In America there is a growing trend to take your date to the prom in a limousine with all the pomp and lavishness and it works (I’ve heard stories anyway). The same can be said for books. Technical books that deal with certain subjects, CSS, Silverlight etc. are noticeably enhanced when they are printed in full color and Silverlight 3 Programmers Reference is no exception. It helps to clearly demonstrate what the author(s) are portraying.

This book covers both the bases of those new to Silverlight programming and those looking to upgrade their skill sets from Silverlight 2. Silverlight 3 has introduced many enhancements in many areas of the product and the authors have done a good job explaining this. It gently eases you like a pair of well worn slippers into the world of Silverlight programming and captures you with the possibilities that this technology can achieve.

Some chapters of the book are better than others, for example the chapter on styling is the best I’ve read on Silverlight styling but other chapters, although they get the subject matter across appear to leave out some information and sometimes come across as overviews rather than in-depth tutorials.

The authors have slipped up in a couple of places and you can certainly tell that this book isn’t a complete re-write but rather an update of their book on Silverlight 2 as they have forgotten to update the text. This should not put you off however as Silverlight 3 is backwards compatible so what might apply to Silverlight 2 equally applies to Silverlight 3.

I would say that this book is aimed mainly at the newcomer to the Silverlight world and it gives you enough knowledge to more than get started with the technology. Those that are already familiar with Silverlight 2 will learn what is new in Silverlight 3 however the book does not point these things out in an obvious manner which is perhaps one of it’s downfalls. The other downfall is you are left with a feeling that some things should have been explained in more depth. It certainly gives you a good introduction to certain things, some things it does cover well and in-depth but this is not consistent throughout the book.

Some things in this world are exquisite, the minute attention to every detail in a Da Vinci, the song of a Ferrari engine. Some things are good but but lack that something that makes them great and most things fall into the category of Mediocre/Useable. This book I would place in the good category if you are new to Silverlight programming. If you are already proficient in Silverlight 2 and looking to learn what’s new in Silverlight 3 then perhaps this book is not for you as you really have to dig to find that information.

 

Like human beings, CSS is constantly evolving. The introduction of new browsers, people learning new techniques and tricks etc. The CSS Anthology is now in it’s third edition and has been completely updated to include the latest browsers including Internet Explorer 8.

The book takes a slightly different approach than most. It’s still split into different chapters like every other book but rather than teaching you in the normal fashion, this book takes the approach of you reader having asked a question then gives you an answer and an explanation of the answer.

For example, in the chapter on CSS positioning and layout, there is a question “Can I make an inline element display as if it were a block element and vice versa?”. This then leads to an example of exactly what the question means, an answer and an explanation of how the answer works. If necessary, sidebars are presented to detail certain abnormalities for example, what happens in quirks mode in Internet Explorer, if there are differences in the final renderings between the various browsers or whether the browser actually accepts the specified CSS and if not what a workaround would be. All this information extra information is essential for web developers and is tied nicely in with the specific question.  

There is a lot to learn in this book if you are fairly new to CSS and even things to learn if you are an old hand but this isn’t really a book on learning CSS so if you are in the market for that I would suggest looking elsewhere and it’s not exactly a reference book either (I would suggest The Ultimate CSS Reference - Book Review also by SitePoint although to my knowledge this book hasn’t been completely updated with the new browsers yet, but is an excellent reference book on CSS).

The CSS Anthology is beautifully decked out in full color. For certain kinds of books, CSS, Silverlight etc. there is a definite advantage to having the book in color and this shines through here.

Although this book isn’t really meant as a complete learning guide to CSS due to the way it’s been written as a question and answer scenario the first few chapters are written as if the reader has no knowledge of CSS and therefore would be a newcomer to CSS. This gives the book a slight identity crisis and you’re left not knowing exactly where CSS Anthology should be positioned. Is it a newcomer learning book? Is it a reference book or is it as the title suggests a tips book? It tries to cover all bases when it shouldn’t. This is my main criticism of the book and why I find it hard to unequivocally recommend.  I would say the people who are going to get the most out of this book are people who know the basics of CSS but aren’t quite fully accomplished CSS gurus.

Title : Professional Silverlight 2 for ASP.NET Developers Author : Jonathan Swift Chris Barker Dan Wahlin Salvador Alvarez Patuel ISBN : 0470277750 Price : $31.49 Rating : 83 out of 100

Writing a programming book is extremely difficult. You generally either end up wallowing in a blancmange of technical details suitable only for egg-heads like me or you end up with a meringue, so light on details that your granny would understand every word.

Professional Silverlight 2 for ASP.Net developers is like a lemon sorbet fitting nicely in-between the two. Light enough to make for easy reading but with enough bite in the technical department that you walk away with a very good knowledge of actually how to do things. Wrox are known for their tombstone like manuals that are everything to everybody, desktop reference books. Over the years Wrox has went from being the absolute authority on programming (if you are old enough you will remember the Wrox book on classic Asp which was the bible for Asp programmers), to books that I honestly wouldn’t expend the energy to lift up. Lately however Wrox have been retracing their steps back to the good old days and this book on Silverlight 2 is definitely a  step along that path.  It comes in lighter than most Wrox books at only a tad over 600 pages so you don’t need professional weight bodybuilding classes just to lift it, but is packed with knowledge and information.

As you might guess from the title, this book is not for programming newbie's and expects that you have a good understanding of ASP.Net, it’s page lifecycles, event models, and the underlying .Net Framework. This book was written squarely for Asp.Net developers who want to get to grips with Microsoft’s new(ish) Silverlight component. Silverlight 1 was fairly limited in what you could do with it and your only programming choice was JavaScript. Silverlight 2 introduced a condensed .Net Framework and CLR and therefore opened up the programming realm to C# and VB.Net programmers.

