5 comments about VSTO for Mere Mortals(TM): A VBA Developer's Guide to Microsoft Office Development Using Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (For Mere Mortals).

1. I should mention although I haven't really done much with the book that it lacks a sample code file download. This means you have to key in everything yourself to test and debug.



2. This book is part of the "For Mere Mortals" series, which sounds like it was created by the publisher to compete with the popular Dummies and Idiots books. However, McGrath's efforts are not a trivial read. What she describes is a considerable effort by Microsoft to migrate the myriad VBA developers towards .NET and Visual Studio 2005 Tools.
   
   The emphasis is not on implementing abstractions like object oriented programming. Rather, it uses the reader's background in coding VBA and in MS Word and Excel. Nor are you expected to be proficient in database design or the intricacies of SQL Server. Much of the text is about front end material. Like using the conveniences of the VSTO user interface, with its many widgets and menus, to easily code.
   
   Many new features are available, compared to what you previously had under VBA. The most striking example is now the nifty ability to have a data island. Imagine an Excel spreadsheet on one machine. That loads from a database on another. If the first machine is your laptop, and you take it somewhere isolated from the network, what happens to your data? Well, there is now a means of copying that data, while you're still connected, into a data cache on the laptop. Without having to go to the extent of running a full database on the laptop.



3. This book (VSTO for Mere Mortals) is very well written and easy to understand. I did not come from a programming background. I started by learning VBA so making the move from VBA to the .NET /VSTO world was a bit intimidating for me, however; after reading and following the examples in this book, making that leap is not as hard as I thought it would be. I love the detailed code samples in the book and the step-by-step way that they are presented. I really learned a lot from reading this book. Thank you to all that contributed to putting this book together.



4. Traditionally, developing on the Office platform meant that you would use VBA but Microsoft released Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) a few years ago to let .NET developers use their skills to develop managed Office applications. Moving from VBA to .NET is not easy because you need to learn so much new stuff especially if you never touched .NET in any way. "VSTO for Mere Mortals" is a book targeted at VBA developers who never used .NET before.
   
   In the first chapters, the authors explain what is VSTO and what features are available for developers. Chapter 2 and 3 introduce the Visual Studio development environment and managed code. Seasoned .NET developers will skip these chapters but they are essential for people who never used Visual Studio before. The next chapters cover everything VSTO from Word, Excel and Outlook development to Smart Tags and database development. A full chapter is devoted to new features of VSTO 2005 SE and Office 2007.
   
   If you're a VBA developer that wants to jump into .NET development using VSTO, look no further, this is the book for you. Experienced .NET will also find this book interesting but will skip a couple of .NET introduction chapters.



5. I found the book thorough and easy to read and follow. It reviewed .net extremely well, and made me aware of .net capabilities I had overlooked since the old ones worked.
   I met a problem early on in my use of the book, communicated with the author, and got the help I needed to overcome the problem.
   An excellent book on the subject.

5 comments about .NET Internationalization: The Developer's Guide to Building Global Windows and Web Applications (Microsoft .NET Development Series).

1. Nowadays, if you are a programmer, you might be coding an application that will be deployed globally. Very different from 30 years ago, when you would usually have English-only text for your user interface. Of course, then, the UI was often just standard out and standard in.
   
   The book shows how the .NET platform lets you handle internationalisation (i18n) in several ways. You can define strings that will appear in your UI. Grouped into several sets, each set usually specific to a language. So given the name of a string, you can write language-specific versions of it. Plus, there is a Resource fallback process, which lets you define a hierarchy of these sets. So you might make the English set the default, say. Useful if you can't find translations into some other language. Plus, you can be more specific than just specifying a language. Within a language, there might be different terms or spellings, depending on the user's location. Hence, the book describes the concept of a locale or culture. The best example is en-US and en-GB, describing American and British versions of English.
   
