Personal Pages Books

Steven A. Smith, ASP.NET by Example (Que, 2002)

It's been five years since the release of ASP.NET by Example, so if you're already well-versed in ASP.NET, this probably isn't the book for you. I, on the other hand, know nothing about ASP.NET, and picked it up as an introductory tome. (If you do so, you should have at least a decent background in either VB.NET or C#, the two languages Smith alternates between for his code-behind pages.) As someone coming into ASP.NET brand-new, I found it well worth reading, informative, and easy to understand. Of course, some stuff has changed in the intervening years, but enough has stayed the same so most of the book will still be useful to the ASP.NET noob. A good place for beginners to start. ****

I bought this book recently to learn ASP.NET and feel I have mainly wasted my money. In the main the author simply has not put himself into the place of the newbie he aims the book at.

Rather than give opinions, let me quote specific examples from an early chapter. Listing 4.1 gives code to be added to the page_load method. When you try to run it it doesn't work. You find out 3 pages later that you should have added a group of "using" statements. It would have been easy to add these lines to the snippet, or at least give a forward reference to them.

In the same snippet you're invited to open a database named "pubs" (Publications) The following snippets perform various functions on this database. But this is not a standard database, and you're given no details of how it's put together so you can mock up your own in Access or whatever.

I advise against this book.

After reading some of the other "by Example" books, this one was a disappointment. XML by example was excellent.
This book was too full of errors, and would do more harm than good for someone's first book.
There are better books out there to learn ASP.NET.

Perhaps a second edition, with closer editing, would be better

I too purchased ASP.NET by example and I feel strongly about how terrible I think it is. The positive reviews may have been written by the Authors or their friends. I feel that this book has been slapped together quickly in order to sell books rather than to impart knowledge. Never before have I seen a book with so many glaring errors. The website of examples was not even responding when I tried to access it. Then when it was back online, the same errors were in the example code as the book.

For example Chapter 9 (Using ASP.NET User Controls) is missing the fundamental InitializeComponent() and all of the related constructor methods that are required for the software to compile and run.
This book is full of information that looks good at first but when you start to really try and use it there is a lot of information missing.
DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. I am sick of handing over good money for poorly written reference books.

I agree with the reviewer who mentioned that this book would do more harm than good.

This book seems to be geared towards classic ASP developer who wants to learn about ASP.NET. There are chapters explaining the difference between ASP.NET and classic ASP and migrating Web applications from classic ASP to ASP.NET. Some code examples use HTML with embedded VB, some use HTML with code-behind files coded in C#, and some use HTML with embedded C# code. The book discusses .NET architecture/framework in some detail and explains complicated topics such as: MSIL, CLR, and JIT quite well. The book covers a lot of territory, including ADO.NET, working with XML data, HTML and Server Controls, Validation Controls, Debugging, User Controls, and Web Services. There are several appendixes which cover ASP.NET syntax, ADO.NET object model, VB.NET language reference, and C# language reference.

This book is a concise and incomplete reference of ASP.NET, but that appears to have been author's intent. It's well written, well organized and easy to understand. I think the intended audience, which is a beginner-to-intermediate Web developer, will find it useful. The author makes an assumption that the reader is familiar with HTML, XML, VB or C#, and knows how to use Visual Studio.NET. DO NOT buy this book if you studying for Microsoft Certification exam/s, it's not intended for that purpose.

I too found it difficult to find an XML book dealing with Specifically .NET. This book does a good job in alot of respects, but falls short and wanders off the subject a bit in some chapters (this of course can be skipped over.) The author does give alot of real world examples through out the book, which is always a plus. Overall highlights in what I learned:
Serializing / Deserializing XML in .NET
.NET XML Base classes and their Implementations
SQL Server 2000 interaction with .NET & XML
ASP.NET Web Services (you create a public Address book Web Service)

It even has a decent reference section at the end dealing with XSLT that I find I use frequently.
This book represents (at this time) a great bargain!

More about XML than "XML and ASP.NET." I have already read a lot on XML and this book just confused me about what I already knew. It is full of definitions that don't really define anything and is lacking in good examples. I have read many, many books on programming and on the .Net framework specifically and this is by far one of the worst. After I know XML well I am sure that I will come back to this book and understand it completely. I am very sorry that I wasted my money on this book.