After a brief introduction into the Silverlight world and how it is architected, you delve straight into the meaty aspects of Silverlights XAML model, a cut down version of the full client side XAML model and how to interact with the Silverlight objects in your code-behind. A chapter is dedicated on how to layout your Silverlight application detailing what controls are available to you and giving you tips and guidance on how to appropriately scale up for full-screen mode if you should decide to allow users to use this option. Next the book moves on to varied user controls that come pre-packaged with Silverlight 2, what they are, they’re various properties and quirks and also refreshing to see is some details of controls in the Silverlight Toolkit, a separate download that adds further controls and functionality Silverlight.

Most Asp.Net developers are trying to produce standards based, best practice websites and they are a myriad of options on how to style objects and controls available within the Asp.Net framework from CSS to theming. Silverlight 2 also has these options available albeit slightly differently, there is no CSS as per se, but there is an equivalent. Chapter 7 of the book covers all of these in detail, except for one which I found odd. The book does cover best practices in separating content from styling but then does not proceed to it’s natural conclusion in removing the styling from the actual page and into a separate resource file. This strangely comes much later in the book under the chapter of working with data and appears to be a bit of a disconnect. A fairly minor gripe as the author’s do indeed cover the subject, along with best practices and explanations as to why.

Every application needs interaction and responding to what the user is doing, the next chapter covers just this and goes into sufficient detail that you not only know about events from the built in controls but the authors give you a good explanation of the actual event model should you decide at some point to build your own controls. It’s certainly not an exhaustive view of the event model but certainly enough to get you started with your own controls. This is nicely rounded out with a chapter later in the book on precisely that, how to build your own controls.

The next major chunk of the book deals with communicating with the server and data. Silverlight 2 is a client application with your code-behind actually running client side and not server side like you are used to with the Asp.Net programming model, therefore getting data in and out of Silverlight is slightly different. The book details well all of the possible ways that this can be accomplished and the various ways of actually getting that data into your controls and onto your page. Special attention is paid to data binding which is done slightly differently in Silverlight than in Asp.Net.

When Silverlight 1 first appeared on the scene, most thought of it as the beauty queen of plugins, very pretty but not much substance. Silverlight 2 retains the looks of its’ predecessor but adds some meat to the bones rounding out a very nice package. The next section deals with the blush and lipstick of Silverlight, what makes it different from it’s main rival Flash, and how to take advantage of this added power and graphical wondrousness. Finally it rounds off with a few chapters on how to Troubleshoot Silverlight errors and your inevitable programming glitches and performance considerations that you should take into account with best practices on how to do this. Remember, Silverlight is a client application and therefore everything has to be sent to the client, but there are ways to do this so that your web page doesn’t take an orbit of the sun to load.  

This is the first Silverlight 2 book that I have read that really does take into account what knowledge you should have programming web pages in Asp.Net and transferring and molding that knowledge so that it is relevant to Silverlight. The authors have done a fantastic job and given you enough details that you can be confident to get good looking and fully immersive applications in Silverlight 2.  If you are an Asp.Net developer who has a future project that will use Silverlight 2 or you just want to dip your big toe into the pond and make some waves then I thoroughly recommend this book.

Every so often in computing a language extension or new technology comes along that is the buzz of the development community. JQuery is one of those. Lots of developers are talking about it and using it, even Microsoft are including native support for it in their upcoming Visual Studio 2010 release.

With that in mind I thought it was about time to look at what all the hype is about and learn the language. JQuery is really a library of JavaScript routines that makes your life easier. In a way it is akin to the Microsoft AJAX extensions that originally were a separate release but are now baked into the .Net Framework. Microsoft’s AJAX extensions went beyond just handling AJAX calls and put a whole framework behind JavaScript to make it easier for .Net OO developers to code in JavaScript. JQuery does the same thing, makes it easier to code certain things in JavaScript and is cross-browser compatible taking out one of the headaches a lot of developers inevitably come across.

Beginning JavaScript and CSS Development with JQuery is a beautiful full color book from Wrox Press weighing in at just over 500 pages. Richard York assumes that you are already familiar with JavaScript and also CSS and therefore this is not a book for the complete beginner, only a beginner with JQuery.

The book is well laid out with chapters devoted to each of JQuery’s main areas, selectors, AJAX, Manipulating the DOM, Event handling etc. etc. with numerous Appendixes that can be used as a quick reference. Each chapter has numerous examples explaining the particular JQuery concepts and constructs being discussed culminating in one big example program at the end of the chapter that brings together everything discussed in that particular chapter finally ending with a quick question exercise to make sure that the keywords and constructs discussed have truly sunk in. This is an excellent way for a beginners book to be constructed as it really hammers home what has been discussed during each chapter.

One major annoyance I have with Richards writing style however is that he comes across as a Mac snob and throughout the book takes snipes at Microsoft and especially Internet Explorer. Whilst some of this may be deserving it is off-putting and a detraction from what is ultimately a good book.

If you can gloss over the snobbishness I would actually recommend this book for beginners of JQuery. The full color screenshots highlight the various examples superbly and Richard does give you a lot of useful information without overwhelming you with every nuance of JQuery.

Developers and businesses alike are starting to see the benefits of Silverlight 2 and more and more are starting to take advantage of it’s capabilities. Most web-developers have a good knowledge of Microsoft’s .Net platform, they also have good knowledge of HTML, CSS and all the other technologies surrounding the web. However presentation fairly much still is lacking on the web front, even with the acceptance of AJAX, it’s still like an amateurs representation of the Mona Lisa compared with the desktop cousins.  The first version of Silverlight was mainly geared towards video and audio and was restricted to the Javascript language. With the introduction of Silverlight 2, you now have pre-built controls at your disposal, C# and VB.Net programming access and a whole lot more. The painting has now gone from being amateurish to professional but still not quite the original. Now however developers can re-use their existing .Net Framework knowledge without having to learn another language like Flash and have a rich user experience. One thing that you will definitely need is data. Data is king in any application and gaining access to your data is what this book is all about.

