4 comments about Teach Yourself Activex Control Programming With Visual Basic 5 in 21 Days (Teach Yourself).

1. In chapter 5 the author writes: What are User-Defined Properties? First of all, you need to understand the difference between predefined and user-defined properties. User-defined properties are those properties that already exist in the UserControl Object ... Hey, wait a minute. Isn't that a definition of predefined properties. Of course. The author got them mixed up, didn't he. How much further will you have to read before you realize his mistake. This is only one of hundreds such inaccuracies in the book. Still, if you can correct the author's sloppiness, you will learn a lot about ActiveX Control design.



2. Every person has ideal explanation / hands-on ratio for maximal learning of a new programming topic. Of four "VB5 & ActiveX" books I bought, this was the one from which I learned ActiveX progamming. (It has quite a few errors. Perhaps parts of the book were written with a Beta version of VB5...) My copies of Kurata & Appleman are now more useful than this book, but they didn't make sense to me until I worked through this book.



3. I was preparing for the VB5 MCSD exam. A friend suggested one exam cram book, but I found the ActiveX part on it really compact and difficult to make sense of. Studying the basics of ActiveX programming from this book and combining it with the tips from the Exam Cram, I was able to know just enough to succesfully attempt ALL ActiveX questions on the exam.



4. Of the various ActiveX control books I have, this one is really for beginners. I am preparing MCSD exams and find ActiveX part in Hawhee's book too condensed. Without much prior knowledge about it, piling information in Hawhee's book is just too much to understand/remember. I also read Dan Appleman's book which is quite good theoretically, but it doesn't teach you the much about the actual steps. So Appleman's book is harder to follow than this book. I'd say combining the three books makes a lot of sense. While this book provides hands-on guidance, it doesn't teach you the things behind the scene, where Appleman's book does great on. The hawhee's book, on the other hand, provides a good review which lets you find the holes in your knowledge.

   The first comment is right on that the book has many errors. Also the writing sometimes is wordy.

3 comments about Distributed .NET Programming in VB .NET.

1. I have been working with .Net Remoting for a couple months and this book has more detailed information in it, than I could find anywhere. Not only did it help reinforce the fundamentals of remoting, it explores many advanced topics and gives easy to follow examples. The approach is practical and direct even with difficult topics. This book saved me hours of time by explaining in depth delegates and remote callbacks. I highly suggest this book for anyone working with remoting, web services or other distributed programming topics.

   Also, the code used in the examples can be downloaded from the book's website in C# or VB.NET.




2. When I first started reading this book, I thought "Oh no - 3 chapters of intro and a large appendix". I naturally skipped over the intro and started reading what I thought was the first Real chapter. I kept finding interesting references back to an intro chapter "Introduction to .Net Remoting". I finally read this chapter and was pleasantly surprised to find a clear and comprehensive explanation of channels and contexts. The "This is .Net" intro chapter had a great explanation of versioning in .Net. So I'd recommend reading this book from the beginning - or at least start with chapter 2.

   The rest of the book allowed me to complete a moderately size distributed project in a lot less time that I thought it would. There is also a great chapter on using transactions under Component Services. I was also able the complete my last MCAD certification test (VB XML) based mainly on what I got out of this book.

   This book has no fluff and is packed with a lot of key concepts and practical code samples. The only downside was the brief coverage and dismissal of Web Services. The Appendix turned out to be coverage of ADO.Net written by Andrew Troelsen. I didn't read this chapter because I was already up to speed on ADO.Net. But having read a couple of Troelsen's other books, my guess is that it's pretty good.




3. Very detailed and well explained topics. Tom Barnaby shows MS distributed programing in a deeply manner.
   I think that an architecture chapter or advices about MS distributed architecture would be useful. Anyway, an excellent book.

5 comments about Writing Add-ins for Visual Studio .NET.

1. This book clearly teaches and demonstrates, with real-world examples, how to develop powerfull add-ins for Visual Studio.NET.
   This book is a great resource for .NET starters - in regards to Add-ins - and a fantasic reference for experts.
   Serious .NET developers should definatelly add this book to their library.



