Customer Reviews

Developing Microsoft .NET Controls with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Pro Developer)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is unusual in that, in addition to providing you with the information you actually bought the book for, you get lots of information about some pretty obscure .Net topics. Even better (assuming you're an experienced VB Developer), he doesn't waste so darn much space taking up topics you're already sick of reading about (controlling program flow, what is a class, and the like). He also mentioned in passing a couple of little gems in the SDK that I was unaware of. Of course, if you're not an experienced developer, why are you buying a book on controls? (save your money!) So John Connell gets a dozen stars for content.

The ugly: the book is poorly edited. There are a number of typographical errors, grammatical word omissions, etc. There are innumerable bugs in the book's code. There are also a number of omissions in the instructions, of a type such as instructing you to add a class without mentioning which component to add the class to, things like that. You'll want to get the download code from MSPress, so you can look at his code to see where he added a module, or whatever. Because I am an experienced developer, I found that the debugging required actually improved my learning (by keeping me awake), but I'm pretty sure an inexperienced programmer would get pretty frustrated. So: no stars to MSPress for the editing and testing of code! Bad job here, you guys, and considerably worse than the job you usually do.

If you already know how to program, buy this book!

While I've never built a control before, I need to build something for a client. After pre-ordering this, I was amazed to find out about designer verbs and designers in general. The Wizards of Redmond constructed the pieces to interact and really make building sophisticated controls easy for anyone that understands OO and VB.Net (which is what I use). I purchased and read Connell's other books so hoped this would be in a par. "Controls" takes you from soup to nuts - and even discusses sophisticated licensing so you can build a control and sell it. If you are new to controls, even though this covers some fairly complicated technology, Mr. Connell clearly explains how its used and provides tons of full examples. Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth. Personally, I found the book extremely useful even if I didnt need it as I do. The technologies he explains such as encryption, serialization, and isolated storage alone make this a valuable tool for any serious professional programmer.

I browse every new VB.Net book that comes out, and find that most are pretty much the same in terms of generalized content. This book is a refreshing change. Mr. Connell covers encryption with a handy control to encrypt your important files so that even governments can't crack them, let alone snooping co-workers. But he covers isolated storage, the control designer, custom designers, designer verbs, type editors, type converters, and other topics you just don't find elsewhere. Other topics such as serialization, control licensing, the advanced use of the ASP.NET datagrid, and of course building sophisticated controls for both the desktop and the web are well done. This book treads new and exciting ground, so you won't have to worry about not learning new concepts. There is fresh and incredibly useful material in each chapter. Even if you are not building controls today, this book will help you be a better all-round programmer in so many ways. I've read Mr. Connell's other books and enjoyed them - this was not a disappointment and for me worth the wait.

I have Connell's database book, and his other Microsoft Book on Coding Techniques. So, I purchased this book because I was so pleased with the other 2. This is excellent. If you wish to build a control - he covers both client and ASP.NET. And if you have a really good idea for a control, he goes into several advanced licensing techniques. Probably my favorite chapter is on encryption. I can see why Microsoft wanted Mr Connell to write another book. He has a keen sense of knowing what readers want and can explain his thoughts with crystal clearity.

I have to admit, I'm a bit biased in regard to Mr. Connell. His bought on Coding techniques is one of my favorites of all, and I have a lot of .NET books. He has the incredible ability to make reading his stuff fun and get you thinking. He never goes off on tangents and really knows how to communicate his material.

Creating controls is certainly something most developers will have to do...many times you have to do it a bunch. He has created many controls that I have myself (although he has some more interesting implementations), but the "Why" behind it really gets you thinking. he also has a lot of controls I never thought of, but have put into practice already. I had the book for about an hour before I put it down b/c I saw a ton of places to use his ideas in an app I was working on.

Then he makes the case for component based programming in general. Sure, we all know we should re-use stuff. But many of us get in a hurry and forget to build things specifically with re-use in mind. I wont' make that mistake again.

I can't say enough about this book, but you'll definitely like it. After i got a copy of it, the rest of my department eventually got a copy b/c everyone wanted to borrow it because of it's killer content. Everyone else shared my sentiments.