Silverlight 2 introduced various ways in which you can gain access to your data, through RESTful web services, SOAP, RSS, AtomPub, POX, JSON, direct from a backend database etc. etc. You can write your own data layers or bind directly to controls and can even use LINQ.

John Papa takes you by the hand and shows you how to do all of the above scenarios and more. The book is very well written, easy to read and understand and no filler (something I’m really disliking about certain books, putting filler in just to increase page count).

There are whole chapters dedicated to each of the main ways to gain access to your data and bind it to your front end application with numerous examples throughout including how to read Tweets, access and consume Amazon RESTful services, the ADO.Net Entity Framework etc. If there is a way to access data you will find out how to incorporate that into your Silverlight 2 application with this book. And of course, you can also take the techniques John has so masterfully expounded on in this book and use them in your standard ASP.Net web sites as well.

If you’re a Silverlight developer, this is one of those must have books. You’ll refer to it over and over. Even if you’re a standard ASP.Net developer it is worth taking a look through this book as most of the content can very easily be applied to a normal ASP.Net site.

Have you ever gazed longingly at a supercar? Say a Ferrari F430. The sleek lines, the speed and power, the potential. Someone hands you keys to your dream machine. You get in and luxuriate in the saffron feel of the interior, insert the keys ready to hear the roar of the V8, start the car and all you hear is a putt, putt of a small 1.4L engine inside. The emperor has all the clothes but no body to put them on.  This is exactly what this book (and others) is like.

Now to be fair this isn’t a full of the above book as I’ve still to read a lot of it but I’m curious as to why books do this?  Have a lot of completely unnecessary filler.

I got this book yesterday (it is one of a few that I am currently reading) and started to read it. I was in-fact looking forward to getting this book. This is (as far as I know) the only book on K2 Blackpearl that is currently out there and Blackpearl is a technology that I use so I thought great, I’ll be able to learn more about this product.

Open the book and the first chapter is an introduction to Blackpearl and process driven applications. Now this is all fine and well if you know absolutely nothing about process management but if you want to learn about that then a couple of chapters in a book that is meant to be dedicated to something else is a complete waste of space and time reading. The discussions on BPM are so high level as to be almost useless.

OK you think, surely the next chapter will actually discuss Blackpearl. Nope more BPM, and the next. In-fact the whole first section of this book is dedicated to BPM (the first 4 chapters), but discusses it at such a high level as to be useless to anyone who does not have any BPM experience. Knowing a little can be far more dangerous than knowing nothing at all. If you want to learn about BPM, go study it. It’s going to take a lot more than 4 fairly think chapters on the subject to know about it.

Therefore the whole first section of this book is basically just filler, an unnecessary waste.  There seems to be more and more books coming out that are doing this kind of thing. You read chapters or sections and gain no useful knowledge from them. Now in defense of other publishers, the worst offender of this seems to be Wrox Press. Having a small introduction chapter is no crime. Giving you a background of the product or technology, what the book hopes to cover etc. but having multiple chapters or whole sections that are really just filler should be a crime. It is the customers time that you are wasting.

The  rest of the book does however look to be promising and I’ll give a full review soon, but please publishers, stop with the unnecessary  filler. If I wanted filler I’d buy more jam and cream for my scone.

Coding 4 Fun is one of these strange books that’s not really a tutorial on a specific topic like most IT books are but it shows you some of the things you can actually accomplish with relatively little work. Hopefully the ideas and solutions presented in the book will give you ideas on how to enhance or further use either the technologies that it covers in the book or go out and research your ideas for integrating new technologies.

Some of the projects covered in the book are hardware projects which if you’re not comfortable using a soldering iron then perhaps you shouldn’t try whilst others are pure software solutions. The range of topics covered is very diverse from programming a game using XNA for the Xbox 360 or Popfly to turning your computer into a streaming media machine to creating an interactive whiteboard with a Wii remote control.

As the title suggests these are all fun projects for home computer enthusiasts and not something you would likely use in the workplace. The average length of each project presented in the book is 3-6 hours.

The book is laid out very well, with a quick introduction to each chapter explaining what you will need, roughly how long the project should take, the rough cost (if any) etc. Followed by a quick introduction as to what you should get out of the project then onto the actual project itself. Each project is split into manageable chunks with good reasonable explanations given. The explanations aren’t in-depth but give you enough information that you can hop onto the web for a fuller explanation if you like (for example in the WHSMail project it does not cover the API calls that you are actually making but gives you enough information that you can go to MSDN and find the specific API and related ones if you wish).  The authors take you through the project step by step and include diagrams and photographs where necessary. These are especially helpful on the hardware projects.

Overall this is a great book for coders that are looking for something to do or to give them ideas about what is possible in a relatively short time period. My main concern about this book is that it may have limited appeal and isn’t really a reference manual. That is not to say that the content of the book isn’t worthwhile but I’ve marked down my rating taking this into consideration.

 

This is a very strange title for a book and I was extremely intrigued by it. I’ve been laying out web pages for years now with CSS and for a book to come along and suggest that everything I had been doing was wrong was a bit of a bold statement.

This is quite a short book weighing in at just over 110 pages and really only deals with one topic, however it does that in-depth. The style of writing is good and flowing and it feels like you’re just reading a magazine article.

This book deals with CSS layout for the latest browsers and talks a lot about the upcoming version of IE8 and how it fixes things so that now you can use CSS 2 styles on your site and they will work across all major browsers (as long as you’re running the latest ones, Firefox 3, Opera 9 etc.) and now that Internet Explorer is finally supporting web standards it will work on Microsoft’s browser platform as well.

In that respect, all the tricks and work-arounds that you’ve had to learn in the past to get layouts looking correct are indeed wrong as you will no longer need to use them, for example using floats to get multiple columns.

The main thrust of this book is positioning using CSS tables. The book explains what these are, how they are different from HTML tables but create the same results, some of the pitfalls you may come across (there is no equivalent to colspan or rowspan for example) and how to code for these instances. The introduction of web standards across all major browser platforms and the adherence to CSS 2 specifications will make web designers and programmers immensely easier and this book explains how.