2. I found that it is largely full of code listings, and short on background information. The coding style seems very much stuck in the VB6 world, and the author needs to acquaint himself with the guidelines for coding in .NET (e.g., naming, etc.).

   At the time I bought this book, it was the only book around for VS.NET add-in development. I did get some value out of it, but now that I've done more development of add-ins and VSIP packages for Visual Studio .NET, I find this book very thin on information, and full of sloppy errors.

   It might be useful if you are writing VS.NET add ins (but take it with a grain of salt). If you want to develop add-ins, and learn about Visual Studio .NET in general, "Inside Microsoft Visual Studio .NET" is a far better choice.




3. I keep stressing the fact that I have not seen a single intelligently written Visual Basic (.NET) source code. This book is not an exception. The code segments are plain sloppy and don't cover enough features of Visual Studio .NET 2003
   Better luck with C# in the next edition.



4. I am flabbergasted that this book has been published in the state it is in. I can only assume no one reviewed it.
   
   It is teeming with badly written and largely irrelevant code samples. For the most part, only four or five lines of a four or five *page* code sample are relevant to the topic at hand. And they are poorly - if at all - explained. The obvious is stated and the subject quickly changed.
   
   The writing style is boring and uninformative. I have learnt close to nothing from this book and am outraged by the blatant mistakes with regards to .NET. Take, for example, page 313 (the grammatical mistake is as printed):
   
   Microsoft has intimated that there will be other languages from Microsoft as well as other languages from . . . This is possible because of the set of unified classes provided by .NET Framework.
   
   Um, no. It is actually possible thanks to the CLR. The author obviously has very little understanding of .NET. It's as if he wrote the book while trying to teach himself the fundamentals.
   
   As a final note, do not expect C# code. The book title does not allude to the fact that most code is written (badly) in VB.



5. After reading this book, I not only find it helpful, but I also took note of several things. First, the release date of the book was just three months after the first release of .NET. Assuming that it takes over six months to write and publish a book, the author had to have started writing the book using a Beta release of Visual Studio .NET and probably finished it using the Release Candidate if it was available to him. Anyone who knows Microsoft Beta releases, knows that the last thing to get any attention is the Help files. They are always spotty and many times non-existant, at least until the release version.
   
   Secondly, the author tells you up front that he is a VB developer and will not use much C# code.
   
   I did find that there are some sections with too much code, and sometimes not enough explanation. However, the code does work; I have tried it, and I will take working code over innocous verbage any day. I often times have purchased a book that costs more that this one, just to get help with one problem and this book helped me in several areas.
   
   Obviously, any buyer has a right to their own opinion, but sometimes, self-proclaimed gurus ought to take into consideration the time at which a book was written, and the subject material, upon which research for the book was done, was available at the time the book was started and completed prior to release to the publisher. Apress is noted for having good books and they don't let bad ones out.
   
   I hope Mr. Smith will write a second edition and cover some of the subjects that he and others have still not yet touched on.

5 comments about Visual Basic 6.0 Business Objects.

1. As a beginner to business objects, I found some of the material beneficial. Not to say that what i found was not of great value and therefore making the book overall worth keeping. It was simply a needle in a haystack of overly complicated topics that could have been stated more simply. Such a nice table of contents (perhaps over extended in the middle to end too) is deserving of better work.

   I admit i have not read the entire book. But who has the time to read an entire book of this length? I read it as I have all of my other 30 or so and had more trouble linking the different parts of the book together than i should have. I would almost recommend reading this book front to back sequentially, which is frustrating.

   I have never purchased a CS book before with code in each chapter that did not function. This author certainly did not outdo himself in that respect. So, at the end of the chapter and the end of the day, you can download his code and it will not function as expected; If it functions at all. Even more bothersome is the inexcusable errors in the 'functioning' application. For a book praising robustness, it is quite watered down.

   In closing, chop the book in half, eliminating all of the redundant chatter, give it functioning downloadable code, and call it a beginning book on business objects. This book could have been much better but is still worth looking at, maybe buying; be sure to test drive first though.




