Rating: 
Summary: Good introduction, lousy reference
Review: First of all, I know that one shouldn't judge a book by itscover, but the cover is horrible. The book just stares at you untilyou hide it with something. Very lame! This book is a pretty good introduction to the many and various technologies involved in making a professional web site with InterDev 6, except for the parts on JavaScript and VBScript, which will make you search elsewhere to learn how to do the simplest things. It is an excellent reference on InterDev itself. It does a good job of telling you what you want to know in a reasonable number of pages. The book is a lousy reference. Once you have learned to do something in the book, it will no longer help you. If you need this book for your job, you will end up giving it away after two weeks because it will have already outlived its usefulness. As a reference it leans too much on the examples, even considering the scope of the book. The examples are of limited use, because they don't always work, and you can only download the finished article. You can't start using an example in the middle of the book because you can't download the examples chapter by chapter.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good for beginners
Review: I am a new web developer I do not have much web development experience and I find this book a very good starting book that takes you from ground up in a fast and easy manner. Although it does not cover the more advanced issues however this is very clear form the title.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for a beginner with some programming experience.
Review: I have to agree with the fact that the book is a little vague in places, however, if you are a beginning web programmer who has a little knowledge of the Microsoft development environment (Visual Studio, MS-SQL), then this is a really really good start. I have to give the book five stars when reviewing it in the context of a book for beginners. Mumford does a thorough job of explaining net programming and Visual InterDev, plus he touches on everything from T-SQL to ASP and XML. What beginner could ask for a more comprehensive glance at web development? Also, the book takes a hands-on approach, so you'll actually build a little business2consumer website solution complete w/database support. If you think you may be a candidate for this book, then there is no question - buy it. If not, buy several books concentrating solely on individual topics.
Rating: 
Summary: Too vague for beginners, too easy for experienced programmer
Review: I know HTML pretty well, but I wanted to learn the more advanced things that Interdev can do. The problem with this book, is that it tries to cover all the things Interdev can do: Javascript, VBscript, ASP, ActiveX etc., without providing any foundation of the topic being covered. The method of his book is to have you type in example code, run them, and then explain to you how it worked. However, he does not provide any foundation to the subject being covered, such as syntax. For example, I did not know Javascript, and he takes straight into the example program. However, he does not tell you beforehand that Javascript is case-sensitive. So I wasted an hour trying to figure out why my program didn't work! Because it's a beginners book, I expected it to "lay the foundation" before you start building the house, but he does not do that. The result is that it's no good for beginners because he doesn't teach you any foundational skills, and the intermediate programmer who could understand what he is saying would find his code too simplistic. My last complaint about his book is that many of his examples simply did not work, especially in the database sections and Time control sections. I even imported his code that I downloaded from Wrox's web site, and it still did not work. I gave it two stars instead of 1 because you can learn something from it, but there has to be a better book out there for the beginner.
Rating:
Summary: Web Development with Visual Interdev 6
Review: It is a good book specially for a beginner like myself. What makes it a good book, is it is slow paced and explains well throughout. The only thing I didn't like about it, was in chapter 5 when you get to Database stuff it showed you how to do it using SQL Server 7 which is a very expensive piece of software in which not very many home use users have. It is more for a business. Most people like myself would like to hook a Database up on a website using Microsoft Access. But overall, it is a good book. Coming into it not knowing anything about Interdev I would suggest buying it, even if you do know alittle about it still buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for Beginners in Web Development
Review: It was my pleasure to review this book and I was amazed about the usefulness of the examples and how one example is worked out in all aspects. The book gives a complete overview of a feature rich product and takes the reader through it by one main example. I believe this book is very helpful for people that want to develop web applications beyond the use of Frontpage. Very recommendable book!