This book reads like a medical journal, point-by-point layout out the facts and presenting very narrow-minded interpretations of what ASP.NET and XML are designed to do. For one thing, the authors exude an opinion in their writing that ASP.NET is useless without XML, and that XML is the greatest thing to come along since the transistor. I disagree with the sentiments, but that's beside the point. This book doesn't accomplish anything in the end but to confuse the reader. It's as if the authors are trying to impress you with how many acronyms they can spit out in a single page (I counted over 30 on one particular page). This is not writing, this is not teaching, it is shooting facts at the reader with a shotgun.

In retrospect, I read this book a year ago when I was new to ASP.NET (but not to XML). I find it useful for storing read-only data in XML to be used in ASP.NET web sites. However, it's still one of the dryest books you will ever find.

This book (in my opinion) is for those more interested in XML alone than its use with ASP.NET. I was looking for a book that combined the two effectively, but found this one to be very difficult to read, with topics discussed without definitions (only references to chapters ahead of the current one), and little introduction to .NET or ASP.NET. There are very few examples, and even fewer pictures to display the effectiveness of the examples. Maybe I need to spend more time digesting the material, but there is little use of ASP.NET in this book... and even less integration of the two technologies. This is not for anyone interested in eCommerce or strictly internet programming.

This book is by far the best information out there on xml in the .net framework that I have seen yet. (And trust me, I've looked.)

This book is well-organized and jam-packed full of useful information on a very wide variety of subjects. More than just your run-of-the mill red covered book that regurgitates the documentation.

As for other reviews, I suspect it's like many newbies in programming. Laziness is clouding their judgements.

"Shelf Life" has its moments. It's like a collection of somewhat dry, bordering on badly written, short stories that amuse you when you don't have anything better to read.

The reason I think the author is a bit hypocritical is that she complains about people continually misspelling her name, etc., but when she talks about "Tuesdays With Morrie", she intentionally spells it "Tuesdays with Morey". Seriously? Why would you think someone would take you seriously when you can't get a basic title, with such a wide fan base and with a lot of good recognition, correct?

I would venture to say that any lover of books has toyed with the idea of working at the mecca for bibliophiles, a bookstore. Strempek Shea -- not just any book lover but also a bestselling author -- shows us what it's like on the other side of the cash register.

Shea has a way with words, and her turns of phrase are always skillful and often unexpected. I enjoyed the way she wove details about the publishing business with the details about the inner workings of the store and its many colorful characters.

She did seem testy at times, particularly when describing her reaction to some customers' requests. And I found her denigration of Bill O'Reilly to be unwarranted (what happened to nonjudgment??). And it was interesting that she -- who is so sensitive about her own name being spelled correctly -- misspelled the title of Mitch Albom's "Tuesdays with Morrie."

Those are just minor peeves, though, and overall I give this book a high rating. If you love the written word, you'll love this book .

I first read Shelf Life shortly after its initial publication and I remember being somewhat disappointed in it because it seemed to promise so much more than it delivered. I didn't record my feelings about the book after finishing it that first time and, because the passage of time mellowed my disappointment in it to a large degree, when I stumbled upon it again last week in a box of old books I decided to give it another try. I just knew that it would work for me this time around.

I was wrong.

Like most bibliophiles, especially those fast approaching retirement age, I've often dreamed of working in a bookstore so that, for once in my life, I could get paid for doing something I love in an environment I enjoy. Suzanne Strempek Shea's book recounting her first year's worth of experiences as a novice bookstore clerk seems like a natural choice for anyone dreaming of living the same life for themselves one day. Unfortunately, however, Shelf Life is written in such a dry, rambling, and often obtuse style, that the author eventually had me wondering if I could possibly last a whole year in the boring job she describes.

Suzanne Strempek Shea, in the midst of recovering from cancer treatments and not yet up to working on her next novel, realized that she needed to shake up her life a bit before she would be ready to resume her writing routine. She needed something to take her mind off of her recovery and lack of physical stamina and when an opportunity to work at Edwards Books (Springfield, Massachusetts) came up, she jumped at it. As things turned out, she brought many skills and ideas to the bookstore and Edwards Books was as lucky to have her as she was to have walked into the job.

