Rating: 
Summary: Writing Server Controls? - Look Elsewhere.
Review: This is the worst, most overpriced, Wrox book I have ever purchased. If only the entire book had been of the quality of the added chapter "JavaScript and Server Controls" (available from Wrox.com). Now that was an excellent read. I can't believe it was the same group of authors.This book attempts to reduce a complex topic to a few lame examples and no real explanation of the concepts. I was very disappointed. I got no more information than I already had in a single chapter of "Professional ASP.NET". See the MSPress book "ASP.NET Server Controls and Components" for an example of how it should have been done. The MSPress book (~700 pages, as opposed to 439 for the Wrox book) provides a thorough treatment of the topic with excellent, sometimes challenging, but always well documented examples. The authors consistently make a point of explaining WHY something was done. I found that quite refreshing. Reasons are important to good understanding! Each chapter of the MSPress book builds on earlier chapters, but sequential reading is not absolutely necessary. The MSPress book appears to benefit from a wealth of inside information; things you may never decipher from reading the .NET documentation. It includes everything you need to know about writing .NET Server Controls!
Rating:
Summary: Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen
Review: Wow. This book is really confusing! I bought this book last year when I started working on a large project using .NET. It's been over 12 months and I'm grown to love .NET---and built-up quite a bag of tools. When I returned to this book recently to build my own custom controls, I thought it would be much more comprehensible than my first attempt. Unfortunately it wasn't. That is, until I read a few articles and an excerpt from Dino Esposito's book! Esposito's explanations were so much more clear and simple--while this book took that same subject and made it so complicated! Don't buy this book.
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