There is also a chapter dedicated to backwards compatibility and what you should be doing with layouts and yet still make things look on older browsers like Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7.

The final chapter of the book deals with some things to look forward that are currently part of the CSS 3 working draft and how they will make your job even easier yet.

This is one of those books that I actually have a hard time reviewing, not for the content, the style and layout etc. but for giving it a rating.  I think this is a must read book for anybody who designs or layouts web pages, whether you a graphic designer or programmer or  in-between however the book is very short and really only deals with a single topic, even though it does it in-depth. The book is in full color which makes it a beautiful book however it’s also a book that you would perhaps only read or twice and wouldn’t be used a reference book so the longevity takes a hit. I wish the book had more to it and covered a few more topics. That said, I still stick by what I say in that everyone who designs or codes web pages should read this as it will make their jobs a lot easier.

First off I would like to point out that I’ve changed my book review rating system a little. I used to give ratings out of 5 in 0.5 increments however after reviewing a great number of books now this system was too limiting with a number of books for example receiving 4 out of 5 when some books were slightly more deserving of that than others but those “others” weren’t deserving enough for a 3.5 out of 5.  Therefore I’ve moved to a very simple “out of 100” rating system. This gives me more scope to play with. Now with saying this onto my first review under the new rating system, Silverlight 1.0 from Wrox Press.

With the very recent release of Silverlight 2.0 to the web by Microsoft, this book is now slightly dated however I’m sure Wrox will be releasing an updated version of this book shortly to cover the new 2.0 release and all the enhancements that it brings with it.

One thing that immediately strikes you about this book is that it is in color. With the subject matter at hand I think that this decision was a very good one after all it is would be very difficult to show off the power of Silverlight and to get some of the examples showing correctly with just grey scale.

For a Wrox book this one is fairly small weighing in at just 288 pages, however you will find everything you need to know to get you started using Silverlight in this book. It does not cover everything in detail and therefore I would consider it to be a “starter” book. One that you will pick up to get the basics of the technology, know how it works and how to do use it quickly and easily.

Silverlight 1.0 is built atop a cut-down version of XAML, Microsoft’s graphical language that is used mainly in desktop applications and was introduced with Microsoft .Net 3.0.

The book starts with an explanation of what Silverlight is. It does mention the “forthcoming” Silverlight 1.1 stack which is what was recently released as Silverlight 2.0.  The book continues by giving a quick overview of the tools that you can use to build a Silverlight application, where to get the SDK and runtime, some examples of it’s uses then gives a quick breakdown of default Silverlight application that is used in Visual Studio.

The next chapter gives a brief introduction to XAML and some of the various elements that Silverlight makes use of. There are plenty of examples given and some visual tricks thrown in for those of us that are not graphically inclined (I definitely include myself in this department).  There is enough in this chapter to give you the basics for building your own Silverlight application including animations, video and basic shapes and transforms.

With the introduction of XAML, Microsoft released a tool specifically for designing applications using this language, Microsoft Expression Blend. Chapter 3 deals with how you use blend to create your XAML files and how to incorporate these into your Visual Studio project. One of the benefits of Expression Blend is that you can hand off the design aspect of the project to a graphical designer on your team and the resulting code fits very neatly in with Visual Studio so that developers don’t need to worry about this aspect. Again this is a quick introduction to Expression Blend and it does not go into depth of every option that Expression Blend offers but gives you enough that you can get started and build projects.

Silverlight 1.0 was programmed with Javascript only. This has changed with the release of Silverlight 2.0 which now offers a subsection of the .Net Framework and the ability to program in C#, VB.Net etc. The next couple of chapters deal with programming Silverlight 1.0, hooking up events, how to incorporate Silverlight into your page and how it can interact with the code in your web page. Again plenty of examples are given.

A quick introduction to Silverlight 1.1 is given however this has now been superseded with Silverlight 2.0 and some of the features have changed since Silverlight 1.1 so the small chapter on this is not really relevant anymore.

Finally the authors give you a full blown Silverlight Video application and explain it works. The previous chapters in this book give you enough information to create applications such as this and Video was mainly the target for Silverlight 1.0, therefore this example is great for showing what you can create and the potential power of Silverlight 1.0.

Although this book is really a brief introduction to Silverlight 1.0, the authors explain the concepts well and give you enough information to get you going, creating your own Silverlight applications. As mentioned, this book is targeted towards people who are interested in learning Silverlight and not an in-depth desktop reference for those who are already using it. The easy to  understand explanations mixed with the full color graphics and code markup makes this an excellent book for those who are wanting to get their feet with with Microsoft Silverlight. The main downfall of this book being the very recent release of Silverlight 2.0, although the concepts learned in this book are just as relevant for Silverlight 2.0 as they are for Silverlight 1.0.

Asp.Net Ajax Programmers Reference weighs in at a hefty 1500+ pages. Most other books I’ve read on Microsoft’s Asp.Net Ajax weigh in at between 300 and 500 pages. So are all the extra pages just filler or is the content actually worth it?

This book definitely is not for the light hearted or beginners. You need to have a very good grasp of Javascript to get anywhere with this book.

After a brief introduction on what Ajax is and the methods and thought processes behind Ajax the book jumps straight in with how Microsoft have extended Javascript to give it a .Net Framework style of programming so those used to Asp.Net code behind and the .Net Framework will be more at home. Dr Khosravi doesn’t just give you brief explanations as to how Microsoft have extended Javascript but also gives you an in-depth explanation with code as to how Microsoft actually done it. Basically he takes apart the Javascript that Microsoft has used and explains step by step what they have done. This is where a lot of the extra 1000+ pages come from. Most programmers, whilst they might be interested in the actual internals, won’t actually need this in-depth an explanation of each of the features and therefore you could argue that a lot of this is just filler in the book. Some programmers however will eat this up as it shows not only how Microsoft has extended Javascript but also gives you a base as to how you can extend it too using the best practices that Microsoft has employed.

