Beginning Visual Web Programming in C#

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Summary: a complete web development environment
Review: The book shows how to write a C# web application on a server running .NET. Perhaps the most succinct description of the book is its cohesiveness. It describes using two crucial packages, ASP.NET and ADO.NET. ASP.NET essentially handles the client-server interaction, by making dynamic HTML pages and handling the user's input. While ADO.NET controls the interaction between the application server and the database.

As you go through the book, if you keep this simple demarcation in mind, then it helps your understanding of the many lower level details in each chapter.

It is clear from the book that Microsoft is pushing hard to have the entire web development process done on their .NET machines, by offering a tight and consistent tool integration. Gives the open source movement a serious challenge.

Rating:
Summary: Sweeping introduction to .NET
Review: This is an end-to-end introduction to the world of .NET development. The coverage, which starts with the architecture and ends with deployment, is never comprehensive, but is always thorough enough to get you started.

Graphics are used extensively, which is not appropriate for a reference, but which works here because of the introductory nature of the text. The book doesn't pander though.

I recommend this to anyone who is starting with ASP.NET, and who wants an introductory text in the step by step style. If you are experienced in other web application development technologies then you would be better served by one of the O'Reilly ASP.NET reference books.