SharePoint Development 2010, Where is a good start? For Beginners

Question

I need a resource that will tell me how to use the ASP controls in Designer 2010. Something that tells me about XSLT customization and jquery, all relating to SharePoint 2010. I've been thru many books. SO far, they all fall seriously short.
I need a book that talks about the ASP controls in Designer, the SharePoint controls in Designer. So far, everything pushes me to Visual Studio. I need something that tells me HOW to type in ASP control attributes, where to put them, how to bind them to
a list. Does such a book exist? I need something that tells me about XSLT and how it relates to SharePoint 2010. What are the beginner options?
These are the books I have so far: Beginning SharePoint 2010 Development (another Visual studio book), SharePoint 2010 as a Development Platform. There's an XSLT book(?, wouldn't really call it a book by Marc Anderson, who, normally I like but that books
is horrible, literally a cut and paste of XSLT tags with a description. Can't believe I paid 25 bucks for that when all I had to was look at the code in Designer).
Need something, anything, that tells me about ASP controls and how to tie them to a SharePoint list. So far, I've found nothing that walks you thru that process without having Visual Studio. Do I need Visual Studio? How bout Express? Do I need to be able
to deploy everything I do in Visual Studio or can I just compile there and look at the code and then paste that into Designer? Where I work, Visual Studio Express IS an option but deployment is not. But do I really need to go that far. I think I just need
a good book that goes thru each webform control option in Designer and talks about the attributes for each and how to bind the data to a list. I'm really surprised at how difficult it is to find such info without having to look at a bunch of Google searches.
Also, something talking about XSLTviewwebparts. For example, was trying to add a FORM ACTION WORKFLOW but couldn't figure out how to bind it the list item so that it would run on THAT list item. There just seems to be a serious lack of organized info out
there.

Answer 1

Computer monitors and television monitors (Plasma, LCD or CRT) don't work in the same color space (RGB vs YUV), and gamma range. Using a computer monitor to preview your work is one thing. Regardless, all monitors need to be calibrated adequately. Take nothing for granted, and always keep in mind that nothing "out of the box" is adequately calibrated.
The advantages of having a professional monitor is the blue-gun, or blue-only feature, that allows you to calibrate the monitor with SMPTE color bars, by eye.  http://www.glennchan.info/broadcast-monitors/monitor-calibration/monitor-calibration.htm
I just learned (and ordered) of a tool that helps in calibrating consummer televisions: http://www.spearsandmunsil.com. Without such a tool it's a real hassle to properly calibrate a consumer television in general.
If you are going to manually calibrate a monitor without the blue-only option, get a Wratten 47B dark blue photographic filter, and place it over the monitor when adjusting chroma and phase with the SMPTE color bars.
As for computer monitors, calibration can be very accurate when calibrating with a puck. SpectraView comes bundled with some NEC monitors. So if you're buying a NEC monitor, it is worthwhile to get the Spectraview II. SpectraView is exclusive to NEC, so if you need to calibrate other brands of monitors, you need to find another solution, like the xrite, lacie, spyder, etc.
http://www.dpbestflow.org/color/monitor-calibration-and-profiling
Two input values you need to know for calibration software: White Point: 6500 K (D65) and Gamma: 2.22
Message was edited by: Frederic Segard