5 comments about Visual Basic Developer's Guide to Asp and IIS (Visual Basic Developer's Guides).

1. This book has been very useful to me so far--the author seems to have a good grasp of the subject. The issue I have is with the code downloads from the Sybex website--it seems to contain a lot of errors--the code for chapter 7 is especially bad. Also, I wish the auther had not included so much ADO in the book; while I understand that ADO was relatively new when the book was written, I do not feel that it was necessary to include so much of it, since the author says the book is for those who already know VB well. As a result I've had to waste a lot of time tweaking the database code to get it to work with my system, and I haven't learned anything new from doing that.



2. This book has been very useful to me so far--the author seems to have a good grasp of the subject. The issue I have is with the code downloads from the Sybex website--it seems to contain a lot of errors--the code for chapter 7 is especially bad. Also, I wish the auther had not included so much ADO in the book; while I understand that ADO was relatively new when the book was written, I do not feel that it was necessary to include so much of it, since the author says the book is for those who already know VB well. As a result I've had to waste a lot of time tweaking the database code to get it to work with my system, and I haven't learned anything new from doing that.



3. This was a pretty good book for someone experienced with Internet content delivery and Visual Basic but not both together.

   It allowed me to tie my knowledge of both together and often resulted in a lot of lightbulbs over my head.

   If you're a VB developer who would like to leverage your skill to get into web development, I'd highly recommend you grab this book.




4. I am a programmer. I currently develop in Visual Basic, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and VBscript. I purchased this book in order to learn ASP, and I've struggled through the first six chapters. I must tell you that, so far, the "book" is garbage. The examples are mismatched (i.e., the pictures don't match their descriptions), and the exercise projects don't work. I followed the examples word for word, line by line, only to find that after the exhausting effort, I accomplished nothing. I thought perhaps it was me at first, but after I downloaded the sample code from the Sybex website, I found it to be identical with the code I had written. When I tried to run the code I downloaded (presumably, this code was written by the author of the book), it also did not work. Chapter 5 in particular is overflowing with errata, only one of which is addressed in the Errata section of the Sybex website. I don't mind telling you, Mr. Jones, that I feel cheated...I hope you are enjoying the [money] that I paid for this doorstop. I could go on all day about this POS, but I must now go down to the bookstore and try my best not to get swindled again.



5. This is absolutely the most useless tech manual I have ever purchased. They didn't even get the index correct, it must be referring to another manual.

   DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!

No comments about Learning Programming Using Visual Basic .NET w/ 5-CD VB .NET 2003 software.

No comments about Introduction to Programming with Visual Basic.NET, An & Microsoft VB. NET & Document VB.NET.

5 comments about Practical Visual Basic 6 (Practical).

1. This is strictly a book for beginners, as it covers only the rudimentary concepts of visual basic. You'd benefit from it if you've never written a line of code in your life. Even for total greenhorn, it's very tedious to read page after page about addition/subtraction/multiplication/division operations.

   The greatest problem with this book, as with many, many other programming books, is that the authors just throw large chunks of code at you without bothering to explain why or how they work. For instance, on page 138 of the paperback edition, the author would write "Exit Sub" on line 44, without telling you why you would want to do that at that point. You WON'T find it explained in its context in the entire book. For beginners (as this book is obviously targetting at), this is plain bad practice. You'd have very many "whys" knocking around in your head, and you'd be left hopelessly lost. You'd even begin to doubt yourself, and think it's your fault, which of course it isn't. It's just bad writing.

   In addition, in some cases, the authors seem to hate using the properties window, and wouldn't tell you that it may be much easier to use the properties window (for design-time properties)than writing laborious codes. The MoveIt example at page 98 illustrates my point.

   Overall, I wouldn't recommend it to beginners, even though this book is written with beginners in mind. It'd put you off using visual basic, maybe forever. Try another book. There're many good ones lying around.




2. I found this book quite useful actually, now my monitor is more level with my face after placing this book under it! The book has lots of examples but doesn't thoroughly explain them. The index is way less than incomplete and the book is unkempt.

   I've read MANY computer books of all sorts and this one comes out on bottom, I have to say.




3. There is nothing "practical" about this VB book. It is a confusing mess. Chapter 1 starts out simple enough but suddenly chapter 2 starts dealing with extremely advanced activex controls and goes into VB jargon. Code samples are not explained well and some don't even work right. Those who already know VB will not have a problem following it but beginners will probably just close it after chapter 4 and give up on VB thinking they're just stupid or something.

   The book makes the mistake of throwing the entire VB kitchen sink at a beginner when all they need to know is getting acquainted with syntax, gui, and a smattering of useful common controls. There are much better books out there for the rank beginner, pass by this one even if it is in the bargain bin at your bookstore.




4. There is no easy way in evaluating this book. One can always say the classic response, �It was all right� and just walk away.
   The book had much more examples to look at than in had tutorial type examples. It was fast reading. In the sample code the book teaches you the code by mixing it with other new concepts that will be explained later on. This somewhat leaves one with a funny feeling that the whole is not yet fully understood. Most of the sample applications, though sometimes very long in code, are not exactly real world applications. The book seems much easier than what it appears to be. A number of chapters, such as Activex components and data forms, cannot be done with the Learners Edition of Visual Basic thats provided in the book cd.



