If you want to gain more precise control over Windows and Web-based applications, this is the only comprehensive combination reference with tutorial you need by your side. Expert programmer and author Tom Archer begins with thorough hands on introduction, such as SDI applications, MDI applications and dialogs then moves quickly to the skills expected of professionals, such as internet programming, multithreaded programming and attribute programming.
The author ensures that the novice professional receives special explanation as well as dispensing expert tips, such as ATL Server issues and programming .NET for the advanced developers.
This book fills the “holes ” between understanding how to create a Visual C++ project and how to implement a complex application.
Visual C++.NET Bible is the essential guide for developers at every skill level with its step-by-step instructions, real world examples and Tom’s expert insight into developing industrial strength applications.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Indepth and applicable coverage
I got this book as our development team was moving from Visual C++ 6 to Visual C++ .NET and I wanted to get a little ahead of the game. I had read and heard that VC++.NET was significantly different to VC6 so I decided to go for the Bible from Visual C++ .NET Bible as I’ve always like the bible series from Wiley.
I was definitely not disappointed.
The book covered all aspects of Windows C++ development from menus in MFC to creating dll’s. The main area I was interested in was ATL and I’m glad I got this book before I switched to VS.NET. ATL development has changed significantly in VS.NET as attributes have been introduced. VC.NET Bible give an excellent overview of ATL in VS.NET.
I haven’t read this book in its entirety, but it’s one book that i’ll definitely have near my machine in work. Topics are easy to find, and all chapters explain how to do something and why you should do it in a certain way.
Well worth the price.
3 Stars Good overall, except for bug ridden examples
I’ve been working through this book for a while now, and overall the material is presented in a decent format. For the most part you can pick the topic to work on (ie. Menus, Dialog boxes, etc) and focus on that chapter to learn it. For someone like myself who needs a point solution (very specific app with very narrow GUI requirements) this works well.
However that said, one thing that is driving me nuts in this book are the bug-ridden examples. I’ve been through quite a few chapters now, and I’ve come to the expectation that its not a question of -if- a given example has a bug, but where it is located (since it almost certainly has one or more).
To give an example I just read over the Modeless dialog example in chapter 11. It starts off having you throw down a dialog and a bunch of controls, without exactly telling you what IDs to give them (after a while you get used to this, because the author does this a lot). Its important because by the time you get to step 7 in the example you realize that the ellipsis button should have an ID of IDC_FILEOPEN if you want your function call to line up with the demo (again not such a problem since you can change the IDs at anytime - but I’m just getting started). At step 10 you get to enter in a global function (huh? what the heck happened to the class?). Moving on - Step 12 has you adding in member variables to a class which won’t exist until step 13. Yeah good job there. Step 19 has an erroneous structure definition. And to top it off, steps 21 and 23 have you add message handler functions without actually telling you how to map them in the message map. Whew! and this is just one example program. Typed in exactly as the steps in the book describe, this example compiled with something like 20+ errors. Fixing the structure and the map problems (which required downloading the code off the website to figure out what to do), eventually got it to work.
Overall I think the content and the way the material is broken up is good, however this book needs a complete overhaul and proofing on the examples.
5 Stars Additional reference of VC++
Enriched information on the MFC, ATL framework, plus some extra knowledge on .Net, ATL Server, COM+ etc. It can be treated as the extra references on the development of the above technologies stated. Look for others if no experience before.
2 Stars Not a bad book but TOO MANY errors
As another reviewer pointed out, it has a lot of errors in the code. If you just follow the instructions you would most probably not get your code compiling.
Author omitted many things that you need to know. He states, for example, “create SDI project” in step 1. In step 10 or so you find out that you had to give it a specific name which he failed to indicate in the beginning. Same with IDs and so on. Author also fails to give the code for the header files and you just need to think what each variable does (and still write the header file code, of course) or download the solution from the web.
Also, author asks to call the function with one name, and in the code he changes the name to a different one. Adds confusion.
2 Stars Not .Net
This is a regurgetation of C++ and MFC. .NET and managed C++ are only briefly addressed. There are better books.
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
Leave a reply