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Rating: 
Summary: The CD doesn't work, and the publishers know it!
Review: 90% of the reason for the purchase of this book was the accompanying CD. The CD is missing a critical install file for Visual InterDev. I've learned from reading the other reviews here that the problem can be fixed with a 29 MB download! Bolognie!! If a publisher knows a CD is going out defective, it is, in my opinion, its responsibility to either pull the defective CDs and replace them before shipping to booksellers, or attach to every book a CD containing the 29 MB patch. It's like charging you full sticker price for a beautiful new car and telling you after the sale that you can pick up the engine somewhere else. The current version could be ethically sold for full price with a label across the front: Includes shiny InterDev coaster for your coffee table.
Rating: 
Summary: Learn Visual Interdev...oops, and ASP!
Review: A nice addition to the fast+easy collection. I like this book because like the other F+E books it dives right into creating ASP apps for the web, which is what we all want to do with ASP, right? I'm glad I started out with this book because I knew very little about ASP and it lead me through the most important concepts such as mySQL, ADO, COM, transactions and even some VB code examples. This book tends to lean on Visual Interdev a lot. It is a nice and helpful dev environment but you may spoil yourself after using it for too long, I am using the demo but have no plans on throwing my life savings at microsoft, like most readers. It would have been nice if they had pushed UltraEdit or a some development environment a little more reasonable for the average user.
I like this book a lot and think it is worth a spot on your bookshelf if you need to get into ASP quickly. I am giving it 3 stars not because of the content but because of the damn broken CD. You can download a fix but I hope you have a T1 or DSL because its 29megs! This sort of thing just plain ticks me off. And what's with the lame blue text and the horrible graphics - felt like I was watching Oregon's 12. I had hoped they would learn from the first book.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Book for Learning ASP
Review: I have been using this book as required in a class on ASP. Even the teacher doesn't refer much to the content of the text. The examples are so difficult to read because a screen print of a full size page has been reduced to no more than a 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" size display in the book. Making it nearly impossible to read what is on the display. The author also fails on most every example to give the name of the file that is being displayed on the page. You have to squint to see the file name in the title or address bar. The author also has an annoying habit referring to something without a definition or saying it will be covered in later chapters. There is no glossary in the back to find a definition for a word or acronym. The author fails to provide a background for the technology used. ODBC, OLEDB, ADO are never really defined and to what purpose they were created. SQL is referenced, but never really defined. I would definitely recommend other text before this book. The publisher should have this text rewritten to define words used, make larger displays of examples and give more background about the use of terms and their purpose.
Rating:
Summary: CD-Rom problems
Review: Ooops, slight CD-Rom problem with this one. I was unable to install it. On their web-site, Prima-Tech state that "some file seem to have disappeared at the duplicator's". They offer a ZIP-file to correct the problem, to be downloaded at one's convenience. Well, make sure you've got plenty of time - it's 27 Megs.....
Rating: 
Summary: Concise and to the point
Review: This book is definitely targeting people with some basic knowledge of VB or VBScript, however I found it refreshing that it really concentrates on the essentials of using ASP, unlike many ASP books that are full of information you rarely, if ever, need. This book aims to get you up and running with ASP quickly and I believe it does just that. If you don't want to wade your way through mounds of unnecessary information this is the book for you. I've been programming in ASP for a few years now and I still learned some useful information from this book.
Rating:
Summary: The online book review was very misleading.
Review: This book is not so much about ASP as it is about Visual Interdev. The book comes with a CD that contains a trial copy of Visual Interdev that drops dead after 90 days. Rather than teaching ASP, the author shows how to construct Active Server Pages using Visual Interdev. He does show and discuss screen shots of the ASP that is created. The screen shots however are displayed in a faint blue text that is hard to read. This could be a helpful book for anyone who intends to create Active Server Pages in Visual Interdev, everyone else would be better served by purchasing something like "Beginning ASP Databases" by John Kauffman.
Rating:
Summary: Good Beginning Book
Review: This is a solid beginning ASP book. If you have only marginal knowledge about how to program, this book will help you. It also explains the code and VBScript very well. It is a good first book on ASP and VBScript.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Do It!
Review: This was the first ASP book that I got, and it was pretty much a waste of money. It's not writting well and there's many pages with print screens showing you how to install things like InterDev............Does the author really think we cannot install software????? The reason I gave it 2 stars is there was a couple of times I was stuck on some VBS syntax and this book had what I needed.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Do It!
Review: This was the first ASP book that I got, and it was pretty much a waste of money. It's not writting well and there's many pages with print screens showing you how to install things like InterDev............Does the author really think we cannot install software????? The reason I gave it 2 stars is there was a couple of times I was stuck on some VBS syntax and this book had what I needed.
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