Rating:  - Good overview of technology with some poor design tips
The book is pretty well tooled to ASP.Net 3.5. But it is as much a marketing pamphlet for Microsoft as it is a resource for ASP.Net programming. The author also seems to have some really terrible understandings of OO design. Early in the book he states that you should always favor base classes over interfaces. Sometimes base classes are favorable to interfaces but the founding principal of all common OO design patterns is that you should code to an interface and not an implementation. Frequent use of classes instead of interfaces can create unwanted dependencies on implementations that do nothing more than facilitate unnecessary coupling. Do a little more research before considering any of the design recommendations that the author suggests.
Rating: - Interesting work
Good for updating your knowledge on the new features of ASP.NET,still to be improved in dealing with advanced features.
Rating:  - Shine with insight
Sometimes just recover the earlier ground may not be a bad idea at all, if previous coverage was good and thorough. Dino's new treatment of ASP.NET falls into this category. His earlier books on ASP.NET 1.x and ASP.NET 2 did such good job that for ASP.NET 3.5 iteration, what he needs to do is to repeat those good coverage with new material for new stuff. And I think he achieved this task hands-down.
But for a book buyer, that can pose a delima. I already had Dino's Programming ASP.NET and to this date I am still referencing it again and again, and should I just pay $40 for just the LINQ and Ajax stuff? It is a hard call.
If you are not an owner of Dino's ASP.NET programming books before, buy it and enlighten yourself with Dino's insight. If you are an owner of Dino's previous ASP.NET book, pay close attention to Chapter 19, 20 and 21. Dino's insight on what direction ASP.NET as a web programming platform move forward worths the admission. Ajax is not just a repackaged JavaScript library, it requires rethinking how web programming model should evolve, and Dino seems to understand Microsoft's long term goal.
Rating:  - Disapointed
This book Microsoft recomends for the new 70-562 certification. But this is not a good source if the certification is your primary objective. This is not one training kit, with CD and test simulations. There is no CD at all! I give only 2 stars becuse of this lack on certification source.
Rating: - Good Book for Experienced .net programmers
It's a good book for developers who have past experience with earlier versions of .net. I have always liked referencing Dino's books.
The book itself covers most of the features available with asp.net 3.5 version. There is also one complete chapter over Silverlight programming.
Although, it would have been better if there would have been further more chapters covering Silverlight.
Also missing is any detailed chapter over "REST" feature available with Framework 3.5. Overall the book is really informative.
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