I'm at a moderate level of web programming experience and new to .net 2.0. I have referenced the book twice in a week for topics that I was having trouble googling. On both occasions, I found the topic directly listed in the table of contents. When I read the topic, the presentation of the material was straightforward and the examples were terrific for filling in some subtleties not covered in the text.

There were small pieces missing about hooking up windows security (examples helped me figure it out). It's also a VB-oriented book. The table of contents shows this book to be rich with different topics covered. In scanning the book, it looks like they will be similarly well covered.

In short, I'm thrilled with this book.

We bought 5 of these for our staff. I haven't gotten too far into it yet as we're really busy but we are being forced to move to .net soon so we need some materials. We researched several different books on this topic. This one is presented very clearly, lots of examples and explinations, reads well. Not super intense but seems like a great starter/mid level book.

Generally speaking, it's a good book for new features of asp.net 2.0.
Unfortunately, this big book still not include, two important parts of asp.net, ADO.NET and Web Service.

I bought this book just a few weeks back. And I've noticed that there are no database files in the CD. The author mentioned in the 8th chapter of the book " You can simply copy the database files(.mdf files) from the CD onto your local hardrive to use the sample databases". But I could see only the sourcecode files in the cd, no database files. That's really bad and I am very disappointed.

Trying to read most other book on asp.net 2.0 programming books are dull, boring, and mostly hard to follow. ASP.Net 2.0 Unleashed was considerable easier to follow steps and really hit on the concepts!

I've been read a lot of ASP NET books, but since I read this one my knowledge of using this tecnology has changed and a lot of concepts in this plataform as well. Therefore, the best ASP NET book I've ever read!

"All code samples are presented in VB and C#." If you were able to read the previous sentence describing the book's contents, you, like me, would naturally assume that C# code is present in the book. You would be wrong. The C# code is relegated to the CD only, making reading the book from a C# perspective awkward at best. I've written the publisher, who foolishly asked for feedback. Bottom line, if you develop in C#, this book is not for you.

I am a web developer that started with Classic ASP and eventually moved to the .NET framework. With the release of .NET 2.0 came a wide variety of new tools and objects to use and I wanted to get up-to-date with all the new features it provided. Looking for the right book (built on a tutorial/reference base) I read through the different reviews of books on ASP.NET 2.0 offered on this site and ultimately chose this book. I AM GLAD I DID!!! This book is jam packed with 1600 pages of tutorial-style code that goes over all the new functions and essentially everything I wanted. The book provides source code in C# as well as VB.NET. If you are looking to come to speed with ASP.NET 2.0 this is definitely the book for you.
-John W. [asp:webDeveloper]

I am a web developer that started with Classic ASP and eventually moved to the .NET framework. With the release of .NET 2.0 came a wide variety of new tools and objects to use and I wanted to get up-to-date with all the new features it provided. Looking for the right book (built on a tutorial/reference base) I read through the different reviews of books on ASP.NET 2.0 offered on this site and ultimately chose this book. I AM GLAD I DID!!! This book is jam packed with 1600 pages of tutorial-style code that goes over all the new functions and essentially everything I wanted. The book provides source code in C# as well as VB.NET. If you are looking to come to speed with ASP.NET 2.0 this is definitely the book for you.
-John W. [asp:webDeveloper]

I would give this book 1000 stars if I could, and yet it's far from perfect. How can this be?
I will try to explain.

Well this book is a product of amazing quality, input and hard work from the author.
Here are the pros:
it is only written by one author.
It has complete code listings [it comes in at a wapping 1900+ pages] - and this cannot be underestimated, as lots of books give you snippets so you have to look in 2 or 3 places to understand what you're doing.
The code listings are on the disk and they are very very well organized by chapter. They are in VB and C#
The code listings all work
it has few typos, I'm reading it from front to back and I've come across very little that is wrong.
It progresses very nicely from the simple to the complex
it is intensely practical in the way that it's written being basically one long tutorial covering all the vital aspects ASP.net and how they relate to the .Net framework

the cons:
the listings are in VB which is verbose and a worse choice for a thick book (obviously that's a subjective point)

often the examples contain scads of features (sqldatasource, objectdatasource etc...etc..) that are not explained until later in the book. This can be a good thing though

it's not the only book you can read because even though it goes through all the features it's not definitive and does not contain industrial quality or highly elegant code.

it's very light on theory.