I have to suspect that working in an independent bookstore, or even one of the big box bookstores, for that matter, is a lot more interesting than Shea makes it sound. She does pass on some interesting insights into the inner workings of a bookstore regarding the ordering process, how returns and markdowns work, how to best handle incomplete customer queries, how the location of a book within a store directly impacts the number of copies it will sell, etc. But her tendency to include long lists of trivial detail or to go on and on about every holiday display she built for the store in her entire first year becomes very tedious and distracting reading.

Simply put, as much as I sympathized with Shea's situation and envied her opportunity to work in a bookstore setting as she moved back into the world after her medical treatments, she never quite managed to breathe life into Edwards Books and its employees, something that still surprises me on this second reading, especially considering the fact that she is primarily known as a novelist.

Suzanne's book: Shelf Life was a very enjoyable read for me. Having grown up in Western Massachusetts, and a life-long book-lover, I frequented many of the quaint, unique bookstores she mentions throughout this wonderful book.

Thanks Suzanne!

I picked up this book because I thought it's setting in a bookstore would be interesting. However, it turned out to be just another ho hum personal memoir. Cancer surviving writer is lifted out of her depressed state and brought back to life when a bookstore owning friend calls and asks her to work a few hours a week in the store. The reader does get an interesting tidbit or two about the book publishing and book selling industries, but most of it is an awfully boring recitation of book signing tours or setting up displays for yet another holiday in the bookstore. The author's glib tone is annoying beyond belief and hardly endeared herself to me as a warm human being.The book lacks any organization that I can see and the author seems to have a problem crafting a complete sentence. The book abounds with incomplete ones. Nor do I understand the subtitle of the book as no romance, mystery or drama figures in the book. If you want to read a really fine personal memoir about the world of books I heartily recommend Michael Dirda's, "Open Book".

[...]

I picked this book up about three years to late, as it is entirely written about the original IBuySpy Portal framework, and I am an avid DotNetNuke module developer. The author presents numerous great examples of custom module development for IBuySpy, including a simple library application, extended discussions module, a complex Human Resources module, and a great Document Management System. Keep in mind IBuySpy is the forerunner to DotNetNuke, and all of the modules outlined in the book port nicely to the newer architecture, as they leverage many of the features moved forward into DotNetNuke, like user account integration, portal security, and more.

As I worked through configuring the various samples provided with the book, I got to set up & play with the original IBuySpy Portal framework after nearly three years of playing with it for the for the first time. When it was first released, it very intimidating in some of it's implementation details, although it didn't appear as sophisticated in it's business architecture, unlike the original Reports, Time Tracking, & Issue Tracking kits.

The book provides one of the best guides I have read to everything IBuySpy. The second time looking at IBuySpy portal, I was more able to appreciate the great concepts introduced in it, and I was at times amazed at how simple the IBuySpy Portal is when compared to the latest version of DotNetNuke. With the Introduction of the DotNetNuke Data Access Layer (DAL) in version 2.x, DotNetNuke was able to encapsulate all of the sophistication, and more, of the business layer found in the Time Tracking/Reports starter kits, at which point I was hooked.

I found the Document Management System described in Chapter 9 sophisticated enough that I believed it was worth the effort to convert it to a modern DotNetNuke module. The module is very well designed and documented in the book, so I decided on an uneventful Sunday afternoon to start converting it. Approximately 40 hours of development later, I have completed converting the module to DotNetNuke 2.1.2 (DotNetNuke 3.0.9 was released two days before the writing of this review).

I bought this book for 62 Euros (75 USD) in Lisbon that is too much for 450 pages (with promos, content, indexes, images from internet) book without any CD and with broken promise of the downloadable code!

IMHO, there was no need to bloat the volume of a book and reader's tiredness reprinting from internet the lengthy code examples just for the sake of a few modifications and after that again printing, again, the resulting snippets (it is proper only for e-books)

Since the book is oriented for working with codes, the absence of electronic version is also the great drawback.

The book seems to be the monopolist on IBuySpy Portal (the only one available) , but I wouldn't have bought it, had I known about mentioned above.