The reading also is not lightweight and is something more like what you would find in a university classroom than a normal textbook, however Dr Khosravi does get the pertinent points across and with the sheer level of detail that he goes into, you’d be hard pressed to find another book of this magnitude.

The book is up to date covering Asp.Net Ajax as released in it’s original form as an add-on to the .Net framework and also the newer .Net 3.5 integrated Asp.Net Ajax (there were some enhancements made although it is backwards compatible). The book also covers everything you would need from the extensions Microsoft has made to the base Javascript types, to communicating with Web Services, using the out of the box Update Panel control to developing your own custom client controls with Ajax. Basically everything you would need to know about Asp.Net Ajax is covered in this book and covered in detail.

So given that this book is basically a one stop shop for Asp.Net Ajax, why not give it a 5 out of 5 rating? The reasons for this I’ve outlined above. It is not the easiest book in the world to read and for a lot of programmers there is no real need to dissect every extension Microsoft has made to Javascript with the actual code that they have used. There is this feeling that this will be an excellent book to have at your computer beside you when you’re actually coding however to start learning Asp.Net Ajax you’d also want to pick up another book that quite go into the detail of this book and one that is slightly easier to read. That said, if you already know Asp.Net Ajax and want to know more or are looking for a good book to have handy when you’re coding your project, then this is the book to have.

First off I must point out that this review is based off an early preview of this book and therefore things may be subject to change before this book gets fully published in April next year. I would also like to say that this review is based on most chapters of the book, but not all.

Sharepoint Server 2007 Survival Guide is aimed squarely at end users, power users and business users of the Sharepoint 2007 Office System. The book is broken down into logical parts, each chapter can be read in it’s own right however the concepts in the book do build upon what you have previously learned in previous chapters. The good news for end users is that there is absolutely no prior knowledge of Sharepoint required.

It starts off with a quick overview of what Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is and a brief history lesson of where it came from. The next chapter that I had access to was on Lists, Libraries and Content Types. This is essential knowledge for anyone using MOSS. The authors break these core concepts down and describe the functions of each with a few very easy to follow step by step directions on how to set them up, what metadata is and how to create and collect it, different views that are available to the user etc.

This concept is repeated throughout the book. The authors give you a oversight on what the chapter focuses on, then gives you very easy to follow step by step instructions on how to use/create that feature followed by a more in-depth explanation of related topics and features within MOSS.

Web content management and document/records management are core features of MOSS and the authors cover these topics very nicely, giving good hints on what you should and shouldn’t do, however they do fail to point out some limitations of MOSS that I feel should be conveyed to a user for example document libraries should really only handle roughly 2000 documents. Libraries can hold more than that but after the 2000 limit performance drops off considerably so being able to plan ahead for this is a necessity. Also when considering security, if you break the inherited permissions of a library you may run into ACL problems when you have over roughly 1820 unique user entries in your library. This is a windows limitation that unfortunately MOSS inherits but again an important one that people should be aware of whilst planning out their MOSS deployments.

Business Intelligence is a big part of this book. Once you’ve got the information into your MOSS system, how can you use that information? It starts with an overview of what business intelligence is then breaks it apart into it’s core constituents dedicating a chapter to each of the major components. At this point you’re getting into slightly more advanced topics but the authors handle it well and explain it easily understood terms and examples. Depending upon your MOSS installation, not all of the features explained in these chapters may be available to you however if they are then you’ll get a great deal of information and use from these chapters.

I was initially surprised to see on a chapter on the Business Data Catalog as this is more developer oriented, creating the backend BDC XML etc. however the book takes the standpoint that somebody from within the companies IT department will do this for you and leads you by the hand from after this has already been setup.

The final section of book is dedicated to customizing MOSS. Something most companies will want to do and there are whole books written on just this subject alone. The authors first give you a brief introduction to Sharepoint Designer 2007 which is an end user tool for customizing MOSS followed by a step by step example on how to customize a site, move things around the page, give it a new look and feel, incorporate your corporate identity and logo etc. These chapters are definitely aimed at power users  and not the average business user. Developers might also pick up some information here on how to do things quickly through Sharepoint Designer as opposed to using Visual Studio for developing MOSS solutions. Having a knowledge of stylesheets / CSS, HTML and ASPX pages, XML and XSLT are a must here. The authors do a good job as an overview and how to do some fairly basic customization tasks, however there isn’t quite as much in-depth knowledge conveyed that would be necessary to get the most out of Sharepoint Designer, for example how to manipulate views and pass information across to pages using the Querystring. Only a very brief mention is given to XSLT which is fairly integral to MOSS development.

Overall there is a lot of very useful information within this book for new users of Sharepoint and Power Users / Business Users to give them the knowledge and confidence to explore and make the best use out of MOSS. Concepts are explained in easy terms and examples are given to underscore those concepts and give the users enough knowledge to do things on their own. If you are a MOSS developer then this book is not for you, however I did learn a few new things whilst reading it.  If you are perhaps in an organization where you have to teach end users how to use MOSS then again I would recommend this book as it will give you most of what you will need to convey to your users. This review was based on a preview of the book. There were some missing chapters and I do expect there will be edits made before the book is finally published, however from this preview, this is a book I would recommend to intended target audience of end users and power users.

This reference book can really be considered a companion to the previous book I reviewed recently, the Ultimate HTML Reference although you can use this as a standalone book if you wish.

The ultimate CSS reference by Tommy Olsson and Paul O'Brien is exactly what it says, a reference guide. As with all books however I’ve read this one cover to cover. The book covers every single CSS keyword, selector, pseudo-class  and corresponding attribute known (including some that aren’t even in the official ratified W3C standard but are supported by certain browsers and some that are currently in the standard but aren't supported by any of the major browsers) from CSS version 1 right through to the latest CSS 3. 

