I, too, am disappointed with the book. To find out the book started out on the wrong foot is inexcusable (please find yourself a different technical reviewer for future books!). My main concern now is investing 2-3 months going through the Try It Outs and not having a completely functioning website.

Are there any other “show-stoppers” beyond Chapter 6 that will cause major problems? Hopefully, I can work past minor typo’s and instructions that may not be totally accurate or complete. The author can provide answers to those issues I can’t resolve. But I need assurance that I won’t run into a massive roadblock that will cause me to give up and not complete building an ASP.NET website.

I don’t want to go back to ASP.NET 4.5.1 (which uses Web Forms); I got this book to learn the latest techniques for ASP.NET MVC.

I agree.
I have used these books for several years now as the textbook for my ASP .NET / C# classes where I teach. In all that time, they have been a tremendous resource.

This one, however? I switched to it at the last minute before classes started this year, thinking it would be good for students doing later work in Azure and mobile apps development, so I didn't have time to review it or work through it first (big mistake on my part).

After all kinds of hassle actually purchasing it (because we're in Australia, and the storefront wouldn't let us select Australian states for billing - again, the first time in over five years this has been a problem), we finally got it...only to find I'm having to re-write all the "Try It Out' sections myself so the students can reproduce what they're supposed to be doing.

After paying $50 for a textbook, my students shouldn't need me to give them errata for every chapter in order for them to reproduce the exercises.

Not very happy.

I feel your pain here and i am new to asp.net and this book has turned me away from it fast . It is not the errors and there is a lot but i am willing to look past that because problem solving is a big part of learning . However it is the lack of support for this book, it is like the author of this book just does not care . But at the end of the day this just hurts Wrox and the author .

I'd like to step in here and ask that everyone involved in this and a couple of other threads about the book remember to be kind to people who try to help.
If you look at the 10 or so threads in this book's forum you'll see that the author William provided answers to 7 or 8 of them, including multiple back and forth troubleshooting answers with some of the posters needing help with versions for example.
So, to say that the author doesn't care or that the editing didn't exist isn't accurate or helpful. If there's a specific error that's bugging you, please by all means post a question about it and we'll encourage the author any anyone else to help. But if the posts are just blanket criticisms, don't be surprised if you get no response from staff or authors.

__________________
Jim Minatel
Associate Publisher, WROX - A Wiley Brand
Did someone here help you? Click on their post!

Jim,

Criticism WILL get us nowhere ; this forum should be for solutions to specific questions. And I agree that Mr. Penberthy has been responsive to questions, and the text is well written and easy to understand. However, Aldaron points out that the reader shouldn’t have to redo every Try It Out section. If Aldaron went through the entire book and found serious errors in each chapter, that indicates a haphazard technical review. No book is 100% flawless, but excessive errors can bring doubts about the technical correctness of all the material.

I have two choices: I can give up and assume that rest of the book will only cause further frustration, or I can trust that the author has provided reasonable and tested Try It Out sections that will result in a full-featured RentMyWrox ASP.NET website. I’m choosing the latter.