2 comments about The Visual Basic 4 for Windows 95 Handbook (Your One-Stop Guide to Learning the Latest Release of Visual Basic).

1. On first look at the table of contents, this looks like a great book. Once you get into the material, you will be disappointed. The examples are really poor. The author's style is confusing. He seems to get verbose when it's not necessary, and gives only brief explanations when he needs to explain further. There are so many VB books that are so much better. I have a large collection of VB books that I use when teaching programming courses at varying levels. Most authors include a disk or CD with extensive examples etc. This author wants $25 for a companion diskette?



2. I had this book with me when I was a programmmer back in India. I forgot to carry this book with me to the US. For the last 2 months I have been in the US I have borrowed a couple of books of various authors and various publications from my friends ,but no book has come close to this book. I often regret not having carried that book along with me.

No comments about Pinnacle Studio 10.

5 comments about MCSD Microsoft Visual Basic 5 Exam Cram: Exam: 70-165.

1. This is a paraphrasing of the email I sent directly to Coriolis. Subject: VB5 Exam Cram is WRONG!!! Message: This is the WORST book I've ever seen in 25 years of being a programmer! Obviously just a rush-to-market attempt to capitalize on the current certification hype. Absolutely NO technical editing has been done on this book: in the first 100 pages alone, I have seen numerous typos, contradictions, and just flat misstatements of basic fact! This book appears to be just a chop-up of some other book. Code examples are wrong, they do not match illustrations, it references VB4 features that no longer apply to VB5, etc., etc., etc. How can you let junk like this out on the market?!?!? How can you mess with peoples careers like this?!?!?!? I don't have time for this kinda stuff! It's a good thing you say on your home page you are looking for knowledgeable technical reviewers to come work for you, because you darn sure need some! Dave Wald Carrollton, Texas



2. When I posted my my review yesterday, I was very tired, frustrated and cranky. Studying for any Microsoft certification will do that to you. But I want all readers to know that Coriolis responded swiftly, personally, and positively to my email, and they are being very supportive. That's worth a lot, even if there are a few typos in the book. It certainly made ME feel alot better. If you have any problem at all with the book, just email them. Yes, the book has some obvious errors and contradictions, but it may still be a good study guide for most folks. I urge all readers to read *ALL* the reviews that follow (about half are quite positive) and make up your own mind. Also I would like to clarify that my comments were not in any way directed at the author, simply at the editing, proofreading and/or presentation, which could have suffered technical problems. My apologies to Mike. At any rate, I rescind my admonition not to buy the book. Just don't expect it to be perfect. But then, what is?



3. The book hits on the keywords & concepts that appear on the exam and the book's sample questions give the reader an idea of the level of detail, trickery & trivia that Microsoft includes on the exam. However, there are several contradictory statements in the book that confused me so much, I had to consult another source. For example, pg 212, the book explains Active-X Exe as out-of-process and asynchronous. And Active-X DLL as in-process and synchronous. But in question #2 on page 234, the answer pairs an in-process server with asynchronous communication! I would recommend also using the transcenders and visiting braindump sites before heading to the exam.



4. While there are errors and typos, the book provides just the right depth of detail for someone already very familiar with VB to prepare for the exam.



5. As for all books in the Exam Cram and Exam Prep series, this book covers all information necessary to pass the exam thoroughly and at the right level of depth. Unfortunately, this book had errors on over 10% of the pages -- giving it a "Dog-Ear Factor" of POOR. Look for the recordset method "MovePrior" which should REALLY be "MovePrevious". I consider this type of technical error to be unacceptable -- particularly since it was repeated throughout the entire book! Many practice questions also had errors -- again, very disconcerting. Overall -- if you're planning on passing the exam, definitely get this book and read it through TWICE, but don't panic if you spot something wrong -- it probably is!

No comments about Visual Reference Basics: Microsoft Office 97 (Visual Reference S).

No comments about ALS Microsoft Visual Basic.NET Programming Essentials.

No comments about Introducing VBScript and ActiveX¿.

4 comments about Hijacking .Net Vol 1: Role Based Security.

1. I had to read this - touted as the first volume in a series that could be for .NET what Appleman's books were for the Win32 API. But a fair bit of the ebook is just a guided tour of windows role based security, well written though.

   The core of the 'hijacking' part could be boiled down to a couple of pages. Essentially it's this:

   Marking a class or method as private in .NET impacts its visibility, but not its security boundary - i.e. it is possible to invoke private methods.
   And vs.net provides all the means necessary to do so:

   Step One - navigate to the library/class you want with ildasm and have a peek at the IL. From that its pretty straightforward to grok the private objects/methods you might be interested in.
   Step Two - use the InvokeMember method of the Type class to make use of private class/method.

   That's it. Classic Win32 API Appleman this is not, how useful the technique is - I'm not sure (not so much in in commercial work i suspect), but it's still well worth a read.




2. The lessons of this PDF are twofold:
   1) You get a great extension to .NET role-based security APIs via Dan's code writings and

   2) In the teach-you-how-to-do-it-but-at-your-own-risk! tradition of Dan Appleman, you learn how to introspect the .NET Framework class libraries and work with their internals. Or more to the point, with the internals of *any* reflectable .NET assembly.

   Bottom line: If you like knowing internals and haven't tackled the Reflection namespaces in .NET yet, this is a good start. (You'll probably need reflection skills at some point anyway).

   It's a great read!




3. The lessons of this PDF are twofold:
   1) You get a great extension to .NET role-based security APIs via Dan's code writings and

   2) In the teach-you-how-to-do-it-but-at-your-own-risk! tradition of Dan Appleman, you learn how to introspect the .NET Framework class libraries and work with their internals. Or more to the point, with the internals of *any* reflectable .NET assembly.

   Bottom line: If you like knowing internals and haven't tackled the Reflection namespaces in .NET yet, this is a good start. (You'll probably need reflection skills at some point anyway).

   It's a great read!




4. It's hard to see how other readers of this eBook
   could regard it so highly. (One begins to wonder
   whether or not they're some sort of Appleman
   polishers.) About 25% of this tomelet consists
   of advertisements for Appleman's other works and
   a blighted index which lists every last one of them.
   A further 10% of the book contains unnecessary MSIL
   from mscorlib.dll. Yet more space is consumed by
   VB.NET code which regurgitates that listed in C#.
   By my estimate then at least 40% of this offering
   should have been removed before release.

   Turning now to the content, this book's overview of
   role based security is simplistic to the point of
   puerility. Reducing security to a slogan such as
   "Can you do something [to some object]" is claptrap
   for simpletons. The book's idea of hijacking .NET
   is to call the Type.InvokeMember() method with
   BindingFlags.NonPublic as one of its arguments and
   to use P/Invoke to call native code. Since none of
   this will violate Code Access Security, it's hard to
   see how it qualifies as hijacking .NET. If you're
   interested in seeing what Appleman does, you should
   download the code for this book from his web site
   instead of allowing him to hijack your wallet.

No comments about Visual Basic 4 Coursebook.

No comments about Gurewich Ole Controls for Visual Basic 4.

No comments about Enciclopedia de Microsoft Visual Basic.