Microsoft ASP.NET Fast & Easy Web Development (Fast & Easy Web Development)

Don't spend your time wading through manuals to learn ASP.NET. Spend it doing what you do best-creating Web pages! Begin with an introduction to the .NET initiative. Then work your way through the concepts of ASP.NET, Visual Basic .NET, and ADO.NET. By the time you finish, you'll be using ASP.NET to create custom applications. Combining easy-to-understand instructions with visual examples, Microsoft ASP.NET Fast & Easy Web Development offers a unique, hands-on approach to ASP.NET that you won't find anywhere else. Less time, less effort, more results!

User review
Too High-level
The book is too high-level for anyone trying to real development. Book is designed for the complete novice. There's not enought content to do any in-depth development.

User review
An extremely poor text
REVIEW: While not completely atrocious, this volume is certainly not among my favorite IT books. To begin, it is written in very understandable english. However, this is misleading. Oftentimes, that simple english conceals details that are quite useful and downright necessary for the examples given. To quote page 178: `Write the code for the GetDocumentation method.` Note that the book does not give you the complete code (unlike most tech books). All the reader gets is a screenshot of the VS.NET window.

Now, you might think that's not too bad. There's probably a CD or a website that you can download the source from, right? Wrong. The website listed on the back of the book and in the introduction is not a valid URL. I eventually tracked down the real publisher and downloaded the source code. Unfortunately, it's buggy and comes with a senseless installation application.

In essence, this book is a lot of flash and no substance. It doesn't clearly explain concepts nor does it adequately present the material. At times it acts as if the reader is already very experienced (not providing the full source) while at others it reads as if it were written for a CS 101 class (showing step by step which buttons to click to create a new app).

STRENGTHS: Very few and far between. The screenshots provided are useful for positioning of controls and overall appearance conformity. The book also does a decent job of introductory explanations such as `Introducing the .NET Initiative.` Which, parenthetically you could also read for free about on Microsoft's site. These, however, do not outweight the glaring errors present though.

WEAKNESSES: Aside from the above complaints, a major issue that I had with the book is that it did not use standard Hungarian notation. Instead, the author used IDs such as `AdRotator1`, `CalStart`, `documentation`, `picture`, etc,,. Naming conventions like these simply scream `amateur` to me.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: If you still want to read it, I'd recommend that you already be familiar with VB.NET or C#. Also, an understanding of web technologies such as IIS and SQL Server are quite useful when the author neglects to tell you important information.

FOR SIMILAR/RELATED TOPICS, CONSIDER: I would recommend `ASP.NET by Example` (ISBN 0789725622) or `Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 21 Days` (ISBN 0672324458). Both are far better.

User review
Don't waste your money!
This is by far the worst computer book I have ever read. This book does not deliver on any level.

I am an experienced VB programmer new to ASP.NET. If you are a beginner, you will learn nothing from this book. If you are an experienced programmer but new to ASP.NET, again you will learn little from this book and will be forced to search elsewhere for your answers.


User review
Very easy to read, covers all the important details
Ignore the other reviewers, don't know what they're talking about.

I'm a professional programmer who selected this book because I was under a deadline for an ASP.NET project and knew nothing about ASP.NET. I bought Sams ASP.NET Unleashed (1200 pages) first, and found it really hard to decipher--as a beginner. For one thing, Walther prefers Web Matrix over Visual Studio, which I found utterly irritating (no VS.Net projects). Finding solutions in this book is a long-term prospect, and I'll admit it's got the details I'll need to learn eventually. But for getting up to speed quickly, this little gem of a book by Pandey does a great job.

The author succeeds with simple writing (short sentences that are easy to consume), while still covering `enough` of the technical details to get the job done. There were many things I wish he'd covered in more detail, like how to connect to IIS without FP Server Extensions, and how to debug an ASP.Net app (skips over that subject with barely a mention), but then again, a lot of these things are assumed to be set up already by an ops/lan/sa, so this book doesn't deal with config, which is okay. I don't mind that. If I'd had my system running IIS in the first place, I would have learned much more quickly. I highly recommend that you install IIS5 on your Win2k/XP box while learning, and not try to do remote development while learning.

I'm reading this book through a second time before passing it on to a junior member of the team, and will soon dive into the ASP.Net Unleashed book again. I thoroughly enjoyed it and appreciate Pandey's easy writing style. He speaks to you, rather than preaching AT you, and doesn't condescend,,.he explains stuff patiently and politely with no assumptions.

User review
Example won't work
Once I actually tried the examples, the first one I am trying doesn't work. Since I bought this book purely for the step by step examples, this pretty much makes it suspect as to having any value.

When I typed in the example lines as described on page 318 I get an error (Parser Error Message: Unrecognized configuration section 'Forms') when I try to run it. Since it is only two lines of text, and I have typed them in multiple times, I am at a loss. I went to the website to download the example files, thinking at least that should work, but it was it was zipped. So, I went to pkware.com and tried to download the viewer, but something was wrong with their link, and when I would get to the last page, it would say, `File not found.` instead of downloading. Almost every other books examples are not zipped, I suppose someone thought they were being cute by zipping it, but I don't appreciate that either, since pkware is apparently having problems.

Anyway, I did have this book rated as a 3, but now that the first time I actually try an example and it doesn't work, I am changing my rating. If I try another one and it doesn't work either, then I will log back and lower it still further.