It took me a while (over a year, basically -- while at the same time doing everything else in .NET that I possibly could learn) to begin to realize that Server Controls in .NET present what I believe to be the number one "profitunity" for independent developers on the .NET platform. The reason I make this statement is very simple: Once you've carefully reviewed the over 60 pages of documentation that Microsoft gives you for free (in the Framework SDK) and a good book like this one, you will understand that the MS gurus who put together .NET really, really wanted to give developers a set of object-oriented, professional - quality tools that would empower them to create problem solving, feature - rich controls (both for Windows Forms and for ASP.NET) that would be marketable for profit.

Anybody that has ever visited or purchased from a vendor such as ComponentSource, for example, should be quick to realize that developers want and need various "plug-in" tools (components) that will enable them to do a variety of things in the programs and applications that they create which, if developed on their own, would incur a potentially high increase in cost because of the additional development time involved. Need a graphics chart to display your database report? It's a component. Want to upload a file or track banner ad clickthrus? Component. Want an updateable datalist that displays current stock prices? You get the picture.

In .NET, we've moved beyond the COM problem space and now we have pluggable server controls (components, if you will) that you can add to your VS.NET Toolbox and drag onto the design canvas of your WebForm, set the properties, display, colors, style, and so on, and Voila! -- it looks like you have just become the most professional developer out there.

That's what Professional ASP.NET Server Controls - Building Custom Controls with C# is all about. It introduces the server control architecture, deals extensively with the event model, inheritance and containment, managing state, templated controls, and even has an entire chapter on working with Data and databinding.

The book is easy to follow (even though it seems to have been written by eight authors!) and is progressive in nature. The sample source code is well documented and - hey - it compiles!

One of the authors, Daniel Cazzulino, with whom I have corresponded, has developed a high - quality open source set of serialization and data modeling infrastructure libraries that they call NMatrix, which you can view here. Daniel is the only person who successfully answered my newsgroup posts requesting help on serializing an Xml Document instance into a class dynamically at runtime and then using the BinaryFormatter to create a compact bytestream of the populated class to send over the wire. His XGof classes are nothing short of absolute genius!

The only thing I really found disappointing about this excellent book on server controls is that they simply left out what I consider to be one of the most exciting features of server controls - the class methods that enable you to generate client-side javascript and event - handling methods that wire up your control on the client side at the browser level.

IMPORTANT NOTE: --Oops! I spoke too soon! Damian Carville at Wrox just emailed me that the authors have posted an additional chapter along with complete source code that covers all of these items in great detail. In this bonus chapter you'll learn how to build an XML - based Contact List server control that does almost all its operations with client -side Javascript! On top of that, the authors show you how to encapsulate all your Javascript and even CSS as resources compiled right into the Assembly DLL. Pretty slick! If you'd like to read the bonus chapter as an example of the quality of the book, look here.

Professional ASP.NET Server Controls - Building Custom Controls with C# at $49.95 list for a 441 page book is not cheap. But since it's one of only about two books out there on the subject, I have to rate it as "recommended".

Peter Bromberg is a C# MVP, MCP, and .NET consultant who has worked in the banking and financial industry for 20 years. He has architected and developed web - based corporate distributed application solutions since 1995, and focuses exclusively on the .NET Platform. Pete's samples at GotDotNet.com have been downloaded over 41,000 times. You can read Peter's UnBlog Here.  --><--NOTE: Post QUESTIONS on FORUMS!