2. If you're gonna use vb, learn to use it right. This is the right way. As close as you can get to oo in vb.



3. What a great book!

   The title should actually be, "I Can't Believe I Was Able To Program Anything Without Using Class Modules". This book is really about back-end programming. It's about writing a DLL that abstracts what you want to do from the nuts and bolts work of actually doing it. And the best thing about it is that the components you write are COM compliant so they can be used with basically any language; specifically I've used them with ASP and ColdFusion.

   Imagine writing an ASP page like this to update someone's salary:

   <% set objStaff = server.createobject("MyCompany.StaffMember")
   objStaff.beginedit
   objStaff.load 10
   objStaff.Salary = 60000
   objStaff.applyedit
   set objStaff = nothing %>

   Notice that there's no database code, no business logic, no MTS stuff, no nothing. All of these things get encapsulated in a DLL so that the front-end programmers don't have to worry about them. They just create an object, do stuff, and kill it. If that StaffMember was a non-manager, the DLL could be written to raise an error if the salary was over a certain threshold, or whatever. It's up to you, the back-end programmer, and it's not possible to bypass the business's rules by forgetting to include the logic in the GUI. Also, this is great if you are selling your app to a customer, because your code is compiled and can't be "stolen" or modified.

   The book got a little bit confusing to me at times in chapters 4 and 5, but I hadn't touched VB in about two years since an intro college class, so that may have been to blame. Also, it was more like "Where are we going with this?" rather than "What's going on?". However, if you struggle through to chapter 6 or so, you will have an "A-ha" moment and then it will all make sense. Believe me!

   I now feel like a VB 6 Expert from reading this book. It goes deeply into Debugging as an added bonus, and I don't really know how I got along without the "Immediate" window for so long. Also, VB components are so much faster and more reliable than writing (and re-writing) your business rules in ASP code. Your web apps will stop sucking and start being fast and reliable.

   I whole-heartedly recommend this book, and I can't wait for the VB.net update.




4. First of all, this book is a great buy for a VB beginner and it offers few great tricks to handle business objects in VB. For myself, I've learned much from this book (even I've read many VB books). However, things I noticed while reading, this book has bad layout and presentation of code examples. Also, Author seems to have a grasp from the subject, but he falls down with repetitive writing which results to 'fat book'. Applying the summary of 'Code so far' instead of partial code examples, this book would have been much better. Finally, this book is not a reference book; if you want to learn business objects, you have to sit down and concentrate to keep up with author's subject.

   If you want to learn the basics of business objects, buy this one. If you want to find a reference book or more professional approach, look for something else.




5. When I first read this book I loved it. Nothing of the kind had shown VB developers how to write large distributed apps before. Now that VB .NET is out, however, this book has become a lot less useful and given the direction of the outside world, I think it may be time to move on. I hadn't found any other books to fill the gap for the longest time. I tried "Building Distributed Applications with Visual Basic .NET" from Sams, which was terrible. However, I recently stumbled across a couple of truly great books. First of all is MS Press "Microsoft .NET Distributed Applications" which is fantastic!! The architecture advice and case studies are on a par with this book in the .NET world, and I can't recommend it enough. Another solid (but more technology-specific) book is Advanced .NET Remoting on APress. After reading these, I'm never going back to VB!

5 comments about Murach's Visual Basic 6.

1. This is the only VB book I found that provided a "complete" database solution for ADO. I bought several in my search. It steps you through both a bound and unbound solution (program). Each chapter of this book challenges you with a practical program to develop that reinforces the topics discussed. I did have to change the name of a file to match the actual database that I downloaded. Not a big deal! The 1st four chapters present the basics for a new VB programmer, including an excellent tour through MS Visual Studio for VB. Beginning in chapter 5, you work with databases, ActiveX, SQL, Classes, DHTML, and IIS. You get 15 chapters that pretty much cover the gammit, bringing you up to a VB intermediate level. It gives you a good flavor of what VB can do. There is a lot more to VB, though. You just have to continue to read more about VB or seak out more coding examples. I had a question about one of the programming examples, and received an answer right away. Murach is committed to providing solid computer books and welcomes your suggestions towards improving their products. You won't be disappointed with this book. It will encourage you to learn more about VB. This would be an excellent text for a VB course.



