Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Charles Petzold has been writing Windows programming books since the year one. He knows his subject and how to get it across to his readers. This is not intended to be another in an already long series of books on VB data base programming for the enterprise. Rather it is a clear exposition of VB.NET Windows programming with an emphasis on the inner workings of Windows. It will prepare its readers to create their own structures from the building blocks offered by the .NET Framework. It has excellent sections which explain how Windows paints and draws objects and others on how to use the built-in graphics functionality of Windows in your own projects. It is probably not for rank beginners. A useful complement, in a different style, is Francesco Balena's "Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET".
Rating: 
Summary: Misleading Title
Review: I bought this book recently along with the (far superior) book "Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .Net" by Francesco Balena. The titles are remarkably similar, yet the content of each book couldn't be more different. The Petzold book ignores most of the concepts which I would deem to be most important in .NET, such as all the new OOP features of the language (Inheritance, Interfaces, ADO.NET, etc.). Instead, an inordinate amount of detail is spent explaining things like how to play around with brushes, pens and fonts. In the world of enterprise development, I couldn't care less about these operations. I'm interested in topics like what ADO.Net can offer me when building a 3 tier architecture. If I want to display pretty graphs, I'll buy a 3rd party control to do it for me. For those who are more interested in "Windows Form Specific" operations, this book might be the one for you. As an introductory text to .NET, your time would be much better spent looking elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Misleading Title
Review: I have two books on user interfaces in .NET. This one and "User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls" by
Mathew Macdonald's from Apress. Both are great books and I recommend both highly. Comparing this book to the one by Macdonald: Macdonald's book is much more manageable than Petzold but still seemed to contain everything I wanted to know about Windows forms. It however skipped over lots of wonderful "side roads" that I found very enjoyable (as I did Petzold's great style-he's one of the best writers in the business). Still, Petzold is more than twice as long as Macdonald and thus not likely to be a book you will read from cover to cover as I think you might with Macdonald. If you can afford it by all means get both books, if you only want one, then for a more condensed "what you need to know" book get Macdonald, if you want just one book that will then serve also as a reference, get Petzold...
Rating:
Summary: The definitive reference (VB version) and very readable too
Review: I have two books on user interfaces in .NET. This one and "User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls" by
Mathew Macdonald's from Apress. Both are great books and I recommend both highly. Comparing this book to the one by Macdonald: Macdonald's book is much more manageable than Petzold but still seemed to contain everything I wanted to know about Windows forms. It however skipped over lots of wonderful "side roads" that I found very enjoyable (as I did Petzold's great style-he's one of the best writers in the business). Still, Petzold is more than twice as long as Macdonald and thus not likely to be a book you will read from cover to cover as I think you might with Macdonald. If you can afford it by all means get both books, if you only want one, then for a more condensed "what you need to know" book get Macdonald, if you want just one book that will then serve also as a reference, get Petzold...
Rating:
Summary: Warning--Same book as Petzold's C# Book!
Review: Not really a review, just a caveat to potential buyers. This is the SAME book as Petzold's Programming Microsoft Windows with C#. Only the sample code is changed (and that's available for free online). Buy either one, but don't buy both!
Rating: 
Summary: It pays to read the title
Review: People browsing reviews of this book may be puzzled by the variation in star ratings. Firstly, this book is about programming Windows applications. It starts from the ground up talking about, in great detail, drawing text, handling mouse and keyboard events etc. It is not about enterprise programming, ASP.Net, multiple tier applications etc. Mr Petzold wants the reader to understand what is going on underneath the hood, behind all of the code that VB.Net generates automatically. The graphical aspects of the IDE are hardly mentioned in the book. In a way, this defeats the purpose of VB.Net - rapid forms development - and indeed this book is more or less a translation of Mr Petzold's book on C#. Mr Petzold tells his story well however, and introduces aspects of object oriented programming along the way in a very readable style, despite the high level of detail. I certainly have a much better understanding of Windows programming after reading this even a few chapters of this book. It is not a definitive guide to VB.Net but it doesn't pretend to be. It is called 'Programming Microsoft Windows with VB.Net'. Mr Belana's more wide ranging book is titled 'Programming Microsoft VB.Net', but does not go into as much detail about Windows programming. I hope this clarifies the situation.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This is the best book I have ever had. I have used Sams Reach Yourself Visual Basic.Net and Sams Teach yourself more Visual Basic.Net. But, this helped me aply my programing to windows better and I was able to have more fun
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: This is the one book I recommend for all VB.NET developer's coming from a VB6 background! Why? Consider it a first step in walking down a true developer's path. Throw away your Visual Studio .NET crutch, and you might begin to visualize the way Java and C++ programmers tackle real world problems. Be warned though, this is a book most VB developer's will not fully understand the value of! To prove this theory, make note of the mixed review scores for this book. Now, browse over to the C# version of this book and you will find only high review scores. Why would this be true? Because C# is, for the most part, being tackled by the Java and C++ communities, so you are dealing with two different levels of developers. I think you will find "Beziers and Other Splines" one of the most fascinating chapters in the book. Petzold explains these drawing tools exceptionally well! Another chapter worth noting, "Taming the Mouse" explains mouse capture/loss and how to deal with it. You might even learn a thing or two about utilizing an interface if you pay close attention. Once you read this book, you might find yourself shunning the visual designer all together (I prefer to code everything by hand myself), and this is a positive thing. You should know how to write every control outside the designer. This is actually a prerequisite for anyone interested in getting involved in enterprise level development (assuming you are working with a good program manager/senior developer). I also recommend purchasing "Applied .NET Framework Programming" by Richter. Together these books are a valuable addition to any professional developer's library, and should be read from beginning to end!
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: This is the one book I recommend for all VB.NET developer's coming from a VB6 background! Why? Consider it a first step in walking down a true developer's path. Throw away your Visual Studio .NET crutch, and you might begin to visualize the way Java and C++ programmers tackle real world problems. Be warned though, this is a book most VB developer's will not fully understand the value of! To prove this theory, make note of the mixed review scores for this book. Now, browse over to the C# version of this book and you will find only high review scores. Why would this be true? Because C# is, for the most part, being tackled by the Java and C++ communities, so you are dealing with two different levels of developers. I think you will find "Beziers and Other Splines" one of the most fascinating chapters in the book. Petzold explains these drawing tools exceptionally well! Another chapter worth noting, "Taming the Mouse" explains mouse capture/loss and how to deal with it. You might even learn a thing or two about utilizing an interface if you pay close attention. Once you read this book, you might find yourself shunning the visual designer all together (I prefer to code everything by hand myself), and this is a positive thing. You should know how to write every control outside the designer. This is actually a prerequisite for anyone interested in getting involved in enterprise level development (assuming you are working with a good program manager/senior developer). I also recommend purchasing "Applied .NET Framework Programming" by Richter. Together these books are a valuable addition to any professional developer's library, and should be read from beginning to end!
Rating: 
Summary: Programming Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Visual Basic .N
Review: This title has a wealth of information on a whole bunch of irrelevant topics such as brushes as some already mentioned. Another thing about it is that it doesn't show how to program Visual Basic.NET with Visual Studio.NET. Instead, it assumes you will use a notepad like editor and the command line compiler. If you are interested in getting into the raw side of the language, this might be the book for you. If you want a book that takes advantage of the drag and drop features of VS.NET, however, look elsewhere.
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