Customer Reviews

Advanced Windows

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I believe "Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows" is the fourth edition to this book. The Microsoft Press summary for the new book says "This fully updated expansion of the bestselling ADVANCED WINDOWS digs even deeper into the advanced features..."

Also compare the table of contents between the two books for yourself. I am buying "Programming Applications" instead of this book.

Before reading this book I had a good grasp of C++ but didn't know much of the Win32 API except some of the function names I was really interested in.

After sitting down for 2 - 3 weeks with the MSDN Library, Visual C++ and Advanced Windows I now have a firm grasp of most concepts.

This book does not go into GUI development at all. I would recommend Programming Windows Fifth Edition for this. Since most of the code I write is for the backend (DLLs, Databases) my prefered GUI is always a web application so this was very desirable for me.

If you want MFC you should probably get the Microsoft Mastering series title.

If you want GUI get Programming Windows Fifth Edition.

If you want hard core, Win32... GET THIS BOOK!

For UNIX, you buy W. Richard Stevens' Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment and UNIX Network Programming -- for Win32 you buy Programming Windows by Charles Petzold and this book. Petzold gets you started, Richter lets you pursue the good stuff.

Although this is easily a 5 star book, it is not without room for improvement. For the 4th edition, Mr. Richter, I'd like to see Anonymous and Named Pipes covered, as well as Mailslots, and some introductory coverage of Winsock (Winsock could be covered in a separate book.)

It's a bit surprising that those topics aren't covered, since just about every advanced topic I was looking for was covered in excellent detail.

To be in the same class as Stevens' books, I'd like to see some performance considerations included. For example, how much more expensive is a Mutex over Critical Sections and Events? Ralph Davis' book, Win32 Network Programming, covers this a little better, and includes quite a bit of discussion on advanced Win32 topics besides the networking APIs.

And lastly, a hard-bound edition would be nice.

This book is a fantastic reference for Windows programmers. However, as others below have mentioned, its fourth release is now available under the title "Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows." If you're comfortable with Windows programming and are looking to get into some of the meatier areas, check it out.

Excellent book.

Read it just to know what it covers, then you can forget about those tricky functions, but do not forget where you saw them being used. When later you have a problem that may be resolved by one of those functions, just open the book and get your problem resolved.

Jeffrey Richter's Advanced Windows is easily the most frequently used (and borrowed) book on my computer bookshelf. It is well written, complete, and contains descriptions and examples of non-GUI Windows programming you simply can not find anywhere else. I plan on buying both of his new books as well. All of his books are utterly without hype - it's like reading just the meaty parts of MSJ/MSDN magazine. Long Live Jeff Richter!

I had the opportunity to attend a Win32 Seminar given by Jeff Richter. The guy knows his stuff. The Win32 API has grown and evolved over the years from its roots in Win16 and Windows 3.x. It has become more robust and refined just as Windows has (but as with Windows, still has its inherent flaws). While it would be nice to see the Windows programming style of Petzold et al in turn evolve to a more modular, reusable, and OO (C++) style, one must not forget the roots of the Win32 API(written in C). Richter does an admiral job of addressing the often vexing and misunderstood issues of memory management, processes, threads and thread synchronization. Don't expect this book to be a how to manual for MFC hacks. As the title states: Advanced Windows. I have recently gotten into WinCE programming. Between Richter's Advanced Windows and Boling's WinCE Programming book, I am surviving. No MFC here. All of the previous reviews were divided between either five stars(21) or one star(7). No in between here. This tells me that the reviewing audience consists of Windows programmers looking for a good resource or wanna-be Windows programmers whinning because it doesn't cover MFC.

Anyone doing serious Windows development using the base Win32 API's must have this book. It covers intermediate and advanced usage of the file system, DLL's, memory architecture, memory management, thread synchronization, memory mapped files, and a host of other more advanced topics. The coverage of the various subjects is complete and the code examples well written. Really anyone doing development under the Win32 API will benefit greatly from this book. Get it. I hope this helps J.

NO MFC OR C++, no intro to the c language which it uses solely! This is an advanced book! Covers many topics Pertzold(Programming Windows) doesn't. Great for getting into the cracks of the Win OS! Definitely not for newbies, but for anyone looking to really become a professional win32 programmer, this is the book! To anyone but a real programmer the topics covered aren't easy nor for everyone. Much of the book is about Kernel Objects, inner workings, sharing objects between process and thread boudaries. Thread locks and scheduling are also detailed plus much much more!

This is a great book if you want to get more out of Windows. Lots of sample applications to work through and well laid out as a reference for when you are developing Windows applications later. This book may be somewhat difficult for readers who do not have multi-tasking basics; the information is all there in how Windows executes threads, multi-processes, timers, synchronization and more, but can be confusing if you don't understand why these functions are required.