   The other main aspect of the book shows how the various .NET UIs can use these Resources. For example, Internet Explorer has a control pane that lets you define different locales, and the order in which these will be used, to look up Resource values. Of course, IE comes to you pre-programmed. More importantly, the book shows how to program this ability into your own code, written perhaps using Windows Forms.
   
   All this should sound familiar to you, if you've already been programming in Java. Which has had these capabilities since 1998 and earlier. To some extent, the book shows how .NET is still playing catch-up. And that it essentially has achieved parity with Java/J2EE in i18n.
   
   The book also has a section which might initially seem very exciting, machine translation. Especially if you have had prior experience dealing with programs that do this. MT is a very hard problem that really belongs fully in AI research. Accurate translations often require human input. Alas, as Smith-Ferrier points out, the book reveals no breakthrough by Microsoft. Essentially, Microsoft has a Web Service that takes an input word and returns a translation into some other language. But still very limited. And you certainly can't hand it a sentence and expect a (correct) result. Its usefulness is mostly in cases where you have single words commonly used in programs, like 'file' and 'quit', and you need translations into another language commonly used in programming. On balance, however, the Web Service is better than nothing. Microsoft has taken the obvious step and automated what can easily be automated.



2. So what's an IBM Lotus Notes/Domino developer looking at a .NET book? Hey, solid fundamentals and learning can come from anywhere! :) And Guy Smith-Ferrier's book .NET Internationalization: The Developer's Guide to Building Global Windows and Web Applications has given me a greater appreciation for what it takes to make a multi-language application that actually works...
   
   Contents: A Roadmap for the Internationalization Process; Unicode, Windows, and the .NET Framework; An Introduction to Internationalization; Windows Forms Specifics; ASP.NET Specifics; Globalization; Middle East and East Asian Cultures; Best Practices; Machine Translation; Resource Administration; Custom Cultures; Custom Resource Managers; Testing Internationalization Using FxCop; The Translator; New Internationalization Features in the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005; Information Resources; Index
   
   Make no mistake... This is primarily a book on how to use Visual Studio 2003/2005 to make your .NET programs functional in more than one language and culture. The information is very detailed in how Microsoft has structured the environment to allow for the use of items such as "resource managers" and "cultures" in development. These features can make it possible to have a single code base but differing text and behavior based on the user's application or browser settings for language. If I were a .NET developer tasked with building an application for use in multiple countries, I'm pretty sure I'd want this book close beside me.
   
   But even without being a .NET developer, I still came away with some valuable concepts. Since I *haven't* had to internationalize an application, I pretty much just thought "translate the words and you're done". But it's much more extensive than that. What about languages where the character set is completely different (and not found on your "normal" keyboard?) What about languages that read right-to-left? It was a bit strange to see examples of dialog boxes where input box labels were right justified with the input boxes themselves placed to the left... I mean, it made sense once I thought about it, but I had really never done so. So much for my "open, global" mindset... :)
   
   While there are likely better books for someone looking for internationalization concepts on a general basis, this book *does* deliver in that area to a large extent. And if you're focused on .NET, I don't think there would be much question that this would be a prime resource for you...



3. This is actually one of the best technical books that I have read in a long time. It is to the point, it does not reiterate, it is well considered in its structure and it elegantly covers the topic from the beginner to the advanced.



4. I don't rave about books very often, but this book is worth the rave.
   
   It's perhaps the best written hard-core technical book I've ever read, and one of the few where I didn't skip half. Topics are correctly grouped and covered to an appropriate depth with clear explanations of when and why you need specific features.
   
   If you are not familiar with internationalization - the first part of the book covers basics such as why a culture is needed and the fallback process.
   
   If you think you know about .NET internationalization - you already know about cultures and resource managers and localizable, but you've never actually localized an application, the insight into the process - such as the value of pseudo translators will be very helpful. It also covers a boatload of language nuances from the Turkish letter I to non-cased languages.
   
