I just bought this book, I'm studying for the new 70-562 exam. I've gone through about 300 pages, and I'm astounded at the information. I've been programming in ASP.NET 4 years, and have picked up a lot along the way ("junkie"). Some people get on and say "I wanted to learn ASP.NET from scratch!!!" This book is not for that. This book, so far, covers everything incredibly well, and fills in any gaps you might have. I am confident this book will allow me to pass the exam. I'll update once I do. The downside is there a lot of forward references. So once again, this book is for people who really, already know ASP.NET. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to become a well-rounded ASP developer. Even though it has 1800 pages, the font is good, the information is clear, and it is extremely easy reading. It doesn't get bogged down and repetitive, but covers everything.

This book is massive with a lot of good information but there are many errors particularly linking the code to the sample output displayed.

I wasn't able to find the link to download the errata or submit suggestions for corrections. I should have checked this before purchasing the book as no book is perfect and downloading and annotating the book from the known corrections list is usually my first task prior to reading the book.

For a beginner, the errors could be seriously confusing while for the experienced developer they will be annoynances.

This book also has very poor end of chapter wrap-ups. There are no chapter review questions to assist the user in validating that the material has been understood and the summary that is provided is pitifully short and not at all helpful in summarizing the materials presented in the chapters.

SAMS needs to get their act together or their market vunrabilities of poor quality and support exhibited by this book will relagate them soon to be only able to publish and sell porn books or some types of books where readers will willingly pay big bucks but not care about correlating the text with the illustrations.

I will definitely be more cautious about purchasing or recommending any book published by SAMS in the future.

Mike Lane

I am pretty new to .net and I brought several books on the subject, I have to say this book is very detailed and very easy to follow. If anyone is looking to buy a book on this subject, I would totally recommend this one. I did go through Apress books on ASP.net for novice to beginners, which I thought was not that easy to follow. I would ask anyone who is looking to buy a book on ASP.Net to invest in this one, the size of the book can make you think twice but you will be surprised how easy it is to follow.

This book is best suited for those already with a basic knowledge of C# and ASP.Net who just want to dive in and quickly get exposed to the vast array of features available in ASP.Net 3.5 for web application development. There are lots of things one can learn from this book. For example, do you know that the ASP.Net Visual Page Designer in Visual Studio 2008 now supports nested Master Pages, or that one can now build pages containing more than one logical forms (say, a Login and a Register form) courtesy of validation group magic? Even the author's discussion of LINQ to SQL contain some materials I have not seen covered in other introductory books dedicated solely to LINQ. Although some chapters contain forward references to future chapters, each chapter is mostly self-contained and therefore, in my opinion, the chapters can be read in arbitrary order, which makes this book a really good reference book.

This is a good book. The reason for my 3 stars, is excessive forward references in this book. Basically you have to read this book backwards in some arbitrary order. If Ajax is one of the last sections of this book, there should be no Ajax discussion prior to its introduction. The book has also less than optimal editing. Almost every discussion has a full short example. It would have been nice to highlight the relevant parts of the example so that people didn't have to read the code line by line to identify the discussion point. [This has nothing to do with the book: don't be afraid of the 1700+ pages, like everything else Microsoft, there is 300% overhead in concept, technology, implementation and you still don't know what exactly is going on under the hoods. If you are not mandated by something or someone to do your pages in ASP.NET, just do it with jsp or jsf or gwt or struts combined with spring. You will be happier at the end...]

Stephen Walther's earlier book on ASP.NET was a well-worn bible, used pretty much daily for months as I learned about the new .NET world. I especially appreciated his tight focus. Almost any topic seemed to be brilliantly simplified and explained with just enough words and code to get me on my way quickly.

Five years later, Mr. Walther has not lost his touch. I've spent much of the day with this book and hope I can remember even half of the new insights I've gained. It's a good, measured workout for the brain. It's also a good workout for the arm; it's nearly 1900 pages long even though code samples are in C# only! (VB code is on the CD that comes with the book.) Like the last one, this book is thoroughly comprehensive, yet is a comfortable and very efficient tool. Very tight, very clear.

If you're only going to buy one book on ASP.NET 3.5, then this is unquestionably the one to buy. If you plan to buy a few, buy this one first and you may decide you don't need more.

