Amazon Review
A reader from Berkeley, San Francisco
One of the best VB books on the shelves
When I first bought the book I didn't know what to expect but upon reading the
first two chapters, I was totally delighted. I found some real world examples
that I have been able to use right away. It also showed some tips. It is a good
book to have for reference. Some VB programming experience is necessary to fully
benefit from this book.
A reader from Richmond, Virginia
Wonderful - A Return to Old
This books presents what programmers need to know. it presents the theory behind
the programming. Almost all of the books available today stress "tips and
tricks" or methods. This leaves programmers high and dry having to buy
more books for further ventures. But just like in the old days of programming,
theory with code is stressed which allows the programmer to adapt code from
other areas with these concepts. Excellent work.
A reader from Springfield, PA
Wonderful coding examples
An advanced programming book has a difficult goal. It must show programmers,
who are already working with a language, techniques that they presumably don't
know or of which they don't realize the capabilities. They tend to be weak in
a number of ways. They emphasize "tips and tricks" and avoid the harder
details. They use code snippets and fragments that need user-supplied code to
work. When they present fully coded procedures, they are frequently a set of
disjointed routines, which the user is left to weave together.
Advanced Visual Basic Techniques by Rod Stephens avoids these areas of weakness.
It does this by presenting fully developed systems that demonstrate advanced
use of Visual Basic. Better still, it does not avoid the difficulties and details
that make the techniques described work. A careful reading through this book
covers the areas needed for full mastery of Visual Basic.
Chapter one starts with a simple look at field validation and moves directly
into dynamic management of controls, including placement after form resizing;
creation of controls at run-time; displaying controls in scrollable viewports;
printing and print preview; and saving and reading data in files, including
all pertinent menus and a "recently used file" menu item. The beauty
of this is that these techniques are used in a fully developed application,
which shows them in operation.
On the Visual Basic newsgroups we see questions on such topics as printer setup,
building help files, and use of the Printer Object. The short, specific answers
found there are only a start at help. This book is the complete help needed.
Rod Stephens covers these topics in chapter two. Again, by showing these topics
in use and in detail a reader has all the information needed to use these techniques
in his own work.
The first two chapters would be a useful book on their own, although it's true
that some additional details are continued into chapter three. But there is
more! Topics like handling bit-mapped variables, creating rotated fonts, menu
handling, and step-by-step procedures for creating Add-Ins make this a complete
course for intermediate programmers.
The second half of the book tackles subjects that need the kind of in-depth
coverage this book gives them. The third section covers database design, queries,
and use and splitting a database on a network. A fourth section covers client/server
topics. The chapter on Asynchronous Servers, while short, clearly shows concepts
that I have found to be major stumbling blocks in class. A final pair of sections
gives a brief introduction to ActiveX controls and their use on the Web, including
retrieving data from the client-side to the server. Here too, fully operational
applications are provided to demonstrate the techniques.
Clearly, there is so much here that some aspects must be left out in a book
this size, but they are only marginally Visual Basic (such as setup and use
of ODBC). Still, the topics that are covered are hard to find elsewhere, expressed
as clearly and accurately as they are here. Mr. Stephens presents each topic
in a straightforward, clear style.
This book will require the intended audience to work through it. It will be
well worth the effort.