This is a well-written, easy-to-use book hitting the main points of ASP.NET 2.0. I've never read it cover-to-cover, but have gotten great use from it as a reference manual when I need to quickly figure out how to do something new in ASP.NET 2.0.



The book's laid out in a clear fashion and has a solid index, so it's easy to find the material you need to solve a problem. Each "lab" in the book is task-oriented, so you'll find things like "Create a Master Page for Your Site" which details the steps necessary to accomplish the task. Sections are nicely done and full of tips and tricks, plus there are plenty of short sidebars noting smaller bits of interest such as content pages being limited to having only one master page.



I've found the breadth of coverage quite nice. The author hits everything from Master Pages/Site Navigation to Security to Profiles. There's also a nice section on Performance which talks about site precompilation and caching. (I even nabbed one of the author's labs for one of my talks on .NET -- with attribution, of course.)



The book's very nicely done. It's concise and clear, and I like its style, both content and visual. Some folks might complain about the examples all being in Visual Basic 2005, but as Dr. Phil might say, "Build a bridge and get over it." The labs give you more than enough detail to understand how you need to use the Framework to accomplish tasks, so the particular language used shouldn't be such an issue.



Advanced ASP.NET developers probably won't get a lot out of this unless they're completely new to 2.0, but beginning and intermediate developers should find the book very helpful.



So far this book's been very useful.

This is a well-written, easy-to-use book hitting the main points of ASP.NET 2.0. I've never read it cover-to-cover, but have gotten great use from it as a reference manual when I need to quickly figure out how to do something new in ASP.NET 2.0.

The book's laid out in a clear fashion and has a solid index, so it's easy to find the material you need to solve a problem. Each "lab" in the book is task-oriented, so you'll find things like "Create a Master Page for Your Site" which details the steps necessary to accomplish the task. Sections are nicely done and full of tips and tricks, plus there are plenty of short sidebars noting smaller bits of interest such as content pages being limited to having only one master page.

I've found the breadth of coverage quite nice. The author hits everything from Master Pages/Site Navigation to Security to Profiles. There's also a nice section on Performance which talks about site precompilation and caching. (I even nabbed one of the author's labs for one of my talks on .NET -- with attribution, of course.)

The book's very nicely done. It's concise and clear, and I like its style, both content and visual. Some folks might complain about the examples all being in Visual Basic 2005, but as Dr. Phil might say, "Build a bridge and get over it." The labs give you more than enough detail to understand how you need to use the Framework to accomplish tasks, so the particular language used shouldn't be such an issue.

Advanced ASP.NET developers probably won't get a lot out of this unless they're completely new to 2.0, but beginning and intermediate developers should find the book very helpful.

So far this book's been very useful.

This is a pretty good introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 for folks who are already familiar with ASP.NET 1.1. All of the examples are in VB.NET, so if that bothers you, you might want to look elsewhere. I prefer C# myself, so I just rewrote the examples in C# as I went along. That gave me something mildly interesting to do as I worked my way through the book.

The examples in the book are pretty simple and generally just serve to illustrate basic concepts. There's no really interesting code in the book. It's really just a quick way to get through some of the new stuff in ASP.NET 2.0.

One problem with this book is that it was written during the beta phase, and doesn't reflect a few things that changed in the final version of ASP.NET 2.0. There is an update document on O'Reilly's site, and there may be a new printing with those corrections, but I'm not sure about that.

This is a great book for taking your ASP.NET 2.0 skills beyond the basics. Learn valuable skills for improving your web sites such as data caching, partial page caching and lowering the cost of server callbacks. Learn to let your site save user profiles and let users save site themes as a personalized profile; plus lots more.

Where other books just gloss the surface of controls and topics Wei-Meng Lee using a lab notebook approach drills down multiple layers on each topic and in just over 300 pages manages to cover more information than books with 3 times the number of pages; and on almost every page is a URL for additional information. IMHO, this book should be on the bookshelf of every serious ASP.NET developer.

This is a great book for taking your ASP.NET 2.0 skills beyond the basics. Learn valuable skills for improving your web sites such as data caching, partial page caching and lowering the cost of server callbacks. Learn to let your site save user profiles and let users save site themes as a personalized profile; plus lots more.

