Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008, Second Edition, from Apress Books (© 2007)
ASP.NET 3.5 is the latest version of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2008 web application and Framework 3.5 technology that adds new functions and features to Visual Studio 2005's ASP.NET 2.0. ASP.NET 3.5 is the principal standard for creating dynamic web pages on the Windows platform. Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 offers high–quality, in-depth, and practical advice on learning and deploying Microsoft’s web solution for thin, but rich client applications.
Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta cover ASP.NET 3.5 as a whole, illustrating both the brand–new features and the functionality carried over from previous versions of ASP.NET. This book gives a developer the knowledge needed to code real ASP.NET 3.5 applications with a focus on best practices.
The book covers ASP.NET 3.5 in great detail starting with core concepts to more advanced topics. The major topics covered are:
Core concepts of ASP.NET 3.5 and the fundamental principles for the underlying and support technologies like IIS 7. The basics of setting up ASP.NET applications in Visual Studio 2008. How ASP.NET 3.5 controls are created, and how they fit into ASP.NET 3.5 pages, ultimately creating full applications.
Data access details. The intricacies of ADO.NET and how to access many sources from databases to file streams to XML. The book includes LINQ coverage which is a new core data access technology with Framework 3.5.
- Security. Once considered the Achilles heel (classic ASP, ASP 1.1 anyone?) of Windows web applications, the security model has vastly improved with Forms Authentication, Membership, Windows Authentication, Authorization, Roles, and asymmetric or symmetric Cryptography.
- Advanced user interface techniques that include user controls, custom server controls, and client–side JavaScript.
- Web services. This book shows how to create and work with them.
- ASP.NET AJAX, with an emphasis on rich client web development techniques for partial postback and other asynchronous techniques.
- Development and Deployment using Internet Information Services 7, Microsoft’s Windows 2008 web hosting platform. It also chronicles the transition from IIS 5 through IIS 6 to the latest IIS 7.
- State Management. View, Session, and Application State configuration, security. Includes cross-page posting.
- ASP.NET concepts such as Master pages, Cascading Style Sheets, Navigation Controls, and Silverlight.
This book is available from Amazon
Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, Second Edition (© 2008)
by Matthew MacDonald (Author)
Please buy this book if you haven't explored Windows Presentation Foundation. The separation of the UI (with XAML) and the code-behind page controller (C# or VB.NET) will revolutionize .NET development. If you don't have a designer you must learn Microsoft Expression Blend, but a UI designer will push your view (from Model-View-Controller) to the extreme.
The browser-based XBAP works like a Winform app, but it can be viewed in Internet Explorer. If you've ever tried to create a dirty flag to denote changes in form data in ASP.NET, you know how superior Winforms are for this purpose. XBAPs give you the ability to access the textbox text changed event like Winforms. This takes a ton of JavaScript to do this in ASP.NET forms.
The update of the application to the client machine (the XBAP runs on the client) can be done with new technolgy called ClickOnce.
I've even tried to learn the XAML markup from a very good chapter on this.
This book is really well done. Kudos to the author.
This book is available from Amazon
Learning jQuery 1.3 (© 2009)
by John Resig (creator of jQuery)
This book is a great introduction to jQuery by its creator. The books begins with the basics and progresses through very advanced programming examples. All the solutions help the programmer implement client-side functinality like:
1. Traverse the Document Object Model (DOM) tree with just a few lines of code to manipulate or check elements of the HTML or ASPX page.
2. Easily change the appearance of an HTML or ASPX page with the power of CSS 3.0 style properties.
3. Use the API to alter the contents of an HTML or ASPX page in short, concise jQuery code snippets.
4. Perform AJAX calls to server-side page methods to securely access database information through MVC classes or web/WCF services.
5. Interact with the user by binding events and properties to an HTML or ASPX page elements to produce powerful and elegant visual effects that also maintain state in the client with browser caching.
6. Create reuable jQuery plug-ins shared across an entire application.
The only caveat that I find to pass on the the .NET programmer is that some of the chapters include PHP programming that I have no interest in knowing. I converted all the PHP examples, however, to .NET, and I have included them in the jQuery section of this website.
This book is available from Amazon