   I came to this book with an extremely difficult internationalization problem that I thought we would have to kludge by walking controls on form load. This book went deep enough into the internationalization customization points and pointed out a critical trick I had not seen, that I am building a localization system that will work for us. Instead of being kludged on top and parallel, this book showed me how to leverage the .NET extensibility to solve the problem. I did not find enough information on making the internationalization extensibility model actually work elsewhere.
   
   I know a good bit about Winforms, the framework, and code generation and this book is solid in the coverage of these topics. I learned things I didn't know, especially that InitializeComponent code injection trick - which is also one of the best examples of why business programmers might want to know a little about the CodeDOM (one way to do code generation).
   
   I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in internationalization in .NET, whether an introduction, rubber meets the road suggestions/experience, or black belt insight into the extensibility points.



5. Like most English people, my multilingual capabilities extend to English, American, and Shouting. But as I've increasingly worked at conferences across Europe, I've become more aware at just how difficult it is for non-English speakers, and those for whom English is not their first language. It's when you attend a conference in somewhere like Austria, and all the sessions except yours are in German (de-AT or de-DE) that you realize you have a long way to go to even start to support other languages and cultures in your applications.
   
   While I've tried hard to tailor my examples, by internationalizing them as far as I can using the features of ASP.NET 2.0, this book opened my eyes to the huge number of other issues that such "translated" applications actually face. It's then you realize that, without a professional approach and solid information on the whole gamut of gotchas involved, translating the text is just scratching the surface...
   
   And that's why you really do need this book. It's packed with detailed, and often "inside" information that spans every related topic area. It covers not only theory and guidance on the best practical techniques, but tools and resources that can help. In fact, the detail it contains is so thorough that you'll find yourself reading some chapters over again to get to grips with the complex internal workings on .NET and Windows. Yet it's written in a friendly, readable, and often amusing way that makes perusing topics a pleasure as well as being informative.
   
   Make no mistake, this is not a "read and remember" book. Be prepared to keep it near to hand as a reference, as you'll need to study each chapter to grasp and apply the techniques properly - and in enough depth - to make your application "world-ready". And even if you only ever build applications in one language, it's worth reading this book just to help you understand the internationalization features available, and the how to get the best from .NET. You never know, one day you may have to build a multi-language version of your Web site or Windows application...

5 comments about Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0.

1. I really didn't need another book on WPF, at least that is what my girlfriend would say. I already own "Applications = Code + Markup" by Charles Petzold, "Essential Windows Presentation Foundation" by Chris Anderson, "Foundations of WPF: An Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation" by Laurence Moroney, "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" by Adam Nathan, and "Professional WPF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows Presentation Foundation" by an assortment of Wrox authors.
   
   But I saw Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0 on Amazon and decided to investigate the possibility that I need to have it. After reviewing the TOC I still wasn't sure. But after downloading the code from Apress I was sold. I have been a fan of Matthew MacDonald for some time. He has definitely worked his magic on this title.
   
   Some of the highlights I like:
   His in-depth coverage of printing.
   His Custom Elements chapter.
   His approach with 3-D drawings makes extensive use of the 3DTools from CodePlex.
   The chapter on using ClickOnce with WPF.
   Everything is gone into in depth. This is not a brush over the topic book.
   The usability of the code makes the book all that much more valuable.
   
   He also has a great site named ProseTech that has a companion site for the book. It contains all the links found in the book
   
   For extreme coverage of Expression Blend you will have to by a book specifically on Blend. Too bad no good ones exist yet. One I have seen that is out has bad reviews. None of the books I have listed above cover Blend in-depth at all. The Wrox book has 2 high level chapters on it, but I have been playing with Blend 2 a lot and find myself in the XAML most of the time because I don't know how to get to what I want to do in Blend. On that note, this book is excellent for showing you how to work XAML to the maximum.
   
   This book also does not cover Silverlight. It is a book about Windows Applications, not Browser Applications.
   
   I highly recommend this book as addition to any developer's or designer's (those who need to know XAML) library. It was definitely worth buying.



2. Books stated purpose: This book is an in-depth exploration of WPF for professional developers who know the .NET platform, the C# language, and the Visual Studio development environment.
   
