3 comments about Professional Windows GUI Programming Using C#.

1. If you've learned C# and you're ready to jump into Windows Forms, this is a great place start.

   You start off by receiving an introduction to almost all of the Common Windows Controls. An in-depth look at how Databinding works and how you can implement databinding into your own controls. A pretty good introduction to GDI+ and drawing methods, which can be followed up with the book "GDI+ Programming: Creating Custom Controls Using C#" if you want to go into more detail.

   The next chapter on Printing was a highlight for me. With little previous printing experience, it was a very helpful section. A nice relief too, to see that printing really is just drawing to printer instead of the screen. If you have GDI+ down, printing should be no problem.

   Then the book moves on with a nice chapter on Custom Controls. A lot of great sample code in there to help illustrate what they are saying. Design Time support is highlighted upon too, to allow for reusable controls by other programmers.

   Finishing up with two chapters on optimizing and deploying your Windows Applications. Good tips and knowledge that you wouldn't want to take the time to figure out your self.

   Definitely one to own to get started with Windows Forms.




2. This book lacks the depth that one would expect from the "Professional" series. Up to this point, I have found the Professional series of books to be quite a resource, as they usually provide information that you otherwise would not find through a cursory glance at the online documentation that Microsoft provides. I am a professional and I expect a professional level treatment of programming from this series. This book is a disappointment in this respect.

   For example, there is a chapter covering the Windows common controls. The text merely describes the process for dropping each control on a form in the designer and setting a few properties, most of them obvious properties. For the complex controls, for example ListView and TreeView, very little information is provided. TreeView has about 2 pages of text if you drop out the two screen shots and more than 1/4 of that is an extremely simple code example. The ListView control has maybe 2 pages of text and a little less than 1/2 of that is code. By way of contrast, an excellent book called "Professional MFC with Visual C++ 6", although outdated as it does not cover Visual Studio .NET, had nearly 20 pages on the ListView control and 9 pages on the TreeView control, and was an invaluable resource on all aspects of Visual C++, including GUI programming.

   As another example of the many omissions in Pro. Windows GUI Programming, there is no practical discussion about how forms and dialogs should be used. What events should be handled to load data and extract data from the form? When should you call Dispose on a modal dialog? Microsoft documentation says you should always call Dispose when the dialog will no longer be used. This so-called Professional book says nothing.

   There are plenty of other examples of information not provided. About the worst thing I could say about this book is that its worse than the Microsoft documentation. I find myself constantly not finding what I am looking for in the book and resorting to a search of the MSDN documentation. In contrast, when using the Visual C++ 6.0 book that I was so enamoured with, I often found myself doing the opposite: searching in vain in the Microsoft documentation, only to find the topic discussed in sufficient detail in the book.

   ...




3. This is a excellent book for GUI programing with C#

5 comments about Programming .Net Windows Applications.

1. This book doesn't provide supports if you have any questions about this book, and don't have full codes in some chapters!



2. I almost never respond to negative reviews (not everyone will like every book) but the previous review by Mr. Qiu is simply incorrect.

   I provide unprecedented support for my books, including a FAQ, errata, complete source code and a private free support discussion forum through my web site: http://www.LibertyAssociates.com. In addition, more information is available thorugh my blog and articles I write for O'Reilly.com.

   All the code in this book is complete, and all the code is available for download.

   Thank you.

   -j




3. I found myself searching for a book that covered the TreeView control and others in great detail. I needed a book that would give detailed examples of how to use the advanced features of Windows Forms Controls and this was it. I use C# but appreciate the fact that both the VB.Net and C# codes is included as I never know if I will be asked to work on a VB.Net project. I have several other C# books that documented the basics of how to program C#, but this is the first that really showed me how to use the power of Win Forms to build a user friendly UI.



4. Over 70 Percent of this book is code listings (much of it auto generated) that is available in the sample code. Why generate your own database when pubs and northwind provide adequate examples. If you want to learn how to design a database there are ample books out there that are quite good. Most of the examples have very little real world application. As an example of practical concise real world examples look at "Building Web Solutions" by Esposito. He provides four times the useful information in 350 pages that this book provides in 1200. Look elswhere if you want good insight and practical information.



5. Wow, what a disappointment! This book starts with Hello World and goes down hill. 3 pages describing how a label control works then 3.5 pages of code print out, then 2.5 more pages adding explanation to just about every line of code? No wonder it is 1200 pages.
   
