Asp.net

[HankWangford]

Orcas is not released and won't be for quite some time.

As V says, .NET 3.0 is just 100% the same as .NET 2.0 as far as ASP.NET is concerned. Infact calling it .NET 3.0 is the most stupid thing MS has done for a long time as it is really .NET 2.0 (with zero changes) + some new Vista technology additions. It should have been .NET 2.5 IMHO.

so will orcas get released with a newer version of the clr (3.0 sp1
They have chopped and chaged all these releases and names winfx, orcas, .net3.0

[Spacecadet]

Well apart from buying a couple of good books on the subject!

Whilst we're at it, can you recommend any good books?

[DimPrawn]

Not really, haven't bought any beginner ASP.NET 2.0 books myself.

[Zippy]

Whilst we're at it, can you recommend any good books?

I'd recommend O'Reilly's ASP.NET 2.0 Cookbook - the examples are in both C# and VB.
I like the problem/solution presentation of the cookbooks but it may not be for everyone.

I've also just bought ADO.NET 2 (Wrox). I'll let you know if its any good when I've got round to reading it

[Magnus]

It's hard to say what is the best way for you to learn without knowing what you already know.. but here's how I learnt ASP.NET and C#:

- http://www.learnvisualstudio.net - this is a paid site but it had a series of free videos of ASP.NET I downloaded. The site might be worth a poke around. Watching the videos (about a dozen, usually around 20 min but up to 40 min long) was like sitting through class, but I think it was nice to sit and watch someone actually doing something; and it was quite a boost to see that it all really is not hard at all. The instructor (Bob Tabor) doesn't seem particularly bright, or at least highly demanding/expecting of his students.

- I obtained and read a few of those 'for dummies' and 'learn in 24 hours' books (pdf, through mininova.org). It's not worth spending much time on these. The best challenge is to see if you can work through a 24-hour book in one day (8 hrs). In fact, I skimmed through a couple of books like this after having slogged through the books I mention below, just to confirm I really did have a good grip on the topic (I did; these 'dummies' books really are aimed low).

- The best book was from APress, titled 'C# and the .NET Platform'. It took a few weeks of solid work to get through. It gives a good description of the .NET architecture, the CLR, C# itself, and even some of the philosophy behind the language and the execution environment; it continually compares .NET to the old COM crap, and some of the other legacy Microsoft technologies, but it doesn't assume you actually know anything about them. It shows how .NET is different, how it accomplishes the same thing, and how it's better/stronger/faster (maybe not faster). The only problem is that it's based on .NET/C# 1.1, not 2.0, but that's not a big problem at all if you don't know C#/.NET (which I happen to be assuming, because C# seems to be tied pretty strongly to ASP.NET so far..). In fact I would say that slogging through this book, while using the latest VS and keeping up incidentally with C#/.NET/ASP.NET in other ways gives you a better insight on the whole .NET thing. Only the last three chapters (out of about 20 or something like that) are devoted to ASP.NET and web services.

- Another good book I used, for ASP.NET, was APress's "Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in C# 2005 from Novice to Professional". This book is fairly repetitive, and not aimed all that high (most of it was padding), but it covered the gaps left by what I'd done before. There's not really all that much to know about ASP.NET itself, once you know C# (assuming that's what you're using for code-behind, and you already know SQL, etc. I know you asked about DB development, but that's covered pretty adequately in the other resources I'm mentioning).

The two things I think that you need to understand most about ASP.NET are 1) the page's life cycle (OnInit, OnLoad, controls, PreRender, etc) and 2) ViewState (and how it fits in with the page's life cycle). After you've been messing around with ASP.NET for a couple of weeks, this page: click here about ViewState is extremely informative. Bookmark it.

Also, a web site I used all the time in my last project (mainly for JavaScript, which I found myself using quite a lot, but also for CSS and general HTML) is w3schools.com. As for AJAX, there's no web site that I found that's really the duck's nuts, but there are a few that are useful that you'll come across.

HTH

[Spacecadet]

HTH

It certainly does!
Cheers mate, a very nice reply to my original post

[Weltchy]

As for AJAX, there's no web site that I found that's really the duck's nuts, but there are a few that are useful that you'll come across.

HTH

Everything you need to know for AJAX if your using ASP.NET can be found at http://Ajax.asp.net Nice and simple. The ajax controls toolkit is really easy to use!!!!

[HankWangford]

Everything you need to know for AJAX if your using ASP.NET can be found at http://Ajax.asp.net Nice and simple. The ajax controls toolkit is really easy to use!!!!

I prefer anthem.net. No fuss without all the ms javascript jizz bloat

[Weltchy]

I prefer anthem.net. No fuss without all the ms javascript jizz bloat

I'll have to take a look. First look was at the Microsoft stuff tho, as alot of the Microsoft Partners I work with tend to go for anything and everything Microsoft!!!!