very nice book, easy to follow. include most basic concept of the ASP.NET 2.0

I'm only about 1/3 of the way through this book (I just finished hour 8) and am already frustrated with it. It seems to be a book all about how to use Visual Web Developer, not about how to program for ASP.NET. It relies completely on the tool to generate all your code, and rarely shows you the resulting VB.NET code, only the HTML that gets generated once you execute it. If you want to learn how to program in the ASP.NET world, you're better off with a book on VB.NET or C#.NET, as this book doesn't cover it well.

UPDATE 7/23/08 - I'm now finished with the book, and my opinion hasn't changed. This book tells you what ASP.NET is capable of doing (and it's capable of a lot of nice things), but if you don't plan on using MS Visual Web Developer, this book will do you no good. It does not show the code that it generates, only the resulting HTML. Also, I tried using several of the programs the MSVWD created, and they were incompatible with our web server configuration. This code appears to be highly configuration dependent, so if you can't control the configuration of your web server (and I can't for the class I'm taking), this book will help you even less.

This is as close as I ever hope to come to a perfect how to do it book.
If you know anything about programming with almost any GUI IDE, this book (alone)will teach you how to build complete, functional, real-life, non-trivial, database, web sites and applications.

It requires no extra purchase. It does have examples for Access mdb files, Microsoft SQL databases and MySQL. Except for Access, the other databases are no-cost free downloads.

It uses and includes the Microsoft Visual Web 2005 Developer IDE.

If you are not familiar with SQL it will get you off to a useful start but you will soon need some additional help there. I recommend Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases by Damien Foggon.

It will not teach a non-programmer anything useful.
It is NOT a "You can" book that tells you what can be done but not how to do it.
It is NOT copied from the help files.
It will not teach you HTML, XML, or any other *ML. It will show them and explain what they are.

Unfortunately ( Its only failing in my opinion. ) it does not show you how to publish the web sites you create. The author would argue that that is a topic for another book and I can't really argue with that opinion.

It does start at the beginning with how to use the IDE. It provides examples of every step required to create complete web based sites/applications with database support. including how to use and customize all the commonly used windows controls. It also includes user access control.

It is especially good for a VB programmer who wants to move from client side applications to web based browser/dot.net applications.

Way to go, Scott!

I don't often review books but I felt I had to on this one. Coming from a classic ASP background I think this book really helped me get my feet wet in ASP.Net 2.0. It had easy to understand examples on using the IDE to accomplish a lot of the common things you would normally do while developing.

Granted, the book does not get deep into best development practices or higher level concepts such as Data Access Layers and different types of databases and methods for accessing them. What it does do, is give you a very good starting point if you've never done any .Net development.

After you absorb this book and understand what you can do, you can move onto a more full featured ASP.Net book that covers a lot more.

I actually emailed the author and asked what book he would recommend next and he pointed me in the right direction. Overall a good book to start with.

shipped and arrived really fast and the other 2 books i had ordered, it turned out i didn't need them and amazon took them back without any problems and i got my refund. this book is great!! thanks amazon!