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Rating: 
Summary: confused
Review: After an hour or so of reading various topics in this book, I finally broke through months of dead-end leads and half-answers. Here is the info you will be looking for when developing and deploying web apps in ASP.NET. This refers to the VB version, but I am sure the C# version is the same except for the code examples. Some really great topics include setting up IIS, security, subapps, deployment, database usage, etc. The topics are succinctly explained, then you get the walk-through with any necessary code clearly shown. Buy it, read it, keep it around as a great reference.
Rating: 
Summary: So this is where the answers are hidden...
Review: After an hour or so of reading various topics in this book, I finally broke through months of dead-end leads and half-answers. Here is the info you will be looking for when developing and deploying web apps in ASP.NET. This refers to the VB version, but I am sure the C# version is the same except for the code examples. Some really great topics include setting up IIS, security, subapps, deployment, database usage, etc. The topics are succinctly explained, then you get the walk-through with any necessary code clearly shown. Buy it, read it, keep it around as a great reference.
Rating: 
Summary: poorly written. But?
Review: I have found this title very informative and easy to follow. Not only that, but unlike many other titles on the subject of ASP.NET, C#, and .Net programming, this title assumes nothing and supplies all the appropriate directions to complete the exercises included in each chapter. I have also found that G. Andrew Duthie explains the usefulness of what he inroduces in his book in a manner that leaves me confident enough to study other ASP.NET programs with clarity.I place this book on my top ten ASP.Net must have list for anyone who wishes to develop a solid understanding of programming ASP.NET with VC#. Plus, this book is just darn fun! Best,
Jerry
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: My overall impression of the book is that whilst at first glance it is organised into logical chapters (the reason I purchased the book), the contents within the chapters is presented haphazardly. The author jumps from one topic to another without fully explaining whats going on and presents some confusing examples, some of which do not work. Not impressed at all
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe for a beginner
Review: This book is a bit hard to follow. If you are a beginner it may be good for you but otherwise it lacks substance. I used it mostly as a reference and even that was hard as the examples could have pertained more to real world applications.
All said the author could definitely have put a bit more work in the book to bring it up from its mediocrity and closer to its $ value.
Rating: 
Summary: ok for beginners,,,
Review: This book is okay for beginners...I finished this book in 4 days...nothing for professionals and experts..
If you are new to c# ,,,go for it...otherwise try something else...like MCAD..etc
Rating:
Summary: Confused about who its aimed at.
Review: This book was rather hard to follow, and I think it was mostly because the author (G. Andrew Duthie) did not write clearly. For instance, in the debug chapter, he wanted you to view a document called 'trace.axd'. The author wrote, "Appending trace.axd to the base URL for the application will display the list..." I had to read that sentence about ten times and still did not know what it was asking me to do. The picture that followed helped me to figure it out. This is just one example, and since it was at the end of the book, the one most fresh in my mind. If you are unfamiliar with ASP, I don't think the author had you in mind while writing this book. You can't read more than a couple of pages without it saying, "In classic ASP..." or "...unlike classic ASP, ASP.NET..." or something to those effects. This might confuse somebody who is new to ASP (and ASP.NET) as it provides more information that we really want to know about. At the beginning of the book he explains that ASP.NET is totally different from ASP. I think the author should have left it there and left ASP in the past (where I think it belongs). He did include an appendix on upgrading yor applciations from ASP to ASP.NET, which is good. But continuing to bring up "classic" ASP in the book I think is bad. This book is divided into four parts. The first part is aimed at the beginner to help somebody new to ASP.NET start programming with the basic programming of VB.NET explained and what makes ASP.NET different from ASP. It also gives you a brief (too brief) introduction to the server components you can add to an ASP.NET web page. For the final three parts the author really started losing me. It was like he was writing at level 3 and then shot up to level 8 between part 1 and part 2. He would casually write about topics and use terminology not defined earlier in the book. The only chapters I really got information out of was chapter 9 (Accessing and Binding Data, a brief inroduction to ADO.NET) and chapter 14 (Tracing and Debugging ASP.NET applications). Chapter 14 should have come MUCH earlier in the book. However, half of the examples provided did not teach me much, and often times did not work very well. All in all, I would not recommend this book, and regret buyin it (and paying retail on top of that). There is much better out there.
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