Rating:  - Same old same old
I was very disappointed in this book. It makes the same mistake SO MANY computer books make, that renders it useless to the novice. It breaks the universal, critical, #1 rule in writing computer instruction books: NEVER NEVER NEVER use code in your examples that hasn't been covered yet! Authors of these books have NO IDEA how infuriating this is to a novice user who is struggling to learn, yet after decades of flashy, overpriced new computer books, it continues. For example, in the first few chapters, runat=server is used three different ways:
runat = 'server'
runat = server/
runat = 'server'/
...with NO explanation of why. Fact is, ALL of them work, and you can actually just use
runat = server
and it works just fine. This book is FULL of stuff like this, and it makes the novice learner want to smash it against the wall. Sigh. ...
Rating:  - OK but not the best
Get ASP.NET Unleashed by Sams Publishing instead of this book.
Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 21 Days was the first ASP.NET book I bought and I did learn a lot from it. However, the code examples do not all work. I tried the example to add a button programmatically, but could not get it to work. A line was missing from the code (it's not enough to declare the button object, you have to do a New() also). The author does know a lot about the subject, but I think this book was rushed to market. Also, it's now almost a year old.
I do refer to this book from time to time, but the ASP.NET Unleashed by Sams is the book that usually answers my questions.
Rating:  - Some writers know how to get the job done
The writer has an excellent style. He starts by explaining the web programming world at a high level and then moves into ASP.Net specifics. I'm an experienced ASP classic programmer. I have two other books on ASP.Net. Actually this book isn't mine, I borrowed it from a co-worker. I recommended it to him, but not to myself, because I thought I would need a faster paced book.
I was wrong. Other books don't explain the important paradigm shift that .Net brings.
Rating: - A good book to start programming in asp.net !
The book covers a lot of aspects of asp.net, some c#, vb.net and xml. This is good for developers shifting from classic asp to asp.net. Users will have a grasp of the common concepts and new syntax of asp.net. Although I wouldn't recommend this book to a newbie or someone without web programming experience.
Rating: - Not as good as the cover promises!
I have read through the book and I should say this book is like other last-minute-published ones, filled with numerous typos, especially in the code, (in snippets and the final project). The typos and lost parts make it a real challenge to learn ASP.Net using the book and impossible to do it in 21 days.
If I remember correctly, this line of TY in 21 days, are supposed to help people learn new stuff in a short time, while in here we have a book which makes you wonder how to solve the writers mistakes and get the code working!!!
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