   With my last forms work mostly being VB5, and having done mostly ASP.NET, web service, and library work in .NET, I got this book thinking that I would learn a few useful tidbits. (Which is how I found the author's other C# book). Not the case. I'm not sure I learned anything!
   
   I guess for the most timid beginner this book would be OK, but if you have any previous win forms program experience or an inclination to just try things out, save yourself time and money and simply open up a form and start dropping in controls and see how they work.

5 comments about Beginning C# (Beta 2 Edition).

1. This is a great book. Easy to follow. As with any computer book, boring to read, but not at all hard to follow--with exception of few points here and there. The reward comes when you apply it and when you finish reading it.

   This book is an answer to my prayers for finding something that will teach me dot net and C# in a comprehensive and easy to learn way.

   All learning to program books are kind of boring, inluding this one. Easiest to read a bit every day and take a few months to finish, rather than trying to gobble up the hole piece and getting extremely bored.

   My background is that of a mid-level progammer, working with VB 6.0. I had some knowledge about objects before I picked up the book.

   kamlesh mistry...




2. This book has very good intentions and covers things in a good solid order, BUT, the mistakes are just plain sloppy. Please don't tell me this book was seriously edited, because you can tell immediately that it was not. If I wrote documentation at work as sloppy as this book was written, I'd be in trouble. On the flip side, the excercises were very helpful, and the authors do a decent job simplifying the topics enough for beginners to grasp them. However, true beginners should start with C# for Dummies. I hope the second edition really cleans things up though. Wrox should allow for mail-in rebates when second editions come out so quick. I'm sure many of us would be happy to tear off the back cover of the first editions and send it in for a check in return!



3. This is a great book - it explains the concepts quite well, for a person like me, with a PHP background. However, it's incredibly boring. The first 250 pages of the book is dedicated to many small hello-world-style examples of code, which really doesn't explain why or where one should really use enumerations, structs and stuff - I would have preffered to be walked through larger, real-life applications instead. Don't get me wrong - this book is great for looking up stuff, but as a beginner, it's better to complement it with a more hands-on approach.



4. The 1st edition is now out-of-date. I think it was written for an early or beta version of .NET. But..., if you find this, second hand, at a bargain price it's still a good buy. You can still get the errata and sample code from the APress web-site (not the Wrox site!). The book gives a good introduction to C# but I wouldn't recommend it too highly to someone who had never done any programming before. It's recommended for people who have already learnt one programming language. The book does a good job of teaching OOP programming in C# to people who already have some programming experience (but not with OOP). When working through the sample projects everything went well for me with the sample code until the last 2 case studies. I was able to convert all the projects to VS.NET 2003 and to figure out the occasional line of code I needed to rewrite to get the projects working. Things seem to have got a little rushed at the end with the 2 final case studies. I couldn't get them to work and didn't even understand how the first was supposed to work (from the non-explanation given in the text). The other criticism I have of the book is that there aren't enough exercises at the back of the chapters and that sample answers to exercises aren't given. Note: book authors - this (sufficient exercises with sample answers) is an essential requirement for a serious book aimed at beginners.
   
   Because to these smallish flaws it gets only 3 stars. It could've been a 5 star book with a little more care; so it still comes highly recommended if you can get it for less than $5.
   
   This was a review of the 1st edition of the book.



5. Great learning material. Following the examples and the natural progression of the book is a great method for learning C# with practical examples. Very straight forward approach without being too verbose.

5 comments about C#: The Complete Reference (Osborne Complete Reference Series).

1. This is an excellent -- repeat excellent -- book on C#. That's not surprising since its written by legendary author Herbert Schildt. (Just about anyone who has been arround programming for the past 20 years probably has two or more Schildt books!) It provides an incredibly detailed description of the C# language and the .NET Framework libraries. Schildt carefully describes each feature, keyword, and attribute of C#, and shows how to apply them. He even shows how C# compares to and differs from Java and C++. This is clearly a book from an author who knows his stuff.



2. I have been programming since I was 15 (3 years now) but up until this book it had been QBasic and Visual Basic. C# was my first delve into the world of a real programming language.

   Having studies Software Design and Development at high school (7th in the state in the HSC w00t...) I knew quite a lot about the theory behind Object Oriented Programming: Encapsulation, Inheritance and Polymorphism and could describe in psuedocode a complete program but lacked any knowledge of a programming language in which I could implement my ideas and algorithms that were floating around.

