Rating: 
Summary: Book completely based on Exam Objectives. 1 Practice Test.
Review: After doing some extensive research on the best way to prepare for Exam 70-305, I found this to be one of the best solutions available in the market for the following three reasons - 1. Throughout the book, the chapters closely follow the exam objectives published by Microsoft. This really helps you stay focused on passing the exam. The explanations throughout the book are excellent if you are already familiar with VB.NET for the Web (includes ASP.NET, ADO.NET, the .NET framework, etc.). 2. Each chapter follows an excellent format that ensures that you are fully prepared to address problems on all the exam objectives. The format - a listing of the objectives, chapter outline, study strategies, explanations of concepts in objectives, step by step demonstrations of important tasks, guided practice exercises, chapter summary, exercises, review questions, exam questions and answers. Of course, this guide is not meant to replace regular books to learn the technology. The guide is only meant to help you prepare for the exam once you have learned the technology through other means. 3. An electronic version of the entire book on CD-ROM along with a practice test from Prep Logic and code from the entire book. The CD claims to be only a preview version which means that it only has enough questions for 1 practice test. There is then a link to the Prep Logic website where you are supposed to find a premium version that has 400% the number of questions and hence more practice tests BUT after following the link, I realized that the site doesn't have a premium edition available for this particular exam (there are premium editions for all the MCSE exams but not MCSD). I was a little disappointed but I think the quality of this guide is adequate to pass the exam. Please note that this information is true at the time of writing this review so check the Prep Logic website when you are reading the review to see if anything has changed in this regard. The other books and online courses that try to help one pass this exam don't seem to be as organized and thorough as this book. The online courses that are well organized are too pricey. For this exam, I think this is your best bet to help you prepare. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: Best book on this topic
Review: am an experienced IT professional and have gone through many books regarding ASP.NET. Man, I have become a fan of Mike Gunderloy after reading this book. This book is the best to teach you ASP.Net. Also, you can easily pass the exam after going through it. The style is superb and the way he has presented the material is by far excellent. I want to thank him for this effort. If you want to learn ASP.Net or pass 70-305, this is the book that you should buy. Normally, I resell the books after reading. But not this one, I will keep it with me, it is worth keeping.
The only negative point of this book is that it has more than 1000 pages. But I think that was required to do justice with the topics. For people who are going for 70-305, I would suggest them to go through it carefully and I assure you that you do not need anything else except MSDN occasionally.
Rating:
Summary: A great start to a MCAD career
Review: As a person very interesting in learning the newest technologies microsoft has to offer, this MCAD training guide provides a solid understanding of those technologies. Every question I had in Web Application and design has been fully explored in this book and even includes information pertaining to updating legacy applications as well. I also found the review questions to be adequately paced and challenging. I have yet to view the accompying CD, but anything more than the book is a treat as this text contains all you will more than likely need in advancing towards your MCAD. Of the other text I read in Web Applications, this one has a myriad of examples to help you along the way...and leaves all the HELLO WORLD examples out - It realizes your smarter than that! Again...I wouldn't of chose another book over this one...better than microsoft press'!
Rating:
Summary: only book you need to pass 70-305
Review: Bought the book, read it and passed the exam. Excellent book. This book gives you just what you need to pass the exam. The review questions and exam questions at the end of each chapter help you grasp the knowledge greatly. The practice test is pretty good at testing your abilibity before you go to take the real test. Definitely recommand it.
Rating:
Summary: Very good choice
Review: Compared to Shapton & Cassidy, I'm very impressed with this book. The things which make this book good are also what make it better than S&C: Zillions of complete examples, straight-to-the-point prose, good formatting and chapter organization, few mistakes, etc. I'd prefer that it have more programmatic examples, but AFAIK, the GUI stuff is what matters. :) If you're also concerned about learning how to do everything programmatically, consider Walther. His book is an excellent counterpart to this one.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book for exam prep
Review: Having worked with VB .NET for over a year I decided to go for my MCAD. This book was recommended in a developer's group so I bought it. It is very good at teaching you almost all you need for the exam but make sure you work every exercise and step by step. The book did not cover user and custom controls as much as I think it should have. The exam I just took and passed had several questions on these. The other reason I only gave it four stars is because there were numerous errors in the exercises as well as typos (there is an errata on que's website but it is woefully incomplete). I must say though that figuring out how to make the exercises work did give me an even better understanding of the subject but it was annoying to have to do this and there was one exercise I could not figure out. Overall I would recommend this book not only for exam prep but also to make you more familiar with web applications. I was impressed enough to buy his book on web services for the 70-310 exam.
Rating:
Summary: Very Helpful Exam Preparation
Review: I had never taken a certification exam before and had little experience with .NET. However, I worked through all the examples in the book, took several free practice exams I found on the internet, and passed the exam on the first try. There were a few questions that were not addressed in the book but, by and large, this was good preparation. The only disappointment was in the PrepLogic exam that was on the CD. It was full of both grammatical and programmatic errors. I wouldn't rely on this practice exam as your only one.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: I liked very much the "how-to" approach that Mike Gunderloy took for this book. It is important to round-up this how-to's with Framework documentation. I think that this book covers very well the exam needs.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: I liked very much the "how-to" approach that Mike Gunderloy took for this book. It is important to round-up this how-to's with Framework documentation. I think that this book covers very well the exam needs.
Rating:
Summary: Must have ASP.NET book
Review: I will recommend this book to any one who wants to learn ASP.NET. This is by far the best book I have come across and I truly feel that at least this time my hard earned money hasn't gone down the drain. Mike explains each and every ASP.NET concept in detail and after the description you go through the exercise to fully grasp the concepts. The real fun begins when the mystery behind all those .NET related arcane words and phrases that we keep hearing and reading about, starts to unfurl and you shout with joy, oh! So that was it! Until now, I was having difficulty understanding Event Handling and their link to delegates but with this book, I read the section on Event Handling with great concentration and after spending around an hour going back and forth and reading and understanding each and every word, now I can say that I can explain Event handling in ASP.NET. Mike has a knack of using language and making you understand the concept in a very easy language, which shows his art over writing technical material, and his good grasp over the topic he is talking about. By simply going through the material you will realize that he has put a lot of effort into writing this book I already have a couple of books on ASP.NET with which I had been struggling to prepare for ASP.NET exam but now I have laid all these books aside and only using this book. Thanks for writing such an informative book. I am sure others will also enjoy and learn from this book as I did.
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