Rating: 
Summary: Best Internet Programming Book Ever Written
Review: This book is by far the most polished, thorough, and wide scoped internet programming book that I've read. It gives an expansive review of all the ASP.net components - their capabilities and events compared to html as well as classic asp. It shows the fundamental advantage of "code-behind"... seperation of presentation level html from c# or vb code. It teaches Visual Studio .net debugging, which I found to be very enlightening, as well as practical. It goes deep into web.config modifications and global.asax session state and application state access. Also, they explain xml and well-formed html standards, regular expressions (briefly), error handling (including custom error page redirection), tracing and trace.adx (ASP.net's event logging util), validation using built-in ASP.net controls, ADO.NET, and I could go on forever. If you're familiar with old ASP coding practices, jumping from TextPad to Explorer constantly to debug, this book will turn you on to much more effecient and speedy techniques using Studio.net. If you are someone who needs to know just about everything about web development using ASP.NET give this book a try.I recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Makes the Subject Very Approachable
Review: I've been using this book since its first edition as the text of an ASP.NET class I teach for the last two years, after looking over many others. It covers most of the areas on the subject very well. However, I do provide my own supplemental material on a few missing, but common and easy to handle, topics for building more complete web apps, such as HttpCookie and SmtpMail. Still highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Good book...
Review: This book is extremely good for beginners. If you have already worked on ASP, you might find this a bit boring at some places. Something thats missing in the book is the explanation of how exactly the ASP.NET works with respect to CLR or the overall .NET framework. But there are some topics like data access using ADO.NET, ADO Data Updates, Data Binding are the best and very easy to understand with out much effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Well.....
Review: I am not going to say this is the worst book I have ever read, because it was useful considering that I didn't know anything about .NET before starting on this book. However, there was just way too much space spent on the calendar control, and on setting up the database. More time and pages should have been spent on actually connnecting and using the data! Yes, stored procedures are essential to writing real apps..but I bought this book to learn ASP.NET...not how to write complex sql stored procedures. And if you are going to spend so much time writing the procedures, then at least build an app worth having them! Overall, this book wasn't bad, but it is very frustrating as a reference. It DOES cover the controls very well, but if you want a real world application example, you will be left in the dark. I am now reading Programming C# by the same author, and it is a great book for learning the language...which is what led me to believe this book was going to be good. This book is worth having on your shelf for the control coverage. (Especially the calendar!) For COMPLETE coverage of how to use ASP.Net, buy something else.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent start to ASP.NET
Review: I can't add much to what others have already written in terms of content. What I will say, though, is that Jesse and Dan have done another outstanding job with this book. There is quit a bit of overlap with Jesse's Programming C#, but the good thing is that you get to see how it works with ASP.NET. The one thing that I didn't like about this book is the fact that there is both C# and VB code quoted everywhere in the text. I found it a little distracting initially. As I got used to the idea, though, I ignored the VB and found that it was no longer as much of an issue. I asked Dan about this and he pointed out that it is tough to get seperate C# and VB versions of this kind of book published and that this was the compromise that was reached. I'll deal with it. The content is worth its weight in gold anyway. I have also had the opportunity of attending two successive user group meeting where Jesse presented the material in a six hour crash course. It was extremely fast-paced, but I'd worked through the book previously so that having it presented was more of a refresher than anything else. The insight that Jesse and Dan have on the industry as a whole is clearly from years of experience and I can only say that these are two authors who should be mandatory reading on virtually any subject they choose to write on. Definitely a "must-buy".
Rating:
Summary: Programming ASP.NET (O'Reilly Windows)
Review: This book is very helpful for beginners. There are lot of examples in both VB and C# and builds good understanding about ASP.NET , so I would rank as four stars.
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Summary: Best of the best - The right place to learn ASP.NET
Review: If you are an ASP programmer, or have never programmed the web before, this is absolutely the very best book to learn ASP.NET. The authors start at the very beginning and provide page after page of useful information. Every concept, control, approach and idea is illustrated with an example in both C# and VB.NET (which is great) and the authors provide the complete source code (and an errata) on their web site. There are few books that make ASP.NET this clear, and there are few that cover as wide a range of topics. I just hope they write a book on Windows Forms soon. I was really impressed by this book and I recommend it highly. The book is large, but you can pick and choose the topics that are of interest, and the writing is so good you move through the material very quickly.
Rating:
Summary: Shows how it should be done
Review: 'Programming ASP.NET' should serve as a model for other computer-book authors. If only some of the committee-written Wrox books were this good! The writing is clear and the organization is consistent throughout; the examples are easily duplicated and promote further experimentation by the reader. As a programmer with some 15+ years experience, I can say that I'm always delighted to find a book that makes teaching myself so easy. Well, this book reads as if it were written by someone who knows how to teach. Some books leave the reader frustrated with a lot of loose ends, or complicate things that could be presented simply. This one doesn't. And as an added benefit, it contains absolutely no Microsoft hype.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the time
Review: The book assumes you know everything. I have been coding ASP for almost 6 years and this book is totaly useless when trying to learn ASP .NET. I can't even find how to make a database call using the aspx.vb piece. He only uses the aspx part of ASP .NET. In addition he does not even go over some of the basics on recorsets. For example a standard way to detect you have a record set is if not rs.EOF and not rs.BOF then well in ASP .NET the EOF and BOF are gone and he does not even tell you how to figure out that you actually have a recordset from a stored procedure. The book is lacking in many areas including VB itself. About half way all the VB examples just vanish and everything is in C#. I highly recommend if you are a true ASP developer (most program in VBScript) then do not waste your time on this book. It is not even worthy of a referance because the table of contents doesn't really cover any of the basic stuff. As I said earlier the maker of this book assumes you know the world and rather than teach you he sounds like he is trying to tell you what you already know but the truth is you don't know it hehe!
Rating:
Summary: Everything you want in a primer on ASP.NET
Review: This book is just what I was looking for in a primer. It has excellent coverage of all the basic topics, but goes on to cover more advanced topics as well. In addition, the example programs are short, clear, well written and on point. I've never seen such excellent coverage of all the controls and web forms. The introduction to ADO.NET is excellent, the coverage of User controls and custom controls amazing, and their chapters on deployment and performance are first rate. The book also provides an excellent introduction to web services. No book can be all things to all people, but this is an excellent primer for ASP programmers and for new ASP.NET programmers who want to work in either C# or VB.NET. While showing all the examples in both language does make the book slightly longer, it is well worth it; you get to see how the two languages relate and it makes the book much more interesting. The authors are very careful to make sure that every topic is covered thoroughly and well, but they go beyond that to provide extensive support on their web site. This is a book I can recommend without reservaitons. If you want to learn ASP.NET, this is the book for you.
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