Rating: 
Summary: Still looking for a good book on server controls...
Review: At the time of writing this review, I could only find 2 books dedicated to the subect of ASP.NET Server Controls (the WROX book being the other one). I purchased the Microsoft Press one and have found it to be a very complex read. So far I've painstakinly made it through 430 pages. The book is loaded with examples, but for any significant examples provided I've found myself flipping back (or forward) through the pages in order to find usually limited explainations as well as constantly going out to the .NET Framework SDK Documentation in order to figure out what is going on. You will learn things from this book, but I found it to be extremely slow going- not what I had hoped for.
Rating:
Summary: Book is good but need another book also
Review: Book is good but need another book also
at the beginning level. I find this books
more dificult to go through than the wrox books
but there is very books that cover this area
Examples for chapter 13-14 don't work.
I would prefer if the examples were more simple
and explained better.
I will finish this book soon, but I do know that
I will need to get another book on server control
with better explanations to fully understand this
technology.
Rating: 
Summary: What technical writing should be
Review: I almost never comment on the work of other authors, but this book is so good, so well written, so well organized and so useful that I simply have to praise it. This is truly what technical writing should be: clear, concise, well-organized, well presented, with useful exercises. If you need to learn how to write ASP.NET custom controls, in detail and in depth, this is clearly the book to buy. I recommend it highly. -Jesse Liberty
Rating: 
Summary: Great book IF you already understand event programming
Review: I came to this book with considerable experience in ASP, and with fair experience over the past year with ASP.NET, mainly in C#. I also have some experience with Java and object-oriented programming. I wanted to learn how to create custom web controls, and this is one of the few books on the subject. The authors are members of Microsoft's ASP.NET team, so they know the inside story, and technically, they show their knowledge of the topic. However, the book basically assumes not only that you know C# thoroughly, but also that you understand the event model that is more along the lines of desktop applications. Chapter three hits you with an abstract discussion of component and event programming that is difficult if you're not already familiar with the topic, and the book never really looks back after that. I struggled through the first thirteen chapters before giving up, not feeling like I have a grasp of how I could build controls. At this point I'll either have to painstakingly go back through much of the book again, hoping to catch on, or else find another resource. The other problem is that when introducing a topic, the text rarely gives a good explanation of why the topic is important; instead, it jumps into details of interfaces and methods. A good example is in chapter nine, when the book turns to processing postback data. Sure, it's important that the control be able to interact with the data in a form, but what does that mean for the control? An example of how this would work and be important would be key here, but instead, the authors open the section with: "We'll now look at the postback data processing architecture that enables a control to retrieve form data submitted by a user, update its state, and raise events in response to changes in its state. To participate in postback data processing, a control must implement the IPostBackDataHandler interface and render elements whose HTML name attributes have unique values on the page" (p. 203). The discussion continues with the technical details of implementing the interface. By the time they get to the code sample, it's tough to see how the snippets of code added to the previous example helps handle postback data. I expect that if you are an experienced C++ and C# applications programmer, you'll find the book a great help and reference. If you're fairly new to programming, or most of your experience is with Web applications, I would look elsewhere (perhaps the O'Reilly book by Lowy, though I haven't read that one so can't endorse it either). I realize that topics like event handling are more advanced, but there should be a book that can convey it understandably to the intermediate-level Web programmer.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding reference
Review: I found the book to be the absolute best reference on developing server controls. The book is written in a bit text-book language which makes it somewhat "dry". If your are familiar with Microsoft's .NET buzz words you'll be able to follow the book just fine. This is definitely not a beginner-level book. You have to have pretty good knowledge of C# and ASP.NET. Overall, 5 stars for excellent coverage of the topic. I just wish the book had more real-life examples.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding reference
Review: I found the book to be the absolute best reference on developing server controls. The book is written in a bit text-book language which makes it somewhat "dry". If your are familiar with Microsoft's .NET buzz words you'll be able to follow the book just fine. This is definitely not a beginner-level book. You have to have pretty good knowledge of C# and ASP.NET. Overall, 5 stars for excellent coverage of the topic. I just wish the book had more real-life examples.
Rating: 
Summary: Could you make the subject more difficult? No.
Review: I have been a C++ (Visual / MFC/ WinAPI) developer for nigh on 10 years and I think this book is extremely confusing.
I've written my own navigation control in VB and wanted to learn more, in depth, about how to create controls and implement design-time behavior. This book just kills me.
I read the first 3 chapters with a question mark imprinted on my brain. In those first 3 chapters the authors explain (I guess you could call it explain) delegates, page programming model, and event-handling and none of it sinks in. I've read the chapters 2 times and still I'm staring at a question mark.
And, after 3 chapters I expect a sample relating to a control, but here I have nothing.
And I really like Jesse Liberty's books and I see his compliment above. I guess this book is for PURE GENIUSes. So if you're a PURE GENIUS, then you may like this book. Otherwise, keep on searching. Maybe chapter 4 will be better.
I can only hope the question marks go away.
Rating:
Summary: Missing chapter
Review: I payed good money for this book. But for some, to me, unknown reason, Microsoft left out chapter 19. In one page the book jumps from page 484 to page 549. How could this happen?
Rating:
Summary: No details about the book????
Review: I was interested in buying this book. But couldn't find any useful information about it such as Table of Contents. It doesn't even tell whether the book is written in C# or VB. So I decided I don't want to take the trouble of ordering and then return if it is not what I was looking for.
Rating:
Summary: I Wish I Had This Book a Year Ago!!!
Review: I've been doing server control development for a year now, read various articles, documentation and the WROX book. Upon reading this book, all of the clouds remaining lifted instantly. Not only is this book step-by-step and thorough, but explains behind the scenes happenings and gives incremental examples that build upon each concept explained and really cements the concepts relayed in this text. Despite one of the other comments here, I feel this is the easiest read I've had in a long time although the nature of the concepts here are just simply on the complex side. This is THE definitive guide to authoring Server Controls!!! A must read...
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