Microsoft Books

If you are a seasoned Visual Basic developer with no familiarity with .NET, C#, or Web services, this book will get you where you need to go with a minimum of theoretical explanations and examples that are straightforward and to the point. It provides a quick overview of key concepts and then plunges into practical instruction that brings VB 6 experts up to the latest rev. You don't have to learn a new language to take advantage of .NET services. I work with Deon and have worked with Eric, and they not only have the understanding but the technical chops to back up what they are saying here. Buy the book, don't wait for the movie.

If you are like me, you may have thought that the only good Web service support for ASP.NET was offered through C#. The three guys who wrote this book show that this just isn't true.

The book doesn't spend too much time on the protocols-- instead it explains how to use them from VB. If you need to understand the SOAP and WSDL real deeply, get a different book like Seely's SOAP book from PH-PTR. This book is about writing Web services, nothing more or less. The chapter on SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI is nothing other than an overview. Hey, you've been warned.

I just got this book and more or less tore through it. The book does a great job explaining the ins and outs of creating Web services with VB.NET. I especially appreciated the great coverage of using attributes to shape the WSDL and data used in the Web service. The book really helped me out a lot. Highly recommended.

Very reasonably priced and very informative. brilliant for VB programmers and quite good for other languages too.

This book is well worth the price just for the executable controls you get. The source code is even included. All controls are explained in great detail and even suggestions for enhancing them are included. Most of the controls mimic commerically available controls costing hundreds of dollars each. And with this book and cd-rom, you can even change the way they work without having to wait on a vendor to add the functionality for you!

Excellent book on ActiveX creation. The 101 controls included on the CD alone justify the price, not to mention that they all come with source code so that they can be extended. As an added bonus you'll not only learn about creating ActiveX; the controls included cover topics like image processing, data display and manipulation, buttons, text manipulation and much more. While not a book for the complete novice, this book is something I think you'll want to add to your library; if I could have I would have given this a 20 instead of a 10!

All I can say is WOW, Geetesh has once again done a bang-up job of presenting his "cutting edge" techniques, this time for PowerPoint 2007. And also, once again, he's included an amazing CD with all kinds of helpful software on it. Because I've been using and teaching PowerPoint for a long, long time, when I opened this book I immediately looked for a "What's New in PowerPoint 2007" section, but I couldn't find it and was disappointed, but not for long. Once I opened PowerPoint 2007 on my computer and started playing around, every time I couldn't find something in the new interface, a quick glance at the index of this book and I found it immediately. And, don't let the "for Dummies" title fool you ... this book is an excellent addition to any PowerPoint user's library, from beginner through advanced user. Geetesh presents everything in a very readable fashion; it feels like he's right at the computer with you, looking over your shoulder. If you have his 2003 version of this book, this one is very similar but gets you used to using the new 2007 interface with ease.
I highly recommend this as a great reference to keep right beside your computer whenever you are working in PowerPoint 2007.

I own the PowerPoint 2003 edition of this book, and this is even better. I like the fact that the author goes so much out of his way to include coordinated material on the attached CD.

As a presentation designer and author of Presentational Skills for the Next Generation even I found inspiration within the contents of this delightful book. Yes, delightful is the operative word. Geetesh Bajaj's sense of humor sprinkled throughout was a refreshing change from ordinary skills books. His mix of clear explanations and helpful hints prove his credentials and expertise with PowerPoint are solidly established. If you are looking to add to your knowledge quickly or are just learning how to add the power of PowerPoint presentations to your marketing program this is the book you will want to read from cover to cover. And don't miss the free CD with Bonus Chapter, tools and resources too.

This book is excellent both for the student and instructor. It is well written and easy to follow. Each program has it's own session filled with exercises, quizs, reviews, etc. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is learning software programs or need a refresher course.

