Book Review: Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX: From Novice to Professional

Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX: From Novice to Professional by Laurence Moroney This book has a bit of everything leaving everyone from new .NET web developers to experienced ones coming away with a good experience. This book is almost like having 2 books in one. The first half is an introduction to ASP.NET. It covers the foundation, basics,etc and includes examples of some common coding scenarios. The second half of the book is a real treat for experienced developers. Especially ones that have been coding in ASP.NET for some time, but have been on projects that have kept them locked in the .NET 2.0 framework. In the second half of the book, you get a whirlwind tour of all the new advances that .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5 bring. For me, this was a great read since I have been more SharePoint focused lately. But now since MOSS SP1 supports AJAX, Silverlight, etc it was time for me to get up to speed. You will chapters on WCF, WF, WPF, AJAX, and Silverlight. My favorites were WPF which made me take some serious hands on time with Blend and the several AJAX chapters. What I liked about the AJAX chapters is that it started bare bones and built up to include the ASP.NET extensions and calls to services. So even if you are a MOSS dev... you need to start paying attention to the advances in ASP.NET.