This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed is the most comprehensive book available on the Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 Framework, covering all aspects of the ASP.NET 3.5 Framework--no matter how advanced.

This edition covers all the new features of ASP.NET 3.5. It explains Microsoft LINQ to SQL in detail. It includes a chapter on the two new data access controls introduced with the ASP.NET 3.5 Framework: ListView and DataPager. With its coverage of ASP.NET AJAX, this book shows you how to take advantage of Microsoft’s server-side AJAX framework to retrofit existing ASP.NET applications with AJAX functionality. It also demonstrates how to use Microsoft’s client-side AJAX framework to build the web applications of the future: pure client-side AJAX applications. All code samples are written in the C# programming language. (Visual Basic versions of all code samples are included on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book.)

• Take advantage of Microsoft’s new database query language, LINQ to SQL, to easily build database-driven web applications

• Learn how to use the new ListView and DataPager data access controls to build flexible user interfaces

• Take advantage of ASP.NET AJAX when building both server-side and client-side web applications

• Use the AJAX Control Toolkit to create auto-complete text fields, draggable panels, masked edit fields, and complex animations

• Design ASP.NET websites

• Secure your ASP.NET applications

• Create custom components

• Build highly interactive websites that can scale to handle thousands of simultaneous users

• Learn to build a complete ASP.NET 3.5 website from start to finish–the last chapter of the book includes a sample ASP.NET 3.5 web application written with LINQ to SQL and ASP.NET AJAX

CD-ROM includes all examples and source code presented in this book in both C# and Visual Basic.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 38 Ratings

What a good book -- ASP.NET 3.5 Knowledge Unleashed! - 2009-08-07
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book about 4 months ago, placed it in the shelf while i was learning the basics of C# and ASP.NET from other books. I just started learning from this book, and i realize that i shouldn't have wasted time reading all the other ASP.NET books. I am so pleased with this book. It is a huge book as you can tell it has over 1700 pages. It covers topics from the basic to most complex, so far i haven't encountered any errors. I hope to complete this book in 4 days time.The concepts are clearly explained, even my grandma wouldn't have trouble following.Thanks so much Stephen Walther for writing such a good book. I highly recommend this book to anyone regardless of skill level.


ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed

Not complete - 2009-05-12
Reviewer Rating:
To say it is the best in its category is not saying a lot with what's out there. It is a good book but typical of something so large.

Defining beginner can vary greatly. Having coded in VB6 and VBA (classis ASP) for 15 years or better I would be considered a beginner to .NET. And even tho examples are in C# locating the VB samples on the CD wasn't a problem.

The problem I do have with the book is that there is more emphasis on using controls than actually coding. For instance, I prefer to code all of my database access because I can see it - nothing hidden within the control to deal with when debugging. He also left out a very critical part of coding, error handling and how to really use the web.config file. Some of his samples had a lot of web.config code that was not explained so the samples wouldn't always work without tweaking. Finding what needed tweaking took time.

He does seem to know his stuff and there is a lot there. Some of it is beginning level but like a lot of books that have some beginning info, some important stuff gets left out when transitioning beyond. For example, creating a user login. What he gave was very simple. But how do you make those controls more robust. If you can't, then it's strictly beginner.

easy to understand examples and great book. - 2009-04-19
Reviewer Rating:
This is good book for intermediate to advanced asp.net developers. First couple of chapters covers controls, master pages, themes, ans user controls. Later, more than 550 pages devoted to data access. I have read couple of other books but no one covers data access this much. Then it covers site navigation, security, state management, Ajax etc. I don't see any errors in this book, all examples are working fine. This book missing couple of things like - webparts, security basics, Personalization. I am giving 5 stars.

Some Major Models are left out. - 2009-03-22
Reviewer Rating:
I'll preface by saying my comments are on Part 1 of the book.

I feel that Stephen Walther left out a lot of major issues about configuration and models in Part 1.

While the author talks about dynamic compilation in the section called "Understanding Dynamic Compilation", he barely talks about PreCompilation. And he doesn't even touch upon the ASP.Net 1.1 model of compilation which is certainly available in ASP.NET 3.5.

While he covers using code-behind pages and how compilation works with that model. He doesn't mention how compilation works with the single page model.

It's ok to simply certain concepts for one's readers, but don't leave the different code models and compilation models out and they work together in deployment.

Monster of a Book - 2009-07-15
Reviewer Rating:
I got this book because I am moving my projects from 1.1 to 3.5 and didn't want to make the leap without an in depth understanding of "what's new". I'll start by saying that this book gave me exactly what I was looking for. It is beyond thorough. I did have a few issues while reading it but as you will see they have more to do with my personal preferences in tech book than actual flaws on the authors part.

So with that in mind here are a few things to consider about this book...

The author intermixes C# and VB terminology assuming that the reader is proficient enough in both languages to "translate". There were more than a couple times where I needed to look up a term only to discover it is simply something I already know - just the other language's equivalent.

The code samples are amazing. In print it is all C# and on the CD there is both C# and [...]. I did get frustrated at how many times I would be shown how to do something only to discover that the very next (almost identical) code sample was preceded with something like, "While that may work, this next sample is a much better way to do the same thing in less code and is more efficient". UGH! Then why show me the first way??? I am guessing that this book could literally be hundreds of pages shorter if this methodology hadn't been used. This also makes it hard for me to keep this book around as a reference book because I will have to re-read a bit each time I look something up to see if the code I am revisiting is the "good, better or best" version.

I love that everything came on a CD. That really helps when the thought of typing everything out character by character makes your brain bleed. I wasn't able to use the CD as intended (I choose not to run SQL Server Express on my machine) but with a few workarounds I was able to play with the code just fine. Maybe future editions should include scripts to recreate the databases.

There were some mistakes but not too much more than other books of this size but I did notice they got more frequent once I passed the half-way mark. (Yes, I actually read it cover-to-cover.)

Overall, great book and worth the read.

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