This is a pretty decent book if you have no programming experience what-so-ever. If you do have programming experience (namely C#) then you will find a huge portion of this book completely useless.

This book starts off by teaching you how ASP.NET works. This is good information for any programmer to know, but after you learn that then it's all basics. You learn about data types, variables, properties, loops, events... pretty much all the most fundamental aspects of programming. This is not bad if you are new to programming, but like I said, if you know C# but don't know much about ASP.NET then be prepared to skip almost 1/3 of this book. This book also briefs you on OOP, but you will not feel confident in OOP practices - it's more like you learn the definition of OOP.

This book teaches you how to program using Web Matrix, which is a free web development/pseudo web-server tool. I see a lot of reviewers complaining about this, but I actually believe it's a good tool to start with. I believe it's good, especially for beginners because you aren't required to have IIS installed in order to start learning ASP.NET programming. This is good for new developer that don't have access to higher-end operating systems like Windows XP Professional. If you have Windows XP Home then you can use Web Matrix. I don't believe that it would be hard for a developer to move from Web Matrix to Visual Studio, especially since the IDEs are so similar. A big downside to Web Matrix is that it doesn't really utilize the whole code-behind idea (and no intelli-sense).

In conclusion I recommend this book to new developers that have no C# experience. If you are an experienced developer then I would only pick this book up used for less then $10.00 because you already know a lot of the information this book presents.

Unfortunately this book did nothing for me. I was looking for a beginners guide for ASP.Net that would get me started programming with C# while learning the features of .NET. I chose Wrox because I found some of their other books very useful.

This book wastes alot of time on the Web Matrix which is both pretty useless for the beginner and the professional alike. If you are trying to be an ASP.Net professional, Visual Studio would be your choice. And if you are beginner you want to learn how to program the examples in C# rather than using the automated features of Web Matrix.

Basically I am returning the book and will have to find another company to help me in my web development learning process.

I needed to learn ASP.NET for a new project. I know HTML, VB6 and SQL but had no previous experience with ASP or other internet stuff. I was initially going to buy a similar book from O'Reilly but I like this one way much better even though it has some mistakes, typpos and pictures in the wrong places here and there. Wrox will probably fix it all in a second edition. In the mean time they could fire the people who did the revision. Things that other readers mentioned as a CON, I find a PRO in this book. Example: using WebMatrix instead of Visual Studio. WebMatrix is not as powerfull as VS but it is free and at the same time provides you with an Internet Server, so you can get started right away and don't need to spend extra money with VS. The book teaches you what to download and install and takes you step by step in building a complete website with most of the features you will find around an average+ web site. Also gives some brushes about XML, OOP, CSS and Databases among other stuff. It's a long book 800 pages, but with about 40 to 60 a day, with little more than 2 weeks you will be done with it. I couldn't believe I would go through all of it and I am already in page 500!! It doesn't have any cute pictures or icons or little jokes in it, but it will teach you step by step without telling you to click OK in every dialog. GREAT BOOK! Good luck to you!

The examples in this book are built with a free product called WebMatrix. Most (if not all) professionals must use Visual Studio, which is the preferred development environment for all .NET languages. Learning ASP.Net programming without using Visual Studio will only take you half way to your goal.

WebMatrix is also used as the Web Server, so you won't get IIS exposure. If you are a professional, or want to be one, look for a book that uses Visual Studio and IIS.

I have always been happy with the Wrox series, and this one is no exception.

The book starts out explaining about .net and getting you up and running with some "Hello World!" stuff and basic controls on a webpage. It then goes into various datatypes and describes some of the fun data structures built into .net and some basic stuff on how to use them. It then explains some basic c# functionality, and goes on to explain the object-oriented nature of it. After this, databases are discussed and how to connect to them. Much of the remainder of the book is spent developing a faux application which explores some of the more complex controls, some useful objects, asp.net security and how to use assemblies.

I found the style of presentation to be very clear. A concept is presented. A try-it-out section is given where you copy the code from the book, using the IDE etc. The code is then gone over line-by-line explaining what is going on.

The .net framework is huge, and I appreciated having this book so that I could learn the most important stuff first. There is so much that the book does not talk about, but it sets your feet correctly at the beginning of the path.

At times I would have liked more depth in the explanations of some of the code - things can get a little hand-wavy and you see stuff that just kind of plops there (why does he cast that object now, when before he didn't?).

But really, you can learn what you need quickly from this.

*Caveats*

1) The book assumes you are using the free WebMatrix IDE from Microsoft. Some others in the same book in VB complained that they got confused when they used Visual Studio. You have been warned.

2) The book claims to be "for beginners who have no previous experience with ASP, C#, XML, object-oriented programming, or the .NET framework. A little knowledge of HTML is useful, but not essential." - This is a joke. You need to know SQL, HTML, and have some kind of programming experience (VB or C++ - I know both) for this book to be useful. You don't have to know them very well, but you do have to have a clue. This book is *NOT* for people trying to create webpages with no previous experience.