Customer Reviews

Programming Microsoft Office 2000 Web Components (Microsoft Progamming Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I am the author of this book, and after talking with some of the negative reviewers have determined that they disliked the book because they thought it would be a programmer's reference to the controls. That is not what this book is.

The book is segmented into two parts: Part I explains the capabilities and design of each control, along with code examples showing how to accomplish the most basic taks with the control (e.g. putting data into them, simple formatting, etc.); Part II covers a number of solutions written with the controls, showing the reader how to program the controls in a specific context to accomplish specific tasks. The solutions presented in this section were the same scenarios we used to inform the design of the controls.

So while this book does contain information on writing script code against the controls, it is organized *topically*, and does not provide a general reference to the entire programming model. It is intended for readers who are not familiar with the components, and need a roadmap into their rather large and daunting programming model. This book is also for people who have some understanding of the controls, but then need help in understanding how to accomplish a common task (e.g. producing a chart GIF on the server, feeding real-time data to the chart, or posting the contents of the Spreadsheet to a server page). So if you are asking the questions, "what are these controls and what can they do?", or "how do I use them to make some particular solution?" then this book is for you. If you are asking "what are all the valid values for a given parameter in some particular method call?" then this book is not for you.

I hope that these comments will make the nature of this book more apparent so you may decide if this book will help you or not.

-dave stearns

This is definitly the most complete book about the O2K Web Components, but all that shows is how little information is available. There was very little explanation of how to do things. The book was mostly focused on telling you what the components can do and a few examples rather than how to do it. Most of the functionality in which I was really interested was quickly breezed over because there was "much more functionality than this chapter can cover". At less than 400 pages, I think they could've made the chapters large enough to cover a little more of the functionality. After going through the book, I have a better understanding of what the Office 2000 Web Components do, but I've still had to figure out mostly on my own how to do it all. In the end, I feel like I paid for a press release or spec sheet rather than an instruction manual.

I found the book to be very usefull in getting beyond the basics when programming the web components in Office 2000. The deployment section saved me a lot of time rolling the components out within my org.

This is probably the best book on OWC avaliable. This is mostly due to the fact that it's probably the *only* book on OWC available.

There's not substantially more information in the book than what is in the online help file. (And the book is nowhere near comprehensive as a reference) Much of the examples are extremely basic and do not delve into the actual issues that will be encountered developing anything other than a trivial OWC implementation.

If you're on an extremely tight schedule, need some basic OWC examples, and don't have time to read the documentation or search for examples on the web/MSDN, then this book may be helpful. Otherwise, save your money

Microsoft Press has some extremely good items in its catalog(Petzold, Richter, etc). However, this book is mostly just a thinly disguised marketing datasheet. Hopefully, O'Reilly will publish an OWC book.

From the title, I assumed that this would be a programming book. I don't know what I would call it except useless. My fault for not reading the other reviews. Anybody know of a good resource on this subject please contact me at activeinterface.com.

Nothing new here. All the information presented is available on the web..especially in the MSOWC.CHM help file that you can find in the Office directory. Definitely no shedding of new light on subjects like Pivot Table drill downs. The object model is not covered well and documentation is scarce.

This is probably the best book on OWC avaliable. This is mostly due to the fact that it's probably the *only* book on OWC available.

There's not substantially more information in the book than what is in the online help file. (And the book is nowhere near comprehensive as a reference) Much of the examples are extremely basic and do not delve into the actual issues that will be encountered developing anything other than a trivial OWC implementation.

If you're on an extremely tight schedule, need some basic OWC examples, and don't have time to read the documentation or search for examples on the web/MSDN, then this book may be helpful. Otherwise, save your money

Microsoft Press has some extremely good items in its catalog(Petzold, Richter, etc). However, this book is mostly just a thinly disguised marketing datasheet. Hopefully, O'Reilly will publish an OWC book.

Actually, With a short notice, we have been given a task of writing Intranet application with Excel as a reporting tool. So when we were looking for some material related to this subject, we have identified wonderful book which specialized in our requirements . i.e Programming MS Office 2000 Components. The best part is , It supports the latest version of Excel File (Excel 2000). It is with full of tips, sample codes and applications.It covers all type graphs too. It exactly suited our requirments and we achieved what we have been asked for. In fact I have sent an email to Dave Stearns expressing my thoughts. Also when i had an queries and doubts regarding some of my requirements, I have sent an email to Dave Stearns and he directed me in Proper direction. Thanks to Dave. Well Done Dave ! It is wonderful book for anyone who wants to work on Excel Sheets and Graphs . There is no doubt about it. I personally request Dave to write similar book to cover Netscape too. Dave, If you come across anything in future related to this, please write to me.

The book is a great starting point for getting into Office Web Components. The best thing for me was all of the sample code included with the book. We are mostly interested in using the PivotTable component to go after data in an OLAP cube. I was able to point the sample code at my cube and with very little tweaking get the sample applications using our data. Even when I encountered some problems with the sample code, the author was able help me out via email.

"Programming Microsoft Office 2000 Web Components" by Dave Stearns provides an excellent introduction for Web programmers to this new technology. The text takes the reader from the overview of Office Web Components (OWC) through the development and deployment of real world applications. The book is aimed at programmers familiar with Visual Basic Script. A knowledge Visual Basic is helpful in some areas of the book. Each of the code examples in the book clearly demonstrates the use of one (or more) OWC. I found that reading the book allowed me to come up to speed quickly on the use of individual or interconnected OWC components and use one or more of them in complex data-driven Web pages.