   So I wanted a book that didnt harp on about the principles of OOP but was about reserved words, syntax and supporting classes. I found the ideal book in C# the Complete Reference. The overview of OOP priciples was brief and to the point, allowing the book to concentrate on the practical implementation (for readers who have no idea about OOP possibly C# the Beginners Guide would be preferable as a slower paced read). I flew through this book in a week and a half and felt that a blistering pace was kept up by Herb Schildt, at no time did I feel that the book was overdoing examples, with new concepts and syntax appearing all the time.

   The examples in this book are excellent - I hand coded them all and every one compiles first time(unlike some other books I read that involve a bit of debugging). The examples are straight to the point, not only introducing the new idea but consolidating previously learnt work into the example.

   The coverage of all topics was supurb, especially the book's treatment of classes, inheritance, operator overloading and exception handling. If I had any criticism it is that the sections on Attributes and Delegates were a bit brief, and could have done with some more explanation and examples, and the chapter on working with Collections (chapter 22) was a bit disjointed, introducing all the interfaces that are inherited and methods used by the various collections before actually telling you what these collections were - I advise reading this chapter in reverse.

   Not only the language was convered (as I have seen in some other books) but some of the common classes included in the .NET framework are discussed. The System Namespace is explored - going into detail about System.Math and all the data types (like System.Int) and the many methods supported by them.
   There is a valuable section on strings and formatting, going into great depth about the string as an object and the methods it supports. The System.Threading and System.Web namespaces are also discussed in depth (including code to build a webcrawler). However, as Herb Schildt acknowledges there are many other classes not examined here, but gives a good introduction nonetheless.

   The book concludes with three practicle examples of C# - implementing Components, creating a basic Windows form and most interestingly a recursive descent expression parser.

   I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn C#, and learn it fast. However I also recommend readers of this book have some previous programming experience (my Visual Basic experience was usefull for understanding some concepts) or an understanding of programming theory. This book isnt for someone who has never coded before, but beginners with only a month or so of programming in another language behind them will find this book easy to read.

   This book has inspired me to purchase Java 2 The Complete Reference and C++ the Complete Reference by Herb Schildt, as he is the best author I have read (and since reading this I have read several other programming books, mainly on C# - and none have come close to Herb yet).

   So what are you waiting for! Buy it now!

   Deon Poncini




3. There exists many types of books on most programming languages. Reference Guides, How To's, Beginners Books, Advanced Books, and those that tie into specifics like Science and Engineering, Video Games or perhaps Databases. Herbert Schildt usually writes How To and Reference Guides. He's an acknowledged master in the world of object-oriented programming (OOP) and a frequent author because of his down to earth communication style. An earlier book "C++ From the Ground Up" is a legend in itself. It was one of the few books you could learn C++ from without ever having learned the C language.

   This book suffers a little from the beginners syndrome. While its intention is to start from the beginning, unfortunately, that usually means, something will be left out. Unless you want to read 3000 pages, most books have trouble covering the scope of a well-developed computer language. As other reviewers have said, this does lack some things that should be included about C#. That said, it's written in Schildts trademark literary style. Like most of his works seems to speak directly to you rather than talk above or around the reader.

   I do understand that Schildt has another book on C# coming soon if its not our already and that may pick up the detail this book has missed. One of the nice things about this like most of Schildt's books is that it is not written like a dissertation. Too many programming books start out sounding very good and then after 50-60 pages the author "treats" us to 200 pages of annotated code. I've never been able to learn much about reading code. It's better at least for me to learn what the language can do and write my own code. Small examples are ok to get the syntax right, but reading a large program looses my attention.

   If you were unsure, you'd like Schildt's style check out the first chapter or two from "C++ From the Ground Up" at the local bookstore (they may have this one too). Then come back here and buy at a discount.




4. Herb Schildt is my favorite programming book author. I like this explanations and his method of evolving the subject he is teaching. The C# complete reference, 2002 has several errors that have perplexed me for hours causing me visit the osborne.com web site.
   
   At the site, I found no listing for this book, but Schildts' other great books are listed.
   It appears Osborne has given up on this book! Why don't they list the book and why do they not have an erratum on this book?
   
   Schildt is a great author but Osborne is not a good publisher! If you can, wait for his new C# book.



5. This book covers every aspect of the language with easy to understand and follow examples. The code samples would help the reader to understand every nut and bolt of the language and will get you up to the speed in a relatively short period of time. I am making my living with this book and would recommend it to every c# programmer.

