Paul Esler said
The Sams 'Teach Yourself' range of books are an excellent way to learn new technologies quickly. Whilst they don't give you an in depth understanding of the technologies, they do provide plenty of examples and exercises to help you learn the essentials of a particular IT subject.
In this book, the subject is Microsoft's ASP.Net 3.5. I chose this particular book as I was involved in some web application projects built on ASP.Net and needed a way to quickly get up to speed on ASP.Net. This book is structured in such a way that you are thrown straight into writing code and getting real results on screen. Scott Mitchell is a master at this and has written several other books on the subject, as well as his own blogs. The effect is to immediately capture your interest so that you are keen to press on and complete the full 24 hours, rather than being bogged down reading pages of theory.
The only criticism I have of the book is that it perhaps assumes too much knowledge. The User Level is stated as 'Beginning-Intermediate', which is fairly accurate. However, to fully exploit the power of ASP.Net it is necessary to have a working knowledge of one of the application programming languages like Visual Basic or C#. This is not apparent when starting the exercises, but is quickly realised when dealing with topics on database access and creating classes. Having said that, the book does provide enough knowledge to build a fairly basic ASP.Net web site, and I would recommend it to anyone who needs a cursory understanding of the topic.
Matt Duguid said
Great introductory book to ASP.NET for absolute beginner or someone with technical experience that wants to skim across the top and learn quickly.
David Gurgel said
ASP.NET is the heart of Microsoft's web-development platform. ASP.NET includes a large set of web-page controls and database access controls that are executed by a server-side engine. Just drag and drop these controls on a web form from the Visual Studio IDE (or in this case its free, stripped-down but still quite capable version, Visual Web Developer), add some code (VB, C#, or other) to handle events, and you have a web application that handles almost any task, including heavy duty database access. Publish the ASP.Net pages using Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Services) or other web server with .Net support. When a user with any browser requests or enters data on an ASP.NET page, the web server passes the request to the ASP.NET engine, which processes the web controls on the page, fills data requests, and then returns information to the user via the web server as standard HTML. ASP.NET is one of the top technologies used for major web sites. Any site showing pages with a ".aspx" extension is an ASP.NET site.
As you do the tutorials, you will use a complete suite of Microsoft web development tools except for IIS. Instead of IIS, the tutorials simplify matters by directing the use of the web server built into Visual Web Developer.
The included CD has it all - (1) Visual Web Developer 2008 Express, an integrated development environment for site design, page design, code editing, testing, and project administration with most the of the important features of the professional Visual Studio environment, (2) an integrated web server that mimics Microsoft's IIS (a production-grade server) and will run even on XP Home Edition while IIS will not, (3) Visual Basic 2008 Express, which is today the most common language for writing Microsoft code, (4) SQL Server 2005 Express Version, a starter version containing the basic functionality of the full SQL Sever 2005, which is one of the three most popular relational databases used for major websites.
Visual C++ 2008 and Visual C# Express Editions are also on the CD for those who do not want to use VB; but the tutorial text uses VB only.
So to this book just add a computer with any version of XP, Vista, or Windows 2000-2008. You will not need another reference to learn the basics of ASP.NET, VB, or SQL Server since this book is written for those with no prior experience with these Microsoft products. You can move right into a production environment, since for many companies the Express Edition tools are all that will be needed to do all but the most sophisticated applications - just add IIS. The Express Edition tools are also free downloads from Microsoft.
Author Scott Mitchell is a noted authority on ASP. I used and enjoyed his earlier Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0. I am now using his latest book as a refresher after being away from development for the last two years.
R. Parker said
Normally, I find SAMS Teach Yourself Something in 24 Hours slightly frothy--long on white space and illustrations, short on detail. Scott Mitchell excels at balancing the requirements of a complete newbie and those of an intermediate programmer who wants to learn a new skill. If you can't find what you want in the text itself, you can look up the numerous references, including his further 75+ tutorials, which are all available on the web. The Visual Basic programming examples are clearly explained, with sufficient background to avoid the need for a separate VB primer. A great job!
Cort Johnson said
I am a laymen developer just scratching to get my own website up to snuff with Asp.net and deliver a more dynamic product. Computer programming is decidedly NOT my field and that's precisely why I enjoyed Scott's book. I have feeling it's geared just for people like me; it's clearly written and nicely organized, has plenty of information and it takes things at a good steady pace.
There are several good books on asp.net - Imar Spaanjaars book is excellent and I gave it five stars - but Imar throws alot at you. Scott works you through the material more slowly and I really need that at times. Basically I'm using both books - Imar for some more advanced material (nothing in Scott's book on Linq) - and Scott's to really ground myself in the material. I think they're an excellent combo.
Comments