Microsoft Books

If you want to know what is going on under the hood, thn this is THE book.
Every chapter is very in depth with good examples. Definite YES for the geek inside you. 5 Stars.

I love reading Richter's books. When you think that there's no room left for improvement you get a title like this one. Wow!
Where other books present the subject matter this one gives you knowledge. Improves on the previous one.
Covers new topics like generics or nullable types. Just can't wait to see what Richter will do with linq!

I'm more of a Java and Ruby developer, but I found this book fun to read anyway. It's a great read to understand how languages interact with core libraries and how it all fits together inside of a virtual runtime environment. Very well done.

The book is oriented toward experienced programmers. It provides an introduction to the CLR and describes some intermediate topics in detail. Advanced topics are mentioned, but the coverage of advanced topics (such as CLR hosting) is shallow.

If you are an experienced programmer who is new to the CLR and C#, this is a great text. If you already understand the CLR and are looking for more information about advanced techniques, this book is probably not for you.

Most of what needs to be said about this book has already been said. But I feel a need add my two cents, if only to toss another five stars out there.

Really, this one is an example of what a good technical book should be. It's style is both understandable and unpretentious and it covers topics with depth and clarity. The overall organization is such that it never seemed like that terms, ideas, and concepts were being used that had not been introduced previously. Reading this book was a true pleasue and I know I will be referring back to it many times.

The book provides a developer's view of the internals of the .Framework and its CLR. It's more than you need to know to hammer out a lot of code. But if you want to build really good apps - or just want to know what .NET is all about - buy the book, read it, and keep in at hand.

Woody's book (and WOW site) offer the very best practical and error-avoiding advice on using MS Outlook 97. Using Outlook is very different from using other Office applications. The file management aspect is thoroughly confusing and inflexible. Woody's book helps deal with this thorny issue.

As a software trainer and consultant, I am always looking for good books. This book is not good -- it's GREAT! The information on pgs.643 to 647 is worth much more than the price of the book! A must have....

Until now I have practically only been reading the Outlook 98 part of the book, as this part was the most urgent from my point of view. I have certainly not been disappointed. But on the other hand I had not expected less as a keen reader of Woody's Office Watch (WOW) and Woody's Window Watch (WWW). I am really looking forward to the rest of the book. It is a pleasure reading and learning from a book where there are a lot of humour included.

I have been using Office 97 for 1 1/2 years and have taken college courses in Word 97 and Excel 97. Having received certificates in both courses I thought that I knew it all. RIGHT! Woody Leonhard has taught me about the easy ways to execute commands. His shortcuts are invaluable to me. I am a quadriplegic and find his advice very helpful and time saving. I am learning Powerpoint 97 in far less time than it would of taken me in school. I believe he has been most helpful in making me a real power user. Thanks to Woody and his gang.

Clear, concise and easy instructions on how to use MS Ofc 97. Points out the good, bad and ugly of Microsoft products. Can turn any novice into more of a professional than he/she ever dreamed of! I recommend this book to anyone who will be working with MS Ofc 97! Don't pass this one up!

I am still working on the front page book. I knew nothing when I started. I am now nearly finished covering chapter 4. there are a few places I strugled to understand what the author was talking about but overall the book is serving my purpose. I never expect to be a front page expert but one of these days I do expect to have a running website. I recomend the book although I have not looked at other book on the subject.

Wonderful book. Easy to read. Simple instructions. I followed and built my website just like I had taken a class to learn how. I would recommend this book to anyone that needs a quick way to learn FrontPage 2003.

I've been designing web sites for quite some time now. By no means am I a professional but I can make web sites using basic coding and that's what I had to do until I found FrontPage 2003. FrontPage 2003 greatly reduced the amount of time it took me to create a web site. Although I had been using the program for a while, after I decided to start a business designing web sites I bought several books on FrontPage 2003. I wanted to have the most knowledge about the program as possible and be able to produce the most professional looking web sites for customers. Out of the several books that I purchased all on this one program, I found this book to be the most helpful and overall best book on the topic. It covers everything you need to know from start to finish. It starts out by explaining basic web site design features of the program and then progressively describes more detailed processes as the book continues. All instructions are easy to read and understand. Out of all the books I've purchased, this book has helped me fully understand the program the best. If I had to recommend one book on FrontPage 2003 to a friend, this book would be the one.