4 comments about Microsoft Visual C#.NET 2003 Kick Start.

1. This is a very solid book. It assumes you know the basics of programming like loops, modules and the likes... If you are familiar with any regular programming language (like C, C++, Java, PERL, python, ruby, even shell scripting) then this books is probably your best bet to learn C# quickly.
   
   There is no whole chapters made to get you to write a "for" loop here, you must have programming concepts to really benefit from this book.
   
   As a programmer, I really enjoyed it and was able to get to work quickly on C# programs. If you are totaly new to programming, get another book to get your feet wet before jumping on this one.



2. For any programmer coming over from another language, I really think this book offers the most bang for the buck (and for your time). I'm a VB6 programmer who wasted a lot of time and money on other books that either offer too much hand-holding (next to no code, everything through forms designer) and wasted time on extensive examples building software I'll never use or focused only on console C# applications with no explanation of topics like ADO.NET, winforms, etc. I need to use C# at work and like many programmers, I'm busy and have little time to waste. Yet, I also needed a comprehensive book because the real world of business programming requires the use of data-access technologies (ADO.NET), security, network technologies, etc. This book succeeds on all counts. The coverage is surprisingly comprehensive and details are well fleshed out. Even using ADO.NET in code is covered while many other books only cover using it through form controls in Visual Studio (anyone who writes database-connected applications knows that you really need a high level of control of shaping the data before you can present it). Nothing is dwelled upon for long so be warned that the book does move fast and info is densely packed into each page.



3. This a a very good book for someone who has programming experience. Fundamental concepts are in the book, but they are not belabored. The book quickly gets on with C# and what it takes to create real applications that do something more than say "Hello World".
   
   If this is your first experience with programming, then this book is not for you. If you have done some programming and are moving to C# for the first time, then this book is a great addition to your library.



4. As an experienced C++ programmer, I wanted to try C# out of curiosity. Obviously, I didn't want to read long-winded explanations of the most basic programming constructs -- I just wanted syntax and effective ways to use it. This book fulfills this purpose well. Within a few days, I was able to start writing real, useful C# applications. And, since I'm a game developer, I was able to find Managed DirectX tutorials and I've already written the fundamentals of a C# game engine!
   
   So, if you know how to code, this book will show you how to do it in C#. Thanks, Steven Holzner!

5 comments about C# for Windows Programming.

1. Although I agree with the reviewer who gave one star on the repeated code and terrible naming I still recommend this to any new Windows programmer. This book pretty much changed the way I looked at MS programming. A cool language with a great visual tool.(I never got into VB) The book is great at explaining form creation and events. I read almost the whole book in one day it was so interesting. One other downfall though is the full programs at the end of the book. I didn't find them useful.
   The book isn't perfect but it is worth getting.



2. I wrote a review of pappas and murry's book C# for the WEB. Yesterday, I went to the bookstore and found this C# for Windows book.

   So, this review is based on about 12 hours of work with the C# for Windows book. All I can say is if you want to write Windows program without the hassel of C++, this is the book for you.

   They cover all of the major controls, properties and methods. But the best thing is that they give example code for each one. I have now written about 7 short programs using C#. I cloned some of their code (from the Financial App chapter) and am running a loan calculator and mortgage program on my computer right now. C# is really cool - and this is a good book for helping you get started.

   I am also doing WEB development with C#, but that stuff is in their other book.




3. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.

   I bought Petzold, "Programming Windows with C#" and Pappas & Murray, "C# for Windows Programming" at roughly the same time. Petzold's book is long and thorough. It took me about 6 days of working through the book, but when I was done (in April), I had what I needed to write a small (~10000 lines, 1/2 of it GUI code out of the Visual Studio .NET GUI editor) commercial application that just hit the shelves two weeks ago (in July). In addition to a thorough introduction to Windows Forms programming, the book introduced readers to a variety of other .NET framework classes that I actually ended up using. Information was accurate (with a few exceptions due to changes between the betas and the final .NET code) and well organized. Petzold was careful to warn readers about techniques that might look appealing but would cause trouble later, and explained why they might cause trouble.