Where other books just gloss the surface of controls and topics Wei-Meng Lee using a lab notebook approach drills down multiple layers on each topic and in just over 300 pages manages to cover more information than books with 3 times the number of pages; and on almost every page is a URL for additional information. IMHO, this book should be on the bookshelf of every serious ASP.NET developer.

I really have not gained anything from this book. I bought the book having extensive 1.1 experience with a bit of 2.0 experience.

The examples are way to simplistic. I can see this book being okay for an absolute beginner, but advanced developers aren't going to gain much.

And all of the examples are in vb.net... *sigh*

I really have not gained anything from this book. I bought the book having extensive 1.1 experience with a bit of 2.0 experience.

The examples are way to simplistic. I can see this book being okay for an absolute beginner, but advanced developers aren't going to gain much.

And all of the examples are in vb.net... *sigh*

I bought this book after reading a couple of chapters at a local bookstore. It's very hands on, totally gets the job done. I was trying to implement a web application using the new asp.net framework, and it helped me out in all but details which I did not need till later on in the project.
What it will not do: Explain you the intricate differences, eg. at the level of the asp.net worker process in the difference in the way it compiles pages at runtime.
What it will do: Get you completely up and running with the new framework, esp. with a very good chapter about the GridView control.

This is definitely a book written by a developer for developers. The author assumes that you are familiar with ASP.NET 1.0 or 1.1 and Visual Studio.NET. So there are no chapters on how to use the development environment. Also, thankfully, there are no wasted chapters on the history of HTML. Instead, this book goes over the changes that you as a developer need to be aware of to get the most out of the latest version of ASP.NET.

The Developer's Notebook series is a new series of books by O'Reilly that is focused on presenting examples rather than theory - All Lab, No Lecture. As President of the Dallas ASP.NET user group I have recommended this book to my members. This is my favorite book on ASP.NET 2.0.

Things I like about the book:
* The lab format makes for a no-nonsense way to cover the material.
* It highlights the new features that are important to ASP.NET developers such as Master Pages and changes in Security and Data Access.
* It tells you when to use which controls and why.
* It has a very comprehensive section on web parts.
* The performance chapter includes information on how to send data to the server without a postback.

Things you should know:
* All of the examples are written in Visual Basic 2005, so if you are a C# programmer you will need to convert them.
* If you have never developed an ASP.NET application before this book is not for you.

Overall, if you are an experienced developer who wants to take advantage of the new features in ASP.NET 2.0, you should buy this book.

This is definitely a book written by a developer for developers. The author assumes that you are familiar with ASP.NET 1.0 or 1.1 and Visual Studio.NET. So there are no chapters on how to use the development environment. Also, thankfully, there are no wasted chapters on the history of HTML. Instead, this book goes over the changes that you as a developer need to be aware of to get the most out of the latest version of ASP.NET.

The Developer's Notebook series is a new series of books by O'Reilly that is focused on presenting examples rather than theory - All Lab, No Lecture. As President of the Dallas ASP.NET user group I have recommended this book to my members. This is my favorite book on ASP.NET 2.0.

Things I like about the book:
* The lab format makes for a no-nonsense way to cover the material.
* It highlights the new features that are important to ASP.NET developers such as Master Pages and changes in Security and Data Access.
* It tells you when to use which controls and why.
* It has a very comprehensive section on web parts.
* The performance chapter includes information on how to send data to the server without a postback.

Things you should know:
* All of the examples are written in Visual Basic 2005, so if you are a C# programmer you will need to convert them.
* If you have never developed an ASP.NET application before this book is not for you.

Overall, if you are an experienced developer who wants to take advantage of the new features in ASP.NET 2.0, you should buy this book.

First: Thanks O'Reilly for the new Notebook series books; I hope you keep making more. I like the format of these books!

If you're like most Sr. Web Developers, we have very little time on our hands. The .NET language itself is so vast, we often feel overwhelmed with all the great things it can do and don't really have time to find everything we need quickly when huge project deadlines are at hand. We are constantly looking to improve our code and find ways to take the load off our job. This book does an excellent job of informing you of the new version of ASP.NET and also great explanations and examples of why you'd want to use these new features..rather than just a "what the features can do". The author gives great real-life common examples of use of these new features, uses you think to yourself man, I think that would work great in our environment for this and that later on. Without trying to sound too geeky, this book definitely got me excited about ASP.NET 2.0.

