided not to include the CD, and Amazon just has an old image of the cover (O'Reilly has the "old" cover image too then!). I had installed the add-in for other O'Reilly nutshell books (ADO.Net and Windows Forms) and found them to be useful, and thus I was disappointed that this book is not including the CD. Perhaps O'Reilly is planning to sell a plug-in for all of the FCL, and that is why the CD was pulled...
Rating: 
Summary: BALANCED AND WELL-STRUCTURED
Review: Messrs Duthie and MacDonald should be commended for their great effort in structuring this text. The entire 800 pages of this book contain all the necessary ingredients that any serious ASP.NET learner would need in balancing his/her knowledge. It includes: web service development, data access, security, custom controls, deployment, error handling and much more.
In highlighting all the essentials, this book provided easy-to-follow practical analyses for all the features it covered. There are well-anticipated examples which guide the reader through the course. This is a very nice book to have around.
Rating:
Summary: ASP.Net in a nutshell
Review: Review: ASP.NET in a Nutshell - A Desktop Quick Reference ASP.NET in a Nutshell is the fast track way to get up-to-speed on Microsoft's next generation technology for building web enabled applications on the .NET platform. The book is structured in three sections. Part 1 provides a high level overview of what ASP.NET is and discusses the new features such as Web Services, Server Controls, Data Access (ADO.NET), Security, Configuration, Error Handling, and Validation Controls. Part 2 is a reference to each of the major classes that are available as part of the ASP.NET object model. A chapter is devoted to each of the following classes: - Page - HttpApplication and HttpApplicationState - HttpContext - HttpException - HttpRequest - HttpResponse - HttpServerUtility - HttpSessionState Part 3 provides a reference to the namespaces you'll most commonly come across while developing ASP.NET applications. Of all three sections, I found this section to be the least useful. Although each of the classes has an introductory reference, Most of the information here can be sourced easily from the MSDN documentation. Such a reference would have been better suited to a book on ASP, where the official documentation was somewhat scarce. The books introductory chapters start out with code examples written in both VB.NET and C#, however as you progress further through the book the samples are provided in VB.NET only. This is not such a bad thing, but I would have preferred it had the authors stuck to one language throughout the book, or give consistent examples throughout the book in both languages. This is not a book for beginners. For those readers just starting out with ASP.NET or with little to no web development experience, I would suggest reading other titles such as Programming ASP.NET (O'Reilly) or Professional ASP.NET (Wrox Press) before purchasing ASP.NET in a Nutshell. At the end of the day, ASP.NET in a Nutshell provides a good quick reference to the fundamentals of ASP.NET, with excellent tutorials and "How To's" throughout. Despite the namespace reference providing only a little more than the MSDN documentation, the first two sections more than make up for those 300 odd pages of filler. And If you're willing to live with most of the example being written in VB.NET then this book is definitely a worthwhile purchase.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly planned, I don't know who this book is for
Review: The description of this book says it's for ASP developers transitioning to ASP.NET. I have worked with ASP for over a year, and this book was pretty much useless. The only redeeming factor was that I was able to get it from my local library, so I found out before it cost me any cash. The first part of the book delves into topics with zero explanation, and very little code, so you don't have a chance to get your feet wet with actual code, and the topics are dull and dry. The last portion of the book looks like it would be a nice reference, but honestly, why would you buy a book like this for a reference? Isn't that what the 'net is for? Two thumbs down. I'm working through a Sam's teach yourself in 21 days book and it is significantly better for anyone transitioning from classic ASP or learning ASP.NET from scratch,
Rating: 
Summary: An Indispensable ASP.NET Reference
Review: This book is destined to be a classic. It is a complete ASP.NET reference. This book also provides invaluable tips and advice on how to get the most out of ASP.NET. The only minor shortcoming of this book is that all of the brief examples in Part II (the Intrinsic Class Reference) are written in VB.NET. I say that this shortcoming is minor because these examples can easily be converted to C#. To include such examples written in both VB.NET and C# would have increased the size of this book by another 30% and offered nothing meaningful to the reader.
Rating:
Summary: Great reference, except 90% in VB.net
Review: This is a very robust reference, up to par with the usual O'Reilly title quality. Biggest upset is the fact that 90% of context examples and nearly all of the reference examples are in VB.net - book should have been titled "ASP.net with VB.net in a Nutshell."
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