Customer Reviews

Active X/OLE Programming: Building Stable Components with Microsoft Foundation Class with 3.5 Disk

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"ActiveX/OLE Programming" provides useful information about a complex topic; however, it is at best a mediocre technical book. The table of contents speaks to the level of craftsmanship exhibited by the book's producers: a majority of the TOC entries are the word "Prototype". Perhaps the TOC was created in a rush to print, but the lack of attention to organizational issues, by both the editor and author, continues throughout the book: graphics are few and unhelpful; highlighted (supposedly boldfaced) portions of source listings are virtually indistinguishable from the unhighlighted lines; the book itself simply dives into the material without any indication of how the book is organized, its technical audience, prerequisite information, etc.; the chapters themselves provide a sentence or two of introduction and then jump right into the subject matter. The author frequently uses terms not defined in the book nor contained in mainstream software engineering jargon and is careless in the handling of material that will not be covered in the text or is covered later on (though this is a difficult task).

Most of the book consists of source listings for various examples. The accompanying prose is mostly aimed at explaining the workings of the examples. The level of detail in the prose is that of a lecture given to an audience that has already done reading in the subject area: it covers the same material, provides useful applications, but provides only limited technical detail. For example, threading is not considered till an appendix and while it provided an overview of the threading models, did not provide this reader with the solid understanding that was sought.

Though not explicitly stated, the book requires a solid founding in C++ and interprocess/interthread communication that is appropriate for a book aimed at journeyman developers; it is not a book for the neophyte. While I found the book helpful, I would certainly consider other alternatives before settling on this book. Still, I have had the misfortune to purchase other technical books which though they were better organized and written had very little technical content; you will learn from this book, despite its technical flaws.

I agree with the sentiment expressed in most of the other customer reviews. This book is very poorly organized, and the material is not well presented. Although there is some useful information in this book, good prior knowledge of COM and MFC are necessary to take advantage of it. The apparent lack of editing of this book would make me think twice about purchasing another technical book from this publisher.

The author apologizes because the samples don't compile and suggests we rename all the files, all 200 or whatever, I didn't even check. Then, astoundingly, he confesses that "the publisher included earlier and incorrect versions of a handful of chapters in the book." A handful??? Which handful? ... I started reading chapter 2 ("Microsoft Foundation Classes and COM). That must have been one of the chapters that were published from the wrong version. There were numerous typos in it. However, even if there weren't, it is virtually unintelligible. Things come flying at you in all directions from out of the blue with no context. I'm not talking about the material covered in chapter 1 that I did not read, because I was already familiar with that type of material. It was all these MFC macros he was talking about. If I hadn't already just read the MSDN documentation, I would have been totally lost. I found this book at a used bookstore, saw the copyright date of 1998 and was trying to remember when Visual C++ 6.0 came out, to see whether he was using 5.0 or 6.0. I couldn't find that information anywhere on the front or back cover or in a forward anywhere. I took a chance and bought the book anyhow. Then I ran across a code sample that said something like, "Be sure you're running 5.0." Brother. The other thing is, he takes pain to point out Microsoft's latest terms for things. He says they used to be called "servers" now their called "components." Well, NOW they're called "servers" again in the MSDN documentation. I found numerous other terms that are out of date, some of which predate this book, were changed in the 5.0 timeframe, and then reverted back to the original. This book is useless.

The samples in the book seemlingly do not work. The cd-rom containing the examples was created using 8.3 file names, which damaged the original long file names and directory structure. This problem is resolved by renaming the files and directories.

There are editing issues. Mistakenly, the publisher included earlier and incorrect versions of a handful of chapters in the book.

The content in the book is complete and worthwhile. I apologize for the distraction caused by the samples and poor editing. However, I am proud of the book and have met many IT developers that have benefitted from the content.

This book was very helpful to me. I was looking for information on how to write Container code and build my own Word/Excel style editor in C++ from Stingray components. Granted generic Containers do not solve the problem of WYSIWYG printing (which is a hard problem); and this book did not address that part of the problem. But it does a lot better job of describing and giving the code of what a Container needs to do beyond the "Scribble" sample on the MSDN cd. The nature of this topic is that as I entered in the code from the book and became more familiar with the topic, and re-read the text the author had written - sometimes the same passage multiple times after experimenting with the code samples, I understood what was going on and needed to go better and better. This is not easy stuff and I was very glad to find this book because it really helped me understand and do the project.

I purchased this book with the hopes of learning something about programming ActiveX and the use of COM, and wanted a little structured learning where I didn't have to stumble around in the dark forever. If that is your intent, then you should probably try another book (but good luck on finding one, there aren't many others that are much better. They are all pretty poor!), because this one is poorly and illogically organized, and the author leaves out many things that he obviously expects the student to stumble around and figure out on his/her own. Admittedly, the author is correct in one statement: ActiveX and COM are not the same thing. ActiveX is the implementation of the COM specifications and COM technology. But the truth stops almost there! The examples in the book are NOT the same as the examples on the CD, and many of the CD directories are missing files or have empty files. Every one of the examples that I have tried have required doctoring and modifications in order to work. NOT A SINGLE ONE worked right from the CD, nor from the book! NOT ONE! In the acknowledgements and back cover information, the author claims to be a teacher. I have been with teachers all my life, (both a child of, and married to, and taught some myself), consequently I have learned to recognize good and bad teaching techniques. In closing, in all honesty, I am very glad I don't have to take any training or classes from this author, because he would become one of my most despised instructors if I did.