   This book introduces the developer to the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), which is a new graphical display system for Windows. This book is well written from beginning to end, and takes the developer through the process of learning how to utilize the capabilities of WPF. The author provides references to outside sources throughout the book. These either provide a more in depth look at the current topic, or point to a tool that would be useful. The author introduces WPF in a manner that lets developers of any level understand what WPF is and the benefits of using WPF. Then chapter by chapter he provides instructions and examples that take the developer through the learning process about WPF.
   
   System Requirements;
   * To run WPF applications, you must be running Windows Vista or Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
   * To create WPF application, you must have either Visual Studio 2005 with .NET 3.0 and the WPF extension, or Visual Studio 2008.
   
   The early part of the book is about the basics in and about WPF. The author gives basic, but understandable examples that lead the developer in a growing understanding of WPF. Once the developer has the basics of WPF down, the author begins to build on this base.
   
   One of the basics covered is the creation of the Application object. This is the foundation for all the code throughout the book. Another basic operation covered is the layout of the forms. WPF provides the ability for Windows forms to dynamically grow and resize based on data and language, similar to Web Forms. It takes more work to set up a form, but it will give the user a much better experience in using it.
   
   Now that the developer has the basics, the author moves along the path for using them. The developer is introduced to the WPF controls and how to develop with them. There are a number of features added to familiar controls. Some examples include: Tooltips can now contain both images and text. Multi-line text boxes can grow dynamically and text does not have to always break where it fits the textbox edge. You can add a dynamic spell check to textboxes.
   
   There is a chapter on building control templates or modifying existing controls. This feature appears to be more powerful, and quicker than the old method of building a new specialized control from scratch.
   
   The following topics are part of what is covered as the book continues. Data Binding to a database, Printing, Animation, Sound and Video and 3-D drawing.
   
   The author wraps the book up with a short tutorial on using the ClickOnce Deployment. If the developer has already learned to use the ClickOnce Deployment, this chapter can be skipped. However, it is a useful conclusion to the book if the developer has not yet used the ClickOnce Deployement.
   
   The book is pretty detailed. This review only touches on a few of the highlights from the book that specifically caught the reviewer's eye. It is worth adding to any developers library if they are looking to do new development for Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2.



3. I already have several WPF books now, each of them has something to offer and it's a rare day when you can find all the information you need on a complex, wide ranging topic like WPF in one book.
   
   Without detracting from the other books that I admire, I think if one book does come closest to being a one-stop source then possibly it is this one. Coverage of topics is comprehensive, detailed and accurate. At just under 1000 pages it's definitely a heavyweight, although you're unlikely to want to be parted from it long enough to use it as a doorstop.
   
   The author's writing style is clear and friendly without being patronising. If I have a gripe about the book, it's the same complaint I've been making since the middle of 2007 - this is yet another WPF book that only has code behind samples in C#. However I understand that there will be a VB2008 version out early in 2008.
   
   Of the books I have on WPF, I turn to this one early in most researches. I consider this book to be a good investment. I have several of Matthew MacDonald's earlier books, which I have always found relevant, well-written and useful; this book is in the same mould.



4. This review is a comparison between
   Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed (WPF) (Unleashed) by Adam Nathan
   
   and
   
   Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0 by Matthew MacDonald
   
   I have been using both of these books for learning WPF. What I like about "WPF Unleashed" is the quality of the pages with the color printing. I believe this higher quality is a great step in the right direction and I know a lot of developers appreciate good quality printing such as this. But as good as the printing is I still find myself spending more time in the "Pro WPF" book.
   
   I think it has to do with the flow of the book and how the information is presented to the reader. I'll do my best to explain my experience. In the "Unleashed" book I found myself reading a bit of knowledge, looking at the example, try to work with it in Visual Studio and struggling. Then going back over the knowledge, going to the internet, find out some more, work with it in Visual Studio, back to the book and in some cases giving up because I couldn't achieve some result.
   
