Building ASP.NET Server Controls  Buy it at Amazon Read a Sample Chapter From The Publisher
	Author Dale Michalk, Rob Cameron Publisher APress Length 880 pages vbRad Rating: 4 fingers up. (4 out of 5) Reviewed by Robert Gelb

I, for instance, have a very nice and thorough table/datagrid component, which supports paging, sorting, binding, etc, however it still requires the mapping user selection from querystring/form to the control. I use it when building pages with COM & VB6.

Which brings us to this book. ASP.NET provides a very cool model for reusing web-based code, so why not reuse it. Unfortunately, the reality is that doing fully featured controls for web-based applications is still quite complicated, because we are dealing with a disconnected state. This tome attempts to break through the bottlenecks, explain away all the problems that get people stumbling and get you on your way reusing code.

The book covers basics (obviously), where they show you how to build a basic control. Then they delve into state handling. This includes client-side state and server-side state. The authors build an event-based control to demonstrate how to take advantage of the event-based framework. This is followed by applying style to your output.

Templates, data binding and client-side script is covered in detail as well. Then there are the obligatory chapters on validation controls and mobile controls (is anyone using it at all?). Authors conclude by building a really complex control and packaging it for deployment.

One thing that you'll definitely appreciate about this book is that it is very thorough. Every subject is handled with great care and the explanations are very meticulous. I'll definitely keep it on my bookshelf.