Even having said all that, I still can't recommend this book enough because so much of what passes for computer books (especially on ASP.net) is so awful and incomplete that this tome stands out for the right reasons.

I'm not alone in praising it, even the father of ASP.Net Scott Guthrie gives it 5 stars, that has got to count for something

I would give this book 1000 stars if I could, and yet it's far from perfect. How can this be?
I will try to explain.

Well this book is a product of amazing quality, input and hard work from the author.
Here are the pros:
it is only written by one author.
It has complete code listings [it comes in at a wapping 1900+ pages] - and this cannot be underestimated, as lots of books give you snippets so you have to look in 2 or 3 places to understand what you're doing.
The code listings are on the disk and they are very very well organized by chapter. They are in VB and C#
The code listings all work
it has few typos, I'm reading it from front to back and I've come across very little that is wrong.
It progresses very nicely from the simple to the complex
it is intensely practical in the way that it's written being basically one long tutorial covering all the vital aspects ASP.net and how they relate to the .Net framework

the cons:
the listings are in VB which is verbose and a worse choice for a thick book (obviously that's a subjective point)

often the examples contain scads of features (sqldatasource, objectdatasource etc...etc..) that are not explained until later in the book. This can be a good thing though

it's not the only book you can read because even though it goes through all the features it's not definitive and does not contain industrial quality or highly elegant code.

it's very light on theory.

Even having said all that, I still can't recommend this book enough because so much of what passes for computer books (especially on ASP.net) is so awful and incomplete that this tome stands out for the right reasons.

I'm not alone in praising it, even the father of ASP.Net Scott Guthrie gives it 5 stars, that has got to count for something

I'm only partially through the book, but it appears to be very thorough. I'll use it mostly for reference.

As an example in the Gridview chapter every example uses a SQLDataSOurce Control. When explaining paging the author just set the AllowPaging = True. Well in the real world you do not use data source controls for all appllications. The author did not mention the PageIndexChanged event or the need to re-bind. I bought this book on some of the reviews stating that it is the only book you need, covers everything..sometimes I think that the reviews are stacked to sell more copies. This is not the be-all for asp.net 2.0.

ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed is a very good book that covers ASP.NET 2.0 in great detail.

One aspect of the book that I think is particularly useful is that it contains lots of small, focused, samples that illustrate along the way exactly how a feature works and can be used within the broader context of a page. This makes it much easier to pick up and use features, and not have to scramble as much to determine how to integrate a small code-snippet into a real application.

I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for a solid ASP.NET 2.0 reference that is precise and detailed.

I've read several other ASP.Net 2.0 books before this one, mostly from Wrox - all of them were good and all had errors, examples that did not work, instructions to go "there" but no instruction how to get there, jumping to subjects not prepared by previous material - pretty typical stuff.

This book "ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed" by Stephen Walther is a rare and surprizing exception - it leads you step-by-step, skipping nothing, covering every aspect. The lanquage is precise, well formulated and easy to assimilate. Obviously the author is well versed with the subject, and also well versed with presenting the material.

One other thing - I never held in my hands a 2,000 pages book - the super-thin paper is actually of great quality and the book itself is well-bound. A must!

This book is great, I have a rich knowledge in ASP3.0 and this book was the right choice for me, easy to follow and understand examples and my tips. This book could also be considered as a reference for some of us.

