Customer Reviews

Beginning Web Development with Visual InterDev 6

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

 

 

I've been looking for a good book on Visual Interdev (VID) for some time, and even though I only give this book 3 stars, it's clearly a good choice for people who already know some web development basics.

Therein lies the problem: Visual Interdev can be so complicated that it really needs something beyond an introduction. This book goes half way. It explains the basics of how to use the VID interface, how to attach a database, how to write script, but falls flat when your data connection doesn't work right, when you can't figure out where to write a simple script on your web page, etc.

To use VID properly, you really need to know at least a few of the existing web technologies (HTML, SQL, ASP, JScript, VBScript) each of which merits an introductory text of its own (and are also available from Wrox Press). If you're looking for an introductory book to teach you how to build web sites, this is not the one, because it really is an intermediate text. If you already know HTML and one or two other web technologies, then this book will introduce you to a powerful (but buggy) web development tool.

That last point -- buggy -- deserve more merit from the author. VID has more bugs than I've seen in any development package. I would have given this book an additional star if the author had spent some time detailing some of the fundamental bugs in areas like data connections ans scripting errors.

The scope of this book is very aggressive: Mumford attempts to cover just about every Microsoft-sponsored Web technology within 446 pages (despite boasting 700 pages, the non-appendix content only comprises 446 of those). This wide focus means that no one topic is covered in sufficient detail.

I'll give you the summary up front: as an introduction to Visual InterDev 6, this book shines (4 stars). This book also makes an excellent primer for Web technologies. However, I think a true beginner would be better served by focusing on a single area and gaining some confidence first, and then returning to this book for an idea on where to go next. As such, its value is somewhat limited (2 stars).

I'll move on to the content of the book. The order in which these subjects are presented is well-conceived.

Chapters 1 through 3 introduce VI6, and how you can create Web pages through the design interface-think FrontPage. We are introduced to Design Time Controls and site maps for navigation. We create a quick form, and enter a very short (four-line) JavaScript function. Mumford does not elaborate on forms, for example the differences between the GET and POST methods, nor does he spend any more time with JavaScript.

Chapter 4 covers the use of Themes for style, and introduces Design Time Controls (DTC's) and Site Maps for navigation. Themes are essentially out-of-the-box style sheets. Mumford does not delve into style sheets, or describe how you could customize themes.

Chapter 5 is about Database Basics. This is a great chapter that describes how VI6 can be used to develop databases. Some of the Web pages are built using DTC's. A couple of quick hits: at this stage, Mumford hasn't admitted that DTC's are ill suited for heavily trafficked sites. Nor does he mention that client-side DTC's expose all of the database connection information (including server name, user name, and password) within the HTML source that is sent to the browser.

Chapter 6 focuses on Client Side Script. After a brief admonition that JavaScript is a more suitable scripting language for use on the Internet, Mumford plows ahead and provides examples in VBScript. VI6 has some excellent tree controls for creating skeletal form handlers, and support for IE-specific DHTML. Of course, we aren't given a rigorous treatment of either scripting language. The chapter finishes up with using ActiveX controls, but fails to mention Java applets.

Chapter 7 is a decent introduction to Active Server Pages. Mumford touches upon the Response object, the Request object, and even the FileSystemObject. He discusses session state and briefly mentions server-side includes.

Chapter 8 revisits DTC's. The dirt finally comes out about them. I would advise you to avoid them altogether.

Chapter 9 is a good chapter about using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to connect to a database. VI6 can provide some of the same "IntelliSense" features that are available in Visual Basic.

Chapter 10 is a concise, high-level introduction to XML. VI6 does not have any native support for XML, but Mumford does a good job of presenting the benefits of this new standard. I found the exercise of embedding an island of XML data within an HTML document, and using client-side script to navigate its recordset to be very interesting.

Chapter 11 is an admonition to include error-handling routines in your programming. If the stars are properly aligned, you might even get the server-side scripting debugger to work.

Chapter 12 discusses the benefits of moving business logic code from the ASP's into COM objects. There are several worthwhile statements made throughout this chapter with regard to Web application design. A very preliminary introduction to MTS is provided.

Chapter 13 starts out well with many valuable comments about designing your Web application's architecture. It then bogs down with a cursory discussion about Visual SourceSafe, and wraps up with the "Visual Component Manager."

Chapter 14 is the last chapter, and it is a case study for an internal help desk Web application. This is a great example to work through. It typifies real-life development in a Microsoft environment: mostly hand-coded pages, no DTC's, themes, or site maps, using ADO, and creating COM objects.

The appendices are relatively useless. The Visual InterDev menu reference can be discerned within the application itself, and the HTML, VBScript, and JavaScript references can be readily found in a multitude of electronic and hard-bound locations.

A better title would have been "An Introduction to Visual InterDev 6," for that is the aim this book sets out to achieve. I believe this book accomplishes this task very well. However, a beginner who purchases this book with the expectation that she will be a full-fledged Web developer by its end will be sadly disappointed.

