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The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology

Sometimes developers get bored by reading traditional ASP.NET 2.0 books — they often only provide concepts. But as a developer gets familiar with the framework, they need to explore the hidden secrets of it to experience its full potential. The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks from SitePoint unleashes such secrets. Written by five eminent authors, this book is power packed with tips, tricks, and hacks spanning 17 chapters.

The first two chapters provide a basic introduction to ASP.NET and the .NET 2.0 core libraries. You’ll learn the use of source control, strings, generics, and Web site deployment. The authors then delve deep into data access, form validation, state management, memberships, user controls, AJAX, and e-mail. The authors also cover advanced concepts, such as rendering of bar charts (which I hope will help you build a polling system). The remaining chapters explore error handling, connection strings, web.config, performance, and search-engine optimization. Toward the end of the book the authors examine the techniques to build a screen scraper and data access layer.

The format of The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology is different from traditional books in that chapters are laid out in the form of FAQs rather than plain discussion. Each chapter starts with a short introduction, followed by tips that contain a comprehensive explanation with associated screenshots and source code.

Among other techniques, you’ll learn how to add a drop-down list, export data into Microsoft Excel, and more. The authors deserve special credit because they covered advanced topics, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Many books simply don’t cover advanced topics. An important point to note is that relevant explanations are provided for each code snippet, although it would be helpful if the publisher provides source code in VB, as well as a separate download.

I wonder how the authors failed to provide coverage of the wizard control and Web services. I feel that the authors should have covered some of the tips relevant to ASP.NET 3.5, as well, since the book was written and released during its beta stage. I would also prefer to see coverage of database connectivity using MySQL, LINQ, and Silverlight. Maybe in the next edition.

These minor quibbles aside, The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology will surely help developers troubleshoot specific problems that may occur on their Web site. Although it is not a step-by-step reference manual, The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology does provide guidelines to improve the performance of ASP.NET applications. Beginners should first attempt to learn the basics of ASP.NET before going through this book. From my point of view, The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology will be most useful for advanced developers who want to dig deep and get the most from ASP.NET 2.0.

— Anand Narayanaswamy

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Title: The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks

Authors: Scott Allen, Jeff Atwood, Wyatt Barnett, Jon Galloway, Phil Haack

Publisher: SitePoint

ISBN: 978-0-9802858-1-9

Web Site: http://www.sitepoint.com/books/aspnetant1/

Price: US$39.95

Page Count: 596