Customer Reviews

Essential Winlnet: Developing Applications Using the Windows Internet API with RAS, ISAPI, ASP, and COM

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was laid out very nicely and covered all the topics a developer needs to know in order to create Internet-enabled applications. And I agree with the other reviewers that it may be the best book on WinInet (isn't it the ONLY book?), can be used as a reference guide, and the asynchronous section was insightful.

However, for a developer who is trying to take these APIs in a new direction (really do some hard-core ATL with C++) with COM, I found the book a bit lacking. [Admittedly, this book was focused on applications, not objects]. I needed more information about creating UI-less COM objects and perhaps I was looking for this book to do more than it claims. For example, the pre-IE5 WinInet API set doesn't support UNICODE and that information is key to C++ COM developers.

Definitive Guide? Not quite.

If you're looking to do some hard-core COM development with WinInet, I'd stick with the WinInet Reference on Microsoft's site, grab a good ATL reference and go from there (espeically if you're someone who can pick up a new, relatively small API set quickly. There's really nothing to WinInet).

If you're just using VB to create your COM objects or application, then this book is a good resource.

Aaron Skonnard has accomplished quite a feat - he actually explained the intricacies of the WinInet API in a very understandable manner.

He showed not only the practical use of the API, but the underlying implementation; he explained the various protocols (HTTP, FTP and Gopher) well and the WinInet implementations of them. He discussed both the client and server side of the WinInet API and gave a great networking primer for anyone new to networking.

There have been several books that touched upon the WinInet API, but only dedicated a couple chapters to it. This book is the first resource that performs more than a general overview, in fact it provides all the information one would need to use the API in a professional environment.

As I develop Windows Internet applications, this book will find a permanent home on my desk!

This book gives you everything you need in order to effectively use the WinInet DLL. The coverage is very complete the explanations clear and the code examples relevant and nicely written. The HTTP, FTP, And Gopher protocols are covered using both the MFC wrapper classes and the WinInet DLL directly. An intermediate to advanced C++ windows programmer will have no trouble getting through this book, beginners stay away. You will also need to have a at least a basic understanding of MFC in order to get the most out of this book. A strong recommendation for those needing to use the communications capabilities of the WinInet DLL.

I was in a pinch. The client wanted automatic downloads of files from a web site AND an ftp site. What to do? I grabbed a copy of this book and got to it.

This book was an excellent resource for me to get started in Wininet programming. The only warning I will give about the book is that there is only one small chapter on using Wininet with VB. However, the conversion for basic funtionality is fairly simple and if you are this far, chances are good that you will be using C++ anyway.

Yes, you can read the on-line docs about Wininet, but this book covers the subject in a more comprehensive, organised manner. Great code samples. Good section on COM component categories. Improved my understanding of how the Internet and HTTP work.

I just got the book. I skimmed all chapters and read selected chapters. Note, this book is pretty old, but I think it still has practical value. The book talks about Windows 95 and NT 4, but more importantly, it talks about IE 4, which is the foundation of IE 5 and 6. I think the WinInet functionality began w/ IE4 and has not changed much, if at all.

The book does illustrate all examples in C++; however, there are enough non-language-specific *explanations* throughout the book to give it some value to everyone--I say this mainly because there are no other books on WinInet, at present, and clear explanations are not easily found on the Web. I know C++ so I cannot say how easy or hard it is to follow the examples if you don't know C++.

I'd love to see a newer book on this topic that would cover VB/C# .Net and IE 6, but until then, this book is my primary source for WinInet info.

If you know something about WinInet already, don't expect to learn new low-level tidbits or tricks. MSDN is all you need in the way of reference.

Buy it if you want a well-organized tutorial.

I used this book to navigate around the Windows Internet API and managed to put together a decent desk top application in C++.NET. Great. But the COM examples are so full of errors that they can not be compiled from the source code provided from the publisher. Now I'm not a super COM programmer but have put together COM applications with some success. However, it seems the author slapped together the COM chapter with little or no thought.

A handy book covering various aspects of the Internet protocols; sample application simple enough to illustrate the concepts.

If you want to learn WinInet programming, this will be a great start.

I bought this book while I had to research ISAPI but found coverage on ISAPI just adequate. Wish the author comes up with a second edition or print with more alternatives to ISAPI.

I was up and coding within a few hours of reading chapters 1 through 3. The clearly written source code demonstrates the principles and pitfalls of working with the API in no time at all.