Rating: 
Summary: Extraordinary Book
Review: I have studied 8-10 VB books. When reading a topic which is particularly insightful or useful, it is my practice to flag the item and then write in the page number on the inside corner of the book. That way I can go back to the book later and review these particularly useful points. In the average book, there will be about one mark for every 10 or so pages. In Balena's book, there are such marks on almost every page. There is a great deal of meat and not much air, which is unusual for a 1,000+ page book. Although this book starts "at the beginning", there is too much heavy lifting too soon for someone new to programming. To be sure, there are a few gaps and poorly worded phrases, but these are minute when compared to the average programming book.
Rating:
Summary: Best VB book I have read.
Review: Although I would not recommend this book as a first book for someone just learning VB, I would enthusiastically recommend this book for everyone who already has a general familiarity with VB and who has written at least a few programs in VB. I have worked with VB since version 3 and as a professional consultant, I believe that my own VB skills are very good. Chapter and chapter and tip after tip, I found myself learning and getting all sorts of ideas to make my programming life easier and my code better. I don't even want to think about how much money I have burned up in books that I have given way, sold or tossed without getting anything out of them. This book was a real find and a genuine pleasure to read. I plan on a re-read and then hanging on to it as a resource.Bottom Line - I highly recommend this book for anyone who has gotten past the VB introductory material and their first few VB programs.
Rating: 
Summary: Overall, Excellent
Review: I find the book an excellent resource for the following reasons: The author talks to you in a down-to-earth, intelligent manner, while he is highly knowledgeable and knows how to convey vast amounts of information well. You know how when you are right in the middle of a programming task and you need more information about a specific topic? This is the book that supplies that info, allowing you to dig and dig and still find more. I have had this book for 2 months and *every* one of my inquiries has been covered by the author. The book is laid out well, intuitive and easy to understand. It is a pleasure to read and refer to. Material 5/5 stars __________now for the flip side____________ I give the book 5 stars for material, but for book quality I give it 1 star (the 1 star is the fact that there is a very nice looking graphic on the front cover). For the physical quality of the book production, it is zero stars. My first book broke. I had to return it because the spine snapped. The employee at the technical bookstore where I bought it informed me that the book is too big for the quality of bindery to be able to support that many pages. I complained to Microsoft Press, speaking at length to a customer service representative who told me that MS Press receives many, many complaints about the quality of production. Conversely, if any of you have used books from O'Reilly Press, you probably know how well their books are made. Here is what O'Reilly says about their books (Colophon section - VB & VBA in a Nutshell): "Whenever possible, our books use RepKover (tm), a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used." Francesco, please continue writing, but please write for O'Reilly!
Rating:
Summary: Top Notch VB Book -- Get it !!
Review: Balena has done a great service by writing this book. His explanation is clear, concise and very few authors can write the way he does---complicating things brought to down-to-earth level. This book is both great for programmers trying to learn VB for the first time and also for experienced programmers. He explains how and why things should be done in certain ways... and I greatly appreciate that... which enables me to understand VB better. Experienced programmers can also learn as there are simple things that they may have overlooked; easier ways to perform certain tasks than one would imagine. Well-written. To me, this book is a good investment.
Rating:
Summary: Learning VB? Just pay for this book.
Review: With this book, Francesco Balena started my VB programming career. This book begins easy enough for someone with introductory programming experience to begin programming in a professional language. Like other books in the series, it covers a lot of ground, giving enough depth for you to be able to obtain more advanced, in depth and specific reference materials including case studies on the Internet, such as MSDN. If you're looking to start programming, this is the beginning of the road, and will certainly be a great reference for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: The BEST book on VB programming, period!
Review: I do not know how I can emphasize this point any more, this is the best book on Visual Basic programming ever written. Francesco's understanding of Visual Basic is amazing. While I have worked with and programmed with Visual Basic for years, there are few times I open this book and do not learn something new. Even more important to me is Francesco's ability to put complex things into plain and understandable English. He has a gift for writing about programming that is rarely seen. His coverage of the intrinsic controls alone is worth the price of admission, yet that is only one small facet on this diamond of a book. There are other books which cover more esoteric Visual Basic topics better, but no book covers the entire language as well as this one does. It is the true "Programmer's Guide" to the language. "Programming Visual Basic 6.0" is not for the beginner as it is pretty advanced in some places, but it is accessible to programmers of all levels as a reference and to mid-range programmers wanting to improve what they have learned in the beginning books. For advanced VB programmers this book again is a good reference though I can imagine even the seasoned veterans of us will find some new gems in these pages. Rock On Francesco! You are incredible!
