Beginning ASP.NET 1.0 with Visual Basic.NET (ISBN 0764543695) Book Reviews 1-12 Sorted By Most Recent, at VeryWellSaid.com

Excellent for Beginners

The book was an excellent book for beginners. I found that it walks through each section step by step with excellent examples. You start out with the basics and proceed into more complicated designs such as using xml and databases. I would definitely recommend this book for someone who is starting out with asp.net as it gives you a good footing into the language.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-11-19 05:33:34 EST)

02-26-05

(NA)

Excellent book for introductory ASP.Net 1.0

I have read almost all the chapters of this book. I have been programming with intermediate ASP for past 5 years. The reason I picked up the book was for the easy transition from ASP to ASP.Net and this book help me do that. The book explains ASP.Net 1.0 at the novice level. For serious developers this book can serve as an introductory book for ASP.Net. I have now moved on to Professional ASP.Net book by wrox and many times I have to go back to this book to look into introductory details of the new features of ASP.Net.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-07-05 15:13:29 EST)

02-25-05

(NA)

Excellent book for introductory ASP.Net 1.0

(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-04-11 08:39:48 EST)

01-05-05

1\1

Disappointing technology

This book does not look like from Wrox, it got only the bad side of Wrox books - put code on dark background to damage readers' vision.

The usefulness of this book are the examples, while the explanations are not all good. There are 13 authors for this book, the quality of each part of this book differ a lot. Unfortunately, the most importance parts for me: the OOP part and Control part, got the lowest quality. The technology used in these two parts is: put some words there but no real explanation on many important points; simply repeat the sample code to fill out the pages. This is more damaging because of readers' trust on Wrox books, I invested lots of time on this book without questioning, then I found I wasn't going anywhere.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-02 14:35:03 EST)

05-25-04

(NA)

Outdated -- Poor Level Of Detail

The book is well outdated (as of mid-2004).

I'm just finishing the Begining ASP.NET with VB.NET 2003. This was Wrox's suggestion as the follow-on book to really understand website database development. A real waste. The Begining ASP.NET provided the same level of detail.

The book did use SQL Server -- a plus -- which the Begining ASP.NET book lightly covered. But, not enough to justify the expense of buying the book and even more importantly the time to wade through it.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-02 14:35:03 EST)

08-14-03

(NA)

A bit of a disapointment

I have been a fan of wrox books in the past, but this is not one if their better ones. The writing was poor overall, and there were times where I read the infomration three times before I eventually started to search the internet for a better explaination. The chapters on xml were useful, but could have gone into a little more detail with simple ways to data bind instead of focusing on datagrids as a single solution. As a resource, the index is useless and no glossary to organize key concepts to reference was a disapointment.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-02 14:35:03 EST)

01-05-03

2\2

Incomplete

Many wrox books are great, but this one was a disappointment. As an "classic ASP" developer I found the examples unhelpful and impractical, the information spread out, the request and response object - used constantly in classic ASP - were so poorly explained I still have no idea how they function in ASP.net. I am sure that ASP.NET has many important benefits that make it superior to Classic ASP, but after reading almost 600 pages (!) I feel I do not understand how to achieve the same result I can easily get in Classic ASP. Not recommended.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-02 14:35:03 EST)

12-27-02

0\1

Good overall, but not complete.

I wanted to create a simple web application with this book that would allow for authenticated users to add content and allow non-authenticated users to simply view content. The book was perfect for setting up the the database connections, and web forms. The book fell on its face with security. The concepts were included and some examples were included, but there was no information about user roles when using forms based authentication. One feature I think most ASP.Net applications are going to have is authentication so I found it distressing that it was given such incomplete coverage. To get more information you need to look at one of two other Wrox books - Beginning Web Programming with Visual Basic.Net and Visual Studio.Net, or ASP.Net Security. The first book covers mostly the same information as this book, but goes into more detail on security. It too though is not complete. With the inclusion of about five more pages in this book it would have been complete from my viewpoint.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-02 14:35:03 EST)

12-15-02

5\5

Good but shows the weaknesses of committee authorship

First of all, a good number of my undergraduates like this book as it introduces the bare bones required to get something up and running quite quickly. The downside of the book, from my persusal of it, is that it is less even than it could be, or perhaps should be. In many chapters (especially the crucial early ones) examples are often introduced and developed before their key constructs are properly explained. This is simply confusing to naive readers and highly irritating. For instance, the earliest ASP.net script uses "asp:label" without explaining the syntax or semantics for a another few dozen pages.

Unfortunately this is a bit of trend throughout the book and at the very least makes it frustrating. However, once you allow for this, (and it's a big allowance to make) the book is very handy.

It has bundles of scripts that anyone involved in web work will find interesting and useful. You can quibble with some of these (the login scripting for example) contra other books such as Professional ASP.NET, but I suspect this is a byproduct of committee authorship.

The book is clearly aimed at the learner so don't expect Enterprise quality insights into server management. Given the huge range of architectures and technologies available to the developer, producing any 'true' learner book is a considerable challenge. If you need a book for coursework alone, then this will probably meet most of your needs. If you earn your living with the .NET and its companions, then you need some supplementary texts.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-02 14:35:03 EST)

11-22-02

10\10

Beginner's Delight

This is a great book for those new to creating web applications. It seems to me that the people that gave it a low rating are the ones that were experienced web developers. This book was not intended for them. On the back cover of the book, it clearly explains that it is for beginners who have no prior experience with ASP, VB, XML, OOP, or the .NET Framework.

This book fit my experience level very well. I had only developed one small web application in classic ASP prior to purchasing this book and I did that over a year ago. I have weak HTML skills and very little experience writing web pages period. However, I have done quite a lot of development in Access using VBA so I am not completely new to programming or databases. In fact, I would say my skills in these areas are at least average if not above.

After reading and working through the exercices in this book, I was able to develop a web-based time and billing application with a Jet (Access) database back-end. I was able to do all of the things that I imagined doing when I conceived this project and then some. It works and looks great! Of course, in addition to the book, I also used a lot of great online resources. But the knowledge and skills I gained from the book provided me with a solid foundation that I feel confident I can build upon.

The examples in the book all worked for me with very few exceptions. I found very few errors, which is important especially in a beginner's book. In addition, I love how this book is true to its title and sticks to VB.NET. My previous experience with VBA gives me a bias in this direction which was satisfied completely.

My only criticism of the book is that the examples are a little simplistic and unreal even for a beginner's book. I believe the authors could have been a little more creative and come up with some real-world scenarios that still would have been appropriate for this level. However, this is only a minor detractor and does not diminish the overall effectiveness of the book.

If you are a beginner, buy this book. It is a great deal especially considering the price. I would buy it again if I were starting over. I don't think you'll be disappointed if you use the book appropriately and are as determined to learn ASP.NET as I am. Hope this helps!

(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-02 14:35:03 EST)

10-25-02

1\4

Not nearly as good as the ASP 2

I am a developer and teach sometimes as well. The book on ASP 2 was great. Easy to read and the students could understand it. This new book on ASP.NET is nothing like the old one. Explaining XML in the first few chapters is a waste of time, especially if you will not use it until chapter 20. It also doesn't explain things well. Since server controls are an important part of ASP.NET, I expected a lot of detail and examples. Having a single chapter with almost useless examples is not enough. I enjoyed looking at examples that had many properties that were not explained and tags that were not explained. It does not go into the Response, Request objects clearly. The explanation and use of Application and Session variables was pathetic. All in all, I would NOT recommend this book to a person who want to learn ASP.NET well, not even a beginner.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-02 14:35:03 EST)

10-24-02

2\2

Purchase this according to your skill set