5 comments about Excel 2003 VBA Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer).

1. This huge (1176 page) book is intended for Excel users and programmers from beginning to advanced, this book presumes you have a reasonable working knowledge of excel and a full installation of the software. It does not presume that you have a working knowledge of VBA, after all, that's it's subject.
   
   In fact, chapter 1 is titled Primer in Excel VBA. Excel VBA is, of course, a specialized version of Microsoft's standard VBA, where those specific points that cater to spread sheet manipulation are differrent from the VBA's associated with other parts of the Microsoft Office package.
   
   This book gives a general introduction to VBA, but it is entirely within the context of Excel. This is indeed a Primer. It starts with how you open the Visual Basic Editor and goes on from there. Generally the book grows step by step. But not always. ==On page 83 it says: "OnTime - You can use the OnTime method to schedule a macro to run sometime in the future." OK, I understand this. But only 7 pages later it says: "VBA does support interface polymorphism. Interface polymorphism is orthogonal to class polymorphism." Huh? Does this help me schedule something to run in the future? Is this supposed to mean anything at all to me? Since I have no idea what it's talking about am I supposed to go look up all these new words somewhere? Is this really going to help me? Anyway, you skip a few chapters and you're back into getting some useful information about things like creating user forms.
   
   All in all I rate the book quite high. Everything you always wanted to know is there. And it is supposed to be a reference manual, not a tutorial. My only complaint is that I think it could have organized a bit better.



2. sorry to say that i'm very dissapointed to own this book. For those who are new to VBA, it is not a good start from here. I also find that the example and the function covered is not practical enough to use to develop your own program. I would recomend a book written by John Walkenbach which the examples and function cover more practical



3. I have not read this book, but it is obviously based on a book by the same authors, Excel 2002 VBA Programmer's Reference.

   That book has numerous errors: incorrect code that will not run, code that has incorrect variables, code that has nothing to do with the text above or below it, screen shots that have nothing to do with the text.

   It also has an eclectic index that on occasion leads you to what you want.

   The authors have been let down by the Wrox editors, but on occasion one can find gems of useful information in their book. I would be quite tempted to review the present version of the text, but my past experience with Wrox-edited books makes me hesitant to spend more money on such texts.

   I hope someone who has actually read the book can supply us with a better review than this one.
   --j.r.a.




4. This book is very poorly written and badly organized. Essential introductory topics are sprinkled throughout the book seemingly randomly. Much of the writing is horribly ambiguous or just plain unreadable. I am a beginning programmer, though I am highly proficient with Excel. I was lucky to be familiar with some other programming languages because the explanations of object-oriented programming concepts in this book (as well as other topics covered) would have been completely incomprehensible without a moderate level of background experience. The examples in the book are neither practical, nor particularly well designed to illustrate the VBA concepts that the authors are trying to teach. Instead, the authors seem to be preoccupied with designing examples to convey stylistic programming conventions that they personally favor.



5. Just want to echo the negative reviews below. I've owned and read a lot of programming books in my life and this is one of the worst. Avoid it.

3 comments about Professional VSTO 2005: Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (Programmer to Programmer).

1. VSTO (pronounced Visto) is a most interesting product when viewed from Microsoft's overall standpoint. It is a very carefully crafted product with the primary purpose of continuing Microsoft's continued dominance of the desktop marketplace, and a part of Microsoft's thrust to move more heavily into the server marketplace.
   
   As best I can tell, it works something like this. Microsoft recognizes that servers handling up web pages, processing mail, etc. are a huge market, but that Linnux owns a big percentage of that market. Consequently Microsoft came up with the .NET strategy. .NET is a bunch of subroutines (if you will) that are written to provides all kinds of utility to programmers. You write your applications using propriatary programming languages such as C# and J# that use the .NET library and consequently have to run on Microsoft operating systems.
   
   In the Office environment, packages such as OpenOffice have gotten to be pretty good, are basically Microsoft compatible so you don't have a re-training problem, and are FREE. I don't know how much success OpenOffice has had, but it appears to be enough to attract Microsoft's attention.
   
   Enter VSTO. VSTO adds customization and productivity to Microsoft Office applications through 'links' that tie Office to the .NET framework. So to use VSTO first you must have and load the .NET framework, then you must load Visual Studio.NET - in that order -- then install Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office.
   
   All of this is clearly explained by Mr. Bruney in this book, who then goes on to do an excellent job of explaing how to write programs using VSTO. As examples he includes some real world applications. Most of the book is on Excel applications, but Word and Outlook are included as well. Finally he concludes the book with an excellent discussion on pivot tables.
   
   Conclusion: A well written, understandable and complete book on VSTO. If you're going to be using VSTO, this is an excellent place to start.



