Kulrom: As I Said before, not every book is for every reader. There are probably 30 or 40 ASP.NET 2 books already (I haven't counted them already) and I'd guess that at least 1/2 of those are good for some readers but I'd be hard pressed to find 1 book that's right for everyone. I think MythicalMe did a good job of explaining the design goal of the book. If we didn't explain that well on the book cover, the introduction, the decsriptions on Amazon or here, that's a problem but I think the desicription is consistent with what the book delivers.

Tell us, what books on ASP.NET do you like? Feel free to list the books from other publishers you read that are good, there's no competitive censorship in that regard here. I know a lot of people rave about the Sams Unleashed book's for example as well as MS Press's books by Dino Esposito. Are those some of the ones you get more value from?

Jim Minatel
Senior Acquisitions Editor
Wiley Technology Publishing
WROX Press
Blog: http://wroxblog.typepad.com/
Jim's Book of the week: No book this week - Donate to the Red Cross!

Kulrom,

I want to add my 2 cents here and give some good advice. Take a deep breath and go outside and walk around the block a few times. Clear your head. Take the pack off.

Now: this book is a godsend. It not only helps you learn ASP but it also tells you how to incorporate good multi-tiered design in your web app. There is much effort in the book to helping you really create a well-structured app instead of just telling you what this or that control does or giving tantalizing tidbits about how things work 'under the hood'. Its like having a good teacher right there with you as you work. When I picked it up, I had no web development experience at all and only a cursory understanding of C# (I'm a VB6 refugee). With this book and a couple of C# books, I am now off and running.

Yes the book is hard. After having read it, I can see that Marco set out to make good ASP programmers out of us. He went to a great lengths to do that. It was undoubtedly hard for him and its hard for us too but, as they say, 'if it hurts its good', right? You want easy, try something else but where will it get you? You need to get into this book and make a committment. Live in it for a couple of months. The effort will pay off for you.

Well, honestly i beleive that i missed the point of the book. jminatel, you are right that not every book is for every reader. It seems my expectation was wrong. This is "hands on" book with copy/paste method and later getting analise of the code while i was expecting to learn how to do that by only myself. Anyway, the spent money is spent money. Hmm maybe i can give it to someone as present hehehe :)
Ok guys sorry for my reactions ... it's obvious that this book is very popular and that the same has a lot supporters.

Maybe I can jump in here. I posted a similar comment/complaint a while ago.
The book that I find most parallel to this is Rocky Lhotka's expert business objects series (APress) They spend a lot of time laying out a model and explaining why decisions were made. It took me a great deal of work to understand what he was talking about, and one group I work for thinks his stuff is too complicated. I thought this was a good alternative. The difficulty I had is that after typing in the code from the book, I got stuck on the first chapter, and the second... I've seen several people on the forum with the same problem. You need to start with the whole application and then work backwards. Then it's very difficult to tease things apart so you are looking at the issue addressed in each chapter. I know you have an "Instant Results" line, but maybe you need something that is intermediate to those and this.
I hope that helps.

Yes bobhagan, you are right about everything you said. This book is very popular among developers who care only to make something ... if you are one of those who want to know what's happening behind the scene this is not book for you. I cannot just copy/paste things and then be unable to maintain the website that i've made. That's very bad if your client has told you to change smtg and you have no clue where to start from.
Actually, i was wondering why this book is written at all. Instead marco could attach the project and explain it in short articles/stories to his blog. Anyway the rest of the book is only asp and c# code. Hmm it seems i told this ones. Ok i give up. Have a good time reading it.

Kulrom: I'm not going to disagree with you on whether or not the book is good for you, but I will disagree with this statement you made: "if you are one of those who want to know what's happening behind the scene this is not book for you."

I just don't see that when I look at the chapters in the book. take chapter 3 for example: you get more than 50 page describing the design of the solution before the 10 pages of code (which are more than just cut and paste too, there's description there as well). Or chapter 4, there's 32 pages of designing the solution before getting to the 35 pages of coding interspersed with explanation. That's similar throughout the whole book.

If there's one thing I should have made clearer in the descriptive copy, it's the expected pre-requisite knowledge for the book: this is not a first book for "learning" ASP.NET or ASP.NET 2.0. Marco's expectation is that readers know (or can figure out themselves) much of the detail of the individual functions, pieces, parts. What's really unique here is showing all of those working together in one well-thought-our site. So in that sense, you are right, he's not going to teach every nut and bolt, like he says on page 118 "It's outside the scope of this book to provide a more exhaustive coverage of every method and overload..." Or as part of the foreword says "Most offerings in this area are mainly reference books that dissect every little detail of version 2.0 of ASP.NET or the .NET Framework and that – in the best cases – provide a short listing to illustrate each feature. Marco’s book has a radically different approach: he explains how you can assemble all ASP.NET 2.0’s features and leverage its power to design, develop, and deploy a full-featured Web site."

Bobhagen: You are dead on correct in comparing this to Rocky's expert business books. :) Thanks for the suggestion on the "intermediate" level book as well.

Jim Minatel
Senior Acquisitions Editor
Wiley Technology Publishing
WROX Press
Blog: http://wroxblog.typepad.com/
Jim's Book of the week: No book this week - Donate to the Red Cross!

