While the title's main draw is to give a developer a series of diverse applications, it presents the information in a way in which many of us admittedly still program - on a per-script level, without all being tied into one major application. The code is documented nicely and explained well.

Also, examples like the Microsoft ASP.NET Forums and dynamic charting script author Leinecker use a more enterprise approach, each being component-driven sub-applications.

While the book's subtitle denotes "best practices" (which is somewhat argumentative when dissecting the code and methodologies used), it is a quick read, with lots of helpful info. And it does a great job of doing what it says - giving a developer quick, easy access to 23 different types of applications with which to deploy in web environments.

The SpeechVB application was also a neat addition.

So if you're looking for a title that just gives you a jumpstart on getting working code, grab this book.