If you are new to the .Net Framework and haven't decided whether to program in VB or C#, this book is for you. The book does a great job in going through everything from downloading and installing Visual Studio Web Developer Edition, becoming familiar with the IDE and learning to code in VB and C#. The book focuses on developing web forms, so if you're looking for a book on WinForms, this book is not for you.

The progression of the book allows you to test out what you've learned by coding individual pages and creating a fictional web site called Dorknozzle. The book helped me to get a good base of the controls available in ASP.Net 3.5 and how to use them as well as the attributes of those controls. Here are the main sections in the book:

• Introduction to .Net and ASP.Net
• ASP.Net Basics
• VB.Net and C# Basics
• Web Forms and Web Controls
• Validation Controls
• Database Design and Development
• Structural Query Language
• ADO.Net
• DataGrid and DataList Controls
• DataSets
• Web Applications
• Building an ASP.Net Shopping Cart
• Error Handling
• Security and User Authentication
• Working with Files and Email
• Rich Controls and User Controls
• XML Web Services

One area that really is not discussed in this book is object-oriented programming. So if you are looking for information about this subject, this book won't help you.

I was able to successfully work through all the examples in the book and at the end had a functioning website (albeit one that I would never use, but it was still helpful to work through all the examples).

If you already have a foundational understanding of previous versions of ASP.Net, you might want to look for a different volume, but ASP.Net newbies should get a lot out of this book.