Customer Reviews

VBScript Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I am not normally a fan of multi-author text books. Unless they are very carefully edited, you wind up getting beat up with words, hearing 3 or 4 different renditions of the same material.

But I found "VBScript Programmer's Reference to be a useful book. I appreciated the section on Remote Scripting, which I put to good use in an intranet (MSIE5) web development project.

Anyone getting started in web development will find a maze of rapidly emerging software technologies to sort through. I encountered two problems that I simply did not know how to address. So I e-mailed a few of the authors of the text, hoping to get a reply.

To my surprise and delight, each one responded to my request and got me moving forward! I know that WROX cannot promise this kind of followup from all authors for all of its texts, but the folks who wrote VBScript are good guys who want to help. For the book and the remarkable followup they deserve at least 5-stars.

This is far more than the standard reference book I'm used to. This is a tome of immeasurable quality. I was expecting a dry and cold text that I would refer to occassionaly; instead I got an excellent tutorial. The first 4 chapters define all the basics, and then there follow chapters on WSH, HTA's, COM, ADO, and many other topics that I wouldn't expect a reference book to cover.

The book also has 12 appendix chapters which go far beyond my expectations. All-in-all a very thorough, well written and reasonably priced book.

In this day and age, finding good CURRENT books on VBScript is becoming more and more of a holy quest. In the last year, only two come to mind: this book by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes et al (Oct. 99) and VBScript in a Nutshell by Paul Lomax (April 2000).

Well, I have both of these books. They are both very very good and both are very deserving of their overall high ratings.

Even so, I find myself using the VBScript Programmer's Reference a bit more than the other book. It is very comprehensive, very clear and I find myself having to pull it off the shelf time and time again. It's that good.

So, VBScripters out there, I recommend that if you only have enough money for two books on VBScript, purchase VBScript Programmer's Reference and VBScript in a Nutshell. I recommend that you buy VBScript Programmer's Reference first!

This book isn't a reference in the way you would think, but it is good at showing you real world examples of how you'll end up using VBScript. If they really only wanted a reference book they would have just published the pages from Appendix A, which is the part of the book I end up referring to most, but not having an index makes it difficult. Overall, a good reference - not on the language itself, but on its implementation and uses.

This is an outstanding book. At first I was confused by some of the older reviews, until I realized that Amazon is still selling the old 1st edition, and many folks are buying that one instead of the newer, much better Second Edition.

Be sure you're buying the Second Edition! That book's ISBN is 0764559931. It's the one with the picture of three authors on the cover.

Other glowing recommendations are all accurate. HOWEVER, the book is not really a VBScript reference, it is more of a "How to Implement VBScript" manual. The entire VBScript functions reference is contained in an appendix, and (here is the REALLY annoying part) that appendix is not indexed! So, if you want to find the proper syntax for the 'Mid' statement (the sort of thing for which one might expect to turn to their VBScript Reference), do not bother going to the index and trying to look up 'Mid'. It's not there. Nor are the other VBScript functions. Instead you need to find the appendix, and skim through it to find what you need. Not a fatal flaw, but extremely annoying.

If the rest of it were not so good I would have given this one star.

I've been building sites for 3 years using JavaScript, but recently was commissioned to build a site using VBScript and ASP. I bought this book and ASP 2.0 by Wrox.

The first 4 chapters of this book taught me sufficient VBScript to create a custom site virtually from nothing.

There are 4 great COM chapters that were invaluable to me.

I was so impressed that I bought a copy for each of my team. They all love the book too.

The book starts with a strange 'Introduction to Programming' chapter, which is for people who don't know what a variable is (good thing _that's_ in a language reference book!) Meanwhile, there is no 'Introduction to VBScript' chapter. I found it very difficult to find simple information on syntax and keywords (just try to find anything on function return types or declaring arrays...) The main Appendix, which contains lots of valuable information, is organized randomly by arcane subjects (and there's no listing of the subjects) so it's difficult to find anything. It also seems to be lifted out of a VB book and contains things that aren't even supported in VBScript.

The range of topics covered is useful if you're trying to decide whether VBScript is right for your project . But if you're just trying to write Active Server Pages, I recommend skipping this book and getting 'Beginning ASP' by Wrox -- it uses VBScript exclusively and has a better introduction to the syntax and usage of the language.

I was looking for a VBScript reference book for work. One which I could use to look up a command/function in the index and find examples of the syntax within the book. In this respect the book was a total let down.
I would consider this book to be a good introduction to the capabilities of VBScript, since it covers a wide variety of VBS topics (though not with much detail).
Don't let the title fool you -- this is anything but a Programmer's Reference. Even fairly basic functions like left, mid and right are not found in the index.

Although there are many books on scripting, there are only a handful of books about VBScript. Of those that do focus on VBScript, many pages are devoted to server-side web scripting with active server pages, which is amply covered by the many titles on ASP. This book by contrast is current, complete, and packed with chapters about all the cool things you can do with VBScript, including COM objects and how to write your own, regular expressions, HTML applications (*very* cool), ADO, how to build the Script Control into your applications, and yes, ASP. That's the first 500 pages. The remaining 280+ pages are references and appendices that add depth. I have seen no other reference in print or online from Microsoft that goes to these lengths to elucidate what can be done with VBScript.
The writing style is very approachable, and the Wrox Press model of a team of qualified people tackling different topics works very well (11 authors and 7 technical reviewers). These people really know the topics, and the book is well edited. An excellent value.