Book Review: Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 Quickstart Cookbook

The intent of the book Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 Quickstart Cookbook by Jose Luis Latorre Millas, to cover the new features of .NET Framework 4.5 in just 226 pages is too ambitious - it covers too little and will please no one.

It covers a broad-range of .NET related topics:
  • Windows Store Apps
  • CLR
  • Networking
  • EF
  • ASP.NET
  • WPF
  • WCF
  • ASP.NET Web API
  • WF
However, the recipes chosen are random and few for each topic. I feel the organization of the book is flawed and the book reads more like a draft. It was a little annoying to see keywords not capitalized properly. Almost every instance of "ASP.NET Web API" in the chapter devoted to it has the W in Web in lower-case (like this - ASP.NET web API).

The chapter about new features in ASP.NET has sections on WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative-Accessible Rich Internet Applications) - not the hottest of topics & Page Inspector, Visual Studio 2012 features which are completely unrelated to the central theme of the book. Other recipes in the chapter about the Extract to User Control option and Page Inspector are great features in VS 2012 to know about but these have nothing to do with .NET Framework 4.5.

Except learning new things out of academic interest, I doubt if any single developer can make use of all the recipes or read the book end-to-end.

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