I again rate this as a must-have on your shelf at home or in the office.

I had working knowledge of ASP.Net 1.1 and this was the perfect book to move to ASP 2.0.
After going through this book I bought some thick ones from Wrox and to my surprise those 1000 pages were still giving me the same knowledge/concepts that Mr. Lee effectively transferred in 352 pages.
I like books that get straight to the point/concepts. Developer's Notebooks are just perfect for me.
I would recommend this book to any one with some knowledge on .Net 1.1 and to those who like to understand concepts via examples.

This is supposed to be a developer note book with lots of code examples.
I am now stopping at chapter 2 as the examples don't work without changes.
It's really frustating, I will be looking at some other book, this lacks in theory and practical both.
I feel buying this book was a big mistake.
Avoid this.

ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook, part of a new series by O'Reilly Media, takes a radically different approach to code-oriented textbooks, and it's about time. O'Reilly has done something wonderful in realizing that most developers simply don't have the time to read through 1200-page books trying to learn every little detail about a subject.

Instead, we usually only have a matter of days (hours if we're really unlucky) to learn enough about the language we're using to make the project work. That's what this book is about... getting the job done. This books aims to be the brain of a great developer poured onto paper. You won't find useless chapters on theory or elaborate references of class hierarchies and object properties. What you will find is page after page of hands-on code examples that you can actually use.

Topics covered include:
* Master pages, themes, and skins for easily creating a consistent look throughout your site
* The Web Parts Framework (WPF) for building portal applications
* Security and membership controls for managing user authentication
* Data access via new data source controls and the GridView component
* Performance tuning your site by pre-compiling and fragment caching.

ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook is a book for developer's who would rather learn by coding instead of just reading. This is the perfect book for developers familiar with ASP.NET 1.x who're looking to make the jump to ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 without wasting every second of their free time. It throws you into the code immediately, allowing you to learn by example. The code samples are all easy to follow and you can re-use them in your own applications. This is a must-have for anyone trying to learn ASP.NET 2.0.

From http://www.codescene.com/2005/12/book_review_aspnet_20_a_develo.php

I was excited to get my hands on this book and check out the tutorials until I realized that they are all in VB.Net. No C# examples are to be found anywhere in the book. Although C# developers can typically translate code from VB into C#, it's easier and less time consuming to see the code in C# from the outset of the project. I'm really surprised that this author would aim this title at VB developers given that so much of professional development is done in C#.

Lee does, however, offer some quite useful sample projects in this book. I like how she emphasizes what's new in 2.0 instead of rehashing what .Net 1.1 developers will already know from their work. Most of the examples are short and contain just enough code to get the key concepts across to the reader. In some chapters I felt that more explanatory text would have been helpful, but with all the help documentation for .Net I was able to fill in any knowledge gaps.

If I had to sum this book up in one word, it would be 'scatterbrained' ...

I have referenced it a few times; most of those times I have found the topic I was looking for but the examples/steps presented in the book didn't actually work or at least didn't work the way I needed them to.

I couldn't really find any logical flow to the book, either. It jumps from one topic to the next (maybe that is what they were striving for with the 'notebook' approach). To me, it made it difficult to use/follow. The index isn't bad, and since that was where I always went first I guess it doesn't matter too much that I was bouncing all over from chapter to chapter.

I'd say this book was of below-average usefulness. Course, there are not a lot of 'beta' books out there, so you have limited choices prior to launch.

just bought this book today and motoring thru it.
It is so orentated to a developer, I have been using VB since version3 and have bitten the bullet so I can do more, faster and better with net2.0
Things I liked about the book is that it is thin and its core stuff to 'just make it work'.
I can quickly be productive, build on my confidence and know where to learn more 'as and when I need it' and not get saturated with needless feature details. The book does seem to be all lab and is very suitable for those practical/kinesethic types that learn by getting their hands dirty and playing with something - it might not suit people who need to know everything before they start. Also the print style is very easy on the eyes, looks like someone has made margine notes in it and ample space for your own notes to. Wish this was the first book on ASP.NET2 I had bought.

In my daily buisness I appreciate those books that don't need much work for installing the samples. Either you open always a new project for each mini sample or the better way would be to provide a solution file for ALL samples. Moreover the samples lake of files which the compiler claims. Did the author check his samples? I'm very happy to be a safari-online subscriber because I'll drop this book from my bookshelf soon.

