Rating: 
Summary: good book for beginners..
Review: ASP.NET is released and lots of book out there, promising to teach you this new technology. I personally chose MSDN series for .net framework. As they are the closest to this technology.
ASP.net step by step is a really good book for beginners. Unlike some books out there it doesnt jump into bunch of code from the first couple of pages. The book is focused on teaching the fundamentals of ASP.net, there are quite good hints in the book that I found very useful. There are some downsides though.If you have worked with ASP.net before (in beta days) and developed some small to medium applications with that, you will find the book very easy and I dont believe that it will be very useful for your needs. The other thing is the content and the chapters are very similiar to ASP.net quickstart tutorials that comes with .net framework.
If you havent used asp.net before and you dont like to read tutorials from the computer screen, I say go for it, it s very good resource. Otherwise get a more advanced book that is covering more in depth.
Rating: 
Summary: Where is the first step?
Review: First off, let me say you must understand the fundamentals of your language of choice and you must understand the .net framework. This book does not teach you any of those things. This book I think could be expanded further like explaining exactly what does AutoEventWireUp do exactly, or expand on the customs server controls, etc and actually be made into a core reference because the information inside is that valuable. The only real drawback to the book is a lot of VB. C# is really a fast growing language. I myself changed from VB to C# but since I have a lot of VB experience so reading the VB Samples was not that difficult. I would have preferred to see them in C# though. I also didn't care for the Visual Studio walkthrough and explanations like what these windows are were useless to me, but creating web projects were not. Like I said you must know your language and you must know the .net framework before getting into this book. By the time you do learn all that you already know your way around VS. This book will be a desk reference for a very long time though because of all the configurations setting and uses of just ASP Specific things that none of the other .net books cover.
Rating: 
Summary: Try again, Microsoft Press...
Review: Having read this book cover to cover for an informal class on the job and having used previous 'Step By Step' books (Visual Basic) I have a decent perspective on what to expect from such a title. It seems the book attempts to be part reference (Ok, ALOT reference), part instructional/how-to, but does't do a particularly good job of either. I didn't find an example worth going to my machine and working along with until at least page 250. My only thoery is that they wanted to release a book as early as possible with the release of ASP.net and rushed to put something in print using the reference sections as filler so the book looked thick enough. This edition just isn't up to the quality found in the later versions of VB's Step By Step series. If you want to learn ASP.net from the ground up, look elsewhere - just my $.02 .
Rating: 
Summary: Book Deserves More Credit
Review: I have to disagree with other reviewers who said that this book should not be called a step by step book. Although I admit that the style is a bit dry, once you get into the programming examples in Part IV, the step by step format this author uses is perfect for someone like me, with some programming background in VB.Net, but without web programming experience, who is trying to learn ASP.NET. Not only that, but there is adequate explanation of concepts instead of just telling you what steps to follow. I would have liked to have seen more examples using Visual Studio .Net as well as Notepad, but the author gave enough instructions that I was able to follow the examples in Notepad and repeat them again in Visual Studio to see how it's done using the code-behind technique. Another thing I liked about the book is that all the examples I tried actually worked, unlike some other books out there purporting to teach ASP.Net. The dry chapters in Parts II and III are also necessary to include as a reference. I am under a tight deadline at work to learn how to create web pages and I am finding this book to be one of the best for getting me up and running.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a "Step - By - Step" Book
Review: I purchased this book with the hope of having a relatively straight forward book that would walk me through the creation of an ASP.net Application "Step-by-Step". I guess I had set my hopes too high. I am already 300 pages into the book and I have only encountered one really useful example (in my opininon).
This book does contain some very useful information, but it should not have been called a "Step-By-Step" book. Just a side note: C# is mentioned occasionally but this book is mainly discusses VB.net.
Rating:
Summary: Not a "Step - By - Step" Book
Review: I purchased this book with the hope of having a relatively straight forward book that would walk me through the creation of an ASP.net Application "Step-by-Step". I guess I had set my hopes too high. I am already 300 pages into the book and I have only encountered one really useful example (in my opininon).
This book does contain some very useful information, but it should not have been called a "Step-By-Step" book. Just a side note: C# is mentioned occasionally but this book is mainly discusses VB.net.
Rating:
Summary: A bad impression
Review: I really disliked this book I think you can find a better source downloading a tutorial from the Internet. I am sorry that I bought this book.
Rating:
Summary: GO FOR IT USED GOOD PRICE
Review: IF YOUR GOING TO Fairleigh Dickinson University | Advanced ASP Developer YOU NEED THIS BOOK
Rating:
Summary: Typos make this book useless
Review: It's not really a step by step book, and having made it halfway through, doing all the examples, I haven't learned much more than how to type. Granted, I have learned a little about syntax, format and other generalities.
There are so many typos and outright errors, though, that I'm giving up, and moving on to another book.
Rating:
Summary: Good overview with few coding samples
Review: Like other reviewers, I too had expectations that this book would be like the Step-by-Step books of past, whose strengths were two-fold. First, they managed to breakdown large skill sets, such as writing desktop VB apps or automating Word using VBA, into bite-size pieces - focusing on one tool at a time. Second, most of the earlier Step-by-Step books gave interesting, code-along examples right from the first chapter. This was the power and pleasure of the series. "Look, mom! I'm coding!" This book delivers the first without accomplishing the second, unfortunately. Mcbucho from Cincinnati, Ohio is right. There's nothing worth coding until page 250 or so. Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps, it's because it takes 250 pages to explain the basics of the ASP.Net Framework, which you need to understand before you can write a half descent web app. I sure wouldn't want a bunch of coding examples showing every possible manipulation of the myriad of Web.Config elements and attributes. I just want a brief overview, so I know what's there to use, which the book does. I'll figure out how to use them as I go, "Hey what does the <compile> element do? ...(2 hours of tweaking go by)...Cool!" Perhaps, they used the "Step-by-Step" moniker because it was the best work Microsoft Press has done to date (In my humble opinion), and they wanted to capitalize on the name. In any event, the book does deliver what it promises to deliver: an overview that breaks down the various parts of creating ASP.Net apps, presented in such a way that a person with a fundamental skill level can understand. I would recommend this book to anyone new to ASP.NET. Just don't buy it thinking that it's the only book you'll need. Don't buy it thinking it will be fun - that will come later.
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