Product Description
This book was written to introduce you to the features and capabilities that ASP.NET 4 offers, as well as to give you an explanation of the foundation that ASP.NET provides. We assume you have a general understanding of Web technologies, such as previous versions of ASP.NET, Active Server Pages 2.0/3.0, or JavaServer Pages. If you understand the basics of Web programming, you should not have much trouble following along with this book’s content. If you are br… More >>
When this book was delivered I was in shock at the 1400+ pages, I’ve been reading on the book since and am several chapters in but I feel I know the book enough to give a fairly decent overview of how it was written and how it will hold up.
This book takes a great in-depth look at every aspect of ASP.NET 4 and gives clear and clean examples in both VB and C# (the authors seem to favor VB however.) Therein comes a warning, if you’re new to ASP.NET, C#, or programing in general I strongly suggest you take a different book, this one is more to expand your existing knowledge not to build you from scratch. This book primarily covers the api of ASP.NET and how to effectively use it, it also covers topics such as LINQ, it does not cover language semantics or System Architecture. However, it does make up for neglecting those two subjects in covering Visual Studio 2010 in-depth, including diagramming.
Overall some of the content is a bit dry, this is a professional level book after all, but should be easy enough to read through once you get into your own pace. Don’t let the 1400+ pages fool you or dissuade you from picking up this book, the length is partially due to screen shots and also because all code in the book is duplicated between VB to C# also the appendices take up quite a large section, however also keep in mind this book has 36 chapters covering Server and Client Controls to Deployment.
Summary:
Pros- Complete, direct, covers multiple languages (VB and C#,) easy enough to read.
Cons- Paperback only, can be overwhelming if you just open the book, alot of duplication between C# and VB that not everyone may be interested in.
Sideline – If you are new to C#/VB and .NET I would recommend using a language primer and probably the Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer) book by Wrox (Note the ASP.NET 4 version is due out soon.) Afterwards attacking this book will most likely get you where you need to be to compete for jobs/contracts/etc in .NET space.
Rating: 4 / 5