Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Activex Control Programming With Visual Basic 5 in 21 Days

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

 

 

Of the various ActiveX control books I have, this one is really for beginners. I am preparing MCSD exams and find ActiveX part in Hawhee's book too condensed. Without much prior knowledge about it, piling information in Hawhee's book is just too much to understand/remember. I also read Dan Appleman's book which is quite good theoretically, but it doesn't teach you the much about the actual steps. So Appleman's book is harder to follow than this book. I'd say combining the three books makes a lot of sense. While this book provides hands-on guidance, it doesn't teach you the things behind the scene, where Appleman's book does great on. The hawhee's book, on the other hand, provides a good review which lets you find the holes in your knowledge.

The first comment is right on that the book has many errors. Also the writing sometimes is wordy.

Every person has ideal explanation / hands-on ratio for maximal learning of a new programming topic. Of four "VB5 & ActiveX" books I bought, this was the one from which I learned ActiveX progamming. (It has quite a few errors. Perhaps parts of the book were written with a Beta version of VB5...) My copies of Kurata & Appleman are now more useful than this book, but they didn't make sense to me until I worked through this book.

I was preparing for the VB5 MCSD exam. A friend suggested one exam cram book, but I found the ActiveX part on it really compact and difficult to make sense of. Studying the basics of ActiveX programming from this book and combining it with the tips from the Exam Cram, I was able to know just enough to succesfully attempt ALL ActiveX questions on the exam.

In chapter 5 the author writes: What are User-Defined Properties? First of all, you need to understand the difference between predefined and user-defined properties. User-defined properties are those properties that already exist in the UserControl Object ... Hey, wait a minute. Isn't that a definition of predefined properties. Of course. The author got them mixed up, didn't he. How much further will you have to read before you realize his mistake. This is only one of hundreds such inaccuracies in the book. Still, if you can correct the author's sloppiness, you will learn a lot about ActiveX Control design.