The book is very well laid out and easy to look up as a reference with chapters on layout, list styles, box properties etc. Next to this is a quick reference stating whether or not the attribute is inherited, it's initial value, which version of the official W3C specification it comes from and a quick browser support reference stating whether it’s fully supported by the browser, partially supported, not supported at all or whether the implementation is buggy for a particular browser.  This is followed by a description of what the attribute does, any values that it takes followed by a more complete browser compatibility list. The list covers the major browsers that are currently out from IE5.5 through IE7, Firefox 1.0 through 2.0, Safari 1.3 through 3.0 and Opera 9.2. Following this is a brief description of any compatibility issues as listed . 

As with any book of this nature, basically it is out of date virtually as it’s printed. With Firefox 3.0 and Opera 9.5 just being released and Internet Explorer 8.0 just around the corner. However this and it's companion Ultimate HTML reference are definitely two books that I'd love to see updated once the new set of browsers are out.

Scattered throughout the book are numerous references to W3C RFCs, web sites showing compatibility issues and differences between the way various browsers handle the CSS etc. that are very useful.

This book is a must for any web developer no matter which programming language you use to build your web sites. Combine it's sister book with this one and you really do have the ultimate web reference sitting at your fingertips. No more looking through obscure RFC's. When you're designing a web site and come across a quirk in how you thought something should have been laid out, or a CSS selector then simply reach for this book and it will tell you if indeed it is a bug or whether you are just implementing incorrectly.
Tommy and Paul should be proud of what they have produced and this book should grace every web developers desk  and be within fingertip reach.

As far as I’m aware this is the only book currently on the market that covers Windows Live Programming and therefore in quite unique in that aspect. I was actually quite surprised to hear of this book as I am a Windows Live Microsoft MVP and so it was with great enthusiasm that I delved into it and read it cover to cover.

The book is split into 11 chapters, apart from the first few which gives overviews of windows live, each chapter basically covers a single technology, ranging from better known technologies like Virtual Earth, messenger and Live ID to lesser known ones like Custom Domains and Live Expo.

With each chapter/technology, Jon gives a brief introduction to what it actually is then dives straight into the available SDK and shows you how you can use that particular technology for yourself and how to integrate it in with your own web applications. He doesn’t cover every single API call available for each technology but does cover what will be the most widely used situations.

As mentioned Windows Live technologies are mainly web based and the available API’s and there to be used within your own web sites. In order to use this book Jon has assumed that you already know technologies and languages such as Javascript, HTML, CSS etc. If you don’t or if you’re just getting started in web programming then this book isn’t for you, yet.

Microsoft has made available a great number of technologies through Windows Live including authentication, mapping and search. Each of these potentially has it’s place in your web site. There is a terms of use for each technology however unless you’re a very heavy hitter, essentially all these technologies are free for you to include in your applications.

Overall this is a great book for an introduction to programming using the various Windows Live technologies and one that I thoroughly recommend picking up and reading. If this is the case then why did I score it higher? This book was published in 2007 and Microsoft have been very aggressive in their releases and updates to these technologies. Unfortunately this book, as every other computer book will eventually become, is now out of date. Some of the technologies that Jon covers like Windows Live Expo, Microsoft is no longer supporting. Other technologies like Virtual Earth have been updated with new API’s and features and Microsoft have also released other technologies not covered in this book for example the Windows Live Web Messenger API. The question therefore isn’t why didn’t I rate this book higher, but why did I rate it as high as I did? This book gives you an excellent grounding in various Microsoft Windows Live technologies and the things you learn in this book can be applied to the latest releases. So I would recommend picking up this book, reading through it, then visiting http://dev.live.com to get the most up to date information regarding the API that you are interested in.

I got given an advanced "Draft Manuscript" copy of this book from Pearson (the publishers) whilst at Tech-Ed which is why I can write this review before the book is officially published.
First off, let me say that I love this series of "Microsoft.Net Development Series" by Addison Wesley. For information regarding virtually anything .Net, this is really the first series of books that you should take a look at. Most of the books are written by the product teams themselves however this title is not (although the authors have had a great deal of feedback and input from the product teams involved).
This book isn't really about learning Asp.Net Ajax. It takes a more specific topic that little has been written about and the authors have done an excellent job in covering it from end to end. That niche, is developing server controls that integrate Asp.Net Ajax, giving them more functionality and updating web controls to the "Web 2.0" style controls a lot of companies are developing at the moment.
The book starts off with a quick overview of some of the more esoteric aspects of Javascript although it doesn't actually teach you Javascript, it is assumed that you already know this, it gives you a good overview of the basics on how the Microsoft Asp.Net Ajax framework has been written and sets you up to better understand it and extend it for your own needs.
Following this is a chapter on the new "Types" that the Asp.Net Ajax framework introduces as first class components and also how to extend the framework, adding your own classes, interfaces etc. to it.
Without going chapter by chapter, the book covers everything you actually need to know, and a lot more, on how to integrate Ajax into your own Asp.Net server controls. It covers the differences between the Asp.Net Ajax framework 1.0 and that which was released and integrated into the .Net Framework 3.5 where applicable (the book is intended for the .Net Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008).
There are plenty of code examples throughout the book, building on what was covered in previous chapters you gain a thorough understanding of exactly what this book sets out to do.
The writing style isn't as stolid as most other technical books and is actually easy to read and flowing.
There are a few typos and mis-spellings in the copy that I have but I'm sure that these will be resolved for the final published version.
If you develop Asp.Net web server controls then this is a book you must have. Even if you don't program server controls but just do standard Asp.Net pages, this book gives you a lot of information about how to use Asp.Net Ajax in your projects. Overall a highly recommended book.

