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Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0
by David Buser, John Kauffman, Juan T. Llibre, Brian Francis, Dave Sussman
List Price: $39.99
Our Price: $27.99
ISBN: 0764543636
Publisher: Wrox (July, 2000)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 4,308
Average Customer Rating: 4.54 out of 5
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Rating: 4 out of 5
Good but wordy
Like most Wrox books I've read, this book contains lots of easily understandable information, but it is not as concise as it could be. Still, I learned to use ASP from this book and I recommend it.I have done a little Visual Basic and HTML coding, and to me this book seemed too basic in parts. The first part of the book is about how the server deals with HTML and about VBscript. The book doesn't really get into ASP until about page 170. The examples are usually short, which is good. Too bad the examples are not more self-contained. The authors too often illustrate a new point by saying "use the code in the previous example, but with the following changes..." That's just lazy. A complete new code listing for each new topic would have been more helpful. If you are a beginner and you don't mind wading through a lot of words (1000+ pages worth) and a somewhat boring book design, get this book. It will teach you a lot. If you are a very experienced developer, this book will be too basic - look elsewhere (the Wrox book Professional Active Server Pages 3.0 seems popular with reviewers on Amazon).
Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent book to learn ASP & VBScript
An excellent book for beginners, Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0 starts simply and builds on what you've learned until you code a fairly fully-featured application. By the time you've gone through the book, you'll be able to create web pages that can return and capture information stored in databases, tailor pages based on information captured from input by users -- in short, create web pages that are in fact active.Although there are some grammatical errors in the text itself, I think another reviewer perhaps overstated their existence. More importantly though, the examples and exercises take you through using the materials covered in a clear, concise manner. Not a lot of fluff or worthless repetition. Although geared towards Windows 2000, the book can be used if you have a Windows 95/98 platform, at least as far as learning ASP basic coding techniques. An appendix covers use of Personal Web Server (required to let your 95/98 based PC act as a server and thus run the ASP code). Numerous other appendices provide worthwhile reference materials concerning errors, VBScript reference, runtime libraries. etc. If you are looking to teach yourself ASP, this is an excellent book to use to achieve that end. Don't let its size (1100+ pages) turn you away.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Great Start for ASP Coding
In the beginning of Chapter 3, there is a paragraph that sums up the entire book:"When I first started to study Chinese my tutor ... gave me a Chinese-English dictionary, a Chinese grammar book and a primer. But he placed all of these books in a basket and said they were not to used until the next week. In the first week he instructed me just to listen and and memorize some phrases. That week, I had to accept on faith the content, sentence structure, pronunciation and grammar. But by Friday I could at least walk into a Chinese restaurant, order a bowl of rice and pay for it." That pretty well desribes how this book progresses. The authors start you off with some simple ASP and then build on that in the later chapters. I basically went chapter by chapter and did all of the "Try It Out" projects. By the end, I could understand ASP code and I was able to adapt it to the project I was working on. The book is rather wordy, but not in a boring way. The authors' target audience is people with almost no programming experience, and I think they do a good job explaining things to that audience. I had done some web coding before, so I usually skimmed the text to look for the techniques I was not familar with. As I worked on my real-world project, I would refer back to the book when I wasn't sure how to do something. I like the book because it has lots of hands on examples, right up to a full blown web application called "Wrox Classifieds". It's easy to look up a specific ASP technique and get right to the explanation of how it works and how to code it. An added benefit are the Appendices, which include a complete description of the ASP 3.0 and ADO 2.5 Object Models and a VBScript reference. If that's not enough information, they have a website with a messgae board on which you can ask specific questions and get answers from more experienced ASP coders. My only criticism of the book is the "support" provided by the publisher. Wrox was sold to Wiley a couple of years ago in a bankruptcy proceeding. You are supposed to be able to open a ticket with their technical support if you have problems getting something to work. I tried to open a ticket, and all I received was an e-mail from Wiley saying they weren't sure if they would support the book but they would get back to me. They never did. That experience, however, has not dampened my enthusiasm for this book or other books by Wrox.
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