This is a hefty but great book. However, it's not for beginners. You need some ASP.NET or object-oriented programming experience to understand the concepts. I would recommend beginners buy a "Beginning ASP.Net..." book by Wrox or some other publisher, but then later get this as a reference. There are more full code examples of each concept than I have seen in other books, so you are not fishing around for missing pieces that might prevent you from understanding things. The explanations are clear, and the concepts the author chooses to cover are the most important and useful ones. All code is also on the accompanying disk. The index is also quite thorough, something other books lack. It would have been helpful to have a reference in the back containing the major methods, properties, etc. of each control discussed. Some of these are included in the chapters, but you have to search for them. Also, the weight and hard cover make it difficult to read in the bathtub. Overall, a great reference that I'll be using for a long time.

I bought this book for an independent study course on ASP.Net 2.0. In order to understand most of what is covered in this book you should be a somewhat experienced programmer. The foreword says that you should know either VBScript or C# before reading this book, and I agree.

The book shows how the new ASP.Net 2.0 is completely object orientated and dissects all of the objects available to you. The book starts off a bit slow giving brief descriptions of all of the objects and then later on comes back to cover them in full detail. While this is an okay layout, it really leaves the reader wondering for the first 6-7 chapters if they will ever understand ASP.Net.

If you are trying to learn ASP.Net and are not an experienced programmer in either C# or VBScript I would not recommend this book as it is very hard to understand why certain things are done. He only explains the ASP code and not so much the strict VB code.

Overall I found this book rather boring and too technical. For my purposes of learning simple things within ASP.Net 2.0 and creating database driven websites within a semester, it is just too much to tackle.

I have read other books by this author the only complaint is that the book doesn't tell how to get data from another web site posted to your site. Also the text could be just a little darker. Otherwise a good book.

This is a good reference material.But there are several problems with this book.
1.It does not seperate the pages into aspx and code behind
2.It does not use visual studio to explain how things are done
3 chronologically it is horrible.ex. the author explains sqldatasource in chapter 8 but starts using it in earlier chapters similiarly grid view,form view and other controls are used much earlier than explained.This makes thins difficult

This book should be titled: "New Features of ASP.NET 2.0." It has excellent coverage of 2.0's newest features (DataSource controls, master pages, themes, login control, membership, web parts) but has NOTHING on fundamental features such as data access via ADO.NET, web services, or working with XML. These very important topics received considerable coverage in previous versions of the book and, in many ways, are more important than many of the newer "bells & whistles." Datasets, which are very powerful feature of ADO.NET and received a full chapter in the previous edition, receive only three sentences in the new book (on page 848). Serious programmers will soon become frustrated with the limitations of the new drag-and-drop data access controls and will want information on the more powerful and flexible programmatic data tools.

That being said, this is a great book for people who already know ASP.NET and want to learn about the newest features. The code examples are excellent and are included on the CD in both C# & VB.NET.

You will learn more about ASP.NET in the first few chapters of this book than what other authors take a whole book to explain! You should also be familiar with programming prior to reading this book. This book will be hard for a beginner to follow. Some VB.NET programming is a prerequisite.

This book teaches concepts in a very effective manner: making exercises in every one of them. The "how-to" approach, for me, is a very effective method to learn.
For those of us, that English is not our mother tongue, the book is very clear and does not have idioms that increase darkness in concepts.
Very well done!

I read through "Beginning Asp.net 2.0" and "Professional Asp.net 2.0" (both good books), so I was hesitating if I needed another Asp.net 2.0 book. Boy am I glad I bought this book too. This is excellent well-rounded book that has very specific and valuable information. I've already read through 1/2 of this book just as an overview and I've already learned new things. I also found this book to be an excellent reference to answer my random questions. If you are an Asp.net 2.0 programmer I highly recommend you getting this book.

This has about as much on ASP.NET 2.0 as plugging "ASP.NET 2.0" into google and seeing what comes back. It spends 10 pages on what another book may give only a paragraph. It's got 80 pages, IIRC, on the login controls alone. Surely only the most esoteric of problems are not addressed in this thesis. Afterall, the book is so sickeningly thick that it comes in hardcover, which is rare these days for software books.

