Rating: 
Summary: Poor education material.
Review: Anyone wanting to learn fundamentals of C++ .NET programming, don't get this book. The "jump right in" approach of copying someone else's code won't give you true understanding of windows programming. This book definately lacks in-depth explanation of the concepts required to be a competent windows programmer.For those who are new to C++ all together, you are going to have to learn the language before you even think of "jumping into" Windows programming. There's no way around it. The best book I've come across for learning the basics is: 'Core C++ A Software Engineering Approach' by Victor Shtern. Once you break away from the GUI crutch, you will find that the C++ language is exciting and fun.
Rating: 
Summary: The source code is incomplete...
Review: I bought the book and found a lot of interesting discussions in the book. But when I tried to run some examples I found that some source code are missing from the web site to back up the explanations in the book, although the book clearly indicates source code is available for download from the web site. The list of source code from the web site is very incomplete. Besides, the book advertises that the authors' web site has a supporting material for this book, but I found none, not even a mention of this book. I wrote an email to the authors for more information, but got no response. Without a more complete source code to accompany this book, it would be difficult for most of the readers to use this book to its full benefit.
Rating: 
Summary: CodeGuru to the rescue!!
Review: I bought this book expecting the best as Tom Archer is an original CodeGuru founder and I was definitely not disappointed. As another reviewer noted the ATL and COM chapters are worth the price of the book by themselves. Add to that, Archer's unparralled database chapters and some great content on DLLs, custom drawn controls, dialogs, document/view, etc. etc. and you hdefinitely have a great book.
Rating:
Summary: Indepth and applicable coverage
Review: I got this book as our development team was moving from Visual C++ 6 to Visual C++ .NET and I wanted to get a little ahead of the game. I had read and heard that VC++.NET was significantly different to VC6 so I decided to go for the Bible from Visual C++ .NET Bible as I've always like the bible series from Wiley.
I was definitely not disappointed.
The book covered all aspects of Windows C++ development from menus in MFC to creating dll's. The main area I was interested in was ATL and I'm glad I got this book before I switched to VS.NET. ATL development has changed significantly in VS.NET as attributes have been introduced. VC.NET Bible give an excellent overview of ATL in VS.NET.
I haven't read this book in its entirety, but it's one book that i'll definitely have near my machine in work. Topics are easy to find, and all chapters explain how to do something and why you should do it in a certain way.
Well worth the price.
Rating: 
Summary: Good overall, except for bug ridden examples
Review: I've been working through this book for a while now, and overall the material is presented in a decent format. For the most part you can pick the topic to work on (ie. Menus, Dialog boxes, etc) and focus on that chapter to learn it. For someone like myself who needs a point solution (very specific app with very narrow GUI requirements) this works well.
However that said, one thing that is driving me nuts in this book are the bug-ridden examples. I've been through quite a few chapters now, and I've come to the expectation that its not a question of -if- a given example has a bug, but where it is located (since it almost certainly has one or more).
To give an example I just read over the Modeless dialog example in chapter 11. It starts off having you throw down a dialog and a bunch of controls, without exactly telling you what IDs to give them (after a while you get used to this, because the author does this a lot). Its important because by the time you get to step 7 in the example you realize that the ellipsis button should have an ID of IDC_FILEOPEN if you want your function call to line up with the demo (again not such a problem since you can change the IDs at anytime - but I'm just getting started). At step 10 you get to enter in a global function (huh? what the heck happened to the class?). Moving on - Step 12 has you adding in member variables to a class which won't exist until step 13. Yeah good job there. Step 19 has an erroneous structure definition. And to top it off, steps 21 and 23 have you add message handler functions without actually telling you how to map them in the message map. Whew! and this is just one example program. Typed in exactly as the steps in the book describe, this example compiled with something like 20+ errors. Fixing the structure and the map problems (which required downloading the code off the website to figure out what to do), eventually got it to work.
Overall I think the content and the way the material is broken up is good, however this book needs a complete overhaul and proofing on the examples.
Rating:
Summary: NOT a .NET book!
Review: Seems like a book with ".NET Bible" in the title should cover the .NET framework. As mentioned previously it is stated in the preface that this is not a .NET book, but I don't see the preface printed above. This is a well written book for someone who wants to write MFC applications using Visual Studio.Net, but it devotes less than 100 pages to writing managed C++. Some features/screens in Visual Studio.NET have changed since the book was written. The author does a good job of digging into the details of how MFC works. If you are interested in the .NET Framework and Managed C++ I would recommend "Managed C++ and .NET Development".
Rating:
Summary: NOT a .NET book!
Review: Seems like a book with ".NET Bible" in the title should cover the .NET framework. As mentioned previously it is stated in the preface that this is not a .NET book, but I don't see the preface printed above. This is a well written book for someone who wants to write MFC applications using Visual Studio.Net, but it devotes less than 100 pages to writing managed C++. Some features/screens in Visual Studio.NET have changed since the book was written. The author does a good job of digging into the details of how MFC works. If you are interested in the .NET Framework and Managed C++ I would recommend "Managed C++ and .NET Development".
Rating:
Summary: The place to start
Review: Several months ago, I was faced with a daunting challenge -- to develop a state of the art, user-friendly Windows application despite the fact that I had never written any Windows code. Armed with this book and a knoweldge of C++, I quickly mastered enough MFC, COM, and ATL to deliver a great product to a happy client. I couldn't have done it without this book. It will quickly give you the foundation to learn more advanced topics or move in whatever direction your work requires. If you supplement this book with the examples and www.codeproject.com or www.codeguru.com, you will be up to speed in no time.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Book
Review: This book has helped me learn the Basics of Visual C++ .net without the slowness of a beginner book. It's a pretty complicated language but this book explains ideas concepts fairly well, although sometimes, it does get a bit confusing. The sample projects are pratical and usefull in real life projects. Overall it's a pretty good book
Rating:
Summary: Exactly as advertised - Fantasitc book
Review: This book is exactly as advertised - a great MFC book. I'm dumbfounded at some of the other reviewers who couldn't read the very first sentence of the "Who Is This Book For" page that clearly states that this book is an MFC book and *NOT* a .NET book. But that's they're problem. The bottom line is that I own about 10 MFC books - everything from Kruglinski to Prosise to Archer and this book is by far the best. You will absolutely not find better material on integrating COM/ATL with MFC or database chapters and he's the only VC++ author I know of who actually activately supports the book on his site. Well done, Mr. Archer!!
| 