   So now that I can breath again, I thought I'd work through the Pappas & Murray book. What a joke. These guys must have been working under an unrealistic deadline, because I've never seen a book padded with so much fluff and so little usable content. At least two of the examples won't work as published, the descriptions of the event handlers are 23 pages of repetitive cut and paste that could have been cut down to 5 pages with a little thought, enumeration values for three or four MessageBox parameters were munged together in one table so that you couldn't tell which values to use with which parameters, and so on and so on. Code was sloppy - techniques they used that worked for their small examples would be dangerous if used generally in larger programs. This book is worse than just "beginner", it will lead beginners wrong.

   I won with Petzold's book, and lost with Pappas & Murry's. Fortunately I read Petzold's when it counted.




4. I started a new project where I wanted to use C# (I have many years experience programming C, C++ and Delphi on Windows), so I recently bought several books looking for help to get up to speed with Visual C# for Windows. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book. There are many other books I would recommend (Petzold's book, Professional C# Programming, etc..., just about anything) over this one. I would have given my rating at 1 star, to try and compensate for the 5 stars already provided, but I believe this one deserves some credit, so I gave 2 stars.

   My complaints (superficial, wasted space, mundane examples, lack of content); Examples of my concerns follow, several pages and graphics are devoted to how to insert common dialog controls (font picker, date/time picker, color dialog) in a project ... these are pretty simplistic controls, they give hardly any explanation about how to use the return values or methods but waste several pages showing what the form looks like with an inserted control (not real advanced stuff!). I also hold the editor at fault; for almost every code example they include the ENTIRE SOURCE CODE (including usings, Form designer generated code, etc...) and they show the relevant stuff for that topic in bold text. Give me a break, they could have saved hundreds of pages by providing a CD with the code on it and taking this mundane stuff out of the text (who the heck is going to type in all that stuff from the book ... huh??). They again waste space on providing all of the overloaded declarations for methods (especially graphics stuff), Visual Studio provides ample coverage of methods, show us HOW TO USE the methods, not just what they are. And finally, the sample applications are so boring. They include applications that print trigonometric tables, calculate loan amortization, and draw bar and pie charts. Who really would write a C# program to do these items when you would typically fire-up Excel to do this simple stuff. This book was a real let-down for me, especially considering what [$$] can get you from better C# offerings on this site.




5. Good first book. You'll want a language reference too, but this is a good intro to working in .NET and C#.

4 comments about C# Text Manipulation Handbook.

1. For a book of just over 300 pages, this wrox book surely packs a punch! Firstly U'r biceps don't ripple when U carry it around and U'r pecs don't enlarge when U lie down to read it!

   Apart from the physical beauties of the book, it also contains a lot inside. I must admit, being a slightly above average developer, I was rather sceptical about the benefits of reading it but the reviews of the VB.NET version of the book got good reviews so I gave it a try.

   ... How misplaced my initial scepticism was! Reading the book showed me how ignorant I was about strings; the way they're created, handled, manipulated and destroyed! This book shows that strings are more than "Anything between 2 quotes" and shows how to optimise U'r creation and manipulation of them.

   The greatest asset in this book is the information on Regular Expressions. This "Rocket-science-like" topic was reduced to bed time reading ... and the following morning, the knowledge gained the night before didn't "leak" from my head! The regular expression chapters "Eased" the concepts behind the subject into my head and the last chapter on regular expression chapters showed how the mind of a Regular Expression 'Guru' works. It's not the normal "Cook-Book" that pastes preformed expressions for common problems but a step by step analysis of the "thought process" that goes into building complex regular expressions ... "it doesn't give you a fish ... but it teaches you how to catch a fish U'rself"




2. I want to thank every author who working on the C# handbooks , Even the C#'s Guru programmers need this book , Whether you are a beginner or a pro you will need a complete understanding of the text manipulation in C#, and this is only in this book, I'm so sad that there's no more handbooks on C# like VB.NET :-(, The books cover all the aspects of text from A-Z (and that what i like in the book).
   Thanks for all the authors
   A Beginner



3. The first part of this book, which discusses what a string is, storage, and basic methods is primarily geared towards beginners. Veterans should be able to skim through the chapters. Both should take a look at the performance metrics run by the authors, as they offer valuable insight into how strings are manipulated.

   The chapter on Internationalization is not only great for anyone writing global applications but also those just looking to offer more configurability to their applications.

   The price of this book is worth the 3 chapters on Regular Expressions. The authors introduce each concept with an example, building up to complete examples such as Analyzing an SMTP Log File.