While the book is useful (in abscence of any other choice, esp. in electronic version), I estimate the ratio "price/worthyness" as extremely high

PS
I was also more interested in C# and/or Visual Studio .NET versions of IBuySpy Portal, and I think VB.NET is just inappropriate language for the middle-, like IBuySpy Portal,
and large-size projects)

In order to use this book effectively, you really need a good understanding of SQL and SQL stored procedures. The book isn't for SQL Beginners. The tables come from WROX without the identities being set, so you will need to know how to do that. The book also requires a good understanding of stored procedures, you will need to know how to fix the stored procedure if it isn't working correctly. The easy way to work with the stored procedures and all of the changes the WROX programmers made to IBUYSPY is to load their backup database onto your server using a different database name, then import the tables and stored procedures you need into your Portal database. There are some problems with the code that requires revising the name spaces and assembly references to get them to work with the ASPNET Portal, but once modified the code does work well for the most part. I really wish the WROX programmers had spent more time on the RTF piece. I eventually replaced the RTF functionality with someone else's software, but I have to admit that I learned alot about ASP.NET controls by examining the WROX RTF code. The document management piece is worth the price of the book. The documentation really is not very good but if you study the code, you'll learn alot. I disagree strongly with the reviewer who stated this is for people who want code but don't want to learn what it does. If you can make the WROX code work, you're doing pretty well.

I bought this book because I have been thrust into the Intranet development world, and I really don't have a lot of experience building multi-functional web pages. I bought this book to really help me understand the IBuySpy portal, and I have used it to customize that package for a couple of different web sites now.

The Good:
The book is very good at explaining the various components of the IBuySpy Portal. It's a lot like a tourist map; highlighting certain pieces (while complete overlooking other aspects).

The Bad:
As others have noted, this book doesn't go deep into explaining ASP.NET, or how to use classes in the .NET architecture. It merely allows you to copy a lot of code, cross your fingers, and see something work.

The Ugly:
As with most "best-of-breed" solutions from Microsoft, stuff breaks. While this particular manual does point out why some stuff doesn't work as well as intended, it doesn't go into a lot of detail (and don't expect it to catch everything).

In Sum: Buy this book if you have a need to get an intranet up and running quickly, and want to impress your non-developer friends. Don't buy it if you're expecting to use it to learn ASP.NET.

If you wish to understand the IBUY Portal, don't count on this book to help you. I didn't like the style and structure of this book. I got the sense that this book was just another rush publication with a group of programmers getting together, assigning chapters with desired content and then got down to pulling and writing code.

WROX needs to do a better job of controlling quality and up front planning for their books. Sorry, but this book shows none of that. The design of the existing site was mostly crammed into a single chapter. A decent database diagram was not included and no UML or other diagrams were presented so we could easily understand the Object architecture. Instead, the documentation was simply a straight lift from sql server table descriptions. I found myself drawing my own diagrams as I went through the book. An architect's perspective was desparately needed in this first chapter.

I won't be buying any more WROX books if things don't improve by enforcing good technical writing standards for their publications.

Although this book was easy to read and understand it left alot out that I felt should have been discussed under this heading. It seemed more wishy-washy, fluffy bunny type of book than what I had anticipated and I was sadly disappointed after reading it.

There ARE *very important* things to know *before* you begin any serious spell working. Sadly, what most 'newbie-pagans' only want are the answers. They aren't patient enough, nor perhaps mature or smart enough, to realise that first you have to know how to ask the questions. (I recommend they read Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare") The book is well laid out and appropriately informative.

As much as I loathe the author, he actually makes some good points for beginners in magick. The one setback is having to read through why this guy thinks he's freakin' Superman before you get any real info. All in all, the info's there you just have to hunt for it.

This is an excellent book. It is written for people who are new to the world of magic, which the book clearly states. However, I've been involved in Wicca since I was 16, and the book raised some really good points for me. Most people who are new to the craft think that it's all about the spells. I made the same mistake when I started, I think most witches do. But it is about so much more!! If you have been in the craft for many years and have been happy and sucessful in it, I guess this book isn't a must buy. However, I think we all could get something out of it. In my opinion it's not at all "fluffy" to make sure that new witches are very clear about the law of return. It's about making choices and taking responsiblity, which the book does a good job of explaining. If you want to cast a spell on the evil slut who stole your boyfriend, I don't think the 3 days will change your mind. But I wonder how much sucess you'd have at it, since it's so negitive. But if you were clear about what you wanted to do and knew about the consqecuense, well, it's on you. I cast only a few spells a year, most are part of Sabbat rituals. I think that this book makes ethics and vaulues and responsibilty really clear, but the final choices are up to you (and the goddess).

