Customer Reviews

Visual Basic 6 Black Book: The Only Book You'll Need on Visual Basic

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have had this book for about 6 months and while I do find that it is a very good reference book, I definately agree it lacks depth. Most applications that I deal with are database applications and to only dedicate two small chapters to databases while dedicating hundreds of pages to simple objects like forms and text boxes is kindof useless for me.

If you are trying to learn VB and want a good reference book, this is the book for you. However, if you are an experienced VB Programmer who is looking for a book to cover in depth advanced topics, then consider another book. I would recommend most of the titles by WROX for that purpose.

The Black Book is an excellent resource guide for VB6 programming. Note that this is not the type of material you would simply sit down and read. The author has tried to cram as much material as possible into "just-the-facts-and-a-quick-demo" style chunks. This means that you generally need to know what it is you are looking for in the first place. What makes it so great is that you can find an example and an explanation of most any type of control or process that you need, quickly and clearly. The author has even gone a step further, demonstrating such things as image manipulation and ActiveX development. ActiveX documents and DHTML are also covered. This book is not for beginners, but intermediate to advanced users will enjoy it's brevity and depth.

Visual Basic 6 Black Book is intended to be a reference book. As a reference book, it does the job wonderfully. I think that some of the people on here are not giving this book a good review because I believe that they were intending on using this book as a how-to.

A few evenings a week, I am an IT professor for a local university (by day, I'm a software engineer), and I highly recommend this book to my VB students as a REFERENCE book, not as a HOW-TO book. For the beginners learning VB, check out either the Visual Basic books from Course Technologies publishing or the Visual Basic books from WROX press.

I do agree that this book does not give much detail on database programming. Visual Basic is often used for PC-based applications with databases. Maybe for the next edition, there will be more on database programming. Again, I recommend the books from WROX press for serious database programming, and I also recommend books from Microsoft Press for VB programming with SQL Server. For "freebie" information, check out Microsoft's MSDN site for serious database programming information.

I am actually purchasing this book again because a student in one of my previous classes stole my original copy (c'est la vie!).

I don't know how any of you rated this book a 1 star, unless you're some student who hasn't worked with VB before. The purpose of the book is to give you fast results, especially during situations where you have deadlines. Some of us don't have the time to write hundreds of lines of code to perform a simple task, this book gets to the point. A must have for computer consultants as well as software developers.

I thought that this book gives a good overview of most of the main programming essentials and an especially good overview of all the current VB controls which I haven't found in other books. I saw it not so much of an overall course in how to programme VB but more as useful reference to specific VB programming methods. The only negative aspect of the book is a lack of depth in each subject tackled although I think that this is an acceptable compromise given the range of topics considered. Basically this book is good reference material for someone already experienced in VB but wouldn't be much use to a beginner.

Personally I use this book day in and day out. I find it indispensable for finding out ways to do things in Visual Basic that I previously did not know how to do. It is well laid out and easy to follow, two things to look for when buying a programmers refrence. Without this book at my side everyday it is doubtful I could complete projects in the time that I do. Great book that should be on every programmers bookshelf.

I have bought about 5 books on Visual Basic 6.0 for beginners. The Step by Step books are good, but this book has an organization and topics that none of the beginning books have. It is a great book and I'll be looking for this author.

Particularly after reading many of the rave reviews here, I have been somewhat disappointed with the Black Book.

I was surprised, for example, to see virtually no coverage or explanation of the printer object. Also, in the section on File Handling, the requirement for the FreeFile function is covered as kind of an afterthought (as a tip).

The above are merely examples. Clearly the book provides lots of helpful information; but in my view, some material is given disappointedly short shrift. For $50, I was expecting more.

Although it's quite a bit more a beginner's book and doesn't provide nearly the breadth of the Black Book, I found "Paul Sheriff Teaches Visual Basic" to be well done and a far better value at $20.

A similar book, and somewhat more comprehensive, is "VB6 From the Ground Up" -- probably the best beginner's book I've seen.

This is the best reference book I've found for working Visual Basic programmers. It assumes that you already have some knowledge of the language. If you want to learn VB, or want to explore a particular object/theory/control in some depth, look elsewhere. If you want an example of how to code such-and-such a thing, you'll like the (mostly) real-world examples and code snippets. This is the one I pull off the bookshelf when I get bogged down in code. Let's hope there's going to be a VB.NET Black Book next year.

I use VB6.0 Professional. I went to the web help sights. I bought alot of other books that gave me more theory than education. Most books did not cover MCI (that's what I needed). They didn't cover passwords, web building with vb. This book saved me hours of hair pulling and search time. It comes with a cd that is for the most part compatable. Little code changes, which is expected since you need to write it yourself. The book actually has a reality that makes your programming work the way you want it to. Some sections I skipped and I'll keep the book on hand if I need to accomplish a project.
START WITH THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE NEW TO VB, PERIOD.
I paid full price and it's been worth every penny.