4. if you ever wanted to learn about regular expression and string manipulation, but didn't want spend alot of time for it. This is the book for you. The book is somewhat concise which makes it as an easy reference. This can be worrying for the beginner beginner in .net but if this is not your first book on .net it is a very good resource. This book gets the job done.

5 comments about Best Kept Secrets in .NET.

1. While this book does not go into great depth in any one area, it does a good job of recommending ways to increase the performance of code as well as make it more readable and extensible. Many of the tips apply across programming practice (i.e. short-circuiting and/or), but a few are related to just .NET. It is at least worth the $20 Amazon is selling it at (30 Nov 2004) for intermediate / beginning programmers. Advanced programmers may not find anything new however.



2. This has a lot of great ideas for the professional developer that uses Visual Studio to do .NET development. Many ideas that are hard to find or you have to spend a LOT of time working with others to find. Saves a ton of time. For a small book and a small price, this should definitely be on your shelf.



3. Best Kept Secrets in .NET
   Deborah Kurata
   APress 2004 ISBN: 1-59059-426-6
   
   Reviewed by Steven Mullins, HuNTUG member
   
   "The Secrets to improve your productivity and code quality" well that was about the gist of it. For those of us that are just getting into the writing of code and scripting this may give you a few clues on how to tweak while you write. I have only just started to learn how to compose code and this is what I needed to learn a little bit more. The author speaks well and gives plenty of examples in both VB and C# to keep even the beginner up to speed. I always want real world scenario when I read technical literature to help it all sink in.
   
   So down to the dirty, the book starts with the basics how to hot key and toggle between different screens where all the tools are stored and how to get to the tools and your data quickly. This is basics but for those who are still feeling our way through the interface it's nice to learn how to lock all that down. The keyboard shortcuts are here to, nice to have handy during setup. Getting deeper into it, the layout and cleaning of the interface was a nice thing to add in, I know I am not the cleanest builder of pages and have very little graphics skills. The biggest thing that I found here was the operator listings, another good reference for beginners. Chapter four covered a lot of area on getting your database into shape and configured for use but was pretty straight forward in how to get your data into your project. Chapter five was listed as defensive deployment which I learned that means how to clean it up and get your code right. There was very little "security" at least in my facet of it, I expect for security to talk on how to lock it down and deny access to users. There was a really good explanation of hashing and salting but that is where it left off.
   
   After all that being said let me say for a quick read and reference book this is one that I would put on a student readers list just for all the shortcuts and hotkeys. The author has a good flow to writing keeping it from being a solitary technical book. It was a good read for me and I would consider it a good find to add to a desktop library.



4. I read this entire book. Those who have praised this book as a "good book for newbies" have apparently forgot that the book is entitled "Best Kept Secrets". These are not secrets. Much of the book goes into painful detail of basic procedures in Visual Studio that you can figure out easily by using the program for a few days. The title of this book is absolutely fraudulent.
   
   What's really funny is that, at the end of the book, the author declares that if you said "I didn't know that" at least once while reading her book, then the book "met its objective of revealing the best kept secrets in .NET." That self-congratulatory statement is so illogical and false I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
   
   Literally 90% (I made careful marks of the content that was at least slightly informative to me) of the book's "secrets" are extremely basic, tepid, well-known practices.



5. Like other reviewers have pointed out, "Best Kept Secrets in .NET" is a bit misleading title. From a developer's jargon, it would mean internals of assembly binding redirection or uncharted waters of machine.config etc however, this book is more about shortcuts and development techniques from an IDE perspective. "Literally" speaking, its a cross between Visual Studio Hacks and Code to Developer.
   
   Apart from its name, it's generally a good book for beginers and average book for mid-level devs and skim through for seniors in case they won't know how to store code snippets in toolbox. I liked the improving unit testing and defensive development sections along with much ADO and hidden tricks in VS.NET. The Apress roadmap explains the intended audience and its a good match but generally, I'd recommend Coder to Developer for this particular genre of IDE/Process learning.

4 comments about Beginning C# Web Applications with Visual Studio .NET.

1. As a technical reviewer of this book I found it to have a good mix of technical content and explaination which is ideal for helping developers to get started with ASP.NET.

   The book explores various areas of key functionality within ASP.NET and supports it with a sample application. I'd recommend this book to anyone who hasn't had any experience with ASP.NET before and who want to get some understanding before undertaking a project.