   In the "Pro WPF" book though I didn't have this happen nearly as much. In the Pro book it had a really nice flow to it where he would present some basic information, give and example, present some information, give an example. So here I found myself reading some knowledge, do it in Visual Studio like his example, read some knowledge, do it in Visual Studio. I didn't have to reread nearly as much and the knowledge seemed to build upon itself nicely; taking you from simple to more complex. He was really good at NOT introducing newer topics (WPF class/methods) that he hadn't already covered.
   
   The books work well together though and that's how I used them. I use the "Pro WPF" as my main and the "Unleashed" book for more examples.
   
   The "Pro WPF" book has also been updated since publishing and split into two books for C# and VB.NET in .NET 3.5:
   Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, Second Edition (Books for Professionals by Professionals)
   Pro WPF with VB 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5 (Pro)
   I haven't read these books yet so I cannot comment on them. I just wanted to include them as a note to the reader.



5. Judging by the number of reviews, MacDonald's fan base is similar to that of Alison Balter-Mastering Access 97 Development (one of SAMS best). The learning and example experience is fairly similar. I got Pro WPF before the VB version came out. Migrating from VB to WPF is difficult enough without dealing with C#. The downloaded code of the VB version is only for examples but they are generally relevant to me. I still break out Visual Basic 2005 (.NET or Bust) for a succinct reorientation.

5 comments about The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation.

1. I recently became interested a lot in Nature. Especially, being someone in the field of Computer Science, the computational aspect. And this book is by far one of my favourite among all the "How Nature Works" kind of books I've read.

   This Computational Beauty of Nature (CBofN) covered a lot of topics. Ranged from brief introduction to Computation Theory, Fractals, Chaos, Complexity, Adaptation. (See the Table of Content for more details).

   All topics are written in surprisingly clear and very understandable manner. With as little Math as possible. (From my opinion, these topics cannot be completely understood without Mathematics -- The Language of Nature). Therefore, it is also accessible to layperson.

   This book does not, however, go so deep into each subject. (You won't expect it to do that with its less-than 500 pages, don't you? :-) Instead, it does give nice backgrounds, fundamental knowledge, and important ideas for each. So, if you are interesting in any of the subjects presented here, you can go on to the more specialized books on your own.

   One of the nicest feature of this book, which can hardly be found in other text, is that the it does show how things work together, where and why. For example, natural phenomena like adaptation, evolution, computation, and some other things else related to each other. How can one view this from that perspective, and vice versa. etc.

   One other nice feature of this book is, you can really play with almost all concepts using a number of computer programs. All the programs are downloadable (with source code, under GNU license) from the book's homepage. So, you can reproduce almost all the figures from the book.

   However, for one thing, the homepage address given in the book, in the edition/printing I have is incorrect. Maybe MIT Press had changed the structure of their website or something...

   ...you can still search for it using your favourite web-search engine.

   About the website, all the good things are there as well, including errata. (Of course, Perfect things are very rare in Nature... So, books with some errors are ok. The thing that matter is the authors know it/admit it and tell the readers or not).

   Conclusion: If you want to understand "How Nature Works" from the computational point of view. If you interested in Chaos theory, Fractals and Complexity. Then, make no mistake, you can't go wrong with this one. (And, get the hardcover edition, because you will read it, read it, read it again, and keep refering to it. So the paperback edition probably can't endure that :-)

   I want to give it more stars if I only could. This book will always get the highest rating possible from me wherever and whenever I review it.

   Nature herself is so beautiful. So, it's time to get to know her, to learn about her and to understand her! And this book just did it, in such a way that can hardly be better!




2. Good book, [X] bucks is a bargain, it's worth twice that easily.

   Favorite things about this book
   Covers L-systems and also gives the rules for how to make some interesting plants. Also this book touches on some aspects of AI like game-trees and neural nets. The author discuses "boids" and self-organization with autonomous agents that act together, and shows simulations of ants and a flock of birds using this concept.




