Customer Reviews

Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm not new to the visual basic language (I've done some work with VBA) but I was new to visual studio. I just have to say that this book is very easy to follow, it's very detailed, and it's a great place to start learning the language and the use of the IDE.

The author guides the reader in a very easy to follow style of writing. He also goes into detail to make sure that you understand what it is that he either wants you to do or wants you to understand. He also makes no assumption regarding your skill level and basically writes so that anyone can understand.

The only thing that I wasn't crazy about was that he sometimes repeats the same things over and over in every chapter. For example, "If the form is not visible when you load it, click on it in the Solutions box to make it visible." He'll say that for every project that you open. I guess it's ok because these little things really get pounded into your brain, but I found it just a little annoying.

Finally, he does demonstrate a lot of new features in Visual Studio 2008, so the book is great even for experienced users.

Michael H. is now an old hand at producing VB Step by Step books, and it shows. His treatment of the subject is thorough and to-the-point, as you can see by looking inside the book at the Table of Contents (above). His style is easy to follow, and your confidence level at the end will be high if you carefully follow his lead through this book. If his "Database and Web Programming" section at the end of the book doesn't pique your interest, nothing will. By inserting this section he shows you where VB 2008 is headed.

My biggest complaints are minor: 1) he wasted too much ink telling us how things were done back in the days of VB 6.0. Programmers have had about four years to get over that, Michael, but thanks for an otherwise very useful book, and 2) a few menu calls were to menu functions that don't exist. (That's inevitable when a book is based on pre-release software. None of the errors were difficult to overcome.)

I have now read the complete book. The good things about this Step by Step book are:
- It is written in good English.
- The lay-out is pleasing.
- The book is fairly compact having 544 pages.
- All the program samples work and the programming code in the book are correct.
- The book comes with a CD.
- It is suitable for a complete novice.
- It covers many areas of the Visual Basic programming.
- The chapter 20 about the web page programming is good.

The cons in the book are:
- In the beginning of every chapter there is too much repetition.
- Mr. Halvorson does not explain the underlying principles of the VB language or syntax. He only explains (in a limited way) the commands that are used in the specific examples but not how to access the full power of all the commands. Yes, this would have been somewhat outside of the scope of this book but now the reader is left hanging. The reader will learn some Visual Basic but not that much.
- The book and the examples are all done in the Microsoft Visual Studio environment which I consider a limiting factor.

In a summary: This is a good book but not excellent. It serves as a stepping stone. I am fairly pleased with it. Furthermore, I think that in general readers give books far too many stars. The extra-ordinary good text books reserving five stars are very rare.

I have found many books from this publisher (Microsoft Press) to be helpfull in learning a programming language. This title, "VB 2008- Step by Step", I've found to be a very good book to learn VB. Easy to read and understand (Better than the "Dummies" books). Would not use as my first book to learn VB from scratch. But if you know the basics. This is the book to get! A very good investment as well as a addition to your collection!

First, I'll start off with my background. When I was an engineering student, I took a few computer programming courses. First was an introductory class using the C language, second was an intermediate, and the third was on object oriented programming using C++. I learned a lot in these courses; now I forgot most, especially in regards to code.

I decided to get back into programming a hobby and decided to uses Visual Studio 2008. I chose to go the Visual Basic route and decided to buy this book as my first learning resource. It was a good decision and really enjoyed the book.

As a few mentioned, there is some repetition that can get annoying, but for going back to reference, it does help. This is a great primer for beginning programming and once completed, you should be able to write some basic programs that look and act nice. This book is a great stepping stone for reading the more advanced books on VB 2008. I recommend it for anybody new to programming

I am new to Visual Basic.
I've taken a couple of programming classes, but still have had a hard time grasping all of the little nuances.

I recently started as an intern working with developers in the medical field. I found myself completely overwhelmed and started buying and reading every programming book I could get my hands on, specifically Visual Basic.

This book is great! I'm half way through the book and haven't gotten lost yet! Halvorson walks the reader through each and every process and does it in the correct order. The order in which he presents the materal and the way engages the reader is critical to success! For the first time, I feel like I can jump in and get programming.

This is the best book if you are trying to learn Visual Basic!

I think this book is a useful tool for from-scratch beginners, which is pretty much what I was...but the author has a tendancy to repeat the same things over and over and over and over and over and over again from one chapter to the next, and the redundancy got kind of...really annoying. I guess once you learn how to sift through to find the pertinent information, it's a very useful book.

I'm almost to the very end of the book now and I must say Halvorson did a great job with this book. Someone here complained that he kept making references back to other things in the book. Well, yes. However, you gotta keep in mind if you pick this book up just to refresh yourself on a particular task, say learning Printing, you might need to also refer to an earlier part of the book for a particular aspect of programming that is used in Printing. Michael does an excellent job of making references to other stuff in the book just for this very reason. If you need only a particular part of programming, then you'll get it AND the references to other areas of coding in case you've forgotten how they work.

As far as I'm concerned this book is set up wonderfully for those who are new to the language as I was. I've dabbled in programming for years now but this was the first time I have tried my hand at developing Windows programs. Michael does quite well at not only explaining different points of the language, but he also gives excellent examples of how you can relate the coding to different Windows functions. I would most definitely recommend this book to anyone who is wanting to learn the Visual Basic language.

Bravo Michael! Bravo!

This book is great for starters and pro alike. But you need to keep your mind open as you do the exercises. For instance i encountered this problem while i was doing MyCheckBox exercise. The author gave the code in the book as

If CheckBox1.Checkstate = 1 Then
PictureBox1.Image = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile _
("c:\vb08sbs\chap03\calcultr")
PictureBox1.Visible =True
Else
PictureBox1.Visible = False
End IF

and

If CheckBox2.Checkstate = 1 Then
PictureBox2.Image = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile _
("c:\vb08sbs\chap03\copymach")
PictureBox2.Visible =True
Else
PictureBox2.Visible = False
End IF

I got this kind of message while trying to debug the program
"A first chance exception of type 'System.IO.FileNotFoundException' occurred in System.Drawing.dll"

the code should have been given as


If CheckBox1.Checkstate = 1 Then
PictureBox1.Image = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile _
("c:\vb08sbs\chap03\calcultr.bmp")
PictureBox1.Visible =True
Else
PictureBox1.Visible = False
End IF
and

If CheckBox2.Checkstate = 1 Then
PictureBox2.Image = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile _
("c:\vb08sbs\chap03\copymach.bmp")
PictureBox2.Visible =True
Else
PictureBox2.Visible = False
End IF

instead.I could not figure out the problem at first until i compared the code i wrote with that of the completed exercise the author gave.
Another minor problem i encountered was in chapter 4 pg 116. The author assumes that we all are using a Microsoft Office suite that has Microsoft publishers file,but it was not the case for me as I am using Microsoft Office student and home edition which does not have Microsoft publishers files, so i was not able to complete this exercise as i was supposed to.
Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step

This is a good book. I like detailed explanation of topics and concepts. Also the author gives many code examples. I am not totally new to the subject and read a few books for beginners. One thing is lacking from this book is the practical lab projects, which I found in another book titled Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Programming Fundamentals. I found those labs so usefull.