Customer Reviews

Visio 2000: The Official Guide

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This book is an excellent guide to Visio 2000 for the complete beginner, as well as a useful reference for those who have used earlier versions of Visio. Unlike most books of this type, "Visio 2000: The Official Guide" is not a simple typesetting of the program's online help system. In fact, I found the book considerably more informative than the online help, not to mention easier to navigate. Knottingham and Hedtke guide the reader through all of the commonly-used features of Visio (and a few less frequently accessed features, like creating shapes from scratch and importing databases), providing simple, easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, which should serve to make Visio 2000 understandable even to computer novices. I've used earlier versions of Visio on an infrequent basis, and this book helped refresh my memory about how things are done in Visio, as well as providing an excellent head start into learning the new features in Visio 2000. The illustrations in "Visio 2000: The Official Guide" are extremely helpful, particularly in describing a program that is as visually-oriented as Visio. I've read a number of 3rd-party computer books whose illustrations are merely page filler, but that's not the case with this book. The entire book is attractive and laid out well, letting the reader find specific information quickly and easily. The authors explain Visio 2000 features without a lot of excess and confusing verbage. Though it may annoy some more experienced computer users to have every single little click outlined in each series of instructions, it means that readers can find answers to specific problems without having to wade through entire chapters to find what they're looking for; simply turn to the index, go to the right page, and all the steps are clearly outlined, no matter where they occur in the book. Likewise, the book does an excellent job of describing Visio-specific concepts and terms. Overall, this book is an invaluable companion to Visio 2000.

"You'll learn everything about Visio 2000" except what is really worth to learn! Don't expect much from this "official reference". If you are trying to find an absolute beginners book, not going too far in depth, it may be better than the online help (in some cases). I bought this book because I needed immediately a book about Visio2000 and it (unfortunately) was the only one. Know I just have ordered "Professional Development with Visio 2000" and I hope I will find there how to *really* take out from Visio2000 what there is to get. (I'll review it afterwards too.) I found this book not well written, much too superficial and with typos just where it was most important (Connection Tools for instance). The things explained are self-explaining for most of them. For example about grouping shapes: just how to group and ungroup. Nothing about all the options which are allowing one to have a correct control over the grouped object. And what if you want to merge two objects e. g. only having one, not a group? (It would be then centered not according to te group center but according to the biggest object in the former group...) Many little but very important options linked with stick and glue for example are just presented in 1 or 2 lines, leaving you the pleasure to try out dozen of times by yourself, if you want to understand the subtility. When I buy a book I expect a little more than: "to select the tool x, move the mouse over the button y and click once..." I guess you see what I mean... :)

I found this book to a lot of hype and not much delivery. In Chapter 6, the authors spend two whole pages on how to add graphics to Microsoft Word. This is one of the main reasons one would choose Visio. They list the options one may select, but never actually tell you how to accomplish the act!! The index in the back is also difficult to use, hard to find the topics one is looking for - or this may actually be a reflection of the book being incomplete. I have learned more about Visio on my own than by reading, using, or attempting to look up a reference in Hedtke & Knottingham's "Official" guide.

This book is OK for beginners who have little to no experience with other graphics programes (i.e. Publisher, Illustrator), but it simply glosses the more advanced features. For example, the books states, almost like an ad, that you can link to Access and Project, but gives useless explanations as to how these tasks are done and no examples or explanation on why you would do it. These advanced features are the very reason you would use Visio in the first place.

if you want to waste youre time bay this book.