Customer Reviews

Windows 2000 API SuperBible

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3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book claims to be "A comprehensive reference for all the APIs". Well, it isn't - many API calls are not even listed.

The documentation for API calls that are covered is even less complete than Microsoft's online help, and while it is cribbed more or less verbatim from this source quite a bit of vital information is missed out.

The example programs are pathetic - they don't attampt to do much more than show what parameters are passed to the API calls.

The index is a useless computer-generated 52 page monster. Look up 'parameters' for instance - this occupies 7 pages with a list of API calls. Why? Oh yes, because API calls take parameters.

The accompanying CD contains just the useless example programs and only one chapter of the book badly converted into MSWORD format. No 'ebook'.

Don't waste your money on this rubbish.

To me, this is quite an excellent library for using API. It meets all my needs.
At the beginning of the book, first of all, the author gives an simple review over windows components, and give out names of all components. To me, this is quite important because I always got confused about what the component the author is referring to. I don't have such kind of stupid problem with this book.
Secondly, the contents are clear and comprehensive. So far, I can find whatever I need from this book and understand what the author tries to deliver/explain for the function call. What is best is that there are lots of example codes following those function calls. Listed with the function calls, the author gives you what is needed in using this function call and what you could expect for different conditions. Though this is just the basic requirement for a book, the style is neat.
The index system is clear and good. One interesting thing is that the author lists almost all the function calls in this book under the index keyword -- parameters -- again. Kind of redundant though, yet it gives another convenient way to look for the function calls needed.
This one is the book for every windows programmer. Whoever wants to be good at windows programming, the content in this book is essential. I strongly recommend it to everyone!!

There's nothing exactly WRONG with the book, but there's no real reason to buy it either. It's like a hardcopy of the online help available with your development environment. If you WANT a hard copy, then you're looking in the right direction. Otherwise, save your money.

I am a manager of materials and use visual basic applications to manipulate ERP data, I often use some pre-canned API calls and wanted to get all of the information I could about the subject so I bought the bible and found to really use this you have to be a C programmer.