Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Design
Author: Jacob Sanford
Genre: ASP.NET
Rating:
In this literature, Jacob Sanford sets out to teach the reader how to make ASP.NET web pages look good, and how to lay the infrastructure to do this efficiently.
In the first few chapters, the book actually becomes a discussion on web design including the infamous 'CSS v Tables' row, where Mr. Sanford claims to be on the fence, yet 'does all the examples in CSS anyway'.
CSS is obviously the way forward, especially if you know about W3C standards. With this in mind, you can't really fault Jacob's rationale.
One unexpected bonus is a quick education in the basics of Photoshop. An excellent inclusion, and one alone that made the book an economical purchase for me.
Having talked about web design in the initial stages, the topics then move on to ASP.NET master pages, controls and ultimately, themes. In this section you learn all about how to style controls consistently across your entire website with the discussion on .skin files.
I don't think this book has the most fluently or elegantly written text, but it is intelligible. Jacob also likes to talk a lot of theory, and talk about all angles you can approach a situation from. In this respect, he's done a good job.
If you follow all the exercises, you will create a website that helps to teach and solidify all the concepts presented throughout the book. It's not really a chore either; I actually quite enjoyed most of it.
Overall, it's a useful book if you want to make your sites look good and consistent in an efficient way. I wouldn't say the author is a natural writer, but his efforts are robust and get the job done. It definitely gets my recommendation because there appears to be no competition.
