Activex Controls Inside Out

Rating:
Summary: 80% fluff for Visual C++ programmers
Review: Book deals with one single ActiveX control, with no UI, and a simplistic purpose. Yet the author spends 80% of the book explaining the *business logic* (not the ActiveX-specific issues) of this silly example. (and the code listings of every iteration) Good beginning, good chapter on VBX to OCX (if you need that), but overall dissapointing. Hardly "inside-out" coverage to a proficient VC++ developer.

Rating:
Summary: 80% fluff for Visual C++ programmers
Review: Book deals with one single ActiveX control, with no UI, and a simplistic purpose. Yet the author spends 80% of the book explaining the *business logic* (not the ActiveX-specific issues) of this silly example. (and the code listings of every iteration) Good beginning, good chapter on VBX to OCX (if you need that), but overall dissapointing. Hardly "inside-out" coverage to a proficient VC++ developer.

Rating:
Summary: Wait a minute! It's not that bad ...
Review: Chapter 3 of this book is the most frustrating part. In this chapter, the author wants to showcase so much stuff he hasn't yet explained, which makes it extremely difficult to understand. However, from the second section of chapter 4 it begins to make sense. Part II: the basics of ActiveX controls is actually pretty good, the style and approach are more or less similar to what you can find in "Inside VC++". If you have the patience to follow the examples in Part II, you may get some understanding of the basics and some practice as well. My suggestion is: read "Inside COM" first, then skip the first three chapters of this book. After you're done with part II, you should be able to write ActiveX controls (is that too much to ask for anyway?).

Rating:
Summary: Complete reference for in-process ActiveX controls w/ MFC
Review: If you are looking to develop in-process ActiveX controls, this book will make a very good reference. Although the examples could be more mainstream, the technology detailed makes it a read worth your while. After all, it is as close to the source as you can get & you get this without worrying about marshalling, local or remote. The focus is on free marshaling, a.k.a. non-existant, as it should be.

Rating:
Summary: Complete reference for in-process ActiveX controls w/ MFC
Review: If you are looking to develop in-process ActiveX controls, this book will make a very good reference. Although the examples could be more mainstream, the technology detailed makes it a read worth your while. After all, it is as close to the source as you can get & you get this without worrying about marshalling, local or remote. The focus is on free marshaling, a.k.a. non-existant, as it should be.

Rating:
Summary: Good for non beginners.
Review: The book attempts to give a presentation of the requirements needed to write an ActiveX control, but the flow of the text jumps all over the place, skipping topics and glossing over the important ones, such as simple containment. Hopefully the second edition will remedy this.

Rating:
Summary: Actually, it's two and half
Review: The book has one big strong point for anyone wanting to convert VBXs to OCXs. It has an entire chapter on this topic and was useful for me in converting my old controls to the new stuff. The book does a good job explaining controls using MFC and is easy to read if you have experience writing controls already.