A more appropriate title would be "Before You Cast a Spell: Understanding ethics." He doesn't get into writing spells at all. He explains nothing about how power works, and what's worse, it comes across that he doesn't even really believe in magik at all... There's nothing worse than trying to learn something from someone who doesn't believe what they are teaching.

He's extremely preachy on ethics, to the point where it gets irritating. And the other reviewers are right in that he is most definately on a high horse.

I was mainly disappointed because I thought this book might actually get into how magik works, how to write your own spells, and stuff like that. IT NEVER DOES. EVER.

I wouldn't suggest this book to anyone. If you want a book about how to write your own spells try "Your Book Of Shadows: How to Write Your Own Magickal Spells" by Patricia Telesco.

I already had good success learning HTML and Javascript from other Weekend Crash Course books and put it to use at work. So I expected the same from this book. After 23 chapters of things I already knew about HTML and Visual Basic, Mr. Smith begins his application. Like another reviewer here, I was absolutely lost. (The errors in the book don't help.) I loaded his eOrganizer example from the CD, changed the connection to the Access database I built according to chapter 22, and I can't get any further.

His insistance on structured programming is the death of his lesson. I know the value of structured programming, but structure has no value if I can't write a program. The basics should be taught before forcing style upon the reader.

I need to connect web pages to databases. Sorry, Mr. Smith, I'll have to buy a different book to learn how.

ASP 3 Weekend Crash Course by Eric A. Smith is a good book to teach a beginner how to get started with Active Server Pages. The early chapters do a good job to ease the reader into ASP and provide him or her with a good foundation to build upon. Unfortunately this book has fallen victim to a number of typos, which can frustrate the reader. The approach of the book is to build up one's skills and then utilize each in an application (called eOrganizer). Unfortunately there are problems with some of the code and even the application that can be downloaded from the web site needs to be tweaked to work right.

In summary- I feel that this book needs to be corrected and reissued. If all revisions are done, this book will be an excellent resource and worthy of more than 2 stars.

Perhaps the words "Crash Course" in the title are just a bit to seductive for the newbie to ASP and VB Script. As a reader of many programming and application books over the years, (but in no way a professional programmer), I flipped through the book at the store and was pleased to find a "spoonfull" approach to the coverage of material. As a professional trainer, this was really a good sign so I bought the book.

First the good news. For someone who needs a brief yet understandable introduction to HTML, SQL, and Database design, this book was up to the challenge. The explanation of the role ASP plays in Web development was also clear. So I entered the material on VBScript with high hopes. That's when things began to go downhill.

First, if I had not had some knowledge of what a function or subroutine is I would have been totally lost. As it was I was stretching to understand. When I hit the section on "structured code" I really hit the wall. Here I was, coming from learning HTML and some JavaScript, being presented with the idea of generating all of my pages in ASP! (I don't dispute the advantage of this approach but this was not the place to put this material! (Just looking at all the "Write Lines" stressed me out!

I then began to run into many instances where I think the author assumed I knew concepts and terms. A whole bunch of information on server variables, "includes", and error handling blew me away, so by the time I got to databases and the application piece (eOrganizer)it was all over. Nothing really hung together at all. Objects, methods, collections, includes, etc.,all fogged my brain. How do they work together?

In all fairness, my rating is based on how the book met my needs as a non-professional programmer with limited experience in writing code. I was interested in learning the concepts involved in creating database driven web pages for training and educational purposes. I had a basic working knowledge of HTML,exposure to Javascript and Access, and WYSIWIG editors like FrontPage, so I wasn't completely ignorant. I believe learners like me would benefit from a more comprehensive book that adequately covers the vocabulary,concepts,proceesses involved in developing ASP. I would also suggest an approach that builds an actual application throughout the book (similar to Paul Wilton's excellent book "Beginning Javascript". I just don't think the "examples" throughout the book are robust enought to teach a concept.

I am convinced that there is no way for the "beginner" be ready to do anything productive after reading a "crash course"type book. They may be fine, however, for developers who already understand quite a bit about application development. I know the siren song of titles like "learn in a weekend" or "21 hours" may be smart marketing ploys but not very effective as training tools.