Word of caution: if you're looking to come quickly up to speed on ASP.NET 2.0, this book is not what you want; it is the antithesis of crash-course. However, if you've got the basics covered, this will build upon them masterfully.

Since his first book in ASP.NET until this ASP.NET 2.0, Stephen Walther never fails proving that he still deserves chewing the reputation given by Microsoft to him as the Legend in ASP.NET development. (First I thought his reputation was just an over-react response to his book, but since I have used his book, I could not agree more with his reputation)

This book really is an inseparable companion to those ASP.NET developers (once you start falling in love with this book). Yes, this book is super thick, but ... that's the point of it, because it is shinning with incredible resources for those ASP.NET developer people who really need bright information (not information which we can just google it online) about how to really utilize ASP.NET 2.0 features in a brilliant way.

I like to way the author directing his lectures. He shows each point, goes into details, and provides examples to concrete his points. turning page by page and absorbing knowledge from this book is so smooth because it is made possible by the author.

BUY THIS BOOK!!! This book is as close to a useful toolbox as you will ever find in ASP.Net 2.0. I was surprised that such a book even existed. It cuts a lot of time by focusing on usability rather than unnecessary rhetoric. It goes over all the server controls and their required configurations. It also includes an interesting chapter on JavaScript. My complements to the chef!!!

It's hard to imagine a better book for this subject. I'm a professional software engineer with many years of experience, but relatively new to ASP.NET. The best things about this book:

- Comprehensive. It really is a soup-to-nuts tour, with very little left out. At over 1900 pages, 34 chapters, it is the biggest computer book I've ever owned, and I have boxes of them.

- Tons of useful examples that actually work. They're shown in the book in VB.NET, but the CD has both VB.NET and C#. I'm working in C#. By useful, I mean that there is code here that I can see myself lifting for actual production work. I've tried dozens of the examples, and they all work.

- Author's voice is easy to follow and writes well. The book contains few or no typos. I hate paying $$$ for books that are thrown together with lousy editing and presentation; this is definitely a quality piece of work, from the writing perspective and also from the editing perspective.

There are books you buy and skim through once and there are those books that you go back to, knowing you will find what you need. ASP.NET 2.0 by Stephen Walther is the later

As a professional developer I like to understand the tools I use in my craft. Stephen does a great job of teaching you how ASP.NET works and then shows you how to use that knowledge to build professional ASP.NET applications. The book will address almost any type of task you will encounter during your ASP.NET development and show you how to do it right.

One of my favorite things are Stephen's tips that are spread throughout the book and help you avoid common (and sometimes very frustrating) issues that you would otherwise spend hours figuring out for yourself.

I recommend this book to any developer working on ASP.NET 2.0 from beginner to expert. You will not need any other book for your ASP.NET work.

Let me start off by saying that I create ASP.NET C# 2.0 Web Applications, C# Windows Applications, and SQL Server 2005 database designs at work. I have not had to use this book and I cannot make a sound interests into loving this version as much as Steven Walther's last ASP.NET 1.1 Unleashed book. I believe all the rude comments about Steven Walther's lack of CSS, JavaScript, and Visual Studio.NET has overtaken ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed, but has backfired on the programmers that already know these languages inside and out. I found this version a little less unorganized than his first book, but that is probably because of the 2,000 pages and the novice factor of reading a huge book with a tight schedule. This edition focuses on developing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application from the ground up. Overall this book is probably the best book you will ever find on ASP.NET 2.0 C# and VB.NET. It extensively covers Visual Studio.NET 2005, ASP.NET, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX CallBacks, Configuration Files, Security Classes, Regular Expressions Classes, Data Classes, ADO.NET 2.0, OleDb Classes, SqlClient Classes and the most code you will ever read from one book. I really refer to Steven Walther's ASP.NET 1.0 Unleashed book, since I know it inside and out, but his new book covers more general knowledge and 2.0 Web Controls for developing Web applications as whole, so for that it worth the time and the money.