This book is not a "How-To" book by any means. There aren't any projects that are built in stages, the chapters don't build on each other and there isn't a tutorial attitude in the writing. What it is though is a great reference work, with examples and tips for every facet of ASP.NET 3.5. By nature, ASP.NET 3.5 includes ASP.NET 2.0 and this book has a solid rework of the author's ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed content to match the 3.5 framework additions. As others have mentioned, it's a shame there wasn't room for VB code samples in the book, but they are on the CD and inclusion in the book would have created a tome that would give the mailman a hernia.

I don't recommend this book to beginners -- I recommend this book to everyone. At least eventually. Once you start coding in the 3.5 framework you'll find yourself looking for a sample or a quick reference from this book on a daily basis. If you're just starting with ASP.NET you'll want a book that covers the basics of C#, and perhaps a tutorial ASP.NET book if you learn better that way, but if this book isn't your first purchase you should make it your second or third.

I have nothing bad to say about Stephen Walther nor the books that he writes. However, I'm not happy with this book because it did not have VB examples in it. I have every other book he has made in the ASP.NET Unleashed series and was "VERY" disappointed when this one did not have VB examples in the book.

Hopefully, the next release of ASP.NET Unleashed will.

Avoid this one: it's poorly organized, topics are poorly presented, intentional "padding" is painfully obvious on every page -including the silly code dumps in lieu of proper prose about how to get that code with drag-and-drop of controls in Design mode (Design mode never broached!) The continous repetition -or saying the same thing 3 different ways (and simple things, not complexe things that may need 3 ways to convey properly) make the book twice as large (maybe 3 times as large) as it should be. Then, writing style is dry, clunky, but not even in a scientific matter of fact way, just a low-vocabulary way, leaving you bored instead of excited. The worst thing however, is content: a serious lack of proper introducion to the general concept of developing web applications with ASP.NET, and then a lack of introduction to each topic. This paid-per-page author has no idea who his audience is (hasn't decided), ommitting key explanations for new-comers while rambling on about simple concepts more that any programmer would need -or even any english reader. Quantity over quality definately ruling here. I read many computer books in 23 years of programming, and was wondering "Do they not write good training books anymore?" Well, I bought Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008, Second Edition (Windows.Net) and said "Whew! Yes they do!"

If I had to pick just one book on ASP.Net 3.5 this would be the one. (But I don't so I have 4 now) this is the book I start with if need a fast example to do something, followed by online help, the net. Good roll up of asp.net 1.0 to present 3.5 as of May 2008.

Worth having on hand weights about 6 pounds lol

At 1890 pages this book has just about everything you need to know to start building complex ASP.NET applications. While the book assumes that you have some familiarity with using ASP.NET the first few chapters are still devoted to the basics. I encourage everyone to read them, even the experts. There are many tips and tricks in the book so you may learn something new or pick up on something you'd long forgotten. Did you know the asp:Literal control has a build in Mode property that can be set to HTML encode it's content? I'd honestly forgotten about that and had been doing my encoding on the back-end.

This book provides an in-depth look at just about all of the core ASP.NET features building on many of the techniques we used in 2.0. For the new features specific to ASP.NET 3.5 , Walther devotes an entire chapter to the new ListView and DataPager controls. These controls can be thought of as a GridView or Repeater on steroids. There's also a chapter on data access with LINQ to SQL and a 3-chapter section devoted to working with AJAX.NET and the AJAX Control Toolkit.

There are many books out there that focus on the "how" but what I like most about Mr. Walther's books is that he devotes a great deal of time to the "why". For example, the book explains how to use the SqlDataSource control but then also explains why you'll want to avoid it for most complex applications and use the ObjectDatasourceControl instead. With this book you'll not only learn how to get things done, you'll learn how to get things done right. For that reason it's an invaluable resource for your library. Every ASP.NET developer should have this book on his/her shelf.

Note: While the code samples in the previous 1.1 and 2.0 Unleashed books were written in VB.NET, this new 3.5 book has them written in C#. Walther cites the fact that there are now more C# developers than there are VB.NET developers as the reason for the switch. I would've liked to have seen two different versions of the book but all code samples are also provided in VB on the included CD-ROM so everyone can easily follow along.

