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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book If You have done some application development
Review: I have used Allaire Homesite before for writing ASP pages, recently forced myself to Visual Interdev.This book not only teaches you how to use VI, but also hints you a healthy application development throughout chapters. You might be flustrated with the lacking of examples, since they are not always available in everyday. Hold your breath for a few days (I know it is hard) and you will find one that would satisfy you. After all, this is a good book IF YOU ALREADY know some HTML and got some experience in application development. If you haven't met the criteria I have mentioned, you may have to do some studies before you make a conclusion hating this book. I certainly hope they either rename this book, or publish that under Wrox, or get some details in the preface so that people would not expect it incorrectly.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Topic, Bad Book
Review: I purchased this book to help me learn the new and exciting tools available today, not to mention it looks like I will need it for work. The first 10 days or so are fantastic for beginners, gives some great insights into how VI works, the various tools incorporated, and how to merge other resources into VI (such as ActiveX, Databases of various kinds, etc.). There are some basic features and concepts that the author never does explain; those being the themes of the web pages, how to use frames in your project, and others. If you are familiar with HTML, these should not be a problem, but an explanation of how VI manages these would have been nice. As other reviews have stated, there are numerous errors in the code, which does tend to make it extremely frustrating to follow along at times. Other errors I have found are misprints of information tables, the screen shots do not reflect what the author states in follow along steps, and names of objects are changes in mid-stride, to name a few. At other times, the lack of explanation, or inability to explain in a more basic way, why the author has you do certain things also compounds the problem. If it were just these items, the book would still be a valuable tool. However, starting with Day 12, the author stops giving any help with the `Exercises'. Just when the book starts to delve into the hard-core functionality and the power of VI, and when you need it most, the author pulls the rug out from under you. This is where the help is most important. Tying together the ActiveX Controls, Database connectivity, Query building, is not an easy thing to manage, especially for beginners. When I was confronted with "You're on your own for this one. Experiment!" for the Exercise solution from Day 15, I was extremely upset. Most of the latter Exercise solutions you are told to just refer to this or that chapter, look up this web page, or "...there is no pat answer...". The lack of help when it was needed most makes this book a disappointment at best. If you are looking for a book to show you what VI can do, then this book goes a long way in that endeavor. But, if you want to learn HOW to accomplish those tasks, find another book (perhaps take a suggestion or two from the other reviewers), for this one comes up well short of the mark.
Rating:
Summary: Good stuff on scriplets and database access
Review: I was already familiar with Visual Interdev 6.0 when I read this book, but there were some areas I needed a refresher on, specially the data access and scriptlets sections, which are described in good detail and are easy to follow. I did notice a bug in one of the examples in an early chapter, but I have since checked the Sam's website and they've put out a fix.
Rating: 
Summary: great book to start with
Review: I've been using this book for three weeks, and find it a daily frustration. Code examples are generally absent. Key points for beginners are overlooked. And it's not like I'm a novice. I'm a self-taught MCSE, a Microsoft Certified Trainer with more than 20 years of teaching experience, and have been able to teach myself Visual Basic and other languages, but am tearing my hair out trying to learn Visual Interdev 6 using this book. A CD with examples of all code in the book would have been a great help. Here's a small example. Page 170 calls for you to add ActiveX combo boxes, text boxes, and command buttons to a simple sample app. But nowhere in my enterprise edition of VID 6 are they to be found! There are headaches like this at many key points and it's making my blood boil.
Rating:
Summary: Too many errors
Review: Some sample codes don't match what the authors have written in the book. A lot of erros in the codes. For example, in Day 13, the Authors even wrote a VBScript code like 'Dim I as integer' which is supported in VB only, not in VBScript. I doubt if the authors really tested some of the codes. This book does help me to learn VI6 but I don't feel it's a good book.
Rating: 
Summary: Dazed and confused
Review: There's very little to recommend about this book. Most chapters are filled with superfluous verbiage and far fewer hands on exercises than I expected. Some of the chapters are redundant, as if the author forgot that he already covered this ground in an earlier chapter. There is no sensible progression to the book. Concepts and techniques seem to come out of left field with no explanation of the fundamentals of what's going on. You get some exposure to the VI interface and some familiarity with the construction of a site and programming elements, but a poor explanation of underlying concepts. I found bugs in some of the code samples, and few of the more advanced examples worked. Unfortunately, the chapter on debugging comes toward the end of the book. Don't bother with this one.
Rating:
Summary: More harm than good!
Review: This book has been a real disappointment. It has caused more confusion with ambiguous statements and examples that do not work. It often gives code samples for working with SQL databases. I feel that most beginners would be using Access, not SQL. I was expecting more from a Sams publication and found great benefit in Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 4 in 21 days.
Rating:
Summary: Rush Job
Review: This book must have been written in a BIG rush. I bought it when Interdev 6 first came out, excited to learn this new tool. The basics were taught (barely), but most of the book was worthless - full of errors that render examples useless, incorrect information, and the like. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY! I wound up buying the Dummies book on Interdev 6, and while it was excellent, I wound up having to pay for two books!
Rating:
Summary: Good Book for Beginners
Review: This is an excellent book for beginners who want to know more from the conceptual view what Interdev is all about. For a hard-core programmer, I highly recommend Interdev Unleashed(99 ed.)
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