 

The first thing to you will notice about this book is that it doesn't look like any other O'Reilly book that's out there. It has a nice transparent cover (with the books title printed on it) and is ring bound.  The next thing that you'll notice when you pick up the book and open it as that fully half of the pages inside it are completely blank. So the obvious question is why would you want to pay for either a very thin book or just half a book depending on your point view.
The reason for this is that O'Reilly are trying a new approach to new technology books. As you may know, Silverlight 2 is still in early beta at the moment. The reasoning behind the book is that O'Reilly can get a book into your hands as soon as a Beta comes out, let your learn the technology and then when new builds/beta's become available, update the book to reflect the changes between the latest build and the previous one.
O'Reilly are giving you two options for doing this. The first is that you can purchase the pre-printed updates which they will send you and you simply plug these updates into your book. The second option is that they're making these updates available online for free. So you can simply use the blank pages provided in the book to print the updates yourself and insert them into the book. Either way, you will have an up to date book as the beta progresses without having to buy a new edition of the book each time.
I think this is a terrific idea and one that O'Reilly will continue to do for other technologies, not just this Silverlight book.

Now onto the content itself. When you start reading through Essential Silverlight 2, you may be forgiven for thinking that the author is actually talking about Silverlight 1.1 and not 2.0. This quickly changes however and the author starts telling you differences between the two and changes from using client side Javascript to client side C# using the new compact .Net framework that Silverlight incorporates.  I have no doubt that a lot of the material in the book is taken from a previous one covering Silverlight 1.1 although all that is still there is relevant to 2.0 as well, e.g. A quick introduction to XAML etc. The author does point out places in which Silverlight 2.0 differs from 1.1 however.

For the moment there really isn't that much content in the book and you can easily read the whole book in a couple of days, however this plays in to the new books format in that additions, amendments etc.  will be provided online for free for you to just print and plug-in.

This book will currently give you the basics that you need to know for Silverlight, how to create animations, audio and video, it touches on forms and events etc. and how to plug these into your web application. Once you have the basics you can play with the SDK and get more. I hope that in the updates the author goes into more depth on the new compact .Net framework that comes with Silverlight, what's included, what's been dropped etc. so users can take full advantage of client side .Net. For now the book serves as a good introduction however lacking in in-depth learning. My rating reflects this however given that updates will be made available for free I've also marked this up slightly to incorporate that aspect of it. 
If I was just reviewing this new platform that O'Reilly has come up with then I'd give it a full 5 out of 5, it would be my second ever. I think the concept is excellent however at present the book is slightly lacking in details.

Unless you've been living in a cave somewhere for the past year, you're bound to have heard of Linq, one of the major additions to the Microsoft.Net 3.5 framework. Some people however have the wrong impression of Linq, thinking that it's a new technology that will take over from T-SQL (or PL-SQL) and is limited to an easier way of querying databases. However Linq is so much more. At it's base Linq is an underlying extensible framework. With the release of the Microsoft.Net 3.5 framework, Microsoft included a couple of extensions, Linq to SQL being the most well known and Linq to XML.
Joseph Rattz's Pro Linq (Language Integrated Query in C# 2008) covers both released extensions as well as the base Linq framework (however he does not go into how to extend Linq in this book).
Unusually Joseph starts the book, not with an brief introduction or outline but dives straight into code. His writing style is easy and flowing and he covers the topics very well indeed.
The book is split into the three main parts, first covering Linq itself then going a section on Linq to XML and finally a section on Linq to SQL. The two extensions build on the knowledge presented within the first section.
Joseph speaks in-depth about the two main methods of Linq queries, deferred operators and non-deferred and covers each of the language extensions in depth. This however is one of my main gripes about this book (but similarly is also one of it's pluses). In covering each language extension Joseph is basically copying and pasting from a previous extension and amending it slightly for the difference. This feels like he's just trying to fill up space in the book. You look at any page in the non-deferred chapter of the book and count how many times he's included the code for creating an array of US presidents. Now this code snippet takes up 8 lines of the book each time it's there. Multiply that by hundred or so times that it's included in a code sample and the book could easily have been 2/3 of it's 600 pages.
What I meant by Joseph basically copies and pastes from a previous language extension, is that say a language extension has three constructors, Joseph starts with the base constructor, basically uses the same text and sample code for the next constructor but changes it slightly for the difference in that constructor and so on. So again the book could easily have been reduced in size as when you read through it you're basically reading the exact same thing you read for the initial language extension constructor/method call.
Now don't get me wrong. This has it's drawbacks, but I think it's also very good in that this makes for an excellent reference book. You can go directly to the constructor/method call that you're interested and you have the text and sample there rather than having to read everything for that whole language extension. I think it's also great that Joseph covers every possible combination of method call, something most books do not.
Overall this book is aimed at two types of people. Those that don't have any experience in coding with Linq. It teaches you most of what you'll need to know and is easy to follow. And it's also aimed at being a reference manual.
For the most part I'm not that impressed with APress publications however this book is a worthy addition to your collection.

Once in a while I will get a book to review that makes you think "Why can't all books be like this one?". Building a Web 2.0 Portal with Asp.Net 3.5 is one of those books. If you program web sites using Microsoft Asp.Net then drop what you're doing just now and go get this book immediately. It is the best book I've read in a long time.

The book (as the title suggests) explains how to code a web portal using all the latest Microsoft technologies. There is an accompanying open-source web site and the book basically explains how the site was put together. Doesn't sound like much for me heap such praise on it, however the accompanying web site is basically a framework for a fully functional professional web portal, based upon Pageflakes.com. Omar is the co-founder and CTO of Pageflakes and this book not only details and explains the actual code for the accompanying web site but also has numerous tips, tricks, thought patterns and explanations of decisions scattered throughout. These are all based on live, highly scalable, professional sites. I haven't read so much good information packed into such a short amount of space in a long time.