From http://www.codescene.com/2008/03/book-review-aspnet-35-unleashed.php

I bought this book after reading all the good reviews from the readers here. I was very disappointed with the book for the following reasons.

This is more of an introductory book on asp.net. It just list out some of the properties of classes and don't really explain how to use most of it. The author took several pages to explain a simple concept which could be explained more concisely with less code.

It doesn't explain the history, internal workings of Asp.net, design of server controls, reasons for linq, silverlight in a comprehensive manner.

For a more thorough book which addresses the weaknesses of the above, I would recommend either Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 by apress or Pro ASP.NET 3.5 by apress.

This book features a lot of source code examples which you can read and try out. What it's NOT: A tutorial-style book where you advance through the lessons from easy to hard. This is not the author's fault, since he doesn't claim this is a tutorial or beginner's book. Nevertheless, many times I wished the source code was better explained. There is no introduction to the C# language at all, which is OK since this is an ASP book. But many basic concepts, routines and code lines are not explained at all, so you either need to be a pro or you'll have to find out yourself how the code works which can be very cumbersome. A good example for this is the AJAX validator control discussed in one of the first chapters. There's about one hundred lines of source code about this, including JavaScript code which isn't explained at all, and the explaination to the ASP part of it is very short, maybe one third of a page. The author provides a rich collection of code snippets which are all focused on doing a single task, but he often won't explain how these exactly work. You could compare this to a big dictionary where you can browse through if you need a code snippet to solve a specific problem. But this would not be a language course book with exercises and increasing difficulty. All in all, I recommend this book to fairly advanced ASP.NET programmers who have a very good knowledge of the fundamentals. But even those could struggle in some cases due to the lack of source code explanation. This book is not for you if you want to learn the basics of ASP or even the basics of C#. Nevertheless, you get a very good value for your money, since this book covers almost every task you can do with ASP.NET.

Covers most of the related topics.
Code examples are helpful.
LINQ coverage was interesting.

I am very dissatisfied. I just bought this book expecting to find an emphasis on new .NET "3.5" features. This is not the case. 65% of this book is on ASP.NET 2.0, 30% on .NET 3.0 and 5% on .NET 3.5.

A good book if you are new to ASP.NET, not if you are interested in learning the new .NET 3.5 stuff. One chapter on AJAX.

Quite a let down.

It hurts to deduct a star from this excellent book's rating, but it deserves at least removal of one star for the poor decision to remove the VB code and stick it on the CD.

If I wanted to view something in electronic form I would just Google it. I buy a book to leaf through everything on paper. I rarely look at a book's CD, so putting the VB code there is of little value to me.

If I had known about the lack of VB code in print I may have stuck with the previous ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed (which I "upgraded" from) and used other books to supplement the 3.5 material.

If the author left out the VB code in order to reduce the size of the book (with the added material for 3.5 stuff), perhaps he should have produced separate VB and C# editions.

The Unleashed series has a certain following behind it for being a fairly comprehensive guide to the technology the book examines. This entry into the series is no exception. This book goes into every detail of ASP.NET and ready digs into the new features of 3.5, as you may expect given the title.

I've enjoyed the way this book presents material. It's not too detailed for the beginner but doesn't leave the experienced wanting too much more. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for information on ASP.NET 3.5. This book is something every ASP.NET book should aspire to be.

At first blush, it may seem strange for me to review a "competing" ASP.NET 3.5 book. However, Stephen Walther's ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed doesn't target the same audience as ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies. Mine is unabashedly a beginner's book. ASP.NET Unleashed is for intermediate to advanced programmers and definitely hits that mark.
At over 1800 pages, this is definitely not "light" reading. It is, however, packed with most everything a professional ASP.NET developer needs to know to work in ASP.NET 3.5.

I was interested in Walther's assertion at the opening of Chapter 31 (Using Server-Side ASP.NET AJAX) that the future is AJAX:
"Microsoft ASP.NET is a dying technology. It received its death blow on February 18, 2005 when Jess James Garrett published his article 'Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications.' All that is left is the long, slow goodbye."

