Rating:  - Solving Common ASP.NET Problems
Topics covered in this book:
01. Master Pages
02. Tabular Data
03. Validation
04. Forms
05. User Controls
06. Custom Controls
07. Maintaining State
08. Error Handling
09. Security
10. Profiles and Themes
11. Web Parts
12. Configuration
13. Tracing and Debugging
14. Web Services
15. Dynamic Images
16. Caching
17. Internationalization
18. File Operations
19. Performance
20. HTTP Handlers
21. Assorted Tips
While this book is good, and chock full of lots of helpful information, I really think this text is just too big to be very useful. Some books are made to be really massive texts, but when I think of a "Cookbook", I don't expect to be wading through 1,000 different pieces of food before I can cook my meal. I couldn't even begin to imagine how heavy the text will be if there were a version 3 in the future.
A second point to be made is that lots of the "tips" mentioned here are things that you can find in any other ASP 2.0 book, but here they are marketed to be kind of special things that you won't find anything else.
I don't mean to razz on this book and say it isn't helpful for ASP.NET programmers (the new material here in version 2 is nice), but it's really bloated. I feel that cutting out a lot of the extra fat, trimming the size down a couple hundred pages, and focusing on the true "cookbook" suggestions would have been a better approach and made this a more essential purchase.
**** RECOMMENDED
Rating:  - This should be your Second ASP.NET book
While this book doesn't go through all the details of writing an ASP page or application, it does tell you how to do all the little things that are going to occur to you after you commit to writing one. It's THE power programmer's reference.
Rating:  - Not what you expect from O'Reilly
Since the beginning of my web development career, O'Reilly has been the source for me. Perfect reference books, always organized and giving only the information I needed to figure out syntax and parameters. This book, however, falls short on far too many key points that made previous books by this publisher superb.
The main complaint is the rush to get through the descriptive materials, attempting to make a book that is rich in source code seem smaller. While there are many, many pages of code, the description of the code is lacking in concise, easy-to-read language. I understand many technical terms associated with programming; but when I am trying to learn something new or use a reference to find specifics, the last thing that is needed is a mental gymnastic exercise on the latest and most complex terms. If I wanted this, I would have stuck to Microsoft's elitist help files that do little to explain in plain language what I want to know.
If you are looking for a book to help guide you through learning ASP.NET 2.0 from a reference standpoint, this is not the book for you. Even with a very good understanding of ASP.NET 2.0, I would not recommend this book; it seems far too rushed and crammed to be the high standards I am used to from O'Reilly.
If you are seeking books for helping you learn the nuances of ASP.NET 2.0, I would instead recommend the Wrox books. Hopefully this review will save you some time and money.
Rating: - Good Format accurate examples D/L code is there
Well I just D/L The code as well as the sql .bak file all installed as directed.
The book is in a good format I've been doing .Net 1.0 and 1.1 since beta 1 2.0 I have not done much I found this book to be just what is needed to find the answers to the 2.0 questions, if you are a 1.1 experienced programmer and are moving or porting to 2.0 this is well worth the under $50.00 price tag. I can see keeping this one handy for a year or so.
Rating:  - Good book for some purposes, not quite cooked
There are lots of tips and tricks in this book on ASP.NET 2.0 presented in a "Problem: Solution" format that make it a worthwhile timesaver for experienced developers. Code is shown for both VB.NET and C#.
The problem I have is that is little or no discussion of alternatives or the circumstances when a particular recipe should be used. This means inexperienced developers might implement recipes that work for their immediate problem but add maintenance, performance or architectural issues down the road.
For example, there are 72 pages on using the DataGrid control. Except for backward compatibility there is no valid reason to use the DataGrid in ASP.NET 2.0 -- use the GridView control instead. I'd go so far as to say use of the DataGrid in 2.0 is deprecated -- don't do it in new code.
Likewise the data binding examples use SqlDataSource -- never XMLDataSource or, importantly, ObjectDataSource. ObjectDataSource is the way to go when we want to build a modern architecture application where we have separated business logic, data access code, and the UI.
It appears that this book was written quickly to get something out for the 2.0 market before the "2.0ness" of the recipes was fully baked in.
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