Rating: 
Summary: Maybe not for pure VB.NET programmers
Review: I bought this book mainly to learn ASP.NET and since I am an experienced ASP and VB programmer I thought it would be nice to go through once with the VB examples and a second time with the C# examples. Sadly tho the difference in the authors become very apparent around chapter 10 and 11. From here a lot of the examples are only given in C# and the VB.NET code just ignored. The first 9 chapters I thought was very well covered, I can only assume that chapters 10-12 was written by the other author. I am very dissapointed that this had occured, up until this point I really enjoyed reading it. Now I have to sadly by ANOTHER book, in the hopes of getting a clearer VB.NET with ASP.NET understanding. If C# is your game, then this book is very good. So far I just found one example that didn't work (a whole section of code seemed to have been excluded) but other than that good book. Only on chapter 12, so hopefully once I hit 13 the the VB.NET guy is back.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the Best
Review: I have one word for my experience with this book - "frustrating." I don't regret the money for the book. But I do regret the weeks of time I put in this book.Yes, this book has an easy-to-follow coverage of the "theory" of ASP.Net, but maybe too easy. I wrote my first 2-star review of this book in October of 2002. Now I feel even stronger that this book is one of my worst buys in technical books. I think this book has 3 fatal flaws: 1, it doesn't give you a clear illustration of the .Net framework. ASP.Net uses object-oriented programming and compiled code, which is drastically different from classic ASP, and more like servlet/JSP. How does the .Net framework handle inheritance, namespace, and so on? What methods does one system class have? And what methods are inherited from the parent class? How are .aspx files, .cs files, the project, and the solution related to each other? Without a thorough coverage of the code-behind, resource files and their relationship, it's difficult to tell why things work or break. Unfortunately this book lacks this coverage. From this ASP.Net book, you are taught to be an auto-transmission car driver who doesn't know how to change motor oil. In comparison, a typical servlet/JSP book starts from servlet then moves on to JSP. A good one explains the nuts and bolts that make up your web.xml and other resources. The servlet/JSP approach teaches you to be a driver/mechanic combo so you are sure how your little car or app runs. While other OOP books use UML to illustrate class inheritance and user interaction, this book doesn't have a single diagram to illustrate the .Net framework and ASP.Net. That's even worse than Alex Homer's classic ASP book of 1997. If you used classic ASP and Java/J2EE for several years, you've certainly seen better programming books than this ASP.Net book. Liberty's writing style is far behind and backwards. 2, this book doesn't work well with Visual Studio .Net. If you choose VS.Net, it's hard to even start with this book. I tried about ten of the examples from Chapter 4 through Chapter 11. Most of my test pages broke, even though I imported the code directly from the book's website. In order to make the examples work in Visual Studio .Net, you have to follow a specific order in setting up the files, or you have to make changes to the source code from the book. You assume all these steps and changes are covered in the book? Nope! It's possible that Liberty wrote the script before the official release of VS.Net. Yeah, we know beta of VS.Net [was bad]. But then the value of this book is very much discounted. Visual Studio .Net has its own rules of the game - how projects are set up, how resources are called and what files are involved. This book doesn't give adequate coverage on this topic. For instance, how do you take several existing files, copy and replicate their business logic in Visual Studio .Net? Where to find documentation of a specific class from within Visual Studio .Net? If existing data sources don't work in ASP.Net, how to let Visual Studio .Net help you create new data sources? These tasks are easily doable, but don't expect this book to tell you how. 3, you don't see industry-strength samples in this book. Most of the sample code can only be classified as junior-level play code. Look at real world websites using ASP.Net, then look back at this book, you know the difference is like that between a scooter and an SUV. Just having an ADO.Net page to list customer names is far away from satisfying your customers. Coverage of ADO.Net in this book is less than modest. Without database programming, what real world job can you do with ASP.Net? And Liberty spent 140 pages just on server controls, including that Calendar control! Doesn't a technical writer need and have a focus for his book? Sample code in Chapter 11 of the book works, but is not clean. It won't pass the code review in my team, at least. This book is fine, only if ...
you don't expect to understand the object-oriented side of ASP.Net,
or if you don't plan to use Visual Studio .Net,
or, if you don't want to write real-world applications using ASP.Net.
Otherwise, your valuable developer's time is on risk - high risk, that is.
Rating: 
Summary: It is an okay book...
Review: Good book for most part, except the following: [I am using negative writing here, because, the positives are obvious and outweight significantly negatives. Therefore...]
1. Too heavy to hold and read. [My hands are still paining!]
2. Heavy because, the author wasted too many pages, by unnecessarily including both VB and C# code for each example. Bought the book thinking that most will be in C#, which it is, but vB should be a separate book. VB.NET won't find c# useful and vice versa.
3. Why was the author obsessed with Calendar control? God way too many pages/time spent on one simple thing, whereas others could have gotten more attention. Rename the book to: "Programming ASP.NET Calendar control plus some others".