Rating:
Summary: Terrific, unbelievably complete and detailed
Review: Terrific book. I can't say more about its merits.
Rating:
Summary: Can't say enough good things about this book!
Review: Not to sound contrived, but if you only own one book on VB6, this should be the one! I speak from personal experience. I recently moved across country and my entire library was destroyed. I took this opportunity to evaluate my choices and replaced every book I had prior (about 15) with this one. It provides a complete examination of fundamentals but from an advanced point of view. It's the only book I've seen that does a decent job covering basic controls like TreeView and the ADO DataGrid. Does an outstanding job of covering OOP and how to "make" VB be truly object oriented. There are code snippets that I have used in literally dozens of projects! He hits ADO well, a little SQL Server, a great job on IIS projects and even Web Classes! A true winner. By the way...I've over exaggerated a little...I've also added a book on COM+ and UML that even this book didn't cover with enough detail. BUY THIS BOOK.
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Summary: Every page is useful.
Review: When my boss told me that he needed an application developed using Visual Basic, I went hunting for a book that would tell me what I needed to know. Am I ever glad that I found this one! I've had plenty of experience with languages such as C, C++, Java, Perl etc ... so for me, most books are usually too basic or very general. This book is an amazing blend of basic concepts and advanced techniques. Never before have I seen an author give so many useful and insightful tips and guidelines. There is so much contained in this book that you may never figure out on your own, even with years of experience. One of the VB developers in my office continually asks to borrow my copy of this book, and he's been using VB since version 1.0!! The greatest thing about it would have to be that it is not simply another book that tells you everything you could find in the help files. It also makes a wonderful refercence. Don't expect to get rid of this book once you finish it. You will find that you are referring to it again and again, I know I do. Seriously, I'm not one to tell people to waste money on a book that teaches them what they could very well learn somewhere else for free ... but if you plan an doing any Visual Basic development at all, you absolutely must own this book. My only advice to you is to hang on to the CD in the back cover. The actual book may not last as long as your need for the information in its pages.
Rating:
Summary: The world has a great VB writer in Mr. Balena
Review: You should get this book if: (a) you are new to VB with no prior programming experience (b) you are new to VB with prior programming experience (c) you are a moderate VB programmer (can work with basic controls, etc.) (d) you are a skilled VB programmer You get the idea, don't you? Basically, this is _THE BOOK_ for Visual Basic! There is absolutely no better book on the language! This book, 1000+ plus pages thick, gives you a comprehensive tutorial and serves as a reference to the VB language in case you know it already. Although I haven't gone over every part of the book yet, you can see from how the book is organized that Mr. Balena is a structured and good writer. The first Part in the book gives you an intro to the language, but the "intro" is basically what all newbies need to get the basic gist of VB. From then on, you can read the rest of the book for more cool topics or you can start building your own desktop apps and use the book as a reference. In the second part of the book, Mr. Balena goes over a wealth of controls included with Visual Basic. His two chapters on the "Windows Common Controls" were extremely useful to me because I can use it as a reference for the MS Common Dialog , Toolbar, and RichTextBox controls, to name a few. The Common Dialog control is where you get the typical Win32 FileOpen, FileSave, and Print forms. Mr. Balena goes over the properties of all the controls and explains them in detail. Then at the end of Part II, Mr. Balena goes over additional ActiveX controls like the MS Chart control. Part III is for all you database programmers who want to see the power of VB in database programming. It gives you a comprehensive review on using the ADO (ActiveX DataControl-- Microsoft's replacement of DAO and RDO as the newest and best database control for VB). This Part teaches you how to link with different types of databases like a SQL server, and it also gives a brief intro to SQL commands in case you're not familiar with them. Part IV is on ActiveX programming (including parts on creating your own ActiveX controls) and Part V is Internet programming. I have not yet looked at these sections in detail yet and so cannot provide a comprehensive review, but with the book's consistents outstanding performance in earlier parts, I'm sure these chapters are very good also. As a bonus, Mr. Balena provides a commonly used Windows API functions appendix at the end of the book. I hope you see that this book is very effective no matter what kind of programmer you are. If you're new you can learn. If you know the basics, you can learn the cool stuff. If you are a guru, you can use it as a complete reference which explains many things better than the MSDN documentation included w/ Visual Basic.
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