Introduction
I have been a big fan of the Dummies book series for the
last 8 years. I can still remember the day when I picked up my first dummies
book from a local book shop. I recently came to know that Ken Cox has been
involved in writing a dummies title for ASP.NET 3.5 and was keenly waiting for
its release to review it. I was quite impressed with the overall coverage of
content when I quickly scanned through the Table of Contents. I found that the
author has also covered advanced topics even though the book is oriented for
beginners.
Inside the Book
The book begins with an overview of various technologies
such as ASP.NET 3.5, AJAX, Silverlight, SQL Server and also provides a short
introduction of various tools like MS Office, Expression Web, Blend, etc.
Chapter 2 examines the installation of Visual Web Developer Express and also
discusses tweaking of the IDE, working of Toolbar and Solution Explorer. The
author demonstrates the creation of an ASP.NET site which is used to analyze
various concepts throughout the book. The last two chapters of Part 1
introduces important controls such as GridView, FormView, Handling User Inputs
and Events using TextBox, RadioButtonList, CheckBox, CheckBoxList and
DropDownList controls.
Part 2 provides a comprehensive coverage of the usage and
management of databases using SQLDataSource, LinqDataSource controls and RSS
Feeds. The author has provided an exhaustive coverage of LINQ which I hope will
help beginners to understand the real concept behind it. The chapters in part 3
enable developers to extend their knowledge of ASP.NET 3.5 which they have
gained from the previous chapters. It provides a detailed coverage of the usage
of style sheets, Master Pages, Skins, TreeView, Menu, BreadCrumb, SiteMap and
Ajax Control Toolkit.
The author has also covered additional concepts such as web
standards, page layouts and usability. You will also master the steps required
to build your own ListView control, creation of Rollover effects, graphics and
images. The part ends with a short coverage of Silverlight and also examines
the steps required to display rich media content with MediaPlayer control in
addition to the application of Flash in ASP.NET 3.5. I have not seen the
coverage of the above mentioned advanced concepts in any other book. I would
like to see more content on Silverlight in the next edition of the book as it
is gaining popularity among .NET developers.
The penultimate part examines the usage and implementation
of creating secure web applications with the help of various controls. The
author has devoted a separate chapter to demonstrate the creation of a shopping
cart with profiles in addition to the coverage of concepts related to
validation. The author also maintains a website for the purpose of this book
and it can be reached at http://www.kencox.ca.
I must say that that the book covers all aspects of various
concepts in a step-by-step way with the help of screenshots, highlighted source
codes and tips at relevant places. I found that even though the layout of the
book is similar to other Dummies titles, the font used to encapsulate source
codes are not uniform as many code samples are given in a smaller font which I
hope will not be too hard to read. The book also provides a cheat sheet card
which lists the various Query Clauses and Aggregate Functions included with
LINQ along with a short description and sample syntax.
The final part discusses the handling of errors and
exceptions and also debugging related aspects including a short coverage of the
implementation of tracing in an ASP.NET 3.5 application. You will also learn
several tips to effectively deploy ASP.NET 3.5 applications. The author also provides
a list of useful additional references, like names of various web sites, blogs
maintained by eminent developers, etc, which I hope will help you enhance and
update the skills you have gained from the content.
Conclusion
I must say that the author has taken a huge effort to
present the complex topics in a simple way. I must point out that the book
helps a beginner to learn ASP.NET 3.5 quickly and in a user-friendly manner. I
very much liked the style of presentation and highly recommend the book for all
level of developers.
About the Book
