Master advanced topics in ASP.NET 2.0 programming—gaining the essential insights and in-depth understanding you need to build sophisticated, highly functional Web applications successfully. Topics include Web forms, Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005, core controls, master pages, data access, data binding, state management, and security considerations. Developers often discover that the more they use ASP.NET, the more they need to know. With expert guidance from ASP.NET authority Dino Esposito, you get the in-depth, comprehensive information that leads to full mastery of the technology.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 11 Ratings

Not the best for custom controls - 2007-06-19
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book specifically for the 100+ pages on creating custom web controls. That is the only portion of the book that I have used.

The book does not come with a CD for the source code examples, and I have been unable to find them online.

That means I have to type in the examples. I normally don't mind, as it helps me learn. But his sample control, SimpleGaugeBar, has code scattered across two chapters (#13 and 14), all in bits and pieces. The code is intermingled with alternate code examples that (I think) he isn't using in the class, plus code from other classes apparently unrelated to SimpleGaugeBar.

The sample control is also buggy. Of course, it's my guess as to the code that is supposed to be contained in the control, because there is no single definitive listing of the code in the book. I suspect the sample code is simply buggy because the event sequencing the control responds to does not match the way the control was coded.

He separated the creation of the internal list of control objects and the styling code into two routines. That's probably a good idea. But, and this is a killer, if you programmatically change the properties of the control, the internal list of control objects is created *before* the new property value is set, and applies styling after the property is set. This will cause the control to fail, because the styling code will refer to objects that were not created based upon the prior property settings.

The styling code also refers to objects in the internal list of controls by array index number instead of by their id. That's bad form and very prone to error.

I'm not a happy customer.

That said, there is a lot of material on custom controls, and I learned a lot going through it. There are not a lot of resources out there that cover this topic in any depth, and this is one of the few. So, muddled, buggy and disorganized as it is on this topic, I would recommend it (until I found something better).

Worst book ever buy - 2009-03-09
Reviewer Rating:
I have read this author's [..] book ed 2003. It is good, since it contains a lot of useful examples. But his current two books for 2005 are very bad. There is a few of very short useless examples in the books. He just talks about "theory" and lists the spec and a few of web snapshots which are useless for any level readers.

I have read almost all [..] books in libraries. His two books are worst. I do not think that he wrote those books with care. The core book is not core; the advanced is useless.

his two books are totally garbage for me. I never say anything like that in anytime and anywhere else.

Dino - Best ASP.NET Advanced Topics Book on the Market - 2009-01-14
Reviewer Rating:
I own Dino's last book (Programming ASP.NET 2.0 Applications Advanced Topics) and this book continues his excellence in writing about advanced topics in ASP.NET. There are many things that he covers that you come across on a day-to-day basis and he explains those topics well.

The topics in this book are not simple. That's why sometimes I think people who have reviewed this says it can be a hard read. Well, again that's because the topics are NOT SIMPLE. When you are diving into creating your own custom controls, Virtual Path Providers, Asynchronous Commands & Callbacks, Http Handlers and the rest, of course the language is going to have to be pretty verbose...there's not really a good way around this unless you're going to write a 1000 page Head First type of book that explains it in more simple terms.

You will search the internet for a while trying to find this kind of information. I don't know how many times I have opened Dino's book to find what I'm looking for especially when we need to create custom providers, controls and to just really understand the processing of asp.net and all the low-level details that can really become overwelming. Dino does a nice job by not overly explaining things (since you could to way into depth on many of these advanced topics) but also does not leave you short in most of his sections.

His examples are more real-world also as well as his explaination and solutions while talking about a topic. I have been at 3 .coms and all of us used his book to figure out how to do a lot of advanced tasks quite literally by him explaining (examples Virtual Path Provider, custom Http Handlers, etc.).

He also takes the time to show you diagrams more than any book I've ready on the processes. I appreciate this time he has put in to the books he writes. He doesn't just write, he diagrams a ton in his book and this is important because the concepts here are very dry and you can get lost very quickly in all the things that happen behind the scenes in ASP.NET at a very low level.

Anyway, not sure why people are complaining about the expectation of perfection when this book provides a better review of advanced topics than you'll find in any other book as well as the internet itself in a lot of cases.

It's pretty much the Bible for our team in terms of advanced topics for ASP.NET. When in doubt open Dino's book.

ASP.NET 3.5 Applications: Advanced Topics - 2008-05-25
Reviewer Rating:
So whilst you are waiting for the 3.5 version you can get this one second hand.

It covers loads of usefull day-to-day tasks that most web devs have to search google for. Not sure that "Advanced" is the correct choice here, but its tasks that all my senior devs are capable of.
This said, it's a must have for any web developers desk. All of the 2.0 stuff still applies to 3.5 cant wait till the new version that would be more complete.
However, just using his examples expressed in Listview/Datapager controls using LINQ will yeild plenty till his new book comes out.
I can understand why the 3.5 version is delayed (seeing 4.0 is due in December), there is plenty of 'advanced' issues in using MVC to content with, then add microsofts version of Spring/NHibernate to the mix (not stable yet where as the open source Spring/NHibernate is) then you can see why there is a delay.

"ASP.NET 3.5 Applications: Advanced Topics" is a moving target and will be for 6 months(conjecture) or more(features in consenus use a >12months away?).

So why get "ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics"?
It will make your life easier and get projects out the door faster.
All that you learn in this book can be applied to your 3.5 projects (we just use VS2008 and VS2003 for legacy - VS2005 has no further use).
Likewise if your are a commerical C# developer you would use the VSTS version of 2008 due to the productivity gains unless you work in a sweat shop where labour is cheap.

Related:

Using ReSharper4 Power Programming with ReSharper: Optimize .NET Development with the ReSharper Add-In to Visual Studio 2008 (Wrox Briefs) offer substantial benefits for C# 3.5 users this too will have you get quality code out the door faster.

Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 is a welcome addition as Dino really knows his stuff (ASP.NET/AJAX/UI)

Excellent material - 2008-04-14
Reviewer Rating:
This book rocks! I cant find anymore words to say this :D

I keep this book by my computer all the time. Dino has once again provided us with some great information.

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Internet/Online

Sub-Categories:
Internet/Online > .Net
.Net > ASP.NET