Customer Reviews

Visio® 2000 Bible

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

 

 

Visio 2000 Bible is a great book for users who want a better understanding of the basic features of Visio 2000. The book lacks is a covering of the features of Visio 2000 that are part of the Professional, Technical or Enterprise versions.

I was hoping that this book would cover features of the program that are included in the Professional and Enterprise editions.

I bought the book to learn of the features in the Enterprise edition, but not one mention of the features in the Enterprise edition was found.

The book coverage is meant more for people just learning about Visio than for people who are accomplished users of the Visio line of products

The job of the technical writer is to make life easier for the technical
reader. We get paid big bucks to express complicated concepts in the simplest
possible way. It's not an easy job, but what's the fun in an easy job?

Unfortunately, many writers of technical content have other priorities. If
their work is "comprehensive", if it describes all the things it's supposed to
describe, they feel they've done their job. Never mind if the result is a
confusing assemblage of seemingly random facts, hard to follow and hard to
place in context.

Mark Walker is a poster child for this syndrome. It's pretty obvious how he
wrote Visio 2000 Bible. He made a comprehensive list of Visio features and
wrote about them one by one. Every feature, regardless of importance, gets much
the same treatment. Only a few cross references show how related features work
together. Little effort is made to describe the features clearly or concisely.

Here's an example. "There are two ways to activate and set snap and glue.
First, you can use the Snap and Glue Toolbar buttons (as shown in Figure 10-8),
or you can select Tools -> Snap & Glue to adjust settings in the Snap & Glue
dialog box. The Snap & Glue Toolbar button and dialog box are interrelated, so
a change in one also is recorded in the other. The following exercise
demonstrates the relationship...:" Then there's a lengthy demonstration of how
toolbar and dialog work. Then there's a mini-essay on when you'd use the
toolbar and when you'd use the dialog. And *then*, there's a vague, confusing
description of what the toolbar and dialog box are *for*. The whole discussion
uses up a couple of pages, but boils down to four simple statements: (1)
there's a bunch of Visio options relating to the Snap feature or the Glue
feature; (2) Two of these options enable or disable the two features; (3) the
rest of the options control the way the two features work; (4) you can set
these options one at a time (with the Snap & Glue toolbar) or all at once (with
the Snap & Glue dialog).

The reader can be excused for asking, "Jeesh, why didn't he just *say* that?"
Well, boiling complicated details down to simple descriptions is hard work. I
sometimes have to attack a concept six different ways before I'm able to
describe it in a few brief sentences. Good technical prose can be pretty
exhausting to write. It also tends to be discouraged by bosses and publishers,
who too often judge writers by the quantity of their output, not its quality.

Still, a good writer can deal with these issues. You help people understand why
fewer words often means better content. You balance work quality against
personal limitations and unavoidable deadlines. It's not easy to do all this
and still make a decent living. That's especially true if you're working
independently. But is that an excuse for short-changing your readers?

This is a good book. It goes into detail in several areas. My main concern when looking for a book was to exploit the relationship between Visio and other Office applications like Access and Excel. I was also interested in the Wizards that come with Visio. This book was helpful to me in those areas. Since the last half of this book covers these advanced features I would say that its content takes the reader from elementary topics to the more advanced features of Visio. The next step after reading this book is the developers edition from Microsoft.

This book goes into detail that new users will be interested in as well. It explains the temples and shapes, how to edit them, how to set the properties for the page and other miscellaneous topics you need to get started. If you want to make a visual representation of some data that interacts with a spreadsheet or database, you can use this book for guidance and creative insite.

Thats right, if you are a beginer, then I would try something else. I bought this book thinking that being a "Bible" it would be perfect for me. As a Programmer I thought it would be easy to understand. This book is toooooo brief. It doesnt explain the funtionality of any of the stencils. It tells you only how to open them. I am going to have to return it. I bought this to develop a website map. The directions are soooo poor. I could not get the job done with this book. I strongly suggest getting something else. When I discover it, I will post another message. Good Luck, and sorry for negetive review, but Im just trying to save you the hassle. RGDS SS @ NYC

I enjoyed reading Visio 2000 Bible. I thought it was an extremely comprehensive book and I would highly recommend it for the beginner as well as the experienced user. Anyone using Visio 2000 would be well served in having this book as a source of reference.

The Visio 2000 Bible was well written, is evident that lots of research has gone into this project. I have used Mr. Walker'S books as resource materials in the past and the quality of this book rates with the others I have read.