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"ASP.NET v.2.0 â The Beta Version" by Alex
Homer, Dave Sussman and Rob Howard Published by Addison-Wesley I'd like to first talk about what this book is NOT. Contrary to much natural assumption, it isn't
a cheesy upgrade from the author's original work in "ASP.NET v.2.0 â
A First Look" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321228960/qid=1092222716/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-3389463-6907117?v=glance&s=books&n=507846),
with the same content and a few of V2's new properties and methods thrown
in. Rather, much of the book is
completely fresh and re-written, and therefore, a must-read even if you own the
"First Look" title. Each chapter is chock-full of the fundamental V2 concepts
backed by with helpful, relevant code samples that really work, presented in
the easy-to-understand, friendly voice that's a hallmark of Alex & Dave's
work. In my opinion, the following are
the book's redeeming qualities: ï Great
documentation of major ASP.NET V2 APIs with all members, not just "here's
some of the notable properties for this class" ï The book spoons out a healthy dose of the features of Visual
Studio 2005 and touts the drag-and-drop model, but doesn't marry the examples
exclusively to that IDE ï Early alpha testers and SharePoint
enthusiasts will appreciate a great chapter on the new expanded features of WebParts and the Portal Framework ï Healthy
chapters on new datasource server controls, the GridView server control and databinding
in general ï Outstanding illustrations, graphics and examples in covering
Master Pages â a topic that becomes very difficult to grasp for new
readers without appropriate visual aides ï The chapter on personalization, particularly anonymous
personalization, will be greatly appreciated ï The chapter dedicated to centralized application
configuration reads really well ï Great
documentation of the new page-level capabilities of V2 (client callbacks, URL
mapping, cross-page posting) ï Great
discussion of precompilation and SqlCacheDependency
features ï Good
mention of new mobile application development features ï The
book's new, sturdier physical binding supports its lean but stout size (about
600 pages), so it won't fall apart when you thumb through examples; the thick
paper also isn't flimsy With the exception of the whole of the code samples being
presented exclusively in Visual Basic .NET (clearly the preferred language of
the authors), the book is and holistic look at what aspects of V2's feature set
that will have Microsoft web developers salivating. In criticism, I was surprised to not see any contributions
about the new custom control development model, but as I understand it, that's
still in the works. I also was
disappointed not to see anything about the new language features shipping with
VB .NET and/or C#, as such would have been a great tie-in with using generics
with the ObjectDataSource server control. The lack of appendices was also a
surprise. But the positives far outweigh
the few and minor negatives this book sports. In short, if you're an existing ASP.NET developer that's not
yet looked into V2, get this book now.Â
With the first public Beta having been released, check out MSDN,
download the Framework, try Visual Web Developer Express Edition, get the
Hands-On Labsâand make sure to have this book by your side and at your
desk. You won't be disappointed. ---------------------------------------------------
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