Step by step instructions and screen prints. Perfect for beginner. Also purchased FrontPage 2003 the missing manual. An excellent complement.

Instructional manuals lack the one-to-one human connection that make learning more interactive. As complete as this manual strives to be--and it's very good--it can't take the place of individual instruction from a knowledgeable, experienced professional. Case in point are the directions for creating a navigation menu: follow them to a "T" and encounter a surprise when the outcome doesn't match what's listed in the manual.

It takes some savvy to blend one's own personal knowledge and intelligence with that of a great instructional manual. If you're really a beginner, opt for a class first, then use this manual as your constant companion.

This is an excellent hands-on learning guide. I have been able to put the new skills to use in my own personal files right away.

Very useful guide for studying for the MS Office Specialist certification.
Well laid out.

This is the best book ever for someone that needs to learn anything about excel and how to use the spreadsheets, workbooks and any function within. I would recommend this book to users that have never used excel to the more advanced user that needs to utilize other aspects that they have never used before. Great book.

Excellent how-to book!!! you will be taken by your hand to learn in a easy way how to work in excel

I am so glad I bought this book in that it went and showed me the little details that you may not always hit in your normal day to day workings of Excel. I also bought Microsoft office step by step but I never got to use it as this book was all I needed! I will be buying the Microsoft Wor dversion next.

Oh by the was within two weeks I took the specialist test and passed by quite a bit.

Very well organized, and good content.
Id like to see more diagrams or so, so we can se how they decide to build the things... but it still is great.

I think this is one of the best books on this subject that I have read so far- very practical, very useful. There is a lot of information, real-life examples and experience from the .NET framework design team.

As a professional I have worked many times on building re-usable and extensible frameworks. Therefore, I had to read several books in order to make sure that the framework I was building was doing what it was supposed to do. However, in all these years I had never the luck to get a complete guide of "building a framework the right way" and I had to always put together pieces from different articles in order to make my own guide. Well, there you have it! Buy this book, read it and you will have a complete guide of how to do things the right way. Another great thing about this book is that different professionals make their comments about almost every guideline. As a result you are not only exposed to writer's view but also to the views and opinions of many well respected software professionals. Do buy this book and as hard as it might seem try to apply its recommendations to your daily development process.

If you need to write C#/.Net or even Java, this book is a must have.

I don't personally think that all developers will find this book useful. In fact, I have a feeling that some may find it highly useless and disruptive as it is abstract in a sense (one must apply the lessons to each library and scenario independently, taking into consideration many different aspects of usability and readability) and it does require some "retraining" of bad practices which have been long since ingrained due to years of usage.

But whether this book deserves a five star rating or a one star rating - whether this book is for you - can be answered by asking yourself the following question: are you obsessed with quality? Quality in the sense of creating a library that is:

- Easily reused by others, even first timers encountering the library or even first timers to .Net
- Well thought out with well designed classes
- Consistent within itself and consistent with the base libraries from Microsoft

The importance of the little things like naming classes, properties, methods, using one type of construct over another, using one type of accessor over another, etc. cannot be stressed enough in the overall picture of creating a library to a higher standard of quality, usability, and extensibility.

As Confucius is to have said:

"If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

"When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.

"Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect."

As I wrote in an e-mail to my team, I think that digesting this book will lead to: higher quality public facing APIs for our customer development teams seeking to extend the functionality, increased readability and more consistency internally in our teams, increased usability and decreased maintenance costs for the support teams as well as new developers on our team, and of course, increased skill, knowledge, and competency as developers of each of the team members.

Thank You Fergal, for a "steady pen" in writing "Microsoft .NET for Programmers". The use of a FUN case study (Poker client-server) to synergize understanding of .NET principles in a "real-life" application is a boon to communicating such a vast subject.

Though this book seems geared to other than beginners (in both C# and .NET), starting at page 1, reading and doing the examples, and maintaining a steady course until the last page, is sure to "enlighten" the .NET inquiring mind. A more global perspective and understanding of this large subject is pretty much guaranteed.

One foot in front of the other, put yourself through the paces: Buy the book, download the files, read the prolific and responsive author participation list on Manning, read and practice from cover to cover. Your programming skills in .NET will be enhanced enjoyably for all future .NET ventures. As a bonus, you'll go to sleep at night without that large and uneasy .NET question mark look on your face.