This book treads the borderline between a beginning and intermediate text - and succeeds. It starts somewhere close to the beginning by introducing the basics of web development using the Visual Interdev environment, and progresses to explain how to use COM objects to make your site more robust and responsive. The book is a good example of the Wrox Press "Microsoft Technologies" approach, and gives a thorough understanding of not just the Visual Interdev product, but also of the many technologies used in a professional web site, namely ASP, VBScript, JavaScript, databases, and COM. I would recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn this excellent product - it is well written and does not bog you down with unnecessary detail. It is clear, precise, and to the point. The examples are well thought out, and the book delivers all that it promises. Well done Wrox - once again!

I have to agree with the fact that the book is a little vague in places, however, if you are a beginning web programmer who has a little knowledge of the Microsoft development environment (Visual Studio, MS-SQL), then this is a really really good start. I have to give the book five stars when reviewing it in the context of a book for beginners.

Mumford does a thorough job of explaining net programming and Visual InterDev, plus he touches on everything from T-SQL to ASP and XML. What beginner could ask for a more comprehensive glance at web development? Also, the book takes a hands-on approach, so you'll actually build a little business2consumer website solution complete w/database support. If you think you may be a candidate for this book, then there is no question - buy it. If not, buy several books concentrating solely on individual topics.

I know HTML pretty well, but I wanted to learn the more advanced things that Interdev can do. The problem with this book, is that it tries to cover all the things Interdev can do: Javascript, VBscript, ASP, ActiveX etc., without providing any foundation of the topic being covered.

The method of his book is to have you type in example code, run them, and then explain to you how it worked. However, he does not provide any foundation to the subject being covered, such as syntax. For example, I did not know Javascript, and he takes straight into the example program. However, he does not tell you beforehand that Javascript is case-sensitive. So I wasted an hour trying to figure out why my program didn't work!

Because it's a beginners book, I expected it to "lay the foundation" before you start building the house, but he does not do that. The result is that it's no good for beginners because he doesn't teach you any foundational skills, and the intermediate programmer who could understand what he is saying would find his code too simplistic.

My last complaint about his book is that many of his examples simply did not work, especially in the database sections and Time control sections. I even imported his code that I downloaded from Wrox's web site, and it still did not work.

I gave it two stars instead of 1 because you can learn something from it, but there has to be a better book out there for the beginner.

This book is an excellent guide to developing Web Applications using VI6. It covers the necessary technologies such as Javascript, VBScript, ASP, and COM with enough detail to get you up ad running. It also looks at methods of programming that will stand up to the high demand of a production web site. All in all I thoroughly recommend this book.

I am a new web developer I do not have much web development experience and I find this book a very good starting book that takes you from ground up in a fast and easy manner. Although it does not cover the more advanced issues however this is very clear form the title.

It was my pleasure to review this book and I was amazed about the usefulness of the examples and how one example is worked out in all aspects. The book gives a complete overview of a feature rich product and takes the reader through it by one main example. I believe this book is very helpful for people that want to develop web applications beyond the use of Frontpage. Very recommendable book!

First of all, I know that one shouldn't judge a book by itscover, but the cover is horrible. The book just stares at you untilyou hide it with something. Very lame! This book is a pretty good introduction to the many and various technologies involved in making a professional web site with InterDev 6, except for the parts on JavaScript and VBScript, which will make you search elsewhere to learn how to do the simplest things. It is an excellent reference on InterDev itself. It does a good job of telling you what you want to know in a reasonable number of pages. The book is a lousy reference. Once you have learned to do something in the book, it will no longer help you. If you need this book for your job, you will end up giving it away after two weeks because it will have already outlived its usefulness. As a reference it leans too much on the examples, even considering the scope of the book. The examples are of limited use, because they don't always work, and you can only download the finished article. You can't start using an example in the middle of the book because you can't download the examples chapter by chapter.

This book may be fine for producing working web-pages, but it's pretty awful in these days of cross-browser applications.

Furthermore, the introduction of XHTML 1.0 renders almost all the code listings pretty worthless, unless you're familiar with the new standards and how to amend what's already there. As for bad habits, this book supplies them all in spades:

1) HTML pages with no <head> attribute.
2) HTML header tags with no namespace defines.
3) No explanation of DTDs or why pages these days at least follow the minimum necessary guidelines.
4) Unlosed tags.
5) attributes not quoted as string literals - and the book actually *recommends* this practise

and many many more. The actual VBScript/ASP section is relatively okay, but the author needs to pay more attention to the destruction of called objects, and stop using the ScriptLibrary, as it's almost never used commercially and is generally considered unstable and unsafe to run on any IIS server from which a fair degree of uptime is required.

In short, probably the best option for anyone wishing to learn ASP is to get the O'Reilly book on XHTML, make a few pages and get the hang of that side of things first, and then move straight to Wrox's Professional Active Server Pages 3.0