3. This is a good introductory textbook for college undergraduate mathematics and computer science students that attempts to combine the theory of computation with some mathematical concepts and in the end, manages to model virtual life by explaining basic concepts in chaos, adaptation, fractals, and complex systems. There are better books on all of these subjects, but few others do such a good job of tying together key concepts from each discipline into the one theme of this book. However, there is only enough room to outline the included subjects rather than investigate them thoroughly.
   
   Also, the mathematics is elementary enough to be accessible to a mathematically mature high school student. The mathematics is concisely explained as it is needed, with just a page or two for each of calculus, linear algebra, affine transformations, complex numbers, vector calculus, and matrix algebra. Thus, the included mathematics makes a better refresher than a tutorial for the novice even though the author states in the preface that he wrote this book for a younger version of himself. This book teaches its subject matter mainly by demonstrating concepts through simulations that are expressed in dozens of programs which illustrate the points being made. Instructions on using the programs are scattered throughout the book. The source code is available for download on the web, along with selected excerpts from the book.
   
   I would recommend this as a first book for those interested in simulating natural concepts, but it should not be your last if your goal is to truly grasp the concepts presented and produce simulations of your own. However, an even better book on this subject is "Mathematical Models in Biology", although it is an advanced text. A very accessible book that is also more advanced than this text is "Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering". It clearly explains the mathematics while tying it into key concepts in nature. "Chaos and Fractals" by Peitgen is a good book on the subject for the layperson with a fascination for mathematics presented in some depth. The book also has various Java programs that illustrate key concepts.



4. This is an excellent book. I've been reading it for weeks. The chapters are not long, but the content is amazing. The author combines explanations and equations in a format that is demonstrative and repeatible. This is a very good book to study yielding the understanding necessary to penetrate many other advanced books on complexity theory. The author starts by examining whole numbers and real number problems. Next, he examine Godel's incomplete theory of predicate logic showing that no formal language is complete. Next, he examines fractals, self-similar patterns, low ordered with high compression and high order with low order compression, L-systems, and Juliet and Mandel-brot fractals. Fractals open up an emmense study into the complex pattern from simple rules and recursion. Next, he examines equations of strange attraction, chaos, and demonstrates stability behavior within complexity. Next, he looks at small universes created by running CA. NNs and GAs are examined in the last chapter. I was excited to write down many of the authors processes and run them using OpenGL and C. I believe this book to be an excellent book for college students. The material is easy to understand and the content very demonstratible. Cause and effect are very cohesive in this book. Even though the book seems simple, it covers an vast amount of topics necessary to understanding AI and AL.



5. Granted you can find most of this info elsewhere but still this is a great read. Well written, a nice collection of material, and downloadable source code. I found it to be a very inspiring book.

5 comments about Programming Microsoft Windows Forms (Pro Developer).

1. This is hands down the most clearly-written explanation of programing windows forms using C# that I have read or seen on the market. Petzold has an easy and engaging writing style. He takes the time to explain the WHAT and the WHY of what you are doing. This is a great book for someone just sitting down to Visual Studio 2005 to begin learning C# programming. His examples and walkthroughs produce useful and functioning examples of the most common aspects of Win Form programming. My only complaint is that he can only dedicate a chapter to some pretty key concepts, like data-binding. My interest is piqued, and then the chapter ends and we move on to new concepts. This is a small complaint because what he does provide is complete and enlightening. It provides a solid foundation to build off of create your own experiments.
   
   I have worked through many programming books over the years (or should I say attempted to). The Step-by-Step guides always leave me wanting more answers about how things work, in addition to how to make it work, and seem to be pretty superficial. This book has left me anxious to read more of Petzold's work. He has skillfully broken through my thick head and can do the same for you.



2. I wanted to do some windows programming in C#, bougt a lot of books but found this the only one that really helped.



3. This book is, as the author explains, done in Petzold style. Meaning it is shown with the code behind the GUI tools instead of being done with the tools. Unfortunately any forms which are built with code cannot then be manipulated with the GUI tools which defeats the intention of the makers of Visual Studio as a Rapid Application Developement (RAD) tool.
   
