Customer Reviews

Professional Visual Basic 6 Web Programming

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

 

 

I have to agree with previous reviewers, this book DOES cover quite a bit. From DHTML to IIS Applications, but it has to be considered a beginner to intermediate book on Web programming in VB6. Even though the long-term viability of Web Classes is under question, the utter lack of any quality material on the ONE thing Microsoft touts as "Web" enabled in VB6 is extremely disappointing for a book so expensive. You can debug problems with your objects in VB6 with WebClasses that you can't perform with an ASP page and a compiled dll. Do they even mention this? No.

For the interested, you can find most of the material discussed in this book by simply looking on MSDN or other web sites for articles on the subjects you're interested in. With multiple authors, that's all you will get out of this book, anyway.

I have 4 years VB programming experience, but after read 7 chapters of this book, I'm still feel confusing. Everything are talked a little bit, but nothing is discussed in detail.
Each chapter is not well connected, this not like a book but like a huge magazine with a bunch of articles -- too many authers can mess up a good name book. They seems never talk to each other before and after writing this book. for examble, in beginning of chapter 9, it says: "By now you have learned how Active Server Page (ASP) use components." -- False! I never learned, at least in this book!
In chapter 6 -- DHTML Application. The example application is only working in VB IDE even after making the package. It's either the author's problem or Microsoft's problem.
As a "Professional VB Web programming book", it neither explains how to deploy a Web application well in general, nor teach you programming in detail.
This book turns me to read other ASP book.

I was looking for solid examples of WebClass programming, and I thought this book had it. Boy was I disappointed! 100+ pages on general background, much of it going in circles the way material like that seems to, then a scant few pages giving one very anemic and sketchy example of a WebClass project. I bought this book on the strength of the other reviews here. Maybe it is strong in other areas and my investment will prove not to be a waste in the long run...I don't know yet. Just don't expect to get WebClass fluent from it!

This book covers it all. I was looking for a book the thoroughly covered VB IIS Applications. I found only 2, each dedicating only 1 chapter to the subject. This book not only covers IIS Applications in detail, it also covers DHTML apps in detail as well. It also shows how to incorporate MTS, MSMQ, ADO and other technologies into your VB web apps. A highly detailed chapter on ASP, 4 well thought out case studies and appendixes including HTML Tags, VBScript and Jscript Tutorials, VBScript Reference, Configuring IIS4, ADO, MTS and MSMQ among others completes this book. An absolute MUST for any serious VB Programmer doing any kind of web development.

This book does covers alot of things that you can do with VB6. The authors stress the Microsoft DNA architecture of MTS, MSMQ, etc... and the IIS Applications based upon WebClasses, but fail to provide quality examples of WebClasses with MTS system calls.

I wrote a review of VB6 Web four months ago, and have since gained a greater appreciation of the book. I was frustrated that it didn't have more WebClass material. I've realized I can't really fault it for that - WebClasses are very new, and nobody has much material on the subject. I've since gone through a book specifically on WebClasses, and it didn't really give much more basic information on the subject than VB6 Web did.

I've come to appreciate VB6 Web as a comprehensive reference on web programming in Visual Basic. The web development company where I now work uses VB6 Web as an essential reference in our weekly technology study sessions.

I rated this 5 stars because it has the most useful writeup on writing Server Components in VB for use with ASP - chapters 9-11. I wanted to do this and had trouble getting working samples and explanations. I feel that industrial strength ASP is very ugly and unweildy if you don't encapsulate the code into components. MSDN has lots of reference material about this but little, if any, useful "how to" stuff that i could find.

This book showed me how to do exactly what i wanted to do.

Other than that, it is a good introduction into a good number of web concepts, old and new. The first 3 chapters were a good overview of Microsoft web concepts and techniques. The writeup on web classes, if you like them, is good. I really liked the CGI case study including how to implement standard input/output via the win32 API.

The relatively free use of various win32 API functions in VB help overcome a general fear of mixing VB and CC++ functionality.

The book was a bit large but was well organized. In general it gave me a much higher opinion of Wrox books.

If you are just starting to use ASP and have access to a MS SQL server, then this is a good read. However, don't even consider it if you have any previous APS experience or don't have access to a SQL server. In fact, there is no mention of MS Access in the entire book! It is pratically usesless as a reference for ASP and just sits and gathers dust.

I have 4 years VB programming experience, but after read 7 chapters of this book, I'm still feel confusing. Everything are talked a little bit, but nothing is discussed in detail.
Each chapter is not well connected, this not like a book but like a huge magazine with a bunch of articles -- too many authers can mess up a good name book. They seems never talk to each other before and after writing this book. for examble, in beginning of chapter 9, it says: "By now you have learned how Active Server Page (ASP) use components. In the next two chapters, we will focus on ... (something base on use components)" -- False! I never learned, at least in this book!
In chapter 6 -- DHTML Application. The example application is only working in VB IDE even after making the package. It's either the author's problem or Microsoft's problem.
As a "Professional VB Web programming book", it neither explains how to deploy a Web application well in general, nor teach you programming in detail.
This book turns me to other ASP books.

This book is geared towards someone new to VB. None of the chapters get into very much detail, and the examples are kept so simple as to be useless. Extremely frequent typos, spelling errors, and missing words make reading it a chore.