I don't mean to rain on the parade of excellent reviews for this book but there is one thing you should know; this book heavily uses listed instructions, much like the Microsoft "Step by Step" books. I happen to be one of those people whose eyes glaze over when I see a list of instructions! (I tend to do much better with books that discuss technical features within the context of their usage.) If you are like me you should know that before you buy it.

Having said that, many people find that this type of book suits their learning style (as we have seen in the other reviews), and I have no doubt that the content is excellent.

Bill

I would highly recommend this book to any professionals or developers who wanted to learn the most out of ASP.NET 2.0 in the shortest amount of time. I spent about 2 hours after work to go through each chapter and took me slightly more than a week to complete it. The practical approach for the exercises in this book is simply fabulous! Not only I got to learn about the the concepts but i get a lot of chances to try out these concepts on my home computer!

I personally like the chapters on Web Parts and Data Access!! Great demos and exercises covered in these 2 modules.

Thanks Wei Meng !!!

ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook for any programmer that wants to jump right in and discover what v2.0 has to offer. For anyone that is looking for an ASP.NET 2.0 reference book, this isn't what you are looking for. If you want a guide that will give you and overview of all the neat new features of what MSFT's newest set of toys gives you, this is a great guide.

The Author breaks the book into the major new parts of what ASP.NET brings to the table, highlighting the following topics:

- Improved posting to self pages and other pages
- Improved validation routines in 2.0
- Creating image maps with ADO.NET
- Creating master pages for a web site (very cool)
- Using TreeView controls on your page
- Adding drop-down menus to your site
- Using Web Parts to separate content on your pages
- Learning how GridView replaces DataGrid for viewing data
- Improved data caching with 2.0
- XML communication all throughout ASP.NET (how-to)
- Improved security in 2.0

These are just the major points that I have gotten out of this book, and it's quite a bit. Again, if you are looking at this book as a reference, this isn't what you are looking for. There are examples of all these topics, but the Author expects that you have some ASP and/or ASP.NET experience if you are using this book. This book is meant to be a "notebook" where it quickly gets to the heart of the matter, instead of dragging on and on and that's exactly what the user does.

For existing ASP.NET developers or any web developer who wants to learn why .NET is the present and future of web development, this is a great guide to learning all the new tricks that the wizards at Microsoft have come up with. I recommend this book to all web developers and I think you will find it extremely useful in your web careers.

***** RECOMMENDED

ASP.NET 2.0: A DEVELOPER'S NOTEBOOK
By Wei-Meng Lee
Published by O'Reilly
ISBN 0596008120
Reviewed by Steven Mullins-HuNTUG member

Well let me say this was so chocked full of stuff I am still trying some of the tips and examples even after a month of reading it all the way through.

This has been the first book on .NET that has really shown the web page building that can be done. This has been a great read for the point of building a web space there are so many examples that is hard to keep up with all of them. This book really surprised me with the chapter 5 (Security), the last three of four books I have read or looked over have had very little to say about security and this was broken down from simple log-on to using the WAT (Website Administration Tool) to add users and even how to hash passwords.

One last thought was how well this book flowed; there are a lot of books that make it so that you have to do all the exercises in sequence to get the examples to work but with the O'Reilly books you can go straight to the chapter you want to work on and go right to it, that one point has made my last few book selections rather easy.

O'Reilly has the right stuff when it comes to real life work to get done.

ASP.Net 2.0 - A Developer's Notebook wades through feature after feature of the ASP.NET 2.0 web application framework. This is another excellent .NET related title in the Developer's Notebook series. The reader is offered a very complete survey of each functional area. Topics such as master pages, personalization provider, web parts, security, and data access are expertly presented.

True to the "Developer's Notebook" format, you are immersed into the content with very thoughtful examples and hands-on labs. There are a little more than 50 of them. The source language used is Visual Basic.NET. C# developers should not have too much trouble understanding and making the necessary conversions.

Wei-Meng Lee has put together a very compelling Developer's Notebook. The coverage is very complete, and the examples are interesting as well. I really enjoyed sitting down in front of my computer with this book and working through each of the exercises. This is a very good text and is extremely valuable in reviewing the features available in ASP.NET 2.0.