The book is fairly short weighing in at around 280 pages and Omar has a good flowing writing style that makes this book a very easy read.
This book however is not for people new to programming Asp.Net web sites and a good understanding of a multitude of technologies are required (Asp.Net, Windows Workflow, Asp.Net AJAX, XML, CSS etc.). In places where deemed necessary Omar will give a brief outline of a new technology and why it was used for example he gives a short explanation on Lambda expressions and the new "??" C# operator. The bool starts off by explaining N-Tier architecture, why this was chosen, the benefits of doing it this way etc. Progresses through covering the code in manageable and logical chunks (front end, widgets, database layer etc.) and finishes off with an excellent chapter on deployment, hosting and production challenges taken from his real life experience with Pageflakes.com. In this chapter he explains about such things as web farming, which RAID architecture to use through to problems that were encountered after patching a server using windows update.

Rest assured that you will be coming back to these pages time and again for the excellent tips and tricks, both code-wise and architectural wise. This is just one of those books that jumps out and stands head and shoulders above other books in the same vein.

I had just started reading this book and virtually instantly came across a very big no-no. Page 11 of the book is entitled "There are no dumb questions" and there it list about 1/2 a dozen fairly basic question and answers. However one them simply jumps out and is indeed extremely wrong. The question was "Can I change the names of files the IDE generates for me?" and the answer given does state that you can change the names however "we recommend you don't change filenames unless you've got a really good reason to."  It doesn't matter whether this is a book for professional coders or for those that have never written a single line of code in their lives, this is a very wrong answer to give. It should have stated that yes you can and should change the filenames from their default names to ones that make sense for your project.
Was this a sign of things to come for the rest of the book? Well both yes and no.

First off this book is aimed at those new to programming in C# and definitely not aimed at those who already know and have programmed in C# using a previous version of the .Net Framework and looking for a guide to what's new in C# and the .Net Framework 3.0.
That being said, if you're new to C#, this book takes a refreshing stance on learning the language compared with other texts. There are plenty of practical exercises scattered throughout the book to test what you have learned along with good explanations of the material covered.
The book is also aimed at Windows programming and not Asp.Net programming with C# so if you're new to C# and are looking to program your own website then this isn't the book for you.
It does cover a lot of the basics that you will need to know to get started programming and even has a chapter on LINQ which, although the book states it's for .Net 3.0 is actually part of the .Net 3.5 framework.
One point however, as mentioned above, is that the book does teach some fairly bad habits and I have therefore marked my review down slightly due to this.
That being said, this is an excellent book for complete newcomers to the C# language.

Dino Esposito is a well established and respected author writing numerous books about ASP.Net over the years. I picked up a copy of his latest book, Introducing Microsoft Asp.Net AJAX as soon at it was released at this years Tech-Ed conference in Orlando. Asp.Net AJAX had just recently gone RTW and I thought it was a good time to delve into this much hyped technology.

Lots of people, having downloaded and played around with the beta of this product (code named Atlas) basically didn't get very much past the additional Toolkit download and the UpdatePanel control. Dino rectifies this situation and explains there is so much more to the ASP.Net Ajax framework.
The book starts off fairly complicated and you need to have a very good understanding and background in Javascript to get the most out it, however as the book progresses, the foundations laid in the early chapters begin to make more sense and understanding of the concepts congeal. Unfortunately I can see a lot of people being put off by the first couple of chapters and not getting past them to the other topics explained in the book.

Dino explains the concepts of the ASP.Net AJAX framework, how Microsoft have basically mimicked the Asp.Net framework using client side Javascript so that Asp.Net developers feel more at home using. There are numerous code samples scattered throughout the book explaining how to create your own client side classes, how the prototype system works etc.

In later chapters Dino explains about the Toolkit which is a separate download and addition to the base framework, gives examples of each of the main toolkit controls, explains in depth about how to make out of band calls to Web Services and the differences between web service calls and page methods, along with which to use when, the pros and cons, and finishes up with a chapter taking apart one of the freely downloadable starter kits and adding AJAX support to it.

For an "Introduction" title, this book is actually fairly heavy going and it does cover a lot of ground, however in places I would have liked to have seen more indepth explanations and examples. There are a lot of things that have been left out of the book although overall it is a very good book and good introduction to the Asp.Net AJAX framework.

One other thing is that scattered throughout the book is references to the Asp.Net AJAX framework being updated and changed for the Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) .Net 3.5 Framework in which Asp.Net AJAX will become an integral part, however there is no details as to what exactly is changing and how to use the new .Net 3.5 Frameworks Asp.Net AJAX. Part of this I suspect is that the new framework has just been released and this book was published roughly 4-5 months beforehand.

Overall a good book and if you're looking to start developing using Asp.Net AJAX then it is a good starting place, however parts of this book will soon be outdated with the changes made for the new .Net 3.5 Framework.

First off I'll say that this book isn't intended for beginners to Asp.Net. You will need a good understanding of Asp.Net including events and delegates, controls, user and custom controls etc., JavaScript, HTML and C# in order to get the most out of this book.

With that said however I was extremely surprised by this book. The five authors have a done an extremely good job of packing a number of good tips and tricks into the book in a very readable way. The tips and tricks are divided in 17 logical chapters, each one can be read independently of the others, and are presented in a problem/solution format. I think the books introduction covers it well "This is the book I wish I had when I was starting out with Asp.Net."

The 17 chapters cover various topics from user/custom controls to AJAX, Web standards to error handling and each chapter contains little gems that are very useful in real world development scenarios. I have been coding using Asp.Net since an early beta of the product back in late 90's and consider myself to be an experienced developer, however even I managed to glean quite a few good tips from this book.

Rather than pad the book and make it 900-1200 pages as most development books tend to be, the authors have kept the discussions to what you really need to know and inserted references to other materials where necessary. This leads to a fairly compact 550 page book which is packed from start to finish with every day problems and solutions.

I very rarely give out 5 star ratings on book reviews but this one deserves it. In fact this is the first book to receive a 5 star rating from me. If you are an Asp.Net developer using C# (or even Visual Basic for that matter, it's not hard to translate between the two languages), go out and at least have a look at this book. This is one book that will be sitting on my desk next to me.