Review by Dan Maharry, Score: 10/10
The .NET Framework can be a pleasure to use but there's so much to use and master that it's an all-too-often event when we start out with something basic only to realise we've forgotten exactly how it's done. For that very reason, the concept of cookbooks exists—references whose sole existence is to refresh the memory and suggest best practices.
Cookbooks often suffer from being too subjective. What the public tend to get is a set of tips specific to the author's line of work; very useful in places and sorely lacking in others. What makes this book different is that the whole ASP Alliance community has sourced the material for this book and filtered through Smith and Howard a comprehensive and well-considered collection of some 250 basic techniques. If there is a bias to any given topic, it's because an ASP.NET developer has more problems and solutions to remember in that topic and not because it's the author's area of speciality. Perhaps there's a slight bias to the classic ASP origins of the alliance with all the examples in VB.NET, but C# equivalents can be downloaded from the book's support website as required.
The first half of the book looks at the core topics in ASP.NET and ADO.NET—controls, state management, XML, and data handling—while the second covers more generic .NET tasks which are just as applicable to ASP.NET applications as they are elsewhere—text and image manipulation, collections, Web services, and so on. Each topic is given its own chapter and each technique follows the same pattern for easy access. A problem is stated, followed by a brief description of the technique used as a solution and some sample code to demonstrate it. A concise but complete discussion of what has been done is then given along with links and references for further information. Indeed, these links are one of the stand-out features of this book, making it more useful than most other tomes of the same ilk. At the same time then, we are presented with an easy-to-follow, basic working solution for each problem, and are confident that we can use the links to work on a more complex version of the solution should the need arise.
If there is a flaw in this book, it's in the decision to make the solutions code-only and not cover using development IDEs at all. Surely a chapter each on the most common tips and tricks for use with, say, Visual Studio .NET, Dreamweaver MX and Web Matrix wouldn't be out of scope for a book such as this? I know I'd much rather use an IDE to generate a basic paging solution for a DataGrid than type it out by hand. You could also debate that there isn't enough ‘sticky' contextual text in the book itself to inspire readers to give new areas a go without them having already decided that they'll need to anyway, but the simple counter is that ASP.NET Cookbook is a pure reference book and a damn fine one at that. Beginners won't learn ASP.NET development by reading it, but established ones will remember a whole lot they've probably forgotten.
Steven Smith, Rob Howard, and the ASP Alliance have been around the block a good number of times and their experience shines through in this book. They've asked themselves what they would most like out of a technique reference and delivered it with panache. If you're an ASP.NET developer, buy two copies—the first will be falling apart from overuse in weeks.