Obviously we read a different book. Please follow me this time. Ah but before just notice that i am not a n00b but rather experienced developer (for god's sake in the past i was working more on Windows apps than web but it doesn't make much difference anyway).
Look, the thing i am trying to explain here is that at the end you will end up with good project which could me modified by your needs but you will need a months to analize and figure out what's hapenning behind the scene. All those classes and stored procedures. How do you explain them? By puting the copies of them in the book?
Hmm maybe it's hard for me to point out what i really mean cuz of the difficulties with my English (English is not my native language) but anyway the book explains nothing.

Ok let me ilustrate. Just take chapter membership and user profiling for example; it explains almost nothing. Rather in this chapter you can only read and analize the code either asp or c# ... oh of course there are SP's too. Rather i was expecting model as it follows below otherwise you should tell me "take a look at the project".
Problem-Design-Solution. Well design part is missing. Something like this:

1. Add this to the .config file ...add this too ...and so on
2. Drag the login control and double click it then type this procedure which checks into DB for the credientals ...
3. Drag LoginView control etc. etc.

Well, you can work from code view but it makes no difference. In that case only the book will be really useful. Like this I could only download the project sample and learn from it. mhn002 already did that http://p2p.wrox.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=48538 without the book. Right?


Anyway if you say the book is good than i cannot say anything that will have some impact on your opinion about it. If you ask me i would say the book is good for those who want to do things by copy/paste and not care later about it.
They say: if you change someone's code it doesn't mean it's your code but, obviously a lot of people do not care about it. So, carry on. Peace :)

You're both right. I found the design reasoning quite compelling, and the most parallel to Rocky Lhotka's books. That's why I bought this book.

However as kulrom is explaining, its difficult to implement the individual chapters. Everything is linked together.

I found the first chapter the most difficult - I have not used css previously, and trying to make my version work was a nightmare. Css is the direct opposite of WSYWIG. I needed a smaller header and I couldn't get things adjusted so the menu even showed. There are so many elements in that one page! That may be what he means when he says you have to use the code as is. If you modify it, it breaks, and it takes hours of effort to fix it.

I bought the Instant Results book and discovered there that the home page and an administrative page were separated, with a great deal of the complexity moved into the admin page. That approach might make the first chapter here more manageable, and might also improve performance. I wasn't saying there should be an intermediate book, but an intermediate approach.

>1. Add this to the .config file ...add this too ...and so on
>2. Drag the login control and double click it then type this
>procedure which checks into DB for the credientals ...
>3. Drag LoginView control etc. etc.

This is what you'd get in a Step-By-Step or Beginners book. This is not the level this book targets. If you read the book's summary carefully you'll see that this book is aimed at people who already have some experience with ASP.NET (any version).

And I would never consider Windows Forms and ASP.NET to be similar in any way. These are radically different skills. The only common denominator is the programming language. The OOP and functional model of both of these is so different that Windows developers need to start over again when learning ASP.NET. I did it myself. There's no dishonor in dropping back a bit to make sure you get a good foundation in an entirely new way of developing applications. With WPF on the horizon this is going to happen to the Windows programmers soon...they'll all be newbies all over again (me among them, of course).

But if you have solid programming experience under your belt you can move more quickly than a totally new developer. But you'll have to start at the same starting line as him - and then you can run quickly from there, as long as you cover the course without skipping any legs.

By the way, the Amit Kalani Training Guide for the 70-315 certification test is full of these kinds of step-by-step exercises - it's a terrific way to learn. When you finish a book like that you'll be looking for a book on architecture, and this book will carry a new meaning for you then. And this will cover the important new 2.0 features that Kalani doesn't cover in that book.

By the way, I wanted to see a book series by one author. I think there should be 3 levels, where he ensures you get a good foundation first, and then he builds real sites on those foundations. By having the same author you'd be assured of not missing things - book 2 would make assumptions only about what you learned in book 1. And book 3 builds only on the first 2. That way there's no gaps, and you'd have a consistent learning experience. But it would be a big job for someone to do that, and a big committment for a publisher. It's not real likely in today's fast-moving world. Technical books only have a lifespan of a couple years now.

Eric

Ok means you understand it literally that i am asp.net n00b .. well i am not here to show how good programmer i am but rather to point out that this book should't exist. Btw, i own one of the best score at brainbench for asp.net. Anyway, you said nothing about my note that DESIGN part is missing. Ok, just take a look at the SAMS's ASP.NET 2.0 unleashed. That book explains everything and you will find a lot examples where the author tells you put that there, now type this etc. especially i like the parts where he analizes the code with the reader together. And again that book is intended for already experienced developers. Hahahaha the book is 3kg (you cannot care it with you as usually you do - in the bedroom, bus etc.)
Now Please, notice that all people who post here talk only about the modifying and adapting the things. Doesn't it tell you something, that *every* post for this edition of this book talks about adapting stuff?
Whatever your try to discard my opinion is not very professional. It is probably cus i criticise the book. Anyway, thanks for the answer and of course i will not return the book but rather i will keep it to reminds me that i should 1st find the e-book and check it out before i pay for the hardcopy. (e-books are great for that, as you can't learn/read from it all the time ... you have to buy something B&W)

bobhagan> you are right. Couple days ago i was to visite my friend and he has bought the book asp.net 2.0 Instant Results. I droped a fast look at the book and at least they clearly state that the book covers only how to get instant results and how to implement them. Very fair unlike the book i bought that claims to show you problem-design-solution while design part is missing.