Cover all the what and how-to about .NET in a simple and clear way. Can't believe the author does that so nicely in 300 pages. Great for experience programmer get started with .NET

Ok, this book means business. 2 chapters intro about .NET then right into the code. The problem is that IF you don't have a background in C, C++ or C# you are hosed. I had my geeky .NET Microsoft head brother help me with it. Otherwise, excellent book. For 4GL, COBOL and VB programmers like me not familiar with any of the C flavors, I recommend Microsoft Visual C# .Net step-by-step from Microsoft Press written John Sharp and Jon Jagger.

This is one of the best technical books I have read. It takes a very large subject and distills it down to a concise and manageable text.
Each chapter takes you further into .Net in a fast paced yet very well-explained way. The poker game developed in the book is also fun to play with and enhance.
This is a must-read text. However, read an introductory book first.

I've been through many of the C# books, some from Microsoft Press, and some from O'Reilly, and on and on.
For beginners there is no clear winner. However, for experienced programmers looking to expand their knowledge into many of the more advanced areas of C#, I recommended Grimes book, Microsoft .NET for Programmers.

It's for intermediate to advanced, and it's quite a bit of fun working through the example that builds and builds upon an engine, adding many interfaces, where each interface exploits a particular area of .Net. Plus he throws in his years of programming expertise to add in lots of programming tricks that also highlight .Net's flexibility and ease of programming.

Do svidanija - moi tovarischi!

I am an experienced developer but fairly new to VB.NET. This book is not for beginners but it is great for someone like myself who knows what they want to do and just wants some good examples and tips. It's a great reference book and a good alterative to Google. The English is clear and to the point. The book is a sturdy hardback and the pages are well laid out. It's easy to read afters hous of staring at a screen. To sum up, I'm glad that I brought it. It has saved me time and money and you can't ask for much more than that :-)

There is a lot of information in this book, covering a broad range of subjects. It is well laid out and easy to reference. The CD comes with the current version of the book as well as the author's previous book on VB6. Not really a beginner's book as there are more intermediate and advanced topics. I had not used .NET and hadn't touched VB6 in a couple of years. I needed a resource to help jump from rusty VB6 skills to .NET - this book did it perfectly. It is also filled with advanced topics that I am not currently using but now know where to go when the need arrives.

Fast service, great quality... What more can you ask for. I recommend this seller.

I bought this book few years. It is an excelent source of information and writers style is very clear. I just came back to see if Balena has book for C# 2005. Looks like I found something. I am going get that one. However, present book is quite good, check if there is a newer release you may want to get that one.

This was the first .NET book I purchased, and in many ways if I hadn't bought any others it would have been sufficient. It has thorough coverage of the .NET environment, with lucid code examples in VB.NET. I found the chapters on ADO.NET and the framework internals to be most useful to my job as an ASP.NET developer, but the coverage is deep enough that a person with very little programming experience could read this book and come away as a well-rounded .NET programmer. Even if you're writing in C#, as I am, the book is worth the money. I would also recommend Dino Esposito's Programming Microsoft ASP.NET for more depth if you're a web developer.

I found this book to be extremely helpful in constructing an eCommerce site. It's a great book for an experienced VB developer to use to jump into developing an e-commerce site, even if you only go through the PayPal integration. It's also a great source of material on the construction of a shopping cart, and even if your "shopping cart" is only going to be used on a companie's intranet for product/supply request/issue, it's a great starting point. As a developer I can modify the business tier code to conform to my companies requirements and concentrate on the presentation layer.

This little book is chock-full of detailed explanations and examples of an e-commerce site built with ASP.net and an SQL database. It's simply the best and definitely most-used technical book on ASP.net I've picked up in the past 2 years! In addition to the detailed explanations, I especially like the lucid examples of creating and calling the SQL Stored Procedures. Learning by example seems to be the most effective way for this novice programmer to complete an e-commerce site, and this book has greatly reduced the amount of time it normally takes to scan through multiple sources of technical information when creating a complex application. Thanks to the authors, Christian Darie & Karli Watson, for providing a comprehensive resource!

