Murach’s ASP.NET 2.0 Upgrader’s Guide, VB Edition

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Murach s ASP.NET 2.0 Upgrader s Guide, VB Edition

Hot off the heels of their ASP.NET 2.0 Upgrader s Guide, C# Edition, technical book publisherMike Murach & Associates have released a nearly identical version forVisual Basic.NET developers. In fact, almost every aspect of the book except theVB code samples and a few VB-specific keyword and behavior explanations arecopies of the C# edition. This is by no means a knock against the book. Ialready praised the C# Edition with a five-star rating (see the review at http://www.aspnetpro.com/bookreviews/1890774359_b/1890774359_b.aspor in the November 2005 issue of asp.netPRO),and this book simply duplicates the successful style and educational flair thathas become Murach s trademark.

As I mentioned in my review of the C# edition, it is nosecret that I found Murach s first ASP.NET guide to be one of the best ASP.NETeducational manuals on the market. Murach sASP.NET 2.0 Upgrader s Guide, C# Edition continued to solidify thisproclamation. VB developers seeking a no-muss, no-fuss book that will show themthe fastest ways to ASP.NET 2.0 productivity will be hard-pressed to findanother VB teaching tool as effective as this book. The tactic of using the left-handpage to provide a technical explanation coupled with the opposite right-handpage offering a practical demonstration is so smart in its simplicity that it sa wonder other technical titles don t take advantage of this obvious approach,as it offers a definite productivity gain.

Perhaps another reason Murach s titles make such an impactis because of the book s large 8x10 inch trim size, its use of large Arial,Courier, and Times New Roman fonts, and its meaningful screen captures thathave a purpose beyond filling white space. But the most important reason forthe book s effectiveness is the authors superb writing style. Rather thanmeandering through prose weighed down by theory, dry details, and anemic enthusiasm,Murach s guides always hit the mark with the most important day-to-day,need-to-know knowledge. To paraphrase my praise of the sister C# edition, there sa certain magic imbued into Murach books that accelerates the knowledgetransfer process better than most other .NET developer titles on the markettoday.

As was the case with the C# edition, this VB edition is anupgrader s guide to ASP.NET 2.0 (unlike their original Murach s ASP.NET WebProgramming with VB.NET title, which assumed no prior ASP experience).Based on the ASP.NET 2.0 Go Live Beta 2 release, this book is also one of themost closely accurate to what will most likely be manifested in the finalrelease of ASP.NET 2.0, and thus it should be relatively safe to spend the timecommitting to memory the programmatic recommendations. As such, the bookexpects readers to be working in front of the latest available release ofVisual Studio 2005.

The guide is divided into four sections, with the firstproviding a summary of the enhancements made to the ASP.NET 2.0 release,working with the VS.NET 2005 IDE, and understanding the new master pagesfeature by building the front end for a Halloween products e-commerce Web site.

Section 2 targets data access and continues building onthe Halloween example to teach the consumption of object, SQL, and XML datasources in ASP.NET 2.0 applications. This section also delves into the detailsof Microsoft s new GridView, DetailsView, and FormView controls.

Section 3 expands on the specifics of the ASP.NET 2.0improvements by demonstrating the use of Microsoft s new site navigationcontrols (the Menu, SiteMapDataSource, SiteMapPath, and TreeView components)and login controls (the ChangePassword, CreateUserWizard, Login, LoginName,LoginStatus, LoginView, and PasswordRecovery components), understanding andapplying the Membership and Roles classes, and showing how to create andmanipulate user account profiles. Chapters on using the MultiView and Wizardcontrols, building and modifying site themes, creating and using Web parts forportal frameworks, and a handful of other interesting new ASP.NET 2.0 featuresand controls (such as the new FileUpload, HiddenField, and ImageMap components)are also covered in this section.

The last section, aptly titled ASP.NET 2.0 in Practice, is the shortest, focusing on the most important issues to be prepared for whenupgrading ASP.NET 1.x projects to the 2.0 version. The last chapter reviews howto configure and deploy an ASP.NET 2.0-based Web application. The book closes witha single appendix that covers installing and configuring Visual Studio 2005, aswell as obtaining the book s code from the Web site at http://www.murach.com.

Even though this VB edition is virtually identical to theC# edition, which was released approximately a month earlier, it s still anadmirable (and an expensive, even risky) proposition that, in today s glut oftechnical books, a publisher would create an entirely separate book for adifferent syntax. Although many publishers are content with combining the C#and VB.NET code samples, Murach boldly asserts that C# and VB.NET developers dohave different needs that serve different purposes. Even so, the quality ofeither their C# or VB product is the same. For those VB developers who want toexperience the Murach approach for themselves, check out Chapter 3 of the book, How to use master pages ; it s freely available for download at http://www.murach.com/books/ugvb/chapters.htm.

Mike Riley

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Title: Murach s ASP.NET 2.0 Upgrader s Guide, VBEdition

Author: AnneBoehm, Joel Murach

Publisher: MikeMurach & Associates, Inc.

ISBN: 1-890774-36-7

Web Site: http://www.murach.com/books/ugvb/index.htm

Price: US$39.50

Page Count: 526