This book is both a tutorian and a great reference. It is even better than a previous edition, and provides wealth of information on every topic of asp.net 2.0
Pretty much every control is covered in detail, and I love that code samples are right in the book, this way I don't have to keep looking for code on the CD.

I own all of the Stephen Walter's ASP Unleashed books and loved every one of them. This one is just ok while the others were excellent. The explanations seem to be less concise and at the same time less deep. For example, it would be helpful when Login control is discussed to explain (it is explained later in the membership provider's chapters) where the users created are actually stored. Another annoying deficiency is that there is no chapter on differences compared to v1.1 and how to migrate from v1.1 and v2.0. If you need to migrate a v1.1 Visual Studio project to v2.0 Visual Studio project, this book is not the best book to use. If you need to upgrade an existing 1.x project, look elsewhere. That said it is still a pretty good book but not nearly as good as the other ASP Unleashed books by Walter (which were outstanding).

I love this book and ASP.Net Unleashed 2.0 is my 4th copy. The only complaint is that he does not have a section detailing the difference between 1.1 and 2.0.

Walther gives a thorough rendition of ASP.NET 2.0. He explains the many improvements over version 1, as good reasons to migrate from it. Of these, the simplified accessing of a back end database might be the most compelling. While the idea of Cascading Style Sheets has been expanded into Master Pages with Themes. This allows easier maintenance of a large website that needs a consistent look and feel.

The 2000 pages of this book are certainly impressive. One reason that the book is so long is because of the numerous code examples, written in ASP.NET and Visual Basic. With the accompanying CD having the corresponding code in C#. Certainly, it is a good thing in general to furnish many examples. However, the listings tend not to be code fragments, as other texts might do, but complete code sets. What you think about this can depend on your background. If you are new to ASP 2, then perhaps the complete listings are useful. Though if you take time to read through the book (admittedly this will be some time), then you might also find full listings to be superfluous. While if you already know the essence of ASP 2, and need a comprehensive text, then you don't really need full listings. All that does is take up space.

What Walther could have done is push the full VB code listings onto the CD, and just write appropriate snippets in the text. There should certainly be enough space on the CD for this. This would considerably lighten the text, and might actually make it easier to follow the ideas.

I bought Stephen's first book - and I could not wait to lay my hands on his 2nd book. ASP.NET v2.0 has been out since November 05, but nowhere have I found such comprehensive material in one book ! (altho its a tad difficult to carry it to read on the train).

I love Stephen's style of writing - very clear in a manner that is so easy to understand. He explains all principles from a very simple and basic point of view and gradually increasing the complexity.

I would recommend this book to anyone serious enough to build ASP.Net 2.0 web sites.

Thank you very much Stephen for teaching me ASP.Net in such a pleasurable manner !

As an intermediate-level developer, I've purchased a lot of books on ASP.NET 1.x and 2.0 including the author's first version of this book. At almost 2,000 pages, this one is by far the most complete and exhaustive work on ASP.NET 2.0 you can buy today covering virtually every topic related to the new ASP.NET 2.0 framework.

What I love most about his books that he provides complete examples (not just code snippets) of every topic he addresses. This makes the book physically huge, but you're never left wondering how his code fits all together because he lays it all out there for you. He obviously put an enormous amount of work into this book because every example is clear, thorough and complete. In terms of my career, the purchase price of this book is the best money I've ever spent.

I have used the previous edition of this book as the textbook for a college level class that I teach on ASP.NET. The students found it very helpful in learning ASP.NET, so I have been looking forward to the new edition that covers the .NET 2.0 Framework. I received the book about a week ago, and it did not disappoint. In addition to covering the new concepts of the 2.0 Framework the author restructure the chapters in a way that lends itself much better to learning about how to develop web applications using ASP.NET. The author also provides several examples to help ground the concepts of the topic. I have reviewed several books for this class, and by far this is the one I would recommend for learning ASP.NET or learning what is new in 2.0.