PDF (Portable Document Format) is a common choice for e-books, big manuals comprising of several hundred pages and other documents. At a first glance, it seems to be a reasonable choice. PDF is a really cross-platform format, the most popular PDF viewer – Adobe Acrobat – is freely available in all popular operating systems – Windows, Mac OS and Linux. But what is wrong with it?

Well, the first of all, it tends to be slow, of course, it might depend on an application you are viewing your document with, but still opening large files in Adobe Acrobat doesn’t seem to be an easy walk. Of course, it’s not the only reason why I think this format is a poor choice for e-books. More...

Introduction

I have already written several posts on the Entity Framework where I described the power of this particular ORM tool. I also mentioned the book on the Entity Framework written by a Microsoft MVP - Joydip Kanjila. This time I will publish an extract from the book that shows how you can build ASP.NET application by using the Entity Framework and the EntityDataSource control. It can also give a glimpse of the Entity Framework is, if you have no experience in it.

The tutorial covers the following topics:

• Creating the Entity Data Model by using a graphical utility built-in Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• Creating the Entity Data Model by using a command line utility
• Using the EntityDataSource ASP.NET control
• Displaying the data in a GridView

This tutorial uses a particular database, but in fact you can use any database you already have. More...

I suppose you have already heard about the Entity Framework, but probably didn’t have a chance to try it in action. So, you want to learn it. Of course, you can start with MSDN that is indeed is the num ber one resource .NET developers, you can also find a dozen of tutorials on the Net, but you know it’s always pleasant to have a paper book or perhaps its electronic versions that you can read everywhere, not only in front of your computer.

So, I can recommend you a book More...

Even though I don't program with C++ much these days, I still love the book entitled "C++ Programming Language" by Bjarne Stroustrup - the creator of the C++ programming language. Its first edition was published in 1986, but the book still remains informative even for non-C++ programmers.  Unlike many other programming books, this one doesn't focus only on the language itself,  in contrast, there are many very useful chapters on various programming paradigms, including the object oriented one, for sure. Besides, it does really explain the p urpose of the object oriented method and its benefits. Moreover, there is information on software architecture, class design and on programming process as a whole. More...

I often see questions in the forums regarding ASP.NET books, usually people ask not only about reference style books, but about more advanced books that explain not only ASP.NET basics but teach you to write real world applications.

I know a really good book on that topic. This book focuses on building a web portal including news system, guest book, user registration, e-shop and many other features. Actually, this portal is a popular starter-kit called "E-commerce starter-kit" or "The Beer House" that you can find here.

The book is called "ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution".

The new edition that describes ASP.NET 3.5 including LINQ and ASP.NET AJAX will soon arrive.

So, the books are highly recommended by many professional ASP.NET developers.