Customer Reviews

Win32 API Programming with Visual Basic

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

 

 

This is a great VB API book. I think it ranks up there with Appleman's books. But this book is different. It is actually fun to read and yet at the same time it covers the important detail. Somehow it makes the details easy to read and fun.

This book does a GREAT job of going behind the scenes in the Windows operating system. There's lots of good information about how Windows manages things and then how to work around this.

There is an interesting and informed disussion of BSTR's. The author reviews the history of VB3's strings vs. VB4 and higher strings. He also covers the interesting aspects of overcoming VB's limitations of not having signed numbers. His discussion of two's complement storage was really interesting.

Where Appleman is encyclopedic, this author goes into deep detail but makes it interesting. It is not one of those simple books with the focus of "here's how to make 500 API calls that might be interesting."

This book is VB centric in that it explains the differences between the VB world and the Win32/VC++ world. Then you get this great feeling of insight as to why VB does the things it does.

I recommend this book highly, and also recommend the Appleman books. They're different kinds of animals.

First, let me say that this is an excellent reference on the Windows API. I highly reccomend it. That being said, the example source code in this book is not of top-notch quality. The author frequently uses vague variable names such as A-Z, lng, and the like. In fact, it looks like he was trying to program like he would in C in VB. Yes, the source code is understandable, but only after long decipherations. I would give it a 5 if the author had taken more time in his source.

Most programmers and teachers of programmers have to get beyond Wizards. Usually this has meant in-depth coverage of C++ or C and the Windows API. This book helped me to see how to use the API in Visual Basic. Like most O'Reilly books, a good bit of it is reference, which is helpful to me.

This book in no way is a reference book or a how-to book. This book is designed for people who don't have previous knowledge about windows architecture and windows API.

I find this book as a fantastic tool since it gives me initiative and direction to understand the overall picture. I can use the knowledge that I gained in this book and know what I can do with win32 API. I also purchased the dan appleman's book for win32 api which consists of more examples and it is more a reference book .

If you have not programmed in win32 before --> this is the book for you.

This is a very hard book (for VB programmer with no C experience) BY NECESSITY.
Normally, you would like the programming book to have some explanation and plenty of code examples. In the case of Win32 API
for VB programmer, once you get all the intricacies, you just need to find the API function from API viewer applet that comes with Visual Studio.
Why is the book hard by necessity?
C and VB have enough differences (e.g. variable type size differences, signed and unsigned type differences etc) to make the interoperability of languages difficult. Add to this the complexity of the Windows architecture itself and C + VB + WIN32
becomes much more complex, than just C + Win32, which makes me wonder, why use VB at all, if you are planning to make an extensive use of WIN32. Much easier to code in C or C++!
Back to the book.
It does excellent job explaining C + VB + Win32 API interaction
thoroughly. He leaves no stone unturned. If you absorb the book cover to cover, you can consider yourself guru in the area.
You want need anything else than API function declarations.
In short, this is a book for ONLY DEDICATED, serious programmer, intending not just to spice up his code with occasional API calls, but ending up with FULL UNDERSTANDING OF ALL ISSUES.

This book focuses on the Win32 API from a WinNT/9x standpoint, highlighting the differences between the two in a clear and concise way. If you are doing development on a Win2K box, however, then this book is probably not the best resource. The sections on the differences between WinNT and Win9x are largely irrelevant now, but the book is still a good resource for understanding how Windows works behind the scenes. If this book is updated to include current information, I would definately buy it again.

In a manageable sized book, covers a difficult topic very well. I like that fact it maintains the standard Oreilly size instead of making it an encyclopedia. It is an easy read. Another good oreilly book.

The book is old but it gives a good explanation on how to implement win32 API programming techniques in basic and also explains how this whole idea works. It seems to be useful for a beginner, later one can extend this knowledge in more recent and modern implementation of the same idea.
The Book I purchased was a used one but it was clean and arrived fast. For this reason I would consider a very good rating point for the provider.

I would beware of ordering this through Amazon. I have had to return this book after several attempts of getting the order right. They keep sending me the book without the CD-Rom.. yet the cover and their site states one is included.

First, this seems like mostly a C book, not a VB book as the title implies. Sure, the C structures and function call variables are usually provided w/translations (but not always!). And there is a whole chapter on VB strings. But I got the impression the author doesn't know a ton about VB and why a VB programmer might want/need to concern himself with the API function calls. This didn't phase me a ton because I know C, but I thought a lot of the text wasn't much about VB at all.

First-and-a-half, the author is running Windows NT, so if you're like me and on Win 95/98 you may at times feel like you're being left out. He does go to some lengths to compare and point out the differences between the two OS's, but (again) I felt like he was a C/NT programmer rather than a VB/9x programmer.

Second, even though the intro says its for both VB5 and VB6, I use the former and couldn't get the crucial examples on the CD to run without first hunting down and finding the needed DLL's on the I-Net one-by-one. This was a tedious process because after a program would clear past one error message on startup it'd hit the next one. And so on. This was a huge hassle. It probably didn't help that the one bad spot on my CD was the dll.readme file (maybe all this was pointed out in there) -- I probably should have taken the book back, but then I would have had to wait for them to order another one and for it to come in, go back a third time to get it, etc...

Third, the book is not any sort of complete reference to the API functions. Some of the chapters only mention a couple of the functions relevant to the topic, or at least give you the feeling there's more out there that you might want to know about. The functions that are mentioned sometimes only have one or two of their parameters explained (as if the others don't matter). So if you're looking for an API reference book, this probably isn't it.

At least most of the typos in the book can be found at O'Reilly's website, though a careful reader can find a couple that haven't been flagged.

I expected a better book. At least the writing is clear.