Rating: 
Summary: to many cooks spoil the .....
Review: I read this book after reading "Inside Com" and "Beginning MFC/COM", which were both very good. This book is very confusing. Its very difficult to follow the author(s) logic and they get frequently to in-depth for a beginner book. The examples should have been less in-depth as far background and technical specs go, and they should have applied more hands-on examples. It seemed as though they all took turns writing a paragraph and then passing it on because its not easy to follow.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book that really covers the topic
Review: I'm usually leary of books with many authors. I'm afraid they're just thrown together to hit the market quickly. Not so with this excellent book, which had just what I wanted for learning ATL. Plenty of examples, under-the-hood coverage of ATL, good coverage of the many aspects of COM and how they're implemented in ATL, and a final fun full control example (treeview of URL's for use with IE4) that could actually be useful. The writing is excellent, with explanations of all the macros and such, and I've yet to find an error. The only thing that makes this a "Beginning" book is it's thin coverage of threads. But then, supposedly Dr. Grimes is coming out with a Professional ATL COM programming book to cover this and more--I can't wait.
Rating:
Summary: Good book if you know COM concepts and want to learn ATL
Review: If you want to learn COM concepts, no other book beats "Essential COM" by Don Box. But if you want to do some real coding with the help of ATL, you need this book. I started this book when I did not know COM, and found it hard to grasp the concepts and learn the code at the same time. Then I turned to Essential COM, and come back afterwards. I found that this book would really get you going in terms of how to code COM. Great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not for BEGINNER...
Review: The "Beginning..." in the title is really misleading . This book is not for beginners . I did not even get past chapter 1, and this is from someone who feels very comfortable with VC++ and MFC .
Rating:
Summary: Very confusing!
Review: The book is presenting a lot of stuff, but the way the information is organized, is very confusing. Totally unrelated subjects are bundled under the same chapter! Also, the authors keep using all kind of words without ever explaining them. On the bright side, the examples do work and you get a sense of what is going on.
Rating:
Summary: Problem in the book
Review: The example on page 296 when executed, Visual Basic gives General Protection Fault But this runs through Test Container
Rating: 
Summary: Examples are terrible
Review: The examples are interleaved throughout the book and it is very difficult to know if you should type something in or just view the code. The object/application/project names used in the examples, make the examples extremely confusing. Not a good book.
Rating:
Summary: A reasonable COM reference but too technical for beginners
Review: This book fails in its task to be for 'Beginners'. I actually found the more advanced 'COM Applications with ATL' book a much easier read.Way too much hard technical facts and not enough simple explanations or higher level concepts. The first Professional Series book I found a disapointment.
Rating:
Summary: not for beginners
Review: This book gives a serious coverage of ATL COM that will repay readers' efforts. It's far from easy, and the organization could be improved in places. For example, I'm one of those people who absolutely has to know what's going on "under the hood", but the implementation details come a little early (in Chapter 1). Had to experiment with the order of interface entries in the idl file and think a lot about vtables, interface pointer casting, multiple inheritance, and so on before I began to understand what Chap. 1 is all about. Some more explanation at judicious places in Chap. 1 would be helpful. To get the most out of this book, download the code from Wrox and fool around with it. This book really covers the nitty gritty of developing ATL COM projects from scratch. Marshaling, threading, connectable objects, persistence are discussed, and a full control is built in Chap. 8. For some reason, perhaps because the word "beginning" appears in the title, Wrox ranks this book below Professional MFC in difficulty (see the flow chart on the back cover of the book). Actually, it's quite advanced and belongs at the top of the hierarchy. I think it's more detailed and difficult (but also more rewarding) than other books on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: not for beginners
Review: This book gives a serious coverage of ATL COM that will repay readers' efforts. It's far from easy, and the organization could be improved in places. For example, I'm one of those people who absolutely has to know what's going on "under the hood", but the implementation details come a little early (in Chapter 1). Had to experiment with the order of interface entries in the idl file and think a lot about vtables, interface pointer casting, multiple inheritance, and so on before I began to understand what Chap. 1 is all about. Some more explanation at judicious places in Chap. 1 would be helpful. To get the most out of this book, download the code from Wrox and fool around with it. This book really covers the nitty gritty of developing ATL COM projects from scratch. Marshaling, threading, connectable objects, persistence are discussed, and a full control is built in Chap. 8. For some reason, perhaps because the word "beginning" appears in the title, Wrox ranks this book below Professional MFC in difficulty (see the flow chart on the back cover of the book). Actually, it's quite advanced and belongs at the top of the hierarchy. I think it's more detailed and difficult (but also more rewarding) than other books on the subject.
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