I only wish John would quit his day job and write more books, few people do it as well as he does.

This was an excellent book for VB.NET Windows Applications (all examples were for windows, but the principals and some of the code would work for the web) in using Editors, Type Converters, Designers; a lot of the advanced topics.

Talking directly about ASP.NET and mobile applications was lacking a lot, in my opinion, but overall still I thought it was a great book to teach more advanced topics useful at design time.

As another reviewer mentioned, this book is exceptional many ways. If you have never heard of a custom designer, isolated storage, custom editors, type converters, advanced use of attributes and serialization, use of encryption, using raw GDI+, designer verbs, etc., if you are like me you will probably find this book useful. I have been using .net since 2/2002 and thought I knew my way around the framework. But I didnt realize another hidden universe of capablity regarding custom controls. Each chapter develops new and mostly useful controls you can place on your tool palette. One example in particular lets you inherit a stock textbox, and add an extender to allow it of validate a phone number, email address, url, or other input with regular expressions. No need to rewrite this boring code over and over. Click this on your toolbox and you have a new control. Or you might want to add / remove properties from a new or existing control. If you have been using ASP.NET, a simple program shows you how to decrypt the Viewstate. Complete programs on control licensing show how to use various techniques to usethe licensing object and the registry or XML to handle piracy. The thing I like is that each chapter has one or more full programs that are targeted at program designers. For example, sorting a listbox in VB6 was easy, but in .net it's ASCII only. Connell shows how to build a .dll to sort in numeric, date, or any other sort order. While you would think this is built in - it's not?? which makes the stock control limited for all but the most trivial use. Anyway, I liked the book for those reasons. Some sections could be longer and others shorter - but on balance it's well written and you are probably guaratneed to learn more from this book than many of the others filling the bookshelves. One thing I have to say is that now I "think" about developing my own custom controls - either for work use or for sale to other developers. I never thought like this before, so for this alone it was worth the read.

I found the encryption control fascinating. While encryption is the up and coming area, I never realized you could do something this sophisticated. It's easy to see how this nifty control can be added to many of my programs. And the technique of hashing a key from a PW is elegant. Also, the concept of Isolated Storage was presented and covered in depth - another area that was new to me. The book is loaded with useful tips such as something I always wondered about - why do my VB forms and controls look flat on XP, when my browser and other programs sport the XP colorful look? All that is missing is a simple manifest and property settings. Cool. I was also impressed with the wireless and pocketPC programming. Oh, and then there is the advanced datagrid which shows how to make that sing. I wish the book were twice the size. Good stuff - I read it cover to cover in less than three days.

If you think you know the framework, I suggest you take a look at Mr. Connell's book. He covers many undercovered areas in great detail. Isolated storage and encryption come to mind. In short, if you are looking for new material, I highly recommend this book. Its on a par with Mr. Connell's .Net Coding Techniques.

I have Connell's "Beginning VB6 Database" book which I found to be pretty valuable.

"Developing Microsoft .Net Controls" is better written but lacks enough meat, especially for ASP.Net programmers where it is way too sparse.

Here's the basic problem. The book is 10 chapters long. Chapter 1 is pretty much controls 101. Then there's Chapter 2 explaining the WinForm controls shipping with Visual Studio. And we can't forget Chapter 9 explaining WebForm controls that ship with Visual Studio. Oh, I didn't mention Chapter 3 is "advanced" use of WinForm controls that ship with Visual Studio. These chapters are just as long as all the rest meaning 40% of the book has nothing to do with developing custom controls!

There is some hard to find elsewhere meat on topics like licensing controls but for many coders today developing advanced web forms on intranets, there's only one rushed chapter that's useful on ASP.Net custom controls that competes with mobile and user controls for space. Which leaves us with a rather bare page counter example to build upon for advanced real world development. I outgrew the page counter example with my first try at developing a useful custom control.

I rate it 2 stars because I'm primarily a web developer. WinForm developers may get enough out of it to raise it to 3 stars.