ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks and Tips

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ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks and Tips

ASP.NET 2.0 ships with many new features. You can not onlywork with them directly in different ways, but also can tweak them usingvarious techniques indirectly. Many developers learn these techniques only byexperience or by attending conferences, user group meetings, and other events.But what about having next to your desk a book that provides instantinformation about those techniques?

ASP.NET 2.0 MVPHacks and Tips unleashes the hidden secrets and mysteries behind theexciting technology in the form of hacks and tips. The book, written byexperienced developers who are recognized by Microsoft as Most ValuableProfessionals (MVPs), contains 17 chapters with high-quality content that youwill not find anywhere else. Each chapter contains numerous undocumentedtechniques, which will surely enable you to work better with ASP.NET 2.0.

The first chapter provides detailed coverage about theWizard control and techniques for implementing the URL Rewriting and Mapping capabilities.It also includes short coverage about Master Pages, with special reference toASP.NET 1.1. While Chapter 2 examines the organization of projects andsolutions, including Themes and Skinning, Chapter 3 covers the variousproviders that ship with ASP.NET 2.0. The chapter also demonstrates thecreation of your own Membership and Role providers, in addition to building acustom provider.

Chapter 4 provides detailed coverage about buildingsmarter Web clients with Ajax,including a hack provided directly by the ASP.NET team at Microsoft. Chapter 5examines some of the hacks meant for debugging, with special reference toone-stop visualization. Chapter 6 covers some of the advanced hacks regardingcreation of RSS feeds and custom type converters.

The next chapter is an important one as it examines hacksdevoted to the GridView control. I think developers will be interested to testdrive all the hacks discussed in the chapter as the control is used in manyprojects. The disappointing feature I noticed is that the chapter doesn tprovide any screenshots of the final output. From my point of view, screenshotshelp because a developer can view the live output before attempting to workwith each hack. An interesting feature of this book is that each chapterincludes complete source code with detailed explanation of the code. Theauthors also provide a comparison of topics with ASP.NET 1.1 wherever required.

Chapter 8 examines extreme data binding, with specialcoverage of extending the Query String parameter. The next two chapters will beof good use as they provide coverage about ViewState- and Caching-relatedhacks. Chapter 11 includes some of the tips for migration of an ASP.NET 1.xsite to 2.0. While Chapter 12 deals with hacks related to deployment of anASP.NET 2.0 application, Chapter 13 discusses how to effectively leverageVisual Studio 2005 with code snippets and templates.

Chapter 14 provides some of the techniques for securing anASP.NET 2.0 application, such as validating a strong password, usage of DynamicImpersonation, and much more. You ll learn how to build and publish your ownhacks with the help of Chapter 15. The penultimate chapter provides hacks towork with Master Pages with a special reference about sharing Master Pagesacross IIS applications. The final chapter provides crisp coverage about thecreation of handlers and modules. It includes a sample HttpModule project thatenables you to blacklist an IP address.

I am of the opinion that the book contains extensiveinformation for advanced developers. Beginners and intermediate developers willfind it hard to follow the content discussed in the book. They can, however,use the book after gaining sufficient knowledge about ASP.NET 2.0. The authors missedan opportunity by not providing hacks about Web services, e-mail, and some ofthe other new controls (such as FormsView and DetailsView). I would also loveto see a hack that provides information regarding the working of Memberships ina shared hosting environment. I hope the authors will provide even more usefulhacks in the next edition of the book.

Anand Narayanaswamy

Rating:

Title: ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks and Tips

Authors: DavidYack, Joe Mayo, Scott Hanselman, Fredrik Norm n, Dan Wahlin, J. Ambrose Little,and Jonathan Goodyear

Publisher: WroxPublishing

ISBN:0-7645-9766-3

Web Site: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0764597663.html

Price: US$39.99

Page Count: 432