2. Being new to .Net and redirecting my career into software development, I've found Daniel's book to be one of most well written and insightful books on C# and Visual Studio.net. He moves quickly into the nuts and bolts of the .Net classes and provides innovative code that go beyond the obvious. You are given multiple methods of handling logic in the same code-behind. The authors cleared much confusion I had about server controls, data binding and ADO.Net. Readers will appreciate the applications development approach in the book which goes beyond theory and shows you how to apply your skills in solving real-world problems. I recommend you write the code yourself line by line and read the book cover to cover. He leads you step by step. You will discover the finer points of VS.net, not to mention the many properties of the .Net classes with Intellisense. I also like the SQL data interaction because this is so important with our customers. I highly recommend it!



3. Before reading this book I had developed a few simple web applications, but I was ready for a more in depth approach utilizing all of the excellent features provided by .NET. This book covers a lot of the basic topics that will allow you to write code efficiently and quickly. Of course since there are a wide range of topics, one finds that some of them fail to go into great detail, but this is not even an issue as the author gives you enough information and examples to be able to figure it out for yourself, or at least to give you a solid foundation for solving the problem. The only downside is that, as far as I know, the code examples do not exist on Wrox's website. Perhaps I couldn't find them? It's not really a big issue because most of the code is easy to follow. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants beginning/intermediate information regarding State Management, Data Binding, ADO, UI/Web Controls, Basic Security and more.



4. As a beginner to Web Applications, i found this book extremely easy to understand. The book covers all the topics necessary to get going to develop a complete basic web application. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants information regarding State Management, Data Binding, ADO, UI/Web Controls, Basic Security etc. Also, this book would be very useful to anyone who has little or no experience with ASP.NET before and who want to get their basics right before plunging on to a project. Great book!!

5 comments about C# Threading Handbook.

1. the vb.net has code support but the c# has not.
   it is diificult to review the book without
   translating the vb version to c# to see if the code works



2. I've sat and read the book till chapter 3 and it's so academic it smacks of not being able to think in real programming scenarios. It really doesn't find a way to be jovial and sounds so disinterested in the topic. I've read so many books that do better than this. And, I love reading these type of books but oh god these guys are sooo dry I had take breaks just to sleep :) But... since I have the only book on 'c#' threading to date... I'll keep going... I am really pleased I read the book on books24x7 before I purchased!...
   
   Anff



3. Some of the most complex problems in commercial programming arise when you use multiple threads in your application. This book deals with the various ways in which you could spawn new threads and create a more responsive application. However, like every experienced programmer knows, that is the easy part. The real difficulty is in making your code thread-safe. This is also known as thread synchronization. This book has excellent coverage of those aspects too.
   
   It, however, assumes that you are familiar with C# and does indeed jump directly to the topic of the book. If you need help with C#, definitely look somewhere else (C# and the .NET platform, 2nd Edition by Andrew Troelsen is a fantastic book for that purpose). I also felt that the book skimps on some of the more detailed areas of .NET multithreading such as Thread Pools and some specialized classes such as AutoResetEvent, ManualResetEvent, etc. However, this in no way reduces the usefulness of this book.
   
   I found it to be a great primer to learning more about these topics, which paved a path for further investigations using MSDN or other web resources.
   
   Whether it is for your day-to-day job, or for an interview, if you are looking for a book that covers .NET threading in detail, you are likely to be satisfied with this book.



4. I am new to .net threading and this is the book i could find which is about .net threading. Since there are not much choices,comparisons are almost unlikely.
   
   The book is well organized but with one main problem, no source code download. Actually i don't mind there isn't a code for download, because i prefer to type myself. but the author had to make sure all the codes are within the book and all workable.
   
   When i read until chapter 2. I found some difficulty.
   There is a topic about "Life cycle of Thread". when i gone thru the "Interrupting a Thread" it prompt me error. Then i skip this part and go to "Pausing and Resuming Threads". no error but the pause button doesn't work. the thread still continue running even i press the pause button. till i put a break point in the pause button. A little dissapointed hope the author can rectify it immediately



5. This is a good book to get started on .NET threading. However some of the examples are syntax oriented rather than application oriented. For example, the chapter on synchronization covers all the synchronization mechanisms available in .NET but the examples appear to be rushed i.e concentrating on how to use them syntactically rather than providing concrete examples. I also found the book a little unorganized. Some of the snippets are incomplete or improperly explained. Nonetheless, this book helps in getting up to speed in a short time. It covers almost all aspects of .NET Threading. Good reference but not great. 3 stars.