ASP.NET Kick Start

Visual Studio .NET is the premier development environment for creating .NET applications. The environment includes specialized tools for working with databases, XML files, and XML Web services. Building applications with Visual Studio .NET is a very different experience than building ASP.NET applications with a standard text editor. Visual Studio .NET performs a lot of invisible work in the background, and the environment makes a number of assumptions about the best way to build applications. It is difficult for even an experienced ASP.NET developer to use Visual Studio .NET effectively without any guidance. This book helps readers understand and begin using this complicated environment.

User review
Solid starting point
This book does exactly what it says - gives a fast paced intro to asp.net. It's very readable and offers code samples in both c# and vb.net.
I'm almost done with it and have just two issues:
1. Weak summary. The summaries are basically a short paragraph restating the purpose of the chapter. There are no review questions or any other way to gauge your understanding level.
2. Reliance on `drag and drop`. Data objects are almost exclusively accessed by dragging them onto the designer surface and letting vs.net write the code. It wouldn't have taken much longer to type out the ado.net code manually (something I started doing on my own about half way through) and the repetition would have been very beneficial, not to mention the fact that this method isn't very practical in the real applications.
Coming down off of the soapbox, this is a very useful book that lets you dive right in and gain confidence quickly.

User review
Good book for beginner. And for deploying rapid prototype
Good book, easy to read, maybe too easy!!! Repetitive explanations on how to connect to with slqDataConnection,,.
But for beginner, it's a good introduction to the world of ASP.NET. You will have to read a couples of other books to really understand the amplitude of this new technology.

User review
Disappointing
I got this book because it received many good reviews. I was extremely disappointed when I read it. This book felt like a copy-and-paste reference. It goes through code without really explaining why you're programming it that way. Another weakness of this book is that, instead of sticking to code you've learned about, it has you program complex code that they never teach you about in this book. The real-world examples and instruction are also seriously lacking.

Overall, I would urge you not to get this book, beginner or not. I went through the entire thing and still feel like I didn't learn anything.

User review
Good intro with exceptions
This is a good introduction into .Net and it gets deep into abilities so it will be a good reference. The only criticism I have is the author's overuse of Visual Studio objects. While they work fine in simple applications, programmatically building your objects (rather than dropping them onto your application) gives you much more control and speeds up program execution. It would have been beneficial if he would have showed both processes (object and programming based) instead of only the simple approach. However, it is still a good intro and I would recommend it.

User review
Aptly named, a boon for beginners
This book from Stephen Walther has got everything right, especially for beginners. I wish I had seen this book a little earlier. The first part on Creating Web Forms is written very well. It neither scares the beginner nor does it bore him. Most book authors don't realize that beginners are only looking for a simple book through which they can gain confidence. The language in this book is simple and whereever the author uses sophisticated technical language he explains it. Very good book if you are looking to learn ASP.NET using Visual Studio.NET (doesn't matter if its C# or VB.NET route, code is written in both.). One other good thing is that the author takes you step by step because we all know that one cannot learn programming by reading but only by programming.