2. I bought this book because it was available from a 3rd party seller for a very low price. For the money it was okay. It got me familiar with VSTO. However, I'm very glad I didn't pay full price because frankly the text is full of errors, typos and mistakes. E.g., in one paragraph he is talking about the Range object and when referring to an object there is a particular font and style that is used. However, the Range gets referred to 1) using the style, 2) without the style but with a leading capital letter, 3) without the style and all lower case. Consequently I had to re-read the paragraph 3 or 4 times to figure out if he meant "range" in the English definition or the object. A pain. This sort of thing is all over the book.
   
   Also I was reading it so I could automate Word and I found very little practical data in the chapters on Word.
   
   So, unless you are getting it as cheap as I did, I'd say find a better book.



3. Like so many books an help manuals written today, this book never tells you how the pieces fit together. The section on Word starts with an example which occurs on the "ThisDocument_Startup" event, which then opens another document. (Actually, most of the examples are nested in an event handler of that name.) The author doesn't tell us what would ever cause this code to execute -- is it part of a standalone application? Is it triggered when you open a particular file with Word? etc.
   
   I need to write code which operates in place of a Word macro -- i.e. there's a toolbar added to Word via a Global Template, and it has a button, and when that button is clicked, an object is instantiated which then begins to interact with the user and with Word. I've skimmed the entire section on Word, and found nothing of relevance. I'm ready to just skip out and buy another book.

5 comments about Excel 2002 VBA: Programmers Reference.

1. It's a great book! It actually consists of two parts: a brief but very useful VBA overview with all popular tricks and hints in the beginning and a deep and coplete reference at the end. Normally you need to buy two separate books to get this coverage. This book can get you started in a few hours and answer virtually all your questions going forward. Really, really good!



2. The book is adressed both to beginners and intermediate users, not advanced ones though. It covers everything, however there were many occasions where I wanted more information. This is not to say the book is not a great value for money. After all, a complete vba book would probably need to have a couple of thousand pages, whereas with this book you can start programming even having read only chapter 2. If money is not an issue, you also need to buy Walkenbach's vba book too.

   I found it easy to navigate through it, so I didn't think indexing was such a great problem as commented before me. The authors don't say too little or too much and they write very clear. The reason I didn't put 5 stars (if I had the option I would put 4.5 starts) was because I didn't like the second part of it, which is half the book and which mostly presents basic information.




3. If you are interested enough to read this review, then buy this book. Now. I have done quite a bit of programming ... The only problem was, I had never programmed VBA/Excel and was having a very rough time getting started.

   I bought "Excel 2002 VBA Programmer's Reference". I sat down and started reading Chapter 2. Before long, I was so excited that I was firing up my laptop. Four hours after I started reading the book, I had a prototype up and running. This book is amazing. Chapter 2 gave me more useful information than I sometimes get from an entire book. ...

   The authors are simply bursting with knowledge and give it freely. Ideas are expressed clearly and succinctly. Knowledge is well-organized and easy to find. Whether you want to approach the topic methodically or flip through looking for gems, you will find what you want here.

   Getting the object model is a great bonus. I'm going to enjoy spending a few days going through this one.




4. The best aspect of this book is it's section on ADO, but there is little depth into the topic. How frustrating to find something so powerful and so undocumented, only to see the end of the chapter so quickly.
   
   I suppose I do not see why 400 pages was devoted to the Excel object model. I do not use the section, but instead search within the VBE for information and arguments I need.
   
   The book is cheap. The binding broke in 2 places.



5. "Excel 2002 VBA Programmer's Reference" is a good reference for those who write code in Excel VBA. To those familiar with Microsoft Excel, but unfamiliar with the VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) programming environment, this book should serve as a good way to learn how to automate tasks and extend the utility of Excel.
   
   Most appropriate for intermediate- to advanced-users, this book still offers a primer in Excel VBA for those new to VBA. Note that this is a large book (approximately 1,000 pages) and it contains a printed version of the Excel 2002 Object Model, which can prove useful to those who prefer paper-based, as opposed to screen-based, reference information.
   
   Overall, a very good reference book.

4 comments about Expert One-on-One Visual Basic 2005 Design and Development (Expert One on One).

1. Perhaps 3 stars is a bit low, but there is no 3.5, so that's my rating.
   
   Mr. Stephens is obviously an experienced VB coder, and I was hoping to find in this book some advanced coding patterns, based on his experience. In particular, I believe the book summary mentioned advanced object coding, so I was looking forward to some really in-depth discussion about advanced coding methods for objects.
   
