I started developing custom server controls in the earlier days of ASP.NET 1.0, when this was the only book available on the topic.

This book was of literally zero help despite being written particularly for the topic. In fact, if anything, it was confusing and hindered my efforts repeatedly.

The book is a loosely related collection of materials written or assembled by the multitude of authors. Some of the portions of the book seem almost directly taken from Microsoft's freely available documentation. Not surprisingly, the weak points in the documentation typically coincide with the weakest points of the book. In other words, the book is useless. Wrox's own general ASP.NET book "Professional ASP.NET" and the various free online resources were of much more help in early 2002, and there are many more alternatives now.

By the time I was done with my first full-featured custom server control I realized that it was extremely unlikely that any of the authors had gone through the same experience prior to writing the book. This made me approach the publisher with the request for a full refund, a decision on which was delayed until I finally gave up and regretfully threw the book in the garbage.

It is my understanding that the newer editions of the book have added some of the most glaring omissions (like a full chapter on generating client-side script, where the original edition offered nothing). However, there is no fixing a house this crooked. There are much better books available now, like "Server Controls" by Kothari and Datye.