Microsoft Silverlight Books

A Practical Guide to ASP.NET 3.5

The author of this book came to our town to talk about the lessons learned from developing with the Entity Framework with the Beer House project. It was great, and I had to purchase the book when it became available! He walks you through developing a real-life application in ASP.NET 3.5 using the Entity Framework; no impractical examples here.

Many developers dive into writing an application without giving consideration to the overall architectural concerns that are necessary for a well-designed web application. Chris Love walks you through these concerns from the multiple application tiers to logging, instrumentation, and finally deployment.

I am currently a fan of ASP.NET MVC, but if you're still programming Web Forms, and many are, this is the book for you.

Christopher Eargle
13 December, 2009

Be Warned - Download Code Does not Work

I am really tired of spending good money on books whose accompanying, downloadable code does not work. Why put it up at all???

If the code can't back up the ideas set out in the pages, they're not much good to me.

So, if you insist on a well-written, functioning application which you can run, and from which you can learn, this book is probably not for you.

John Bonham
09 February, 2010

Problem - Design - Solution Format is a Practical Way to Learn Code

Chris Love, a principal developer for more than 300 ASP and ASP.NET websites, shows off his real world experience with this book, which I considered excellent.

His unique approach: "Problem - Design - Solution" approaches programming the way experienced developers do. Rather than offering a "Bible" approach, which is obsolete now that reference material is a click away on the web, or a "Dummies" approach, which hand holds you through the keystrokes, the "Problem - Design - Solution" approach identifies key concerns for modern developers, discusses alternative approaches, then presents the meat of his recommended solution. More than a "how-to", it gives you a thorough understanding of what you are doing, why, and, yes, how to. It is a "how-to" with perspective.

The example in the book is a "Beer House" website that Love has worked on over the years. On the downside, you can see the fact that this site has been around for awhile in his choice of languages. It is written and presented in Visual Basic.NET, rather than todays de riguer language, C#. Love confesses that he has re-written the site in C#, but at the time he went to press, it still had bugs. For this he can hardly be blamed, as the site is extensive, has been active for years, and was not in need of a complete overhaul. He does offer the C# version for download from his site, with caveats.

The book was written using web forms, rather than MVC. However, Love has another book out which approaches the project using MVC. Consistently enough, it is titled, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Website Programming Problem - Design - Solution. I have not yet read this book.

Love gives the reader understanding of topics crucial to successful programming, such as the effective use of multiple master pages, sources for getting free ready-to-go graphics and CSS implementations, caching strategies, search engine optimization, membership profile implementation, and effective data and business logic layering.
However, it is not his presentation of these fundamentals that make the book shine. Rather, it is the relatively rare (in off-the-shelf books) treatment of the "extras" that make this book definitely worth the price for serious programmers. These topics include News and Article Management, Opinion Polls, Newsletters, Forums, Calendar of Events, Photo Gallery, and how to set up an e-Commerce Store.

In conclusion, if you are an experienced web programmer, and want solid treatments of issues critical to your success, this is the book for you.


Davis M. DeBard
07 March, 2010

Don't waste your money unless you've bought the previous versions of this book

I don't have the previous versions of this book which made this book WORTHLESS! Don't waste your time on this one if you don't have the series. The book is only written for people who have read the previous versions.



Matt McDonald
16 February, 2010

Generally very pleased

Let me say up front that Chris Love has done a good job on building on what is already a well documented Web site. I liked the fact that he covered most all the elements of a social network web application. I also appreciated the many references included in each chapter for further exploration of the topic at hand.
That said, no book can supply the needs and desires of all its readers, and I am no exception. Chris stated up front who his target audience was and I believe he served them well. My one criticism is the way in which he develops his database and underlying structures to address the database. I would have preferred a chapter on the design of the data to be used. Had he done this he might have served a greater audience. The developer, who only wanted to know how to incorporate polls into his site, had to read much of the book prior to the poll chapter to understand Chris' approach to the data and the repository using entity framework.
I was very pleasantly surprised for the reference to the MVC version of the site as this is where my interests currently lie.
I can say that I recommend this book regardless of your level of expertise. If it is a bit over your head, the many references can give you much help


James Lavine
14 March, 2010