ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly weighs in at about 190 pages of regular content and about 40 pages of Appendices for a total of 230 pages. It has a lot of pictures and code, making it easily something you can read in a couple of nights.
Maarten Balliauw does a good job of introducing you to the basics of ASP.NET MVC. Right off the bat he shows you what you get out of the box when creating a new ASP.NET MVC Project and then walks you through creating your first strongly-typed view, creating a controller action associated with the View, and unit-testing the controller action.
Subsequent chapters build on that simple knowledge and explain the basics of
- URL RoutingASP.NET MVC Request Lifecycle
- HTML Helpers and Form Interaction
- ModelBinding and Validation
- Views, View Markup, Partial Views, and Master Pages
- ActionFilters - IAuthorizationFilter, IActionFilter, IResultFilter, and IExceptionFilter
- AJAX and ASP.NET MVC
- Unit Testing and Mocking
- Leveraging Existing Features in ASP.NET
My favorite chapter was on more advanced subjects where he takes a deeper look at the components of the MVC Framework and ASP.NET MVC Extensibility - Creating a MVC User Control, Custom ActionResult, and creating a ViewEngine. It was brief and pretty high level, but I love topics that have to do with ASP.NET MVC Extensibility.
In the appendices, he walks you through his CarTrackr Sample Application as well as lists various ASP.NET MVC Sample Applications and additional resources.
Although a small book, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly is surprisingly packed with a good mix of information and no real fluff. It is definitely aimed at beginners and for those who want a good overall picture of the MVC Framework without the burden of a larger and more detailed book. If you are looking for a solid introductory book right now that briefly touches on some advanced topics like extensibility, unit testing, mocking, etc., I think you will be happy with ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly.
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