I'm an ASP.NET developer and I wanted a book that presented the changes for 2.0 clearly and completely. I am very happy with this Developer's Notebook.

It covers the key topics well without rehashing the stuff I already knew. In particular, I needed to know about:

* Web parts
* Master pages
* Themes/skins
* New controls

One of the advantages O'Reilly has over Microsoft titles is they can say stuff like "ASP.NET Web Parts are not compatible with SharePoint" clearly rather than glossing over the incompatibility. I also like the author's recommendation *not* to mix languages in a single project (a new "feature") unless it's really necessary. That would be a nightmare to maintain!

Finally, I like the format of these Developer Notebooks. I have the Mono and Excel ones as well and the lab-based format is great.

This is the second of O'Reilly's new "Developer's Notebook" series that I have read, and I am quite impressed with this series. This series aims to provide hands-on tutorials for some of the latest technology. The author does an excellent job covering some of the new features and changes in the upcoming ASP.NET 2.0.

This book works best when you read it sitting in front of the Visual Studio 2005 IDE. The author intends the reader to follow along, doing their own coding, to learn the concepts discussed.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book is the organization. I'm a professional ASP.NET developer, there are things I like about ASP.NET and things I dislike about it. Lee did an excellent job covering a lot of the new and exciting features of ASP.NET right up front, which builds the readers enthusiasm for the rest of the book. Finally I can set focus on a control! Finally I can cross-post forms! Finally I can control visual inheritance! Sure these issues may not be all that important, but they're things current ASP.NET developers have been clamoring for, and they keep the reader engaged through the material.

I think my favorite section of the book is Chapter 3: Web Parts. This chapter is not for the faint of heart-there are lots of juicy coding details, which developers will absolutely eat up. This chapter also covers one of the most interesting aspects of the revamped ASP.NET-the ability to easily create portal applications. The reader is stepped through some excellent examples, from building to personalization.

I found this to be an excellent introduction to the ASP.NET 2.0 framework. As some other reviewers have noted, this book isn't designed as an introduction to programming ASP.NET-you're expected to have written pages in it before. I personally would have preferred to see the examples provided in the book in C# (rather than VB.NET), but that's a minor issue, and any experienced ASP.NET developer already has some practice translating between the two. This book is a must read if you're planning on migrating to the new version of the .NET framework.

Not a primer for the ASP.NET neophyte, this book is meant for programmers who are already equipped with ASP.NET 1.x knowledge. It is written in a straight forward manner. Taking readers first of all, straight into the new features that you will find in ASP.NET 2.0.

Compared to other titles on the market, this seems a very clearly targeted book. It's directed towards professionals and students who need to pick up ASP.NET 2.0 development easily minus all the small prints and with lots of hands-on exercises.

The book starts off with a summary of everything that is new. I was pleased to see that in each of the chapter, I was able to learn new features and controls that ASP.NET 2.0 offers. For example in Chapter 3, how to create a portal website using the Web Parts Framework. That reminds me so much of IBM Websphere ie building a portal page with individual functional units lumped together. Uploading a file to the server was also another useful feature covered in Chapter 1. Using the FileUpload control, it allows web users to upload files for archival or file-submission purposes. It also talks about the new security model: Membership Provider Model in Chapter 5. In ASP.NET 2.0, you can manage security with membership providers, built-in security server controls and cookieless forms authentication.


Wei-meng Lee's new book manages to cover a lot of ground in a concise, readable manner. If you're already developing with ASP.NET 1.x and preparing to migrate to version 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0: A developer's Notebook gives you complete information forassessing ASP.NET 2.0 and making the most of it.

A strong theme pervading the book is the heavy usage of XML to encode and manipulate configuration data. Microsoft has gone to some lengths to use the expressive power of XML to make quite complex configurations. Luckily, the book shows that serious work has also gone into providing you with UI tools to tweak the XML.

If you are still new to XML, the book may be useful as a motivator by showing non-trivial examples of how to use it. Certainly, it also reveals the characteristic verbosity of XML, which might be offputting to some.

Experienced ASP developers may want to check out the new security Provider Model. It is claimed to be very flexible and extensible in how you can use it to add security features. Of all the new items in ASP 2, this is perhaps the most important.