If the title and description of this book appeals to you, you should buy it! I like to pick up programming languages when I get tired of reading other things, and this is the best self teaching book for a language that I have ever read! ASP came surprisingly easy with this book, especially since to use it you really need to also learn HTML & SQL. This book explains ASP and gives you just enough HTML & SQL to get cracking. The only thing that was missing was a JavaScript primer, and as one of the reviewers already mentioned not all of the source code is on the CD ROM (no big deal to me, at least). If you are looking to create dynamic web content, I reccomend this book as well as it's companion for Java Script.

In the future, I will always look for this series of book when learning a new language!

This book will take you from zero to intermediate level in fewer pages than I've ever seen. Its objective is to be concise and easy to read and it achieves that. But expect to invest in a reference like ASP in a Nutshell if you want to go any further. (Most notable omission from the book is the File System Object.) As for whether one can absorb this book in one weekend: if you can program Web pages in another language, and you have a long attention span, that is not impossible, but most programmers will take one to two weeks. Crash courses like this are for those who are no strangers to programming. If you've never programmed before (HTML is not a programming language!), you are likely to find the pace of this book daunting.

What ever happened to one of the authors? His website went to pot and so did his blog. Quite sad actually. Then again, it goes to show that he probably doesn't care much for his readers and or people trying to report inaccuracies or criticisms of the book.

My vote? Never buy a book from someone that doesn't support their readers and gives them the proverbial finger when they go to the author's own website looking for a way to contact them.

This book has a great name but the book does not contain any substantial information related to debugging. Most of the information in the book are not for serious programmers.
My strong suggestion is do not buy this book for ASP.NET debugging or for ASP.NET as some of the reviewers have mentioned.

Title of the book is great and that's what I expected in the book. Unfortunately the book is below standards and if you are serious ASP.NET programmer this book is not for you. I have done extensive ASP and ASP.NET programming and so I am aware of most of the problems that occur nearly everyday when developing large enterprise level applications and I tried to finding these issues and best ways to detect them in this book , sadly it has no mention of the problems nor best suggestion for debugging ASP.NET. Additionally in order to make it a book they have topics highly irrelevant to the actual title which should have been the first chapters of some beginner books

There are good chapter about Tracing, code structures, and ADO.net debugging, and lot more. A must have for .Net Web developers. Code examples are in both VB and C#. I wish Author have included more code for COM based debugging.

To a certain extent, I find this title a bit of a misnomer, as this particular tome contains more than simply debugging. It is well structured to relate these additional topics to debugging, but it is a pleasure to go through a book that both covers its subject and many of the peripheral issues that can help you debug, as well.

While this book is not heavy on OO, which would make a nice additional topic, debugging OO or procedural is largely the same.

There is a good mixture of both C# and VB.NET code, which I applaud. It is important to know that debugging is the same, regardless of language.

I do have a slight beef with the amount of code that resides in the ASPX file. This comes from my belief that the separation of code and UI, via a CodeBehind file, is an important part of .NET. You may disagree with this assessment.

There are some good examples of using tracing in your applications. Tracing is a great tool to find where you are having problems. There is also a nice section on logging your application exceptions.

The material on caching, although not completely related to debugging, is a nice addition.

The book, overall, is aimed for more advanced readers. I think a beginner might be able to tackle some of the material, and probably should, but understand that you might get a bit lost if this is your first ASP.NET book.

PeachTree software for accounting professional is losing out to QuickBooks. As an instructor to find a textbook for PeachTree, this book is the only one. It seems easy to follow. But some of the exercises are outdated, due to the new version of PeachTree. Overall it is not a bad value.

this is a real alternative to learn by your self. But if you took a course it dosen't matter because it's your guide for ever. the shipment was real fast . My opinion is the Amazon it's
very resposible company.

The book takes the technical users manaul and puts into a much more understandable format. The step by step process flows are very helpful. Again, Peachtree for Dummies removes the techie language and adds plain english. All in all, well done.

I bought this out of desperation--there is NOTHING ELSE OUT THERE, at least nothing worth using for learning Peachtree. AVERAGE usefulness for a help-me-I'm-dying guide.

Can be used for a read-through tutorial, but I suggest this only if you are extremely stupid and accounting-illiterate and very bad at navigating self-explanatory computer programs. I'm 17 and have only been doing this accounting thing for 6-7 months, and was totally able to skim/skip the first 3 1/2 chapters.

Don't get me wrong. I needed this book. It simply works better as an index-reference tool (although I will warn you, the setup of the book is unusual, and you will probably need to reference 2-4 different places each time you have a question).

