If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t fix It.

It is not often that you come across a publication that has an immediate positive impact on you after reading just a few pages!  That's how I felt when I began reading ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed  by Stephen Walther. This new version is the fourth such publication by Mr. Walther that was preceded by “ASP.NET Unleashed“ published June 2001; “ASP.NET Unleashed (2nd Edition)” published July 2003; and “ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed” published June 2006.  The overall content of his latest publication is to cover the new features of the ASP.NET 3.5 framework along with relevant content from the previous works. 

This book is organized into ten (10) parts with the first nine (9) covering various tasks required in the development process of an ASP.NET application.  The last part provides a walkthrough for the development of a code sharing web application that utilizes some of the new features of the ASP.NET 3.5 framework.  Each part contains chapters covering material to achieve the part that it belongs to and are ordered to embrace a logical progression to learn the material.  The writing style used resembles that of a “User Guide” / “Training Manual” including examples with detailed explanations of the steps to follow with an occasional “Note”/”Warning”  to providing additional foundation.  All of the examples provided in the book are written in C#.  There is a CD included with the book that contains all of the examples in both VB.Net and C# as well as a web site address containing the information on the CD.  

Regarding the new content, I was particularly impressed with the thoroughness  given to the new Ajax functionality (Three (3) Chapters) that is now included within the.NET framework.  In addition, there is a chapter in the book dealing with LINQ to SQL as well as a chapter that covers the new ListView and DataPager server controls. 

It was surprising to me that certain prior material wasn’t included in this version.  Specifically, the building of web parts, mobile applications, the usage of third party controls, and XML.  However, the content of part ten (10) dealing with the application walkthrough did use a third party control as well as the VirtualPathProvider class that was introduced in the ASP.NET 2.0 framework. 

Overall I was very impressed with this book and strongly recommend it.  The books organization allows for readers who want to learn ASP.NET to read the material from cover-to-cover as well as readers who want to use it as a quick reference.

G. Clay Seifert

ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed

Stephen Walther

0-672-33011-3

Sams Publishing