I just finished reading Building Websites with the ASP.NET Community Starter Kit (by K. Scott Allen and Cristian Darie) so I thought I'd review it here: http://www.packtpub.com/view_book/isbn/1904811000 The book is fairly short coming in at about 250 informative
pages (excluding the tiny appendix and introduction). It is targeted at people that are familiar with ASP.NET and C# (code examples are from the CSVS version), but just beginning with the CSK. Fortunately it doesn't waste any time explaining basic ASP.NET
or C# concepts and concentrates exclusively on just the CSK. This tight focus is very refreshing. The book uses the teach by example and step-by-step tutorial styles common in books targeted at beginners. This book is a fantastic way to get up to speed with
the CSK and learn what it does and how to start coding modifications to it. It is well organized and covers topics of interest to every CSK developer and administrator; but stops short of going into deep technical detail or architectural analysis which could
leave more experienced developers wanting more. The first 4 chapters are simply orientation covering what the CSK is, how to install it (a mercifully short chapter), and then a tour of each of the CSK's features, modules, and admin tools; and wraps up with
an explanation of the skins and themes. This is basically the same stuff that the CSK's own documentation covers; but better written and more complete. A great set of information for someone completely new to the CSK. The weakest chapter would have to be chapter
5; which is mostly devoted to writing custom themes and skins. While it does cover an example of creating a very simple theme, it really didn't go into enough depth. It skipped over working with the various control and template skins completely. But it is
a great start on theme writing, and anyone that gets through chapter 5 should be able to figure most of the rest without serious additional effort. The last 6 chapters are all programming, beginning with an examination of the CSK request and dynamic page creation
(a line by line walk-through of the relevant code). Then an examination of the content module design. In chapter 8, 9, and 10 you actually get to write a new content module from scratch (a great chapter), then write some customization using the custom modules
section type and adding new web boxes. and in chapter 10 you modify the core engine to support RSS 2.0 publishing (another great chapter). The book wraps up with a detailed look at publishing and deploying CSK sites manually from development to production
systems... which is one of the best chapters, and probably the most frequently discussed topic on the forums. My major gripes with the book, aside from the weak chapter 5, would be that it didn't really discuss ANY of the CSK's serious flaws... and there are
serious flaws. It kept a very positive tone about the CSK, which is good, but I thought developers could have learned a lot more if the CSK's mistakes were pointed out more often. It also should have discussed the database performance problem with the stock
CSK and linked to the database performance fix. It also didn't really do enough to point the reader at the user community created custom mods, fixes, and other online resources. It did link to some ASP.NET forum posts, and even to my own web site (thanks!);
but it seemed to avoid linking to the most popular community sites or the GotCommunityNet project. I feel that the developer community is one of the strongest aspects of the CSK and that talking about the works, tools, and code available on the various community
sites and forums could easily have filled a complete chapter all by itself. Overall this is an excellent book, an easy 8 out of 10 rating in my opinion. The tight focus on just the CSK kept it on track without diverging into yet another generic "learn ASP.NET"
book. The book also hits the target audience, developers just beginning to work with the CSK and the non-developer just wanting to know what the CSK is and what it can do. It does a lot to take information spread out all over the web and bring it all into
a single book in a well organized manner. Great piece of work!
Redd
Contributor
5271 Points
1061 Posts
Book Review: Businding Websites with the ASP.NET Community Starter Kit
Jul 11, 2004 12:41 AM|LINK
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