Beginning ASP.NET 1.1 with Visual C# .NET 2003 (Paperback)

WebMatrix is also used as the Web Server, so you won't get IIS exposure. If you are a professional, or want to be one, look for a book that uses Visual Studio and IIS.

The book starts out explaining about .net and getting you up and running with some "Hello World!" stuff and basic controls on a webpage. It then goes into various datatypes and describes some of the fun data structures built into .net and some basic stuff on how to use them. It then explains some basic c# functionality, and goes on to explain the object-oriented nature of it. After this, databases are discussed and how to connect to them. Much of the remainder of the book is spent developing a faux application which explores some of the more complex controls, some useful objects, asp.net security and how to use assemblies.

I found the style of presentation to be very clear. A concept is presented. A try-it-out section is given where you copy the code from the book, using the IDE etc. The code is then gone over line-by-line explaining what is going on.

The .net framework is huge, and I appreciated having this book so that I could learn the most important stuff first. There is so much that the book does not talk about, but it sets your feet correctly at the beginning of the path.

At times I would have liked more depth in the explanations of some of the code - things can get a little hand-wavy and you see stuff that just kind of plops there (why does he cast that object now, when before he didn't?).

But really, you can learn what you need quickly from this.

*Caveats*

1) The book assumes you are using the free WebMatrix IDE from Microsoft. Some others in the same book in VB complained that they got confused when they used Visual Studio. You have been warned.

2) The book claims to be "for beginners who have no previous experience with ASP, C#, XML, object-oriented programming, or the .NET framework. A little knowledge of HTML is useful, but not essential." - This is a joke. You need to know SQL, HTML, and have some kind of programming experience (VB or C++ - I know both) for this book to be useful. You don't have to know them very well, but you do have to have a clue. This book is *NOT* for people trying to create webpages with no previous experience.