The only thing that really bugged me was that the book is somewhat outdated and needs to be re-vamped. This book was last revised in 2004. I have Peachtree 2007 Pro. In some places, the navigation (Go Here--> Click here) was not applicable to my version of Peach and I was left on my own to find the phantasmic feature.

WOULD RECOMMEND. Although finding the exact info you need can be tricky, it's certainly faster than trying to find the answer yourself or, even worse, online.

Peachtree for dummies is no better than the user's guide that comes with Peachtree. I'll give anyone my copy so they don't waste their money on it. Its basically theuser's guide, but paraphrased. It really explains absolutely nothing.

Very good, has lot's of practicle examples. A must have

Tons of errors, some don't even pass the simple syntax test.

Example:
Page 708 -
str = "Update Employees set Department = "@DPT, & _
& "Description = @DSG where EmployeeID = @ID"

Notice the use of & _ & at the end of the first and start of the second lines. This is wrong but not terminal. The real problem is that you will get a syntax error after Department = "@

These lines should probably read:
str = "Update Employees set Department = @DPT, " & _
"Description = @DSG where EmployeeID = @ID"

Now this is not just one isolated problem, there are many many more and when I emailed them for some help I did not get a response.

This book will not just waste your money, it will waste an even more precious resourse -- Your time.

...

Well, I already have a number of .NET language books, I did not need any more. I enjoy the for dummies books because they start at the low level and work upwards from there. What I was looking for was a book that would tell me how to use Visual Studio.NET to it's maximum potential. Instead, I got 7 mini-books on how to program in each of the languages that Visual Studio offers. The title should be Programming in .NET for Dummies rather than using VS.NET in the title. I can write in any of those languages by using notepad, so this is a very misleading title.
However, I will not give this book an awful rating since it seems to be good at what it does say. Just be careful that you don't buy this thinking you're going to get a good reference on how to use Visual Studio - because this ain't it.

Although usually I'm a big fan of the Dummies books, I was really disappointed by this one.

First of all it is not as "hands-on" as other Dummies books. For absolute beginners there is too much general theory (the kind of "I will explain something you don't know by something else that you don't know either"). On the other hand there is very little explanation on what exactly happens in the examples. Experienced programmers however will find this book not going deep enough. I guess the authors tried to satisfy all and ended up satisfying none.

Second point is that there are plenty of errors in the book...That's pretty frustrating if you want to get a program running, because you never know if it's YOU who made a mistake or if there is just another error in the book. I regret that I wasted so much time on this book, just to find again and again that there was an error in it.

Last point, which is crucial if you want to work with Visual Studio .NET on your own computer, and need to install everything on your own: there is little help on how to get the prerequisite software installed and running, like e.g. IIS (Internet Information Services) and Front Page Server Extensions. You will need them to work with Visual Studio .NET, and installation can be very tricky (actually I know of noone who got them running right away). So if the book doesn't cover these topics, it would at least have been helpful to add some resources where you can find help...

The title of this tome is very misleading. I was expecting to find a guide to ease me slowly into the nomenclature and conventions of this very powerful software suite, but what I found was an advanced tip guide for intermediate users already familiar with version 6.0. Being a dummy myself in this field, I was very disappointed with my somewhat large investment in this guide. Also, it is not written in the plain, folksy manner that defines the best of this series. There's $35 I'll never get back. Definitely not for beginners!

I really like the book because of the many examples. Usually most programmers can figure how to 'make a few changes' so the code will do what they want. The book strikes a good balance in content volume by dividing the book into sections so the user can go directly to the section they need help in. I don't read computer books front-to-back, I read the parts I need to know, and this book fits the bill.

This book lacks structure, details and an editorial hand. You can buy better, cheaper.

The only thing this book is useful for is reference. Even then, it's very poor reference. The code samples are full of errors and inconsistencies. I would not recommend this book. You can get better learning and reference material online.

This book has already helped me with answering my quesrions of how to implement a database using ASP. Besides the mimor annoyances of typos here and there (should have edited better), this book is the one-stop resource for ASP Code

As stated in the other reviews, the book has it all. I am constantly finding myself flipping through the reference it contains. The index for the reference is categorized so efficiently it makes life much easier.

The sample code provided covers many commonly found areas of ASP development, and is self documenting. I am extremely satisfied with the content found within it and would recommend it to developers of any level of experience.