With a foreword by Microsoft's Mark Anders, Professional ASP.NET consists of 19 chapters written by seven of today's leading experts in ASP.NET. These authors are professional developers who create ASP.NET applications, teach, run well-known ASP.NET Web sites, either within or outside of Microsoft. The tutorial framework for each chapter includes:

• A brief introduction, explaining the concept.
• A code example, illustrating the concept.
• A piece-by-piece explanation of the code.

Most examples employ VB.NET, but there are also additional C# examples within each chapter, and all of the example programs will be available at the book's web site in both VB.NET and C#.

The code examples in this book are based upon the ASP.NET Beta2 specifications, a functionally complete version of the software.

Amazon.com Review
Instead of having to learn everything about .NET all at once, ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code offers a better way to start using the new ASP.NET effectively based on the most important APIs and programming techniques. For anyone tackling ASP.NET, this book is a great source of practical advice backed up with real examples.

A standout feature of this text is that it does not try to take on all of .NET first before showing you how to start actually using ASP.NET. In the first chapters, you'll learn the most important APIs and programming techniques for using collections, files, and directories, uploading files, and the like. Anchored with VB.NET (and some C# examples), each chapter is written by a separate author (or authors) with a personal take and advice on topics like database programming with ADO.NET, XML, and security options. This is a truly winning approach because it will let beginners or those with experience with the older ASP standard get going quickly with ASP.NET. Better yet, the authors have tested their techniques with the current beta in real code, so you can trust what they say regarding performance, deployment, and configuration, for example.

Final chapters on such advanced topics as separating data from presentation logic, mobile controls for wireless devices, and COM/Win32 interoperability with .NET will please more expert readers. By carving out areas of ASP.NET and exploring them in depth rather than insisting on broad coverage for its own sake, as with many of the first round of titles on .NET, this title sets an admirably high standard as a practical source of programming advice on a platform that is still under construction.

Read this text with or without a general tutorial for .NET and VB.NET and you will have a great head start on Microsoft's newest Web development tools and languages. --Richard Dragan