Other reviewers of this book who have suggested that it has the wrong title are correct. It should have been titled 'A Developer's Introduction to .NET'. It touches on a lot but barely skims the surface of anything. I bought it as a web designer wanting to get into ASP.NET, but the chapter on ASP.NET was just a tedious walkthrough of creating a web form, with pages and pages of minute instructions - add this control, then this one etc. - when all that space could have been devoted to explaining the core concepts.

The book is poorly written, haphazardly organised and plagued by small errors. One example:
'Visual Basic, for all intensive purposes, has arrived, and it's just as powerful and flexible as any other .NET language.' (Does he mean 'for all intents and purposes??') Then two paragraphs later: 'Furthermore, because VB lacks flexibility and power...' Where was the editor?

Another perpetually annoying error is the author's continually referring to 'diminishing' a variable in VB, when the correct term is 'dimensioning'. A small point, but one that adds to the perception of a lack of care.

For someone wanting the quick heads-up on .NET, then maybe, otherwise, avoid it.

As a Visual Basic user from many years ago I bought this book to help me get to grips with the daunting IDE that Visual Studio presents. The danger for a new user is missing the fabulous new Wizards and other time saving things that are pre-built into VS but are sometimes tricky to find for the uninitiated.

This book discusses .NET in detail but to be fair I knew about .NET's principles before. What I wanted was a guide to USING VISUAL STUDIO. And this is really not it. As an overall handy text for a newbie to .NET it is great but I don't think the title is right.

All-in-all, this is a useful book. I would recommend it to anyone trying to get up to speed with Visual Studio.NET quickly or anyone wanting to get an introductory feel for the scope of many things that can be accomplished with this programming environment.

The downside is that the book has quite a few errors, though most are of the typographical style. However, due to the large amount of code he presents, some occur in the code also, and it can't be executed until they are fixed. Most bugs prove no challenge to a relatively experienced programmer, but an absolute newbie might be frustrated. In a way, though, these light errors provide an opportunity to explore the debugging capabilities of VS.NET - was that the point? :)

This book also assumes you know something about the tools you'll be using outside of VS.NET like SQL Server and such.

As I said, overall a very nice introduction to VS.NET. Just don't expect it to exhaustively cover every topic. The author himself states this in the end when he says "Your next step should be to focus on each of these technologies, either by investigating MSDN further, studying books that specialize in specific technologies such as ADO.NET or ASP.NET, or simply building your own applications."

Hope this helps...

The title, "The Book of Visual Studio .NET," is misleading. The book is not an in-depth guide to using Visual Studio and barely touches on extending and customizing Visual Studio. A better title would have been "A Developer's Accelerated Introduction To .NET." It assumes the reader is a working developer, new to .NET, and moves at a brisk pace. Only one of twelve chapters focuses on the Visual Studio tools although Visual Studio is used throughout to design, code, compile, run, and trouble-shoot examples for nearly every topic. After brief disappointment (I wanted a Visual Studio handbook), I read the book cover to cover and learned something in each chapter after more than two years of heavy reading and significant development effort with .NET. If I taught a course on .NET, this would be my text!

Most of the .NET landscape is explored in the 369 pages - including: Visual Studio, the .NET framework and CLR, VB.NET, Windows forms, web forms, web services, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, XML, and COM interoperability. But C# and C++ are given almost no space.

Design and code samples are numerous and are no longer than needed to demonstrate the essential concepts. You will want to be sitting at your computer with a full deck of .NET available - Visual Studio, IIS, and SQL Server. The code can be downloaded.

This is probably an ideal book for someone crossing over from the Java world or moving on from older Micsrosoft technologies. If you are quite expert in other OOP technologies but new to .NET, two days with this book will get you started on your first .NET project or prepare you for a .NET job interview.

This is the author's first book; he is an experienced system architect working in .NET and COM. The publisher, No Starch Press, is small and new but headed by one of the Apress (serious books for serious people) founders. Their site suggests a bunch of San Francisco guys willing to put away their Linux and Java for a grudging review of the enemy's (Microsoft's) armored division. But I could still hear one of them say, "Microsoft .NET is not even in use within one hundred miles."

Nothing was too hard and nothing was too easy. Definitely no starch!

Excellent example of practical uses of Enterprise Services. This isn't the focus of the book but I was pleasantly surprised to find this nugget.

Excellent example of practical uses of Enterprise Services. This isn't the focus of the book but I was pleasantly surprised to find this nugget.

Visual Studio.NET is a very practical and easy to use guide into the world of .NET technology. The author gives clear and easy to follow steps to the implementation of multiple .NET technologies using Visual Studio.NET Overall, the text is helpful for both beginners and advanced users. If one has any need to learn .NET technology, this is the book to purchase.

To the delight of most beginners (and intermediate learners), this book handled the basics of Visual Studio .NET very well.
Chores like typing codes, creating projects; as well as compiling and debugging methods received generous attention.
Also, many advanced learners will appreciate how some sections of this book (diligently) treated the most recent .NET technologies, which are currently being applied in the popular Visual Studio 7.
Overall, this text is a well-composed book which is likely to give newcomers all the accommodation that they may need without disappointing the more advanced learners.

To the delight of most beginners (and intermediate learners), this book handled the basics of Visual Studio .NET very well.
Chores like typing codes, creating projects; as well as compiling and debugging methods received generous attention.
Also, many advanced learners will appreciate how some sections of this book (diligently) treated the most recent .NET technologies, which are currently being applied in the popular Visual Studio 7.
Overall, this text is a well-composed book which is likely to give newcomers all the accommodation that they may need without disappointing the more advanced learners.

This book helped me get up to speed quickly. Will need to look to other books for in depth coverage of specific areas but I found this book handy for my transition to .NET. Where is the download?

It looks like this book was written hastily. Misspellings and clumsy use of language clutter the pages. I am sure nobody read this book thoroughly before it was published. It refers to a CD several times in the text, but there is no CD included. On the last page it refers to a website for source code - nothing there. Its title is "Visual Studio .NET," while most of the text is about a zillion of other topics. The examples are simple but they are needlessly verbose and contain cut/paste errors. The MCAD/MCSD Self Paced Training Kits offer much more quality and cover Visual Studio much more thoroughly.

The Book Of Visual Studio .NET: A Guide For Developers by Robert B. Dunaway (System Architect in Software Development for Strategic Data Systems) is a direct and accessible guide to learning the ins and outs of the various tools applicable to Visual Studio .NET, including ASP.NET, VB.NET, and XML Web Services. Hands-on examples, black-and-white screenshots, and thoroughly "user-friendly" text present complex concepts in an unambiguous and easy-to-assimilate manner. The Book Of Visual Studio .NET is confidently recommended as being a solid, competent introduction for newcomers to the world of .NET technology.

I managed to get what I needed to begin building applications based on this one because my time wasn't wasted. He got right to the point and then continued on to the next topic.

The examples are good but sometimes included a little more hand holding than I really need. If you are brand new to .NET then this might be good.

I would have to describe this book as "Short, sweet, and to the point" and I do recommend it to those just starting to learn Studio .NET.