Alex Homer's Professional ASP 3.0 Web Techniques

One of the attractions Web development offers to programmers is the endless possibility to learn new tricks, exploit the latest technology, and continually build more efficient sites. In Alex Homer's Professional ASP Web Techniques, programmer extraordinaire Alex Homer shares some of his favorite Active Server Pages (ASP) tips and illustrates how to make the most of the technology cards you're dealt.

This book focuses on ASP 3 programming on the Windows 2000 platform, and Homer makes it clear in the introduction that the reader should already be familiar with ASP and general Web development. He wastes no time getting down to business, showing how to dish up dynamic sites, and opening your mind to the concept of a single-page site that relies on database records to produce an unlimited number of pages of content. The book doesn't follow a definite "bottom up" track. Instead, it flows more like a conversation with the author--complete with a "Plug and Play" chapter comprising juicy tidbits that don't fit neatly in the other chapters.

Homer's examples of implementing cross-browser compatible framesets and sophisticated line and pie graphs of user and site statistics are especially intriguing and useful. All of the techniques are presented with a balanced combination of screen shots, code snippets, and commentary.

The author wraps up this fun book with a "Blue Sky" chapter, in which he shares some of his knowledge of upcoming technologies such as ASP+, XHTML, BizTalk, COM+, and more. This is a fitting conclusion to a very engaging guide to ASP. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: Dynamic page design, browser compatibility, access control, remote administration, error handling, broken link management, user tracking and statistics charting, e- mail integration, XML, certificates, and ASP components.