Rating: 
Summary: Real ASP.Net Book..!
Review: ASP.Net is so different from ASP. I know that, having done Classic ASP for about 4 years now and ASP.Net from Beta1 onwards. And still this book changed the way I think of / do ASP.Net programming. The book can as well be titled "Object Oriented Approach to ASP.Net Programming". The author sticks strictly to best coding practices (than some easier way to code), goes thro most of the classes we will be using in ASP.Net and a lot more. He will go advanced but knows where to stop - telling you it's enouugh for ASP.Net (which I agree - I don't expect an ASP book to teach me .Net OOP tharoughly. I would rather turn to "OOP with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual C# Step by Step" by Robin A. Reynolds-Haertle or the forthcoming "Visual Basic .Net Object and Component Handbook" by Peter Vogel ). The author explains you as if he is working with you in a senior position and has a relentless style to drag you thro all of the features in-depth and their benefits that someone new to .Net programming may be scared. VB.Net is used in sample codes (he explains every new concept with code) but initially he gives a real good comparison of C# and VB.Net including how to do the same thing in both languages (And again if I want to learn C#, I don't want to learn from some ASP.Net book - I'd rather learn from "Microsoft Visual C# .NET Step by Step" by John Sharp, Jon Jagger or "Programming C#, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly Windows)" by Jesse Liberty or "Programming Windows(r) with C# (Core Reference)" by Charles Petzold )That said I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has been familiar with ASP and done some programming and want to learn ASP.Net completely, tharoughly.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good introduction to ASP .Net
Review: I am a VB programmer moving to ASP.Net and this book was perfect for me. It covers everything from the basics up including making very definite suggestions on the best way to achieve the results you want. This includes things like the philosophy of database access on the net as opposed to client/server. I much prefer this to books that cover the langauge but don't offer real solutions. The author is brave enough to distinguish good solutions from bad. He also skips rubbish solutions that you'd never use. The other thing I liked about the book is that it left me wanting more. The style is very easy to read and I found myself spending hours trying the samples etc. If I got stuck I could move back to earlier sections to cover the basics. This book actually deserves 4.5 stars but I'm limited in my selections. To get the full 5 stars I would have liked more details on data access and certain other areas. I also had to skip things far to basic like the few pages introducing SQL. DON'T buy this book if you want a bible. There are plenty of those out there that cover every little detail about ASP.Net. DO buy this book if you want a good introduction to ASP.Net. I'm writing a commercial web page and I don't know if I'll need to buy another book, this one could supply enough answers along with a little more research.
Rating: 
Summary: Buyer beware: older than it looks
Review: I bought this book last week, thinking it was a new book because the date is in this year. But, as I started skimming through it, I think now it is really an old book, that has been updated some but not well. How do I think this? Look at many of the screens in chapter 11 (Trace, Log, Error Handling) - they all show dates in 2001 (screen 11-9, 11-10, 11-11)! Same in chapter 17, screen 17-7. Probably many more. If that's when this was really written, .NET 1.0 was still beta then, so this is beta .NET, not even 1.0 even though back of book says 1.1. I haven't found any specific errors yet, but I worry. Only place I see 1.1 mentioned in book so far is in introduction. I see a lot of these old 2001 screens right away but not 1.1. Good thing I got this cheap.
Rating: 
Summary: Fair at Best
Review: I haven't enjoyed much of this book compared to the many other books which have more substance and focus. The author is somewhat fragmented in his presentation, often leaving things incomplete. Consequently, it's not the kind of book you would work through, practice, code and learn as you go. It's okay for just reading to get some ideas about ASP.Net but that's it. I wouldn't say it demonstrates best practices - just using a lot of code behind, disconnected data, etc is a far cry from best practices. Those are just basic benefits of .Net talked about in the first chapter or two of all the other .Net books. The web site for the code download as well as the book reference using the SQL Server sa account if you aren't using integrated security - also known as one of the worst practices for database web development.
Rating:
Summary: Object Oriented ASP.Net!
Review: I knew what was the difference between ASP and ASP.Net and wanted to find a book that deals with writing ASP.net page in an object oriented approach. THIS IS THE BOOK. It takes you slowly from the basics of .Net, architecture, whats new etc and has good amount of examples. My perspective about Asp.Net is changing as I'm reading this book.
If you have an asp/vb background this book is great for you. Not a reference book for ASP.Net. So ppl who have already read through ASP.Net in detail please refrain or don't complain. I absolutely love this book and so far I've finished 1/3rd of the book. I'm hoping to finish this book this week and continue on to the book by Fritz Onion.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: I own 4 other asp.net books, and I keep coming back to this one. It's my first osborne book, but they've won me over! This book is clearly written, organized very well, and easy to read. The code doesn't seem to bleed through the main text unlike my o'reilly book. It covers all the methods for each component along with a large amount of examples that you can easily implement in your sites.
Rating:
Summary: incomplete book, missing code
Review: Many of the code example in the book are simply missing on the website to download. And the book is confusing and doesn't explain much on the code it provide. Instead, it points out several "interesting points of this code" using a tone like an audience, not an advisor. Some reviewer said it's written in both VB.net and C#.net. It actually only cover both language at the beginning. All the rest of the code are in VB so if you're c# programmer, don't waste your time doing the converting though it's doable.I regreat I didn't follow the main stream and purchase the Unleashed book. Now I'm in China and to do that from here I have to pay 30 dollar extra or wait for 1 month.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for learning ASP.Net
Review: Matthew MacDonald writes an excellent book. He knows how to write well and shows awareness for the reader. I have read several other books on this subject. None come close to this book. The book succeeds because Matthew emphasizes thematically the important topics. He does not bog down in overwhelming you with minor details and leave you wondering how all of it makes sense. He provides many examples to demonstrate the topics. You may download them over the internet. He concludes by using Microsoft's IBuySpy Store and Portal websites. You may download these, install them, and actually work with a real enterprise level example. I had a question which I emailed to him. He replied back to me in less than 24 hours with an answer. I intend to buy more of his books.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome book!
Review: The author has done an excellent job in presenting the inner workings of ASP.NET. I used to buy only WROX for my technical book collection but after this, I now have an alternative. Very well presented and straight to the point.
Rating:
Summary: Concise, yet in-depth
Review: The single most useful book I've read on ASP.NET. I was extremely impressed with the meat-to-gravy ratio ( a welcome change from some of the recent WROX books, which unfortunately seem designed to destroy the maximum number of trees and are endlessly repetitious, with the same code sometimes being repeated in VB, then in C#, and occasionally in JScript.NET).
While all the examples are brief, the coverage (in terms of the diversity of problems that are handled) is very extensive. "The Complete Reference" is probably a misnomer, since the online .NET framework documentation is vast, and each topic can only be touched on rather than covered in depth, but this book does a superb job in giving you enough knowledge in being able to make sense of the online docs. The examples are the right degree of complexity, with just enough lines per examples to illustrate a point (such as overriding the Render() method when creating your own control).
The only minor glitch (which would make me give it 4 1/2 stars) is that the README info in the examples file (which you download from MacDonald's site) isn't quite accurate - you MUST create a folder called C:\ASP.NET and make this a virtual directory using Internet Services Manager- if you create any other directory, none of the Visual Studio projects that are part of the bundle will open and run correctly.
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