   If all you have however is the compiler and a text editor then this book is for you but since Visual C# is freely available you can write some nifty applications without needing to know how to invoke the compiler from the command line.
   
   Still, there are some things in this book which are helpful to know and the GUI tools, on occasion, don't exactly fit the bill. So it's nice to know what the code behind the GUI is doing but you'll soon be forgetting most of what you learn because you'll be using the GUI tools.
   
   I would much rather have had a book which shows how to use the GUI tools more effectively than what the code does.
   
   Edwin E. Smith
   Freehold Consulting
   Coffeyville, KS



4. This book is a good updated to his first book on programming forms in C# 1.1. There have been alot of useful changes from C# 1.1 to 2.0. I just wish he would rewrite the first book with the 2.0 updates instead.



5. Programming Microsoft Windows Forms is a great introduction into windows forms. It takes the magic out of windows programming by showing how to do everything from scratch, which, with windows forms, turns out to be pretty easy.
   
   I haven't programmed for windows since MFC, COM, and Visual Studio 6 were considered new. Windows forms makes a lot of the tasks that used to be tedious easy and Petzold as always is very easy to follow.
   
   Although this book is not an introduction into C#, it is easy to pick up assuming you already know some other languages like C++ or Java. I didn't know any C# before I started reading this book and already feel comfortable with it.
   
   One thing to note is that this book covers .NET 2.0 and the current version (as of April 2008) is .NET 3.5. However, I haven't had any problems compiling the example code using Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

No comments about Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct 3D 10: A Shader Approach.

2 comments about Microsoft Office XP for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide).

1. I bought this book for an intro course, and was disappointed. Being a QuickStart guide, I can understand it's concise nature. However, Microsoft's Help menus provides all if not more than the information in this book. Also, the neat caption tips don't really help either. Don't buy this book, unless you've never used Office before.

   Having said that, his book still has strong points. For beginners to Office, this is a nice book. Full of greyscale pictures, this book is easy to read and there shouldn't be too much trouble finding topics.




2. I took courses on Word, PowerPoint and a little Excel, but I go a long time between uses of some of the special features of each program. I find the Visual Quickstart a great and handy resource for refreshing myself on special features that I do not use every day. I find it much more convenient than Microsoft's Help function (which is useless to me).

5 comments about Unified Modeling Language User Guide, The (2nd Edition) (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series).

1. Start reading Chapter 1 of this book for even just the first few pages, and for various topics, it will say to go to future Chapters. If you take a look at those future chapters, there will be notes on the side telling you to go back to Chapter 1 or to other chapters. You can run into infinite loops or dead ends not really picking up anything. It is possible to maybe find what you were looking for, or find that the explanation for it is just not sufficient.
   
   If I'm trying to look for a topic to remember, this book is not an easy read with the index either. If you look up some topics in the index and go to all the pages listed, it may not list all the important pages. Sometimes, when I had to look for information on something, say a "use case" for instance, then I'd look that topic up in the index. I'd go to all the different pages listed in the index and it might not be what I was looking for. Then I'd have to look at the side of the page of usually the lowest or 2nd lowest numbered page listed by the indexed topic, and go to the Chapter(s) listed. When I went to those chapter(s) I'd still have to scour the entire chapter(s) until I might find what I was looking for. An example was when I was trying to understand what one of the diagram types was, a "state diagram" I believe it was, as compared to say an "activity diagram." Sometimes I would find out that things just weren't worded well if in there at all, and I'd have to refer to another UML book.
   
   This book may have some good use, but I haven't found that yet. It's hard to read and hard to look things up, and hard to learn from if you don't already know much or anything that is for sure.



2. I picked up this book as a way to familiarize myself with the changes to UML in UML 2.0, which are extensive, as I found the OMG specification nearly impenetrable. I had liked the first edition, though I too felt Fowler's Distilled was a much better intro to give to students and engineers learning UML for the first time. This edition, though, does not meet expectations. The typos and bad references throughout are bad enough. Join that with a complete lack of real-world design examples, poor organization, and poor design. Why a chapter on State Machines and a separate chapter on State Diagrams that repeats a lot of the earlier chapter? The blue cross references make it clear that the book is spaghetti design at its worst. Check out the table of contents, you won't know where to look for your favorite diagrams; check out the index, and you won't be able to find the definition of the concept you just can't quite remember. The glossary is useful, as the UML 2.0 spec dispensed with a glossary, making it even more impenetrable. On the other hand, the authors make no attempt to call out the new UML 2.0 features, which would have made my day. What I find most unforgivable, though, is the authors' inability to present the new UML as it really is: the book is seriously misleading in many ways for learning UML 2.0. My biggest peeve is the way they treat the new and highly useful composite structure diagrams. In the list of diagrams, they don't even mention it, calling it by the name of a different diagram, the "Component Diagram", which they feel is the same thing. They then separate the discussion of composite classes and components, making it seem as though they're totally unrelated. They fail to mention quite a few of the new UML features (the X navigation adornments that make non-navigability explicit, for example, which is critical to code generation, or the fact that you can have multiple stereotypes associated with model elements. In their defense, the UML standard isn't very clear on these diagram types, but this is a practical tutorial that should take practice into account. There are constant references to the Reference Guide for more advanced features; these are mostly the UML 2.0 features that they didn't feel were important enough to include in the comprehensive tutorial. The appendix on UML notation simply ignores many UML 2.0 notations. I can't help but feel shortchanged.



3. Book is complete waste of money. Find more prevalent information online. Not really a required book. Not used at all.



4. I don't know what people who would review this book well are thinking. These authors may be good at creating the UML, but terrible at explaining it. The sentences are packed with words they haven't explained - or uncommon uses of words that really have no meaning, unless you are already a UML expert. I can't imagine a more poorly written text.



5. When I am using tools supported UML, I often search key concept with this book. Because this book is an user guide.
   I made some sequence charts, so I use some functions of UML.
   I can not understand which architecture is good or not.
   I think there are little idea about that.

5 comments about Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in VB 2005: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: from Novice to Professional).

1. Before purchasing this book, the reader should have "some" working knowledge of Visual Basic 2005 Language, a VB 2005 reference book or some form of training material for VB 2005 Language; the book only presents an overview of VB 2005. If you are hoping that this book will cover Strongly Typed Datasets, then you will be sorely dissappointed; the book doesn't even mention it, which, as one reviewer noted, may be outside its scope.
   The author's use of "Novice to Professional" clearly means you are not an absolute beginner. Overall, this book is a great introduction into [.........]



2. This book was not helpful it does not give any exercises it jumps from one topic to another. The book is suppose to be for beginners not advanced.



3. I teach a web application development course for experienced MIS undergraduate students at a huge southern university. This is the second edition of MadDonald's in VB I have used and will continue to use it as long as he keeps publishing them. My students will have had two programming courses in which they use VB and are very experienced with database design, SQL, and stored procedures.
   
   The book provides superb coverage of the development and execution environment, the fundamentals of coding and contols, data connectivity, security, and performance issues. Unlike most other references (at least for VB 2003) MacDonald focuses exclusively on the code-behind pages and doesn't try to mix up the VB code in the HTML pages.
   
   The book contains a superb brief overview of web services--definitely enough for my students to create and field their own.
   
   The explanations and examples are well written and easy to follow for this audience.



4. Sylvia B. Gonzalez, ASP.NET is really not a beginning subject. I have been in the business for more than 40 years, it is not an easy business. That is the reason they pay us well.
   
   Just keep reading, find a book that is best for the way you learn.



5. Another excellent book. The writter not only presents the subeject very well but his was way of presenting the information and samples are well choreographed. No time wasted, to the point. Hope that he writes other books.

No comments about Getting the Perfect Website (Voices That Matter).