Rating: 
Summary: Just What I Needed!
Review: This book helped me look good at work. I was charged with creating a Digital Dashboard to demo to a large potential customer, but I had been struggling with how to use the web components. After reading just a few chapters, I was able to add a dynamic chart to the home page. Then I integrated the Real-Time Stock Portfolio into another page. The client loved it and everyone at work thinks I'm an OWC wiz!
Rating: 
Summary: No meat on this one.
Review: This book talks about the basics and does not get into any detail. Very boring. Don't waste your money. I think you can get more from MSDN.
Rating: 
Summary: Fair to Partially Cloudy
Review: This is definitly the most complete book about the O2K Web Components, but all that shows is how little information is available. There was very little explanation of how to do things. The book was mostly focused on telling you what the components can do and a few examples rather than how to do it. Most of the functionality in which I was really interested was quickly breezed over because there was "much more functionality than this chapter can cover". At less than 400 pages, I think they could've made the chapters large enough to cover a little more of the functionality. After going through the book, I have a better understanding of what the Office 2000 Web Components do, but I've still had to figure out mostly on my own how to do it all. In the end, I feel like I paid for a press release or spec sheet rather than an instruction manual.
Rating:
Summary: DON'T BUY THIS BOOK
Review: This is one of the worst books I've ever read. I can't believe that anyone would get anything of value from it. I'm an ASP/SQL developer with 5 years experience and I was not able to get more than a trivial example working, using this book. The Author's problem is that he gives you examples, but doesn't teach you how to manipulate them. Several of the things I'm trying to do - have titles with two lines, change color of the column, make columns different colors. This book didn't help me with any of it. I was finally able to do some of what I wanted to do by looking for examples on the internet. Given the fact that Microsoft's web site is also TOTALLY useless, I would think that the author would include and appendix outlining the properties of each object. Not only does this book not include enough information to help you strike out on your own, but it doesn't even point you to resources that could help you. When I bought the wrox asp book (years ago), within a day I had built a data driven web site (crude, to be sure, but it worked). I could work this book for ever and not get anything useful working. I have never bought a book that I couldn't find SOMETHING of use in, but this book will wind up in the bottom of my bird's cage. Dave - next time you think of writing a book - please do us all a favor and turn on the TV instead.
Rating:
Summary: DON'T BUY THIS BOOK
Review: This is one of the worst books I've ever read. I can't believe that anyone would get anything of value from it. I'm an ASP/SQL developer with 5 years experience and I was not able to get more than a trivial example working, using this book. The Author's problem is that he gives you examples, but doesn't teach you how to manipulate them. Several of the things I'm trying to do - have titles with two lines, change color of the column, make columns different colors. This book didn't help me with any of it. I was finally able to do some of what I wanted to do by looking for examples on the internet. Given the fact that Microsoft's web site is also TOTALLY useless, I would think that the author would include and appendix outlining the properties of each object. Not only does this book not include enough information to help you strike out on your own, but it doesn't even point you to resources that could help you. When I bought the wrox asp book (years ago), within a day I had built a data driven web site (crude, to be sure, but it worked). I could work this book for ever and not get anything useful working. I have never bought a book that I couldn't find SOMETHING of use in, but this book will wind up in the bottom of my bird's cage. Dave - next time you think of writing a book - please do us all a favor and turn on the TV instead.
Rating:
Summary: Not much more than what was in the help doc/MSDN
Review: This is probably the best book on OWC avaliable. This is mostly due to the fact that it's probably the *only* book on OWC available. There's not substantially more information in the book than what is in the online help file. (And the book is nowhere near comprehensive as a reference) Much of the examples are extremely basic and do not delve into the actual issues that will be encountered developing anything other than a trivial OWC implementation. If you're on an extremely tight schedule, need some basic OWC examples, and don't have time to read the documentation or search for examples on the web/MSDN, then this book may be helpful. Otherwise, save your money Microsoft Press has some extremely good items in its catalog(Petzold, Richter, etc). However, this book is mostly just a thinly disguised marketing datasheet. Hopefully, O'Reilly will publish an OWC book.
Rating:
Summary: Not much more than what was in the help doc/MSDN
Review: This is probably the best book on OWC avaliable. This is mostly due to the fact that it's probably the *only* book on OWC available. There's not substantially more information in the book than what is in the online help file. (And the book is nowhere near comprehensive as a reference) Much of the examples are extremely basic and do not delve into the actual issues that will be encountered developing anything other than a trivial OWC implementation. If you're on an extremely tight schedule, need some basic OWC examples, and don't have time to read the documentation or search for examples on the web/MSDN, then this book may be helpful. Otherwise, save your money Microsoft Press has some extremely good items in its catalog(Petzold, Richter, etc). However, this book is mostly just a thinly disguised marketing datasheet. Hopefully, O'Reilly will publish an OWC book.
Rating:
Summary: You Can't go Wrong with this One.
Review: You won't find a better book on Office web components. This book is easy to read and follow and offers a very good introduction ,and some, to OWC. The book tells you exactly what you need to know without going to deep and technical. This book is invaluable if you want to develop web pages that use web components and the companion CD offers excellent examples.
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