The author encourages readers to "leave the safety of the server side and enter the wilds of the client side." To that end, Walther does an excellent job of explaining the use of the UpdatePanel, Timer, and UpdateProgress controls that are built into ASP.NET 3.5.
The subsequent chapter, Using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, gives a solid overview of the toolkit's suite. It then shows how to use the AutoComplete, DragPanel, FilteredTextBox, MaskedEdit, Animation, and UpdatePanelAnimation controls. As always, there are many code listings (in C# in this edition). Chapter 33 digs even deeper into AJAX to program client-side applications against the Microsoft AJAX Library. If you're ramping up to build on the client, the book's AJAX content is very valuable.

The book is also solid on LINQ, the popular addition to ASP.NET 3.5. Chapter 18 goes through the concepts of LINQ to SQL entities, automatic properties, initializers, type inference, anonymous types, and lambda expressions. You learn how to perform standard database commands using LINQ to SQL and debug your queries.

This is a programmer's book, for sure. Where my book caters to beginners by using the IDE's graphical tools, Walther writes and explains lots of code. Don't look for numbered steps telling you where to click in Visual Studio 2008. The book focuses more on ASP.NET code than how to get the IDE to write it. This makes sense for the intermediate and advanced audience. Interesting to note, however that ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed uses the single .aspx page model very effectively that I recommend for beginners. The book includes a CD with tons of valuable samples in C# and VB.

I have only two minor issues with this book: Firstly, the screenshots take up an excessive amount of space on the pages for very little value. For example, at page 448, Figure 10.6 takes up half a page to display a list control, a label, and a button scrunched into the top left corner of a browser page. I wish Sams would revise its template standard to do away with full page screenshots and focus on what's important. Secondly, the book is too heavy to rest comfortably on my stomach for bedtime reading. Buy a tray for increased comfort!

In summary, if you're an ASP.NET beginner, start with my book and graduate to ASP.NET Unleashed as you expand your confidence and capabilities. If you're already working comfortably in .NET, you only need this book and the MSDN reference documentation. Buy it.

Its a very good book with an intermediate approach.
As a seasoned professional much of the first part about controls i skipped, but found here and there that bit of very useful information.

A very good book.

Stephen Walther is of a rare breed of authors that can churn out a 1,900-page book and actually give you immense value on each of those pages...unlike most that might give you about 10% value, 90% rambling.

Walther does an especially good job explaining the new built-in ASP.NET AJAX functionality, how to mimic the ASP.NET AJAX architecture in your own JavaScript, and how to integrate the two to better extend the existing AJAX functionality.

A couple other interesting points were the rundown of the ASP.NET AJAX control toolkit and his blurb about Visual Studio 2008 support for IntelliSense for JavaScript via XML commenting. Very useful.

The one topic that I was surprised not to see was mobile ASP.NET development, especially since .NET has so much built-in support for it. The only book I've seen yet with mobile ASP.NET covered was an ASP.NET 2.0 title by Dino Esposito: Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics...but the mobile coverage is just cursory and not nearly as useful as the MSDN site.

Overall, though, this book is a definite must-read and must-have for any ASP.NET developer. I'm now getting rid of my five other ASP.NET books...they've all been rendered obsolete by this title.

Out of all the ASP.NET textbook that I've already had, this one is the best. ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed by Walther has everything that one needs to know you about this great Server-side technology. It covers not only all of ASP.NET 2.0, but also, all of the new features such ASP.NET AJAX, LINQ TO SQL, ListView, DataPager etc... Finally, I would like to say that I did not regret buying this book.

This is a VERY good book for learning ASP.NET 3.5 from A to Z. It covers just about every ASP.NET topic you will touch in your career. This book is a LIBRARY of information on a wide variety of topics. The chapters on custom controls were much easier to read and more in depth than any book on the market. The chapters on ASP.NET AJAX were also very well written and were presented in a very systematic fashion.

Having been working as a senior-level developer and architect for ASP.NET system for many years now, I can tell you that this book will take you very far. If you're a seasoned ASP.NET developer, but aren't familiar with some of ASP.NET's lesser-known features (custom controls, custom configuration sections) or need to learn the various new features of .NET 3.5 like LINQ and the now native ASP.NET AJAX, this book is one you should definitely look at.

Also note that the author is not only an MVP, but he is a Microsoft Software Legend, the highest possible rank of a soldier in Microsoft's public army. He is a General; you can trust his work.