DDC Learning Microsoft Office XP is an excelent book for use by individuals who wish to learn without attending formal class sessions or enrolling in an online course. Of course, the book is also excellent for students enrolled in Secondary Education classes or Adult Education classes. The books published by DDC provide guides to use either menu commands or keyboard commands. Electronic files are provided for all lessons to limit the amount of keyboarding required so that the student concentrates on learning. I use the materials for my personal learning when I wish to quickly get up and running with a software application.

For teachers, solution files and other materials are available. Over a period of several years, I observed both students and teachers successfully using DDC materails. I have yet to find a teacher who used these materials that did not reorder DDC material for subsequent classes. While there are a variety of good materials available, my personal opinion is that DDC materials continue to be one of the best available both for individual use and classroom use.

I'm an instructor for computer school where we teach Office at various levels - and even the most advanced students of mine really like this book.

The examples are great and straight to the point, also - if you do not know how to do something - you can actually find under the procedures quickly and easily.

On the downside - it does not have many expert topics as VBA (and not much for Macros) - but the topics it does cover are great. Even if you have used office for years - in this book you will find new COOL things you never knew about.

Covers Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint --> Tons of practice!!

I have stuied many books. I found this book is very useful for the reader who are working on groundwater field. I think this is one of the best book in this field.

I have stuied many books. I found this book is very useful for the reader who are working on groundwater field. I think this is one of the best book in this field.

I have stuied many books. I found this book is very useful for the reader who are working on groundwater field. I think this is one of the best book in this field.

DesignSense is unmatched for it's quality of presentation of graphics for non-graphics types. Though I know a great deal about graphics, I find it very helpful and am planning to use it as a training tool at my job. Our newsletters have looked amateurish way too long. This tool will help you and those in your company design better publications and graphics!

I've been from the school of "use-what's there' when creating PowerPoint presentations. As long as I don't put too much text on a slide, include some clipart and charts, it's 'good enough'. As a consequence, I've never been satisfied with the results.

DesignSense is the first step-by-step material I've come across that explains the underlying principles simply, and clearly illustrates how to use them. You don't need to work through all of the materials before starting to see benefits. I was able to apply early guidelines to my presentations immediately. In some cases, the results were nothing short of stunning.

The progression of the material makes sense, moving from layout (relatively easy to conceptualize) to uses of type (a little more subtle), color and visual effects (the most knotty issue).

I've worked through the material thoroughly once. Now, the best way I've found to work with the program is to keep it open while I'm in PowerPoint, and use it as a reference. There's a very useful critique section I run through when I think I'm finished.

The package justified its purchase price on the value of any one of a number of guidelines:

- Use of small vs. large caps

- Use of techniques other than bold and underline for emphasis

- Reducing the size of text can ADD emphasis

- Limiting the number of type faces

- Details on punctuation

- Discussion of color palette and its use

If you do a lot of presentations, DesignSense is strongly recommended. It's like having Fowler's English Usage handy - except that it applies to design.

One problem in written communication is that many creative possibilities are available on computers. You'd think that was the good news, but it's not. In the age of typewriters, upper case and underlining were our only design capabilities. We took our typewritten drafts to a trained graphic designer, and all was well.

Today's writers have countless typefaces available, and some people use too many in a document; they add boldface, italics, and outline effects; they employ ten different font sizes in one document, or reverse out their type, or add borders galore. The result can be ugly, unreadable documents.

It's especially hard with PowerPoint® (PP) presentations; the templates are predictable and encourage poor design. However, 90% of the electronic slides made in this country are created in PP. Some critics suggest throwing the program away; others advocate plug-in programs to make PP work better.

DesignSense for Presentations, a CD-ROM instructional program, presents another alternative: It suggests that users can learn basic design principles to improve PP productions, Web-based documents, and all their paper texts. Design principles are normally time-consuming and hard to teach in traditional classes. There are good textbooks, but they're not interactive or dynamic.

Design Sense shows different design options dynamically. The learner can experiment with reverse type (type color and ground) or view text in "tight," "regular," and