I've used this book to construct my first e-commerce website, and I don't think I could have managed without it. The 3 tier design of the sample site is very well organised and easy to adapt to your own requirements. It also makes it simpler for a novice like me to understand how everything works. I found the second part of the book (dealing with the order pipeline and credit card transactions) harder to follow. However, when I contacted the authors about a problem I was having, I received a prompt and friendly reply that soon got me back on track. Thanks, Cristian and Karli!

This is an exeptionally well written book for the beginning webstore developer with

It walks you through a complete design of the side with the end result that you have a basic webstore that you could actually take operational. The only weakness in the credit processing section. It's written for a European credit card gateway. It would be nice if one of the more popular US gateways (e.g. authorize.net) was also included.

I also sent a couple of questions to the author and he was responded very quickly ... obviously he's interested in making sure everyone reading the book is successful. 5 stars for that alone.

This is primarily a book about constructing an ASP.NET web site using stored procedures, and less a book about e-commerce. There are a few sections, mostly at the end, which are specific to e-commerce. These include the order processing pipeline chapter and the credit card transactions chapter.

This is not to say the book is bad. It's very well written and the code is described step-by-step in detail. There could have been more emphasis on architecture, and a little more on e-commerce. I would also like to see some emphasis on the sticky legal issues like customer data management, password security, transaction security, and how and when to migrate the data off of the machines on the open Internet and back into safe storage on the Intranet.

I recently acquired my Network+ certification thanks to this book. It's very well written and does a good job explaining just about everything you need to know.

My only qualm is that Token Ring coverage is a bit light as I was very surprised to find a lot of questions about Token Ring on the exam. While I had enough knowledge to get through most of them, there were some that the book did not cover in this particular topic. You probably won't need another resource for it, just be sure not to underestimate token ring when you take the exam.

Finally, be sure to take the test at the end of the book. This is probably the closest test of the bunch (CD exams with $50 upgrade and all) to assess your ability to pass the exam.

I just got back from taking the exam and got a 833/900 which yeilds a 92%! I was on a timed deadline for the exam as my voucher was about to expire. I read this book front and back and feel Ive gotten the grade because I did.

The best part of this book was the last 72 test questions it gave. I did these right before I had the exam and they did a great job preparing me for what I was about to see.

Get this book!

Passed the Network + exam, this is the only book you will need. Make sure you read the book front to back, I read it twice.

I'll get right to it and list the good and bad about this book:

Strengths
1. The book is an excellent exam prep tool, it is organized and laid out with great focus on fulfilling the exam objectives and ensuring the reader is well-prepared. Includes some handy exam tips on the types of questions which you can expect in the exam.
2. It has a very useful "Fast Facts" section at the back which summarizes a lot of useful information concisely, good resource for revising for the exam and for memorizing facts.
3. Has a very good section devoted entirely to TCP/IP.
4. Includes better-than-average testing software which has harder questions.

Weaknesses
1. Considering this is not an 'introduction to networking' book, this may not be a big deal, but this book is definitely not a book for beginners, some background in IT and networking is required to make full use of this book. Many times a new term or abbreviation is used without prior explanation of what it means.
2. Although it was published in 2002, I found some of the information in the book a little outdated. For example I found the OS section to cover a bit too much on the older Windows 98/Me than I like. This maybe a reflection of the fact that the exam covers these 'older' OS too, but I'd like it if it has a more current feel. Also some of the hardware recommendations given in the book feels like it was made back in 1999!

All in all, an excellent tool to help you pass your Network+ exam. I know it helped me :)

Excellent, excellent book. This was my main study material for the Net+ exam and it didn't fail me. Like another review noted, read the Fast Facts! Memorize them, get a solid understanding of various environments with different OSs, and know how to troubleshoot networks (hands-on helps if you are new to this).

Definitely easy if you already started down the road of CompTIA certifications.

This is a great book for power programmers. But be aware, this book is not for those who want to learn Excel. It's just for those who know Excel and want to imrove their programming capabilities.

When picking up this book, I was an advanced Excel user. Having discovered most of its features by trial-and-error, and coming from a fairly solid programming background, I understood well the interaction between the underlying object model and the sheets appearing on the screen to end users. I have also crafted many sophisticated worksheet formulas, and explored just about every suggestion of literature such as "Excel Hacks" and "Advanced Excel Report Development".

