Jerry Ablan | Matt Brown | Dwayne Gifford | Pierre Boutquin | Paul Wilton | Richard Harrison | Jeffrey Hasan | Matthew Reynolds | Dimitriy Sloshberg | Michael Lane Thomas | Thearon Willis | Micheal Lane Thomas | Tim Waters | Tom Barnaby
Visual Basic 6 is ready to take on the Internet with a variety of options for Web development, both on the server and client side. That's the argument of
Professional VB6 Web Programming, a wide-ranging tour of the strengths of VB for Internet development on the Microsoft DNA platform. This book provides essential information for intermediate to advanced VB developers who want to make the shift to the Internet/intranet development using their favorite tool.
Professional VB6 Web Programming provides in-depth coverage of an entire spectrum of options for VB development on the Web. For instance, it contains a guide to using Visual Basic to create business objects used with Visual InterDev and the ASP for delivering Web pages on the fly. (When used with MTS, this approach greatly improves scalability within the ASP model.)
While there are a number of books on VB business objects, this one is unique when it turns to using WebClasses for creating ASP-based applications from within VB. (The author's example here--a soup-to-nuts tour of a message board application created with Web classes--is itself probably worth the price of the book.)
Another potential standout, which most developers probably don't think about, is using VB to process CGI scripts. (The authors write a custom class to manage stream I/O, usually missing from VB, to pull this off. They also show how to use regular expressions from within VB.)
Throughout Professional VB6 Web Programming, the team of authors cover virtually every new and emerging technology, such as XML, RDS, and CDONTS (for messaging), but they also manage to cover essential VB Web development techniques in depth. In all, this book shows that VB is ready to take on Web development, including cross-browser solutions. It's all you need to take your existing VB skills to the next level for today's Web. --Richard Dragan
Topics covered: Internet and Microsoft DNA overview, HTTP and HTML, Visual Basic Web support, WebClasses: intro and advanced features, DHMTL, ActiveX Documents, ASP applications, VBScript, JavaScript, XML, ActiveX Control Pad, custom ActiveX controls, WebBrowser clients, ExecWB commands, VB server-side components, ADO, RDS, MTS, MSMQ, CDONTS and mail messages, CGI and VB.
1 Book was very useful to me professionally. But not perfect.
I rated this 5 stars because it has the most useful writeup on writing Server Components in VB for use with ASP - chapters 9-11. I wanted to do this and had trouble getting working samples and explanations. I feel that industrial strength ASP is very ugly and unweildy if you don't encapsulate the code into components. MSDN has lots of reference material about this but little, if any, useful "how to" stuff that i could find.
This book showed me how to do exactly what i wanted to do.
Other than that, it is a good introduction into a good number of web concepts, old and new. The first 3 chapters were a good overview of Microsoft web concepts and techniques. The writeup on web classes, if you like them, is good. I really liked the CGI case study including how to implement standard input/output via the win32 API.
The relatively free use of various win32 API functions in VB help overcome a general fear of mixing VB and CC++ functionality.
The book was a bit large but was well organized. In general it gave me a much higher opinion of Wrox books.
2 Very SQL serve-centric
If you are just starting to use ASP and have access to a MS SQL server, then this is a good read. However, don't even consider it if you have any previous APS experience or don't have access to a SQL server. In fact, there is no mention of MS Access in the entire book! It is pratically usesless as a reference for ASP and just sits and gathers dust.
3 Total junk
There seems to be a pattern with the books from Wrox. If there is more than one author on the cover, it usually stinks. This book is no exception. They try to cover too much, and end up leaving you mad because you actually spent money on something this bad. This book is nothing more than a door stop!
4 Not well clearlly writen - too many authors
I have 4 years VB programming experience, but after read 7 chapters of this book, I'm still feel confusing. Everything are talked a little bit, but nothing is discussed in detail.
Each chapter is not well connected, this not like a book but like a huge magazine with a bunch of articles -- too many authers can mess up a good name book. They seems never talk to each other before and after writing this book. for examble, in beginning of chapter 9, it says: "By now you have learned how Active Server Page (ASP) use components. In the next two chapters, we will focus on ... (something base on use components)" -- False! I never learned, at least in this book!
In chapter 6 -- DHTML Application. The example application is only working in VB IDE even after making the package. It's either the author's problem or Microsoft's problem.
As a "Professional VB Web programming book", it neither explains how to deploy a Web application well in general, nor teach you programming in detail.
This book turns me to other ASP books.
5 Not well clearlly writen - too many authors
I have 4 years VB programming experience, but after read 7 chapters of this book, I'm still feel confusing. Everything are talked a little bit, but nothing is discussed in detail.
Each chapter is not well connected, this not like a book but like a huge magazine with a bunch of articles -- too many authers can mess up a good name book. They seems never talk to each other before and after writing this book. for examble, in beginning of chapter 9, it says: "By now you have learned how Active Server Page (ASP) use components." -- False! I never learned, at least in this book!
In chapter 6 -- DHTML Application. The example application is only working in VB IDE even after making the package. It's either the author's problem or Microsoft's problem.
As a "Professional VB Web programming book", it neither explains how to deploy a Web application well in general, nor teach you programming in detail.
This book turns me to read other ASP book.
6 Covers a lot of material
I enjoyed the book. It covers a number of ways to use VB6 in web development.
7 Full coverage of VB6 Web capabilities
This book covers, in excellent fashion, the realm of possibilities in web-enabling your VB6 skills.
First, I would like to clarify that VB6 DOES NOT create web applications, but you have a lot of options to allow your application, or your applications logic, to be presented via web browsers. This book shows you API's and scripting languages that can be used with Visual Basic to accomplish tasks.
Anyone looking for a specific solution to a web programming project using VB, then get a specialized book for that subject, do not assume this book will cover every detail of your needs.
I really enjoyed the coverage of XML becuase it is hard to find quality information about this new language.
Once again, Wrox rocks the boat with a great book.
8 A tremendous help - very good book
I think this book is the mother of all web programming books. It covers so much that by the end you really *can* program for the web in many different ways using many different tools. Hell, there's even a javascript and CGI tutorial in the appendices. I've read many books and it has to be a really good one for me to write a review of it!
If you want to extend your VB skills into some creative web-development then this book is for you! Readers should have a firm grasp of VB itself and OOP programming.
This book is always on the top of the pile!
9 VB6 Web - A Second Review
I wrote a review of VB6 Web four months ago, and have since gained a greater appreciation of the book. I was frustrated that it didn't have more WebClass material. I've realized I can't really fault it for that - WebClasses are very new, and nobody has much material on the subject. I've since gone through a book specifically on WebClasses, and it didn't really give much more basic information on the subject than VB6 Web did.
I've come to appreciate VB6 Web as a comprehensive reference on web programming in Visual Basic. The web development company where I now work uses VB6 Web as an essential reference in our weekly technology study sessions.
10 Poorly Written
This book is geared towards someone new to VB. None of the chapters get into very much detail, and the examples are kept so simple as to be useless. Extremely frequent typos, spelling errors, and missing words make reading it a chore.
11 Great Book, Packed with Lots of Useful information
This book was a great source of tricks, techniques and traps to avoid. I recommend it without question -- it should be on the desk of any developer who pays their rent developing n-tiered web deployed applications.
12 Doesn't succeed in making you want to learn the stuff
This book was a dissapointment and was written in such a way that caused alot of frustration and no desire to continue reading. I got further with info found on the web, which also happened to stimulate me alot more than the text in this book. Its fine if you want an overview of what can be done with VB programming - take it further yourself.
13 Not well written.
The book is a collection of articles. They are not very advanced or special, but they are not systematic enough to be considered as a textbook, and not comprehensive enough to be used as a reference manual. The book is simply not very well written. I am afraid that some people who gave this book 5 stars, had read only the table of content (and it looks really great!).
14 Alot covered, none very well
I have to agree with previous reviewers, this book DOES cover quite a bit. From DHTML to IIS Applications, but it has to be considered a beginner to intermediate book on Web programming in VB6. Even though the long-term viability of Web Classes is under question, the utter lack of any quality material on the ONE thing Microsoft touts as "Web" enabled in VB6 is extremely disappointing for a book so expensive. You can debug problems with your objects in VB6 with WebClasses that you can't perform with an ASP page and a compiled dll. Do they even mention this? No.
For the interested, you can find most of the material discussed in this book by simply looking on MSDN or other web sites for articles on the subjects you're interested in. With multiple authors, that's all you will get out of this book, anyway.
15 A must reference book.
This book is part of my reference library. From web fundamentals to advanced vb server components, this book covers a large portion of the web subject. Highly recommended for serious professional web programmers.
16 Over all pretty good but falls short on WebClasses and MTS
This book does covers alot of things that you can do with VB6. The authors stress the Microsoft DNA architecture of MTS, MSMQ, etc... and the IIS Applications based upon WebClasses, but fail to provide quality examples of WebClasses with MTS system calls.
17 Looking for WebClass Examples, and Disappointed
I was looking for solid examples of WebClass programming, and I thought this book had it. Boy was I disappointed! 100+ pages on general background, much of it going in circles the way material like that seems to, then a scant few pages giving one very anemic and sketchy example of a WebClass project. I bought this book on the strength of the other reviews here. Maybe it is strong in other areas and my investment will prove not to be a waste in the long run...I don't know yet. Just don't expect to get WebClass fluent from it!
18 The best and the most complete book on WEB PROGRAMMING
Every aspect of web programming is described in this book.It starts with web fudamentals, and after that each aspect of client and server programming is globaly explained and after that there is a chapter for each of them. I very liked that approach.The code from the book is downloadable from WROX site.
19 Covers all aspects of VB6 Web Programming!!!
Having purchased many other WROX books, I was eagerly awaiting this one for a current project. When it arrived I read through it like a mad man. Soaking up everything I possibly could. The examples are very clear and there are plenty of them! It covers everything from IIS, ASP and ADO to RDS, SQL, DHTML, MTS and WebClasses. All in one book! Plenty of examples with detailed descriptions and tables explaining the various methods for each function. I definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about using VB6 for web development.
20 The Book for learning how to build VB IIS Applications
This book covers it all. I was looking for a book the thoroughly covered VB IIS Applications. I found only 2, each dedicating only 1 chapter to the subject. This book not only covers IIS Applications in detail, it also covers DHTML apps in detail as well. It also shows how to incorporate MTS, MSMQ, ADO and other technologies into your VB web apps. A highly detailed chapter on ASP, 4 well thought out case studies and appendixes including HTML Tags, VBScript and Jscript Tutorials, VBScript Reference, Configuring IIS4, ADO, MTS and MSMQ among others completes this book. An absolute MUST for any serious VB Programmer doing any kind of web development.
