Mr. Bunny's Guide to Activex (Paperback)

by Carlton, III Egremont (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Surely, our society must have passed some technological milestone in order for component software to merit a comic novella. Mr. Bunny's Guide to ActiveX attempts to enlighten the reader about Microsoft's distributed-computing solution without actually explaining the technology, as more gauche programming books frequently do.

This book is funny! To wit (so to speak), an excerpt:

In Visual Basic, you form windows using forms. A form is a window that you form. At first forms are unformed. You must form your forms using the form designer (formerly the former). In the form former, an unformed form forms a uniform formation....

You get the idea. This book is a hoot and a half. The basic idea is that a smarty-pants bespectacled rabbit and a hick farmer travel around together, having metaphorical experiences that (more or less) help explain how ActiveX works. Hey, Mr. Bunny makes about as much sense as any other approach to COM documentation, and he's a lot less pretentious.

Mr. Bunny's Guide to ActiveX will appeal to people who already have a pretty good grasp of what Microsoft's component architecture is all about--and who have realized it's a complicated morass worth a laugh or two. --David Wall

Product Description
It's been pulled from the underground and pokes fun at technical books, Active X and all things Microsoft. With absolutely no promotional effort, this book has been raved about on newsgroups.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company (July 31, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201485362
• ISBN-13: 978-0201485363
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #477,894 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very funny parody of ActiveX and computer geeks, May 30, 2004

By	Charles Ashbacher "([e-mail])" (Marion, Iowa United States([e-mail])) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

First off, if you want to learn about ActiveX, then this is not the book for you. However, if you want to be entertained by a parody of ActiveX, where wordplay, innuendo and absurdity about ActiveX are used to create some very funny jokes, then it is right for you. Mr. Bunny, the smart one with the glasses and pocket protector, and Farmer Jake, the guy in the overalls with the rake, are the main characters in a story about a "quest" for knowledge.
Everything in the book is a joke; there is a very good one about CLSID registry entries, "Contrary to popular belief, the CLSID registry entries, when spelled backwards, do not contain the subliminal message `I worship Satan'." If you have ever had to write and use CLSID registry entries, you know how much devil there is in the details. Points of additional reading contain entries such as:

* New York City Phone Book.
* United States Internal Revenue Code.
* ActiveX For Bunnies.

I found the last especially funny, the parody in relation to the "For Dummies" series and this book is quite good. Even the exercises are jokes; the following are given as end of chapter exercises:

* Optimize the following Visual Basic code: n = 1
* Point
* Click
* Find the missing poodle.

The book is very funny and a welcome change from the relentless detail that appears in some programming books. I recommend it very highly as comic relief.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It was embarrassing!, December 20, 2000

By	S. Cicoria "..." (Denville, NJ, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was on a train when I started to read this book. I usually don't laugh out loud, but when I was reading this, I just couldn't help it.

This is definitely one of the funniest "geek" books I've seen (haven't seen too many). My wife doesn't get it!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You May Enjoy This One, October 27, 2000

By	Kim "Toddler Mom" (Grapevine, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

After reading through many books on ActiveX control and programming this book was a welcome relief. It is funny and witty and short.

This book is written largly based on using ActiveX control in VB. Anyone familiar with VB (even if they don't know ActiveX)will get most of the jokes and diagrams.

I would recommand this book to anyone that has had just a little too much technical documentation and would like a mental break. Hey, you may even learn something in the process.