   I would describe this book as something akin to Code Complete, but focused on VB. It contains a series of chapters on what (in the author's opinion) is the BEST way to code certain aspects. For example, the best naming conventions.
   
   From the description, my assumption was that this book is for "elite" programmers, who have exhausted all "advanced" books, and are ready for the heavy-duty code examples and techniques.
   
   However, after reading the book, I would say that it would be best for programming groups or departments to use as required reading for their VB programmers. If everyone in a department adhered to the conventions in this book, they would be creating some very solid code.
   
   I hope that Mr. Stephens continues writing advanced books about VB, because he obviously has some very good experience with it. I would really like to see him put together (for example) an object-oriented data access layer (DAL), and then explain it, in 2-3 chapters. The best example of that, but not written for VB, can be found in the Manning book called "ASP.NET Web Parts in Action". It is a very unexpected treasure to find that code in the beginning of that book, and I'd love to see a VB book cover a few *very advanced* topics like that.
   
   I hope this review does not come off as overly negative, because that's not my intent. It is a good book for its purpose. I just didn't see that purpose matching with the summary of what to expect.



2. I am an amateur developer of freeware medical software [...] and a fan of Rod Stephens with this being the third book of his that I have purchased. He has a concise and clear style of writing that is easy to read and his books are dotted with examples. I have previously written a review for his Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference which is a classic. I enjoy dipping into this for the details of Visual Basic and it is full of some truly useful sample code, especially graphics and printing. So it was with some anticipation I waited for delivery of his new book- Visual Basic 2005 Design and Development.
   
   Whereas his last book was full of Visual Basic language details his latest work complements this with more of an overview of the design process. It looks at the bigger picture of developing an application and has some useful advanced coding additions.
   
   Part I details the design process and I found it interesting as an individual developer to see how larger groups go about the design process. Chapter 5 User-Interface Design was the most useful section for me and sets out practical examples of how to make a users life easier. It was full off common sence advice on setting out forms, fonts and how to make an application responsive to the user.
   
   Part II Meta-Development (not sure what that means) gets down to some detail on programming help with snippets, macros ( I didn't even know they existed in VS 2005) and an excellent chapter on custom controls and components. The MapViewFinder in chapter 10 was a superb example (you can drag a small rectangular area around a large map to show a detailed area in the rectangle). There are 21 sample solutions in the accompanying code download for this chapter alone.
   
   Part III Development is for when you get serious about making an application for others to use as well as yourself. It has details on documentation and an overview of design philosophy with some gems. It is dotted with some interesting examples of how things work in the real world and anecdotes of Rod's experiences in various projects. Bug hunting, testing and deployment round this part off.
   
   If Part III was more of an overview, Part IV gets your hands dirty again with some advanced coding. I liked the chapter on splash screens but liked the chapter on printing better. Visual Basic is notoriously hard to program complex printing. Rod has by far and away the best examples of printing in any text I have seen and this chapter adds to the examples in his previous book. Other writers stop at simple but useless examples of printing that don't take into account real world requirements for multiple pages, multiple fonts, imbedded graphics, page sizes, page numbers, text wrapping around images etc. Chapter 20 Printing has 6 example solutions that help you through the complexities of printing in Visual Basic. Threading and reflection are beyond me at present but as my skills develop I may come back to the more advanced chapters.
   
   The accompanying source code is a 4.5M zipped file with copious examples which add value to the book. I am glad I bought it and recommend it to more experience programmers especially if you are developing an application that is intended for use by other users and you dont want to get too much grief from poor decisions in the design phase.



3. I did expect more deeply coverage of the topics. The book is helpful but some chapters are very superficial and you finish with a lot of questions with no answers.
   
   In general terms it is ok.



4. I just finished reading Visual Basic 2005 Design and Development by Rod Stephens.
   
   Rod's written some great books in the past. And, this one is no exception. Each topic is explained clearly. Also, I didn't experience any of the 'dry' reading that I usually experience reading a technical book. The book does a very good job at keeping the reader interested in even the topics that aren't the most exciting. The writing style is very similar to what you will see in the articles on http://vb-helper.com.
   
   In particular, I enjoyed the section on UI design philosophy. In my opinion, that is the type of thing that programming books need more of. Because, let's face it, programmers tend not to be the most creative people.

1 comments about Visual Basic 2005 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice in .Net).

1. I have been using VB.Net 2005 for the last 9 months working with different applications. I got this book because I have a good understanding of how VB works, so I don't need a tutorial on how to write programs, but I do need help sometimes figuring out the best way to solve a problem. In the 2 weeks that I have owned this book I have already referenced it several times. The code examples are straight forward, easy to read and work so well.
   