4. Book does not cover advanced topics and book is rushed towards the finish. Overall good book if you want to get started on ASP.NET, but if you are okay to start with middle level to advanced level, don't buy this one, may be there are books. I will be looking around.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Overview of ASP.NET
Review: This book is a great overview of ASP.NET programming. The author shows examples in both C# and VB.NET (this, however, makes the book thicker than the content would warrant). I have found the book to be well-edited, and the layout is very good. I would definitely recommend this book over the rather patheric Intro to ASP.NET course MS-2063 offered by Microsoft. This will be an invaluable tool for me for at least 6-12 months while I become proficient in .NET Web programming.
Rating:
Summary: go read "4guysfromrolla.com" and msdn instead
Review: This book covers ASP.NET basics for people familiar with C# or VB.net, and the web in general. However there are a few bad things about it: * Most examples are included in both C# and VB.net. The examples first appear as complete listings, then again as fragments, interleaved with explanations of what the various pieces do. This means that there is so much redundant information that it becomes tireing after a while. The fact that the author sometimes refines the examples over several iterations, reproducing the entire source again, makes the book even more bloated. * It's all hobby code. Database connections are not closed after use, and this is such a trivial mistake that one wonders: "being an asp.net novice, how many other things will this book teach me to do wrong". SQL Injection is another thing. I thought one always should use parameters for commands, not construct them using a string builder. The book has no value as a reference, but that would be needless anyway since msdn and the .net framework sdk documentation does a great job at that. All in all there are some good things in this book, but it seems to be a "first generation" asp.net book, based on an experienced programmer tinkerting with new technology; not the sum of experiences of someone that has in-depth knowledge of asp.net. And I suspect this is a widespread flaw of asp.net books on the market.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Book for Learning ASP.NET On the Market
Review: ~This is what a primer should be: clear, well written, comprehensive, excellent. The coverage of the controls is first rate, the coverage of working with Data is unparalleled. This is a complete introduction to programming ASP.NET that goes beyond the fundamentals to teach advanced topics. The examples are given in both C# and VB.NET which is helpful in many ways, and each example is short, to the point and well conceived. The descriptions and analysis are first-rate. The book covers all
Rating:
Summary: Unusual lucidity
Review: This book jumps out of the pack for its clear, well-written, and often thorough introduction to ASP.NET. Unlike a great many authors in this field, Jesse Liberty writes well and clearly. He engages the reader one properly-explained step at a time in logical progression and liberally provides code examples, virtually all of them in *both* VB.NET and C#.NET code. This is the one of several ASP.NET books I - a long-time VB and ASP programmer - bought that turned on the lights for me. A chapter on securing ASP.NET applications is alone worth the book's price. However the book fails where so many in this field do: it hurls itself into explanation of code and framework features and how to use them without providing even rudimentary instruction in planning and designing ASP.NET applications. The serious programmer won't find concentrated chapters on best practices in architecting for the .NET framework, suggestions for maximum efficiency in application development and its products, real-world tips and scenarios for implementation and installation, or other issues outside the mere writing of code. Although tidbits appear throughout the book while explaining code, even experienced programmers from other environments may be left thinking, "OK, but how do I start?" Well, with more reading. Applied .NET Framework Programming by Richter is one book which offers a few chapters on issues like these, and the MSDN site now has many articles, but I'm still hoping to find a great single guide to building great ASP.NET apps.
Rating:
Summary: Good for beginners
Review: I use this book to move from VB6 to ASP.NET for some new projects. I have some knowledge of past ASP, but little experience implementing it. For me, the book was a very good tutorial. Don't pretend, as other reviewers, to have all in one solution: it's a tutorial. If you already know ASP.NET I recommends you another one for reference and more advanced topics and specialized areas (security,web services, XML, etc.)
The double code presentation (C# and VB.NET) in almost 99% of the examples, increase the book and gave you the wrong impression of covers all bases deeply. But this approach, help you consider, in case you don't already, what language fits you best.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introductory Book
Review: I have several books describing the .net ASP platform. The examples in both VB and C# in this book are a great idea. What is lacking-and this applies to all the books on asp.net that I have read and used- is the methodology of applying dynamic data-driven control manipulations. Perhaps this is a result of an incomplete release of this framework by MS corp. Overall, the .NET framework does not impress me as a professional tool set; perhaps next version will fill in the gaps. But if you need to do the 80% no-brainer, trivial stuff then this book lays it out for you in a very clear manner.
Rating:
Summary: For ASP.NET Beginners and intermediate programmers too!
Review: A previous review panned this book for being for beginners; but that is what is great about it. This book teaches you everything you need to know to write ASP.NET applications. That review complains that this book is weak on Delegates, Threading, Remoting, and Event handling but those topics are not ASP.NET; and Liberty covers them in detail in his Programming C# book (which is also excellent). Where this book does shine is in covering ASP.NET, and all the aspects of writing a powerful internet application with ASP.NET. Excellent coverage, not only of controls and web forms, but also of data display and binding, interacting with databases, deployment and so forth. This book is highly recommended.
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