ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks

Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Wrox (May 30, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0764597663
ISBN-13: 978-0764597664
Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches

• This unique book offers readers invaluable information from the cream of the crop-Microsoft MVPs-who are now sharing undocumented hacks for the first time
• Packed with superlative advice on ASP, Microsoft's popular technology for Web sites, this book will help readers become more productive developers, find solutions to problems they thought unsolvable, and develop better applications
• During their many years of working with ASP.NET, Microsoft MVPs have answered thousands of questions, putting them in the distinctive position of knowing exactly what readers need to know
• Many of the hacks will apply to multiple versions of ASP.NET, not just 2.0 but 1.0 and 1.1 as well

This book is also available as part of the 5-book ASP.NET 2.0 Wrox Box (ISBN: 0-470-11757-5). This 5-book set includes:

• Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition (ISBN: 0-470-04178-1)
• ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution (ISBN: 0764584642 )
• Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Security, Membership, and Role Management (ISBN: 0764596985)
• Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control and Component Development (ISBN: 0471793507)
• ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks and Tips (ISBN: 0764597663)
• CD-ROM with more than 1000 pages of bonus chapters from 15 other .NET 2.0 and SQL Server(TM) 2005 Wrox books
• DVD with 180-day trial version of Microsoft(r) Visual Studio(r) 2005 Professional Edition

From the Back Cover
As Microsoft MVPs, this team of authors has witnessed first-hand the innumerable problems and challenges that even the most experienced developers regularly encounter. This project survival guide offers little-known solutions, undocumented features, tips, and tricks—otherwise known as hacks—that you can use to build and deliver real-life applications using ASP.NET.


Written with the seasoned professional in mind, this book examines how some hacks ultimately become mainstream code or practices that are integrated into a product or process. You'll benefit from the extensive experience of the authors as they show you how to adapt various hacks to your specific application and business environment. Plus, in-depth discussions of the solutions prove to bea helpful way to learn more about the inner workings of ASP.NET 2.0.

What you will learn from this book

• Various hacks such as page templates, multiple forms, URL rewriting, and SQL cache dependencies
• The many improvements in ASP.NET 2.0 that were originally hacks but are now part of the base product
• How the many new built-in functions reduce the amount of code you need to write for the most common applications

Who this book is for

This book is for experienced developers familiar with ASP.NET programming who are looking to take their skills from an "average" to "excellent" level.

Wrox MVP Hacks and Tips provide unique and little-known solutions to complex programming challenges. Written by Microsoft MVPs—highly regarded independent technical experts nominated by their peers and selected by Microsoft—each title reveals the highest quality hacks that have been discovered through years of hands-on experience.


User Review:


With the word 'Hacks' in the title, this may throw a few people a 'curve' ball, as it were. As explained inside the
well-known Wiley (Wrox) red covers, some people call them 'creative solutions'. Some people call them
Tips and Tricks. In this writer's opinion, 'Creative Solutions' is a much
better name for what's inside. The code explained starts by showing how v2.0 of ASP.Net took some of the 'hacks' or
'creative solutions' for 1.1 and incorporated the obvious needs inside v2.0. Then, the writers take what's given
in v2.0, and extend that much further, finding the 'shortcomings' and extending the possibilities much further.

A few pages in the beginning, along with an entire chapter (16) deals with Master Pages, one of the more colossal
additions to ASP.Net 2.0, and rightly so, having its origins in Paul Wilsons Template pages, back in the 1.x days. Again,
this book takes a quick look at how to build Master pages, along with Content pages, and then shows how to extend
and nest them. But, then, this is only a start.

When reading this book we are taken through the steps of adding client side scripting to GridViews (and much more),
creating your own RSS viewer control, through Cache, Viewstate, Security and Deployment hacks/tips, and finally ends up with HTTP Handlers and Modules.

This book is not a beginner's book, by any means, but it can take an intermediate or even advanced
developer and really help him/her get to the next 'level'. Looking back, it's just as much as an 'eye-opener' type of book. Yes, it shows code and explains how to do a whole lot of new programming, but just as much, it expands your horizons, enabling you to not only see those horizons, but realize then, how to get past them.

If I were to find one fault with the book, it would be that 90% of the code samples in the book are with C#. There are a few
VB.Net samples sprinkled here and there, but coming from a VB.Net development background, I did find this a shortcoming.
However, if that's all that I could find as a 'con', the 'pros' far outweigh them.

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