I bought this book to help me put together a number of business websites. I was torn between using PHP and ASP.net, but the release of Microsoft's Visual Web Developer Express Edition (powerful and free!) made this a `no brainer'.
In many ways this book seemed the perfect place to start, it seemed to cover the fundamentals of building the sort of dynamic websites I had in mind. However, whilst it is based on the assumption that you are using VWD, the book doesn't really exploit the many labour-saving functions that VWD provides. I found myself having to type lots of 'dry' source code into VWD (then go through and correct my typos), when in hindsight much of this could have been avoided by using a few mouse-clicks in VWD.
I hit a major stumbling block when following the example website - I got stuck when the website started using a database login script which I just couldn't get to work on my installation of SQL server express (despite numerous re-installs etc.) - and the accompanying help was next to useless (it pretty much says configuring SQL Express is a topic covered in other books). Not good enough really, as this is pitched as a 'Beginning' book, and this pretty-much ended my ability to run examples from further-on in the book.
In summary; It doesn't make the best of VWD, and a 'noobs-guide' to SQL Server express should've been included; virtually everyone will be using it in conjunction with VWD when working throught the book.