Rating:
Summary: Accomplishes its goals, but fails to meet expectations
Review: The scope of this book is very aggressive: Mumford attempts to cover just about every Microsoft-sponsored Web technology within 446 pages (despite boasting 700 pages, the non-appendix content only comprises 446 of those). This wide focus means that no one topic is covered in sufficient detail. I'll give you the summary up front: as an introduction to Visual InterDev 6, this book shines (4 stars). This book also makes an excellent primer for Web technologies. However, I think a true beginner would be better served by focusing on a single area and gaining some confidence first, and then returning to this book for an idea on where to go next. As such, its value is somewhat limited (2 stars). I'll move on to the content of the book. The order in which these subjects are presented is well-conceived. Chapters 1 through 3 introduce VI6, and how you can create Web pages through the design interface-think FrontPage. We are introduced to Design Time Controls and site maps for navigation. We create a quick form, and enter a very short (four-line) JavaScript function. Mumford does not elaborate on forms, for example the differences between the GET and POST methods, nor does he spend any more time with JavaScript. Chapter 4 covers the use of Themes for style, and introduces Design Time Controls (DTC's) and Site Maps for navigation. Themes are essentially out-of-the-box style sheets. Mumford does not delve into style sheets, or describe how you could customize themes. Chapter 5 is about Database Basics. This is a great chapter that describes how VI6 can be used to develop databases. Some of the Web pages are built using DTC's. A couple of quick hits: at this stage, Mumford hasn't admitted that DTC's are ill suited for heavily trafficked sites. Nor does he mention that client-side DTC's expose all of the database connection information (including server name, user name, and password) within the HTML source that is sent to the browser. Chapter 6 focuses on Client Side Script. After a brief admonition that JavaScript is a more suitable scripting language for use on the Internet, Mumford plows ahead and provides examples in VBScript. VI6 has some excellent tree controls for creating skeletal form handlers, and support for IE-specific DHTML. Of course, we aren't given a rigorous treatment of either scripting language. The chapter finishes up with using ActiveX controls, but fails to mention Java applets. Chapter 7 is a decent introduction to Active Server Pages. Mumford touches upon the Response object, the Request object, and even the FileSystemObject. He discusses session state and briefly mentions server-side includes. Chapter 8 revisits DTC's. The dirt finally comes out about them. I would advise you to avoid them altogether. Chapter 9 is a good chapter about using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to connect to a database. VI6 can provide some of the same "IntelliSense" features that are available in Visual Basic. Chapter 10 is a concise, high-level introduction to XML. VI6 does not have any native support for XML, but Mumford does a good job of presenting the benefits of this new standard. I found the exercise of embedding an island of XML data within an HTML document, and using client-side script to navigate its recordset to be very interesting. Chapter 11 is an admonition to include error-handling routines in your programming. If the stars are properly aligned, you might even get the server-side scripting debugger to work. Chapter 12 discusses the benefits of moving business logic code from the ASP's into COM objects. There are several worthwhile statements made throughout this chapter with regard to Web application design. A very preliminary introduction to MTS is provided. Chapter 13 starts out well with many valuable comments about designing your Web application's architecture. It then bogs down with a cursory discussion about Visual SourceSafe, and wraps up with the "Visual Component Manager." Chapter 14 is the last chapter, and it is a case study for an internal help desk Web application. This is a great example to work through. It typifies real-life development in a Microsoft environment: mostly hand-coded pages, no DTC's, themes, or site maps, using ADO, and creating COM objects. The appendices are relatively useless. The Visual InterDev menu reference can be discerned within the application itself, and the HTML, VBScript, and JavaScript references can be readily found in a multitude of electronic and hard-bound locations. A better title would have been "An Introduction to Visual InterDev 6," for that is the aim this book sets out to achieve. I believe this book accomplishes this task very well. However, a beginner who purchases this book with the expectation that she will be a full-fledged Web developer by its end will be sadly disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book - covers the ground
Review: This book is an excellent guide to developing Web Applications using VI6. It covers the necessary technologies such as Javascript, VBScript, ASP, and COM with enough detail to get you up ad running. It also looks at methods of programming that will stand up to the high demand of a production web site. All in all I thoroughly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Lousy Cover
Review: This book is definetely for everyone who wants to learn web development and visual interdev 6, it teach you almost everything you need to know. But as web development is changing extremely fast, I hope there is a web site to keep is inform with future update. However, not because I do not like the author face, I hate book with someone face what a totally lousy cover page.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the content
Review: This book is overprice. It has very limited instructions how to use VI 6.0 and not informative. To beginners please look for another one, your penny per page is worthless.
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