2. In 1983 I learned BASIC programming for the VAX. It was my best subject in college. I figured it would be easy to learn Visual Basic 6. It probably is but this book teaches more about the Microsoft Programming Environment than it does about writing computer programs.
   The easiest way for me to learn is by studying examples. It uses the same example through several chapters.
   Information in this book is often presented in non-linear form. Step F is sometimes presented between Steps A and C. I find this annoying.
   I "ground" through this book page by page for Six chapters. I feel I learned the material but it wasn't easy. When it got to database programming I lost interest although I would like to learn it.
   In all fairness to Murach I should metion I haven't used a computer in almost twenty years. I was learing Windows 98 in conjunction with VB6.
   I plan to try another beginner book and return to Murach's to finish it.
   UPDATE: After taking a few VB6 and SQL classes, I have a new appreciation for this book. I frequently return to Murach's VB6 to quickly see how something is done. It's a great reference. I still don't think it's for someone with no programming experience but I'm upping my rating from two to four stars.



3. I have been programming with access for over 10 years and found the transition to Visual Basic a difficult one. I purchased several books to try to teach myself VB to no avail. When I discovered this book (having been away without my reference book), I thought it was very easy to understand. When I got back home, I literally read 13 of 15 chapters in 4 days and accomplished all of the exercises. The following day I began programming a professional database for one of my clients. I am confident and attribute my success to this book.

   I also agree with the review that states if you are a total beginner with no experience at all, it probably isn't the book for you. I would recommend this book to anyone who is trying to understand the world of VB.




4. This book is very good for u if don't have any knowledge about vb6. By reading only 45 pages of this book I, was able to make my first programmme.He has put everything in a very neat manner which makes it interestin to read. The examples r also very good.
   If u want to learn VB6 this book is for you.



5. I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to get into Visual Basic programming. The section on ADO was excellent, and the examples are very clear. Overall very good.

5 comments about Expert Guide to Visual Basic 6 (Expert Guide).

1. I generally like Sybex's books, but this one kind of faked me out... flipping through it in the store I was intrigued by chapters like "Using Virtual Basic Functions" (was just instruction on how to use Date functions and the resource editor) and "Optimizing Visual Basic" (was just the usual things most programmers know, like doubles are slower than singles, longs are slower than ints, etc.)

   So this is not an expert book like "Hard Core Visual Basic" is. But it does document VB quite thoroughly, and if you don't have the hardcopy VB docs from Microsoft, it's not a bad what-it-does and how-to-use-it reference.




2. This is really one of the most horrible books, that I have ever read. Throw this book out event if you get it as a gift from your' boss ( If possible throw your Boss out too). The topics in this book dose't cover anything, you would probally be better off staring at the computer doing nothing. The sample code given in the book dosent work, this book is probally for a real 'Expert' who probally can figure out why the given sample programs dont' work. Moreover the authors style of coding is really horrible, there aren't any coding conventions followed. Not even a single topic is covered in detail. Please do your self an favour and buy any other book, except this on. If you sill have to buy this book, make sure that you read this book in a room that has many windows.



3. I have read a dozen VB books and this is one of the better ones. The author, Wayne Freeze, is obviously a seasoned programmer whose experience comes through in more ways than just the sample code he offers. The examples in this book reflect solid programming methods in a succinct fashion. It might seem that the book isn't that broad because the author usually leads directly to the best way of getting things done, rather than taking a length review of all ways to do something. The coding style and approaches he takes display a lot of wisdom. The book is excellent at providing a good foundation for VB programming and has one of the best no nonsense Inet and FTP summaries I've seen. It also has something uncommon... a summary of working with Windows animated agents. In spite of its lack of database programming, this is a valuable book that will benefit any newcomer to VB as well as those wanting to strengthen their existing VB skills. I give it a strong recommendation.



