How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 (How to Do Everything)

Rating:
Summary: Good Infopath book
Review: As an Excel power user now forced to use Infopath for internal forms, this book was helpful. Definitely pitched at office users as opposed to developers, but still a solid reference.

Rating:
Summary: How To Sell Screendumps to Anybody
Review: Do buy this book if you've never heard of XML and you don't really want to know what it is or what it does.
Don't buy this book if you want to know how repeating sections differ from repeating tables, or if you want to understand all the data validation options.
Although this book does offer some simplified explanations of what Infopath does, it is as light on useful examples as it is heavy on screendumps. Simply repeating what's displayed on the screen is not terribly enlightening, and it's even worse when the text and the screendumps are continually 2 or 3 pages apart.
Shocking spelling and simple grammatical errors detract from the little genuinely useful information presented, and make the whole book's pace seem rushed and incomplete.
If you don't really like Microsoft, but you have to learn Infopath, find another book!




Rating:
Summary: User Manual Regurgitation
Review: I have found nothing in this book that isn't available for free online or in downloads from Microsoft. I wonder why so many computer book authors feel that a re-editing and repackaging of free, widely available product usage advice provides ample reason to ask a customer to shell out money? It's a false promise. Even the "how to do everything" angle is frankly no more than a re-presentation of applications that Microsoft describes just as well for free (and with code) online.

Rating:
Summary: User Manual Regurgitation
Review: I have found nothing in this book that isn't available for free online or in downloads from Microsoft. I wonder why so many computer book authors feel that a re-editing and repackaging of free, widely available product usage advice provides ample reason to ask a customer to shell out money? It's a false promise. Even the "how to do everything" angle is frankly no more than a re-presentation of applications that Microsoft describes just as well for free (and with code) online.