Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic 6 [Paperback]

Peter Norton (Author), Michael Groh (Author)

Book Description

Series: Peter Norton (Sams) | Publication Date: September 9, 1998

Peter Norton's books are well-known for their rapid, tour guide approach: a hands-on overview of the possibilities of the programming environment that does not burden the impatient reader with excessive technical baggage at the outset of his voyage of discovery. Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic X teaches all the complexities of application design in an easy-to-understand style that experienced computer users will appreciate. The book covers both the Standard and Professional editions of Visual Basic.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're looking to try your hand at programming, Visual Basic is a good choice. Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic 6, by Peter Norton and Michael Groh, provides an introduction to this important development environment. The book is targeted toward new programmers and those with some coding background from other languages.

This 790-page book provides an excellent balance of tutorial information and practical examples of how to leverage the power of Visual Basic. The first 12 chapters provide an overview of the Visual Basic environment and the basics of object-oriented programming. Prudent use of annotated screen shots and diagrams, along with step-by-step coverage of basic terms and concepts, makes this first portion of the book very effective.

The text then moves into discussions of printing, file input/output, and data control. The authors cover all of the important aspects of data control and the Microsoft Jet database engine. The book also includes substantial discussion of how to interface Visual Basic with Microsoft Office 97, Outlook 97, and Internet Explorer--topics usually lacking in introductory texts.

A companion CD-ROM contains much of the example code in the book, as well as third-party utilities. If you're new to Visual Basic and have high hopes of becoming a serious developer, this title will take you much of the way. --Stephen Plain

From the Back Cover

Peter Norton's books are well-known for their rapid, tour guide approach: a hands-on overview of the possibilities of the programming environment that does not burden the impatient reader with excessive technical baggage at the outset of his voyage of discovery. Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic X teaches all the complexities of application design in an easy-to-understand style that experienced computer users will appreciate. The book covers both the Standard and Professional editions of Visual Basic.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 816 pages
• Publisher: Sams (September 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672310546
• ISBN-13: 978-0672310546
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,076,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic 6, November 25, 1999

By 

Robert Skoog (Grand Rapids, Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic 6 (Paperback)

My first mistake was to purchase this book at Barnes and Noble.....for $5.00 more...without the benefit of Amazon's Reader Reviews. It was mid-way through chapter 2 when I begain to seriously question.... WHO WROTE THIS THING! The editing errors I ran into previously bothered me, but not to the point of giving up on the book. But the disjointed presentation of the material really got to me in chapters 2, 3, and 4. This book is a classic example of a cut and paste assemblage of not very well written bits of information on VB6. Then I did what I should have done before I bought the book...read the acknowledgements. According to my calculations, Peter Norton did not write any of this book. Michael Groh, who assumes that responsibility, actually wrote only 13 of the 28 chapters (46%) (including 1,3 and 4). I was primarily upset because I purchased the book largely based on Peter Norton's reputation for writing good software AND good books. Regardless of Norton's lack of input, the book should still rise to some base level of instruction. Well, it does do that, but in doing so it also lowers the base.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unorganized book that simply glossed over key concepts, March 30, 1999

By 

Stanley Carter (Abingdon, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic 6 (Paperback)

This book was nothing more than a collection of ambiguous, unorganized "general information" about Visual Basic 6. This book seemed to "wander and meander" from a starting point to an ending point with no discernable focus or objective. It did little more than gloss over most of the important Visual Basic 6 components and concepts; some key topics were hardly discussed at all. It seemed to me that most of the "usable" information contained in this book came directly from the the VB6 Help files. I am tremendously disappointed with this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A walk on the beach, for those who would rather swim, October 24, 2000

By 

Brian Donnelly (Tigard, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic 6 (Paperback)

I have to agree with the other not so exceptional reviews of this book. It was informative to me - only because I knew nothing about VB. Once you read the first couple of chapters you get pretty much all you need to understand the VB UI. But then he goes on and on about it covering every control and its function and never really gets into the stuff that interested me. Like umm, CODE EXAMPLES.
To its credit, this book does cover all of the areas that you should know about when developing in VB i.e. COM and DCOM but he doesn't go in depth enough to allow the reader to understand what they are.
This book needs to take the O'Reilly cookbook approach to teaching. It is a good introduction but it only skims the bare surface of what an aspiring programmer would need to get going.
To reiterate, a good intro but if you want to go swimming, try another book and a new swimsuit.