One downside of this book is that it lacks a mission. There is no clear idea of what exactly was supposed to be in this book. However, whatever material is presented in a chapter, it's covered in depth.

Don't expect this book to become your reference. It simply sheds additional light on a lot of ASP.NET and ADO.NET subjects.

Overall, great book!

The whole first third to half of the book deals with binding data to various controls, primarily the data grid. This is a good thing, as the dataGrid control is the one you will use for most of your data reporting. You learn to page, edit and use templates with this wonderful control. The downside here is that the rest of the controls are largely fluffed over in the first chapter. Overall, this is not a bad thing, but a little more content on the repeater (which is by far the most flexible) and the DataList (which is also editable) would have been a nice addition to this work.

In the middle of the book, you get into code reusability. The chapter loses focus at time, but deals with how you include different controls into your page, including custom user controls. From here, you learn about advanced data reporting, which may well be worth the price of the book alone. You head into deeper programatic decisions here. Fortunately, the DataGrid makes most of this a breeze.

The final third of the book (part of section II and all of section III) puts wheels on what you have learned in the first 2/3rds. The chapters in this third deal with disconnected data, web services, interop with COM and exposing data to your ASP.NET applications.

As I have stated, my largest beef with this book is the lack of more examples with the Repeater and DataList. Overall, I cannot be too critical here, as the DataGrid will most likely bare the brunt of your ASP.NET data programming work. It is a deep enough shortcoming to me, however, that I have to deduct 1 star.

A couple more comments:

1. This book is written using C#. If you are a VB.NET developer, you can still use the book for the concepts, but understand the syntax will be different.

2. This is not a beginner's book. While I can see programmer's experience with ADO utilizing this book, esp. if they come from a language that uses braces (Java, JavaScript, C++, etc.), I would not recommend this as a first .NET book for an inexperienced programmer.

I've never read anything by Klavan and The Uncanny doesn't exactly inspire confidence. The premise is uninspired - American movie producer who's got some health problems (to say the least) ends up hunting down the answers to an old ghost story in England. It also becomes - of course - a somewhat sappy boy-meets-girl story.

I think what truly bothered me most about the novel was the portrayal of the main character. He lived up to every stereotype of the typical American movie producer. Worse, he adopted these qualities only after the first quarter of the book had passed. As an American (and I acknowledge that many of these traits can be somewhat accurate, but are rarely seen in one single individual) I was put off by the portrayal. The whole John Wayne, movie producer, father-was-a-movie-star-cowboy, protect-the-women, suffer-in-silence hero thing was just a little too over-the-top. And while this character is overdeveloped, the others are quite poorly developed.

I don't think Klavan did himself or his readers any favors by making this more of a "literary thriller". It was just slower and more weighed down.

I must admit that I enjoyed some of the name dropping, especially when the VIPs in question looked ridiculous (remember the Goldmans and their stuffed lion?).

In addition to ASP, the book explains all of the other steps in building the example web site, but it overtreats the simpler material and glosses over the complex. For example, there are pages and pages of figures showing what are basically the same installation screens for each piece of software you'll be using; meanwhile, VBScript code, used in ASP, is often put forth as if its purpose and mechanism is obvious. "Visual Interdev" is one of the "tools" the book requires, yet its function is far from obvious. The program is ostensibly for creating ASP pages, but ASP code is never presented in the context of using the Interdev software. Finally, the preface, having almost nothing to do with the rest of the book, goes on about programming nostalgia, and is tangential enough to scare off an earnest beginner.

There is "something for everyone" here, but that's not a good thing, because you're paying for everyone else's portion :-). Who, then, is the target reader? This is, as a whole, _definitely_ not for beginners with no programming knowledge, and advanced users will find much of the book extraneous (how to install your software, how to make graphic icons in a paint program). Intermediate readers like me get the most benefit, in terms of the number of subjects which are at our level.

Rated "Three stars" since the book has a fairly grand mission to live up to, and though I find the problems quite glaring, it is not "poor" by any means.

This book immediately caught my eye. It seemed to have everything I was looking for. While working through the first couple of chapters, I was utterly confused. The author tells you to name a page one name, but refers to the same page with a completely different name for its examples. this happens several times throughout the book. By trial and error I eventually got some of the code to work but with way too much effort.

This is not a simple walkthrough like the books title dictates. There are too many leaps from example to example and too many holes to fill. Most of my time was spent figuring out how to piece the several bits of code together to make the examples work. I am sure this is not the author's fault, but the publisher's rather. It's a shame, because this could have been a winner instead of the jumbling mess that it is. Also Que offers no errata to help out and the source code is just as confusing as the book!

If you wanna learn jsp quick, definately check out Wrox's Beginning JSP Web Development, or Forta's JSP book, and "scratch" this one of your list. Shame on you Que.

Foster's book is a sensationalistic tabloid-esque review of the trials and tribulations of Bettie Page.

While his account of Bettie's troubles with mental health and the law are interesting and revealing (the mug shot does look like an aging Bettie), his facts on her life are taken (often almost verbatim) from Karen Essex's "Bettie Page: The Queen of Pin-up.' Essex's book is much better done with more photos (and what else do we all love Bettie for?), more details, and much better writing.

While Foster tries to give us the impression that Bettie's later years have been besieged with evil promoters wanting to take advantage of her (although that is believable) it seems to me that he should be ashamed of himself, as he comes of little better than they do.

After working through the book during the process of doing a medium sized website, I found that many of my questions were unanswered. This a good book if you have never done anything with the web at all, and are not interested in more advanced manipulation of your site.

A HUGE omission from this book is the topic of Cascading Style Sheets. For those who are considering this book and don't know, having knowledge of how to work with these is crucial, and this topic is completely left out.

Other than that, it was an OK introduction to the most basic of topics. If all you want to do is know what the basics are to put up a home page, this book will do the job. If you want to really dig into intermediate to advanced level features using Frontpage, this book is not for you. I will now buy The Complete REference book hoping for more complete coverage of advanced topics.

As for the CD, there isn't much on it that couldn't be had by surfing around the free sites on the web yourself, finding material that is actually relevent to your project.

This book walks you through how to use all the tools to build web pages, hook up those pages into a web site, and send the site to your internet service provider. When you get done, you'll know how to build and maintain your site, and you won't have had to wade through 1000+ pages to get there. This book even shows you how to use the included graphics editors to dress up your pages, and how to use styles and templates to create a really snazzy look.

The writing is clear and concise, and the wealth of screenshots makes it easy to follow the step-by-step. It might be a bit much to get through this book "in a weekend", but it won't take much longer than that, even if you're a beginner.

I've never given away an ending of a book before, but this one deserves to be exposed. Shame on Ms LaPlante. My advice - don't bother reading this book and allow a successful Lorraine to live on in your mind, as someone to respect and admire.

The phone finally rings at Page Investigations beginning this new adventure into the world of movie producing, pornography, art theft and a possible love interest for Lorraine. The appearance of Jake Burton, as the new chief of detectives, will add some spice to the series not only in the police department but in Lorraine's apartment as well. As she tries to find out who really killed Harry Nathan, all the supporting characters in Harry's world begin to die as well. As his estate travels from one ex-wife to the other, Lorraine will also travel to the Hamptons and New Mexico in an effort to tie all the loose ends together.

While Lorraine is out of town, many things will be going on behind the scenes back home in LA. Rooney and Rosie have returned from their honeymoon and come up with some startling evidence that might bring Lorraine's past demons back to the forefront endangering her life.

Cold Heart is definitely a perfect title for this book as my heart was cold as I read and cried through the last few pages. I have only one thing to say to the author - How Could You?