   One of the more interesting chapters is the one on the next version of VB. It has really gotten me excited for it to be released and I will be looking forward to the next version of this book covering VB 2008.
   
   It's not mentioned here but you can download each one of the example from Apress' website. I would definitely recommend this book to any intermediate or beginner programmer with VB.Net, it's an excellent resource to have.

2 comments about NUnit Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly)).

1. Unit testing is an ideal that many programming projects should aspire to. Like yours, eh? In Java, that gave rise to JUnit. Well, as .NET has grown, so did the need for unit testing in it. From the open source movement, we now have NUnit. Still not as well known as JUnit. Which may add to the need for this book.
   
   A quick pocket reference that is competently done. Lets you easily thumb through and get what you need. The attraction of NUnit is that it can automate a framework for unit testing. There is really not much to NUnit, as attested by the book. But, then again, there is not much need for anything more complicated.



2. This pocket reference is very useful for getting NUnit running and to get you started on making test harnesses of your own. Great buy.

No comments about Microsoft Visual Basic 2008: RELOADED, Third Edition: RELOADED.

5 comments about DarkBASIC Pro Game Programming, Second Edition.

1. This book is awesome gives good amount of information and examples how to program computer games



2. This was a great book for starting game programming with Dark Basic Pro. I use this book all of the time when I am writing games. My only complaint is the 3D stuff. it seems a little rushed and I didn't see anything about 3d collision detection. I am not confident you could create a 3D game using this book exclusively. I would love to see a second volume to this book that was just 3D programming. However Hands On DarkBasic Pro - Volume 2 does just that so if your library included these two books I think you'd be set.



3. Read all the above review and I personally don't think they gone through the book page by page. I notice the lack of information on blocks of code and why the code does what it does. Make it really hard to try to follow along.
   
   Aside from those points, I'm not planning to follow through the codes anymore, just waste of time. Just going to read the tips which are helpful and also the way of approaching things he gives good insight.



4. Very thorough yet easy to read and comprehend. The author is definately a software engineer (apparent in his frequent spelling and gramatical errors) but nevertheless clear and concise. The examples have a few errors, mostly spelling errors in the code, but are well designed and generally show the current concept clearly. Reading this book while you work out the examples is kind of like having an extreemely enthusiastic best friend leaning over your shoulder teaching you the material.



5. This book is ok for people who love to read.
   
   If you don't like reading just use wikipedia.
   
   The article in Wiki is short and easy to understand and it covers
   
   almost everything in this book.

5 comments about Learning VBScript.

1. I won't be long and all i will say is that I knew almost nothing about vbscript before I read this book and by the time I finished it I had enough knowledge and tools to program rather complicated codes! The only bad point is that the book is quite old and covers only versions 1.0 and 2.0 and requires some updating from the msn web site. But in the end of the day Paul Lomax is realy amazing and the book is really really good.



2. Don't buy this book in the yera 2000... buy VBScript Programmer's Reference instead, by Wrox Press. It covers the latest and greatest, VBScript 5.0, instead of Lomax's rinky-dink 1.0 and a bit of 2.0 coverage. I gave this book 3 stars, though, because the quality of Lomax's "lessons" and explanations are great if you are new to VB or a scripting language. Indeed, Lomax demonstrates how VBScript is much easier to learn than JavaScript.

   Overall, it is better to buy a book that is more updated. This is a dinosaur in today's lightning-speed techno market, and it needs to be put in the museum (c'mon, 1997? )




3. This book is NOT for complete novices like me! Terms like "OCX", "32-bit", and "server-side includes" are used but not explained at all. With some help from other books, some of the material made sense. That said, there is a lot of good content in this book. I'd recommend a more introductory book (is there one?) for true rookies.



4. I had been developing strictly with perl for Unix, when I needed to do some work on an NT platform I ordered this book. I used it coupled with O'Reilly's ASP in a nutshell and finished the job quickly. It is a great reference for migrating from other scripting languages.



5. This is the best VBScript book and I've never felt the need to get another one. It's accessible to a novice (which I was when I first bought it) but has enough depth and richness of information to still be used as a reference guide now that I have over 5 years of experience. I can look up all the functions in it quickly (easy to forget syntax when you're programming in VBScript and client-side JavaScript at the same time), since I've marked the pages with post-it tabs, and it's well organized so that I can find things quickly even if I haven't marked them. Sure, it doesn't describe some of the newer language features that came out after it was published, but still it will work 95% of the time. I notice the same author worked on the O'Reilly VBScript in a Nutshell book, so I might check that out, but generally I don't like the Nutshell books as much because they don't have code samples.

No comments about Visual Basic ® 6 Made Easy: A Complete Tutorial for Beginners.