5. The website does no longer exist.
   Most of the examples do not work.
   The provided verison of VB is not able to work with all parts of the book.
   This book is really crap, and is structured crap. I am going to return this as soon as possible, and maybe bbuy visual basic 6: quickstart guide.
   I am buying a book on vb6, not .NET because thats what is studied at school.
   This book starts off buy letting you create a program, cut and past bits from websites. It is absolutely useless, and a beginner would have no idea how it works.
   It is poorly structured, and tells you useless crap.
   It would be good if ti told you things, that you could use...
   absolute crap, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK, YOU WILL REGRET IT

3 comments about Microsoft Visual Basic Programming Projects.

1. Dear Friends, This book is very good for the beginers It helped me a lot to learn about Visual Basic Programing. It tells us about the market what visual basic does. How we can program. Its a life time guide for the Programers. They can simply copy the codes and manipulate them to their Projects.

   I Wish every one good luck whoever buys or uses this book.

   Your's Well wisher. Ravi kumar.




2. some data base project with the of data base projects



3. This is one of the best introductory "bargain" choice for Visual Basic 6 programming. This is a workbook (not a tutorial or beginner's textbook). It is easy to follow and designed for self-starters. It may be a little heavy or fast-paced for the first timers to learn VB or even a programming in GUI, but remember that this book is designed as a workbook. For that, I recommend this book, and have used for my class.

2 comments about VB.NET Core Classes in a Nutshell.

1. Okay--I don't dream in code often, and I don't make a living by programming. I do it for fun. I don't have any of the expensive versions of Visual Studio--just the "Standard", cheapie one.

   With that said, I love having the framework laid out for me. The fact that it integrates into VS is a big plus. And, if you're undecided, here's a little tip--you can install the VB.NET Core Classes information *AND* the VB.NET Language reference into VS with this CD. I imagine that the VB.NET Language Reference is the same way. Whatever, for the price of one, you get two (albeit only on hardcopy version).

   So--well worth the money. I love it.




2. As expected, this is a top notch book. Includes the information I was expecting, and a little bonus: not only can you install the VB.NET Core Classes information, but the CD that comes with this book includes all the information (for integration into VS.NET) for the VB.NET Language Reference, also by O'Reilly. So, while you only get the hard-copy of one book, you get the information of two. Quite a deal.

5 comments about Visual Basic Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with ASP and SQL Server.

1. I agree with many reviewers of this book that there are simply too many errors. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to the development of a website. The second part is devoted to the management of a website. It is in the second part of this book that one would find a majority of the errors.

   Most of the errors I found are simple typos, such as on page 413 the author forgot to close an input tag. There are some many of these types of errors that I grew accustomed to finding them whenever I tested the codes.

   Some errors I found are logical errors. They consumed a lot of my time whenever I tried to fix them. Take for example; on page 466 the author did not include codes to clear several option variables. Thus, each time a new loop was performed, the option variables still contained old values from the previous loop. This produced very unexpected results. Once I added my own codes to clear the option variables before a new loop, the problem was solved.

   It became clear to me that the author had not tested the codes because if he had, he would have discovered the same errors.

   Use this book as a learning tool. But proceed with caution as it is plagued with many errors.




2. Although title says developer's guide but it makes a reader from novice to developer. Before that e-commerce was complicated,difficult even reading other books makes you confuse more about the subject but after reading this whole concept becomes clear. In my opinion Only prerequisite for reading this book is some databases experiance, it will accelarate if reader have experiance in Access, Sql server. The 99 percent Use of stored procedure is one of the greatest thing by Noel. I have built my web site base on concept and examples given in this book. Though there might be some minor errors but I think they make you learn and eventualy they make you master the vb script, stored procedure and concept.
   I congrulate Noel and request him to upgrade this book to Asp.net and vb.net as well as other of his book named e-commerce developer's guide to building community tools.

   Thanks Noel




3. This book bring me from Intermediate level into advanced level.
   It shows you all real useful examples by utilizing ASP, VB, Db design, and Stored Procedures calls. It's kind of learning how real-world sophisticated shoppong sites(like amazon.com) are created. I am very happy with the book. If you want to become a professional web developer, or learn how to design a data-driven web site, the book is what you want.

   I recommend that the book is for Intermediate level who has some experiences in VB, SQL Server.




4. I think Noel did a good job writing this book. The code is well laid out. Code is reusable, and above all it doesnt tie you lot into registering DLLs. The only minus is for not having the full code on the CD which is mentioned in the book.
   Over all its a good reference for beginners to mid level programmers.



5. I just love this book. Few years back I got this book when I was working as FoxPro programmer creating only simple forms and saving data into FoxPro tables. Once I got this book, it changed my life, and I started moving away from windows application after four years of programming and started learning more about web.
   
   I created few e-commerce sites that year, and now I work as senior application developer for #1 web development company (Mercury Web Solutions) in Albany NY where I do mostly ASP.NET (C#) development and create Content Management System (CMS).

1 comments about FrameMaker 7 for Macintosh and Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide).

1. To be fair, I'm only halfway through this book at the moment, but I can't really say that I've "learned" anything more than I would have just playing around with the program on my own and using the online help. It doesn't seem to me that there was much thought put into a logical progression from one section to another, building certain skills off of previously-learned skills. Just about every section has a "see page xxx" reference on it, and most of those refer to pages much later in the book. So if you are actually trying to teach yourself, you are constantly skipping forward to successive lessons. In trying to learn tools on page 13, I have to skip forward to page 190. The lessons are just very haphazardly arranged. Also, there are several errors, saying "circle" when the illustration shows a square, typos, bitmapped illustrations. For example, in the lesson on deleting pages, one screen capture shows the author wanting to delete page 255. In the next screen capture, the Framemaker popup window is showing "Deletion of page 256 cannot be undone. OK to continue?" Mostly just boneheaded little things like that, but I would expect more. Like I say in the subject line, this may be better for a quick reference, not so much for actually trying to become competent and confident using FrameMaker. Maybe get this book to introduce yourself to the absolute (and I mean ABSOLUTE) basics, then get another book to actually put those skills to use.

No comments about Visual Basic .NET Programs to Accompany Programming Logic and Design.

5 comments about Vb Com.

1. It was a fantastic resource that explains COM very well. It's targeted towards beginning programmers, assuming very little about a programmer's foreknowledge of VB. It even walks through wizard examples.

   I've had the book for about 2 years now and I still use it as a basic reference book whenever I have a spacey moment on a fundemental aspect of COM.

   Excellent starter book that I've recommended to many friends along the way.




2. Although this book was written over 3 years ago, it is still a good book for Visual Basic developers to learn COM. Microsoft wants you to think that everyone will be switching to Visual Basic.Net but the reality is there are a lot of Visual Baisc 6.0 shops out there and they have to support legacy COM components (ActiveX) for some time to come. Not all of those components are going to be converted to .Net. This book is a good starting point for any Visual Basic developers who want to learn COM including ActiveX DLLs and EXEs, ActiveX Controls, and Microsoft Transaction Server. The chapter on Microsoft Transaction Server could be a good step to COM+ on Windows 2000 and XP machines. Thomas Lewis takes you step-by-step from introduction to COM thru ActiveX components and finally thru Microsoft Transaction Server. He lays a good knowledge foundation and then with each succeeding chapter builds upon that knowledge. I would recommend that after you read this book that you follow it up the Peter Vogel's "Visual Basic Object and Component Handbook".



3. I was long searching for a book on COM from a VB programmers perspective, first reading 'Beginning visual basic objects' and putting it aside for a while i decided to purchase this book and was not disapointed, sometimes this book is a bit dry and at times the examples are quite abstract it nevertheless delivers! I built a COM object for an IIS Server to handle CDO/SMTP in 10 minutes!



4. The material seems a bit dated, but the basics are there. It was helpful in that I was looking to refresh some of the concepts. However, the ~n that appear in numerous places really started to drive me nuts. You would have thought that something so obvious as a "~n" would have been easily caught by an editor! They start to appear on page 26.
   
   And why does Wrox insist on putting the authors pictures on their books? Developers are not photogenic!



5. I'm making the transition from C++ COM to VB COM, and I have very little experience with VB. This book just kind of goes over what COM can do and sort of explains what COM is doing in the examples. The coverage of material is minimal at best, and you won't really understand what COM is doing from the explanations. What's worse is that you won't really learn how to apply his examples to other projects. This book assumes you are an experienced VB programmer and is explaining COM, which would be fine except then his instructions are way too low level for any VB programmer and his explanations are severely lacking.
   
   As an example for anyone who knows about COM, he covers connection points in 2 pages, whithout really explaining how you can use these in your own applications. For reference, all other COM books I've read devote at least 1 chapter to connections points, and it's often one of the largest/most challenging chapters.
   
   If you want to know what COM is doing, buy a concept book from Microsoft presses, or a C++ book. Even if you don't know C++, it at least explains what COM does. (Because you can't see what COM is doing for you in VB, this book doesn't explain COM very well). If you need to learn COM in VB, try another book (if I knew which one, I would have bought that one instead).
   
   A word about the books age. This book is written for VB 6.0 which was based on COM. If you're now developing in VB 7.0 aka VB.NET, this book is not so useful. VB 7.0 is now based on .NET, so you can't actually make any COM objects from VS 2003 using VB. New VB objects to be used by COM objects or to function as COM objects must use wrappers which are another topic entirely. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I could not find a way to build unmanaged , native code from VB.NET and there don't appear to be any ActiveX (aka COM) wizards around.
   
   Also, online support for this book is non-existant. The Company that published this book was split into two and purchased by other publishers, and this book appears not to have been purchased by either, and so neither provides any support or references for it.
   
   I really recommend against purchasing this book.