The book contains 8 parts with over 35 chapters. Part 1
provides a brief tour of the features included with Expression Web. The
chapters in Part 2 help you to create, publish and manage different kinds of
websites such as Disk based, FTP and HTTP. You will also learn how to generate
reports, importing websites and the usage of personal web packages. Part 3
includes a bunch of chapters and it mainly examines the creation and management
of different types of pages and content. You will learn the usage of
Intellisense, Context Menus, Code Snippets, Quick Tag Tools, Tables, Frames,
Forms, Graphics, Multimedia and Find & Replace. The author also
demonstrates the configuration of various options available in page editor.
Page 4 and 5 examines the usage of CSS, website optimization
using built-in accessibility checker and also some of the compatibility
features. Part 6 discusses some of the advanced topics such as usage of dynamic
web templates, interactive buttons, behaviors, layers and much more. This part
also includes a brief overview of client side scripting and creation and usage
of VBA Macros.
Part 7 delves deep into the various aspects involved with
the development of ASP.NET 2.0 applications. The author provides a detailed
overview of standard ASP.NET 2.0, Navigation, Master Pages and User controls.
Towards the end of the part, you will learn the development of a login system
and usage of form validation controls. The final chapter examines the usage of
ASP.NET web parts in a detailed way. Part 8 deserves special mention as the
author has covered the aspects involved with database management with the help
of various data source controls.
The book concludes with an appendix which provides an
overview of the usage of Visual Web Developer Express Edition and some of the
emerging technologies such as Ajax, Ruby on Rails. I feel the author should
provide some coverage of PHP as well. The author also examines ecommerce
related aspects and lists some of the useful resources available on the web for
further learning.
Each chapter includes step-by-step instructions, tips,
notes, caution hints, complete source code and jumps to related chapters with
page numbers. The author has done a great job presenting the subject matter in
a lucid manner. The book includes a CD which contains sample source files, full
version of popular logo creator software, menu builder and PDF version of the
book. I feel that these softwares will be a sure bonus for all those who
purchase the book.
I would suggest the author provides a trial version of
Expression Web as well on the CD so that readers can quickly install the
software and get the most from the book. The author maintains a website for the purpose
of this book. In addition to useful articles, the site includes a long list of errors and their corrections.
An interesting point to note is that the book is written
based on the final release of Expression Web and the copy which I reviewed and is
currently available from the publisher is the second print of the first edition.
Hence, most of the errata that you see on the above website are oriented for
those readers who have access to the first print of the book.