4. I'm pretty impressed with this book. I have several VB books on my shelf but this book has quite a few gems that are strangely missing from many others. The Status Bar, for example. This book explains how to provide feedback to your users through the status bar, while the topic is blatantly ignored in other VB books. It also has a great chapter on communicating with other programs. After reading this chapter, I successfully wrote an app that would launch Outlook and log me in automatically .

   You're not going to learn VB from this book. It does make the assumption that you are familiar with VB. Fortunately, it doesn't assume that the reader is a very advanced programmer - there isn't much in the way of object-oriented programming in this book. For that, I tip my hat to author Wayne Freeze. It's a great reference to pull off the shelf when you get stuck on doing some of the VB tricks that aren't documented well elsewhere.




5. Let's see ... this book was written 6 years ago and you are wondering why I'm bother to write. Well, I didn't planed to write until I went over to Peter Wright's Beginning VB6 object which was also came about the same time as this text and I saw people still writing reviews on it. So ...

   I've always enjoy reading VB6 expert guide, even when the codes didn't worked. The fix utility tool didn't really worked either (i.e., the treeview controls etc.) Then one day I found the correct codes in the site justplanes(?) and now I'm a happy man.

   The author didn't spoon fed you with every nuances of explanation behind the codes, rather, he presented the topics with the codes and you go explore further. This is exactly how I wanted it. There are lots and lots of ideas here and examples that works (finally). Once you master all these topics, you will be well on your way to become an expert.

3 comments about Adobe Illustrator Scripting with Visual Basic and AppleScript.

1. This title is a real cookbook for automating Adobe Illustrator. It covers every minute aspect of scripting Illustrator, including its object model, quirks, and special objects. The book includes a bunch of complete working script examples for Mac and Windows (AppleScript and Visual Basic).

   I've already used 6 of the scripts out of the book to save me hours in my Illustrator work. Don't hesitate to check this book out if you DO ANYTHING in Illustrator regularly.




2. Thanks Adobe for making Illustrator scriptable! And thanks Ethan Wilde and Adobe Press for putting together such a compelling text on automating Illustrator. If you do anything in Illustrator regularly, this book is going to change your life. PC or Mac - it doesn't matter because the author has done the most amazing thing: He explains both scripting langauges side-by-side in the introduction, scriping tutorials, and examples in the book. I'm just glad that I use AppleScript 'cause it sure looks easier that Visual Basic!



3. I'm mostly a Mac user, but I have to work on the PC for a long-term project. I'm finding that the book's coverage of Visual Basic is poor. For example, some of the scripts have typos! which is really difficult when you are trying to learn programming. In fact, I've found a number of typos in the text and this doesn't inspire confidence. This seems to be the only book out there that covers VB scripting, but I've had to do a lot of work to complete my education.

No comments about Visual Basic 4 Database How-To: The Definitive Database Problem-Solver (How-to).

1 comments about Visual Basic.NET XML Web Services Developer's Guide.

1. A pretty thorough book covering Web Services technologies in some detail, the title is a bit misleading (not in a bad way though), as the author covers both VB6.0 Web Services technology and VB.Net implementation of the same, (with good reason). This strategy should ease the transition for the typical VB6.0 developer to VB.NET Web services, and also facilitate better understanding of SOAP over HTTP.
   This guy's writing style is pretty unique among Computer Manuals in general. He has really researched his stuff, and the book is peppered with several references to tools, articles, and online resources of which many can be put to very good use.
   The one and only gripe I have is that there are no simple example applications in this reference. The author acknowledges this in the book, but explains that no B2B or B2C application is simple either, (primarily what XML Web Services are for).
   I can see that this approach will appeal to some and not to others, but on the whole I have to admit that his web-service examples are more complete and real-worldy than the typical "weather samples" and "add two numbers" implementations which are promoted in many circles as "Web Service examples". The author is a regular columnist for many of the Fawcette group publications such as Visual Studio magazine and I'd advice any purchaser of this book to keep in touch with Roger's writing on XML Web Services in these magazines as there are regular updates on some of the information presented in this book, which Roger continues to write about.

No comments about Moving from Qbasic to C.