Professional Excel Development offers ideas and tools necessary for designing full-fledged, robust Excel-based applications. It does not spend time explaining how various features work, but rather goes into detail on how to put these features to best use.

Here is what I picked up from this book, together with the authors' Excel 2003 VBA reference:
* ways to leverage Excel's built-in features to avoid excessive coding
* advanced design techniques for using Excel as a WYSIWYG interface designer
* techniques for creating custom menu bars and programming their behavior
* various means of interacting with the user and simplifying their sessions by providing guidance as to which steps need to be taken
* restricting the Excel environment to take on the appearance of a product condusive of the goal stated in previous bullet
* using VBA in conjunction with the Excel object model to create powerful object-oriented structures for spreadsheet-based applications
* programming Excel-based solutions in an executable to provide a more standalone application
* using Windows API calls to increase robustness of the application

One key feature of this book is its consistent approach. The authors maintain a consistent structure, using the same application throughout the book for their "practical example" to demonstrate new features made available through the material in each chapter. Also, the "best practices" approach provides a level of consistency that is generally desired of anywhat sophisticated applications. Useable modules are provided on the accompanying CD, ready to be used in readers' own applications.

In the beginning, the authors explain the audiences for which this book may or may not be intended. They separate these into users, power users, VBA developers, Excel developers, and professional developers. The latter three categories of users will benefit the most from this book, each in his/her own way. VBA developers will learn how to use built-in features (I think this is where I started); Excel developers will learn how to incorporate Excel-based solutions into larger applications; Professional developers will be exposed to a great variety of "best practices", optimization techniques, and various other means for developing consistency in Excel applications.

If you do not fall into the latter three categories, you might not pick up much from this book. It is not useless to you, however; you can still find many worksheet/userform design techniques, and get an introduction to the kind of power VBA-based programming can offer. Nonetheless, you may be well-advised to start off with something simpler, such as John Walkenbach's Excel Power Programming (as alluded to by the authors of this book), simply because the present book assumes a good degree of knowledge and leaves much for the reader to figure out from the fully-functional examples provided - thereby covering the ground that it does.

Overall, this book makes for a wonderful reference to the various under-the-hood features of Excel. Even if you've already encountered many of the techniques described, and could technically discover them further on your own, it is useful to have them readily available in a single collection. Very few items are left out; application design, object-oriented programming techniques, database applications, debugging techniques, Office automation, and external interop are all covered here. Professional Excel Development is a solid reference to be consulted for years to come.

When you search the web and most of the books around, you can find solution to your problems most of the time, but you are rarely sure it was the best way to do it and how it would fit to the rest of your code. The authors of this book are not afraid to tell what they suppose to be the best for you, along with full featured versions of code illustrating each chapter.

I found it easy to take the code from a sufficiently leveled chapter and adapt it to get just the application that I needed, knowing it would be fast, clean and complete at the same time, although I didn't understand all the details at first. Now, the book serves as a widely findable documentation for the packages that I make. Highly recommendable.

Buy this book because you want to be able to use VBA to help you at work. I wrote a program to automatically generate and send reports via email - about 500 of them - and my boss was in awe.

You CAN develop VBA custome applications where the user can't see the underlying MS Office application, i.e., Excel for example. They use your program like any stand-alone application. COOL!!!

This book of advanced Excel development was recommended to me by a co-worker whose project I inherited that used the concepts in the book based on the "Petras Template" example. It's classy and polished VBA programming and sure, you can brag about the concepts to the techies interviewing you during your next job hunt.

But, be careful.

The book introduces us to the concept of add-ins and templates. So, there you are showing off your project to your manager or users. But, what do they click on? The add-in or the template? What are all those true/false cells over there? How can the user save the workbook? What heppens if you forget to hide the columns that use cell logic. Hmmm. These questions and others will be asked of your typically non-technical users who have NO idea what goes on behind the scenes. If they open up the template and screw around with the code or re-name the add-in, you'll have chaos.

To be fair, there's tons of advanced concepts to learn here and no doubt you'll benefit from them. But, remember, as a developer, your first goal is to produce a robust application. However, you may have click a couple of functions to get all tabs in your template to show. If you don't do that, you can't see them! Oh, and don't forget to save your add-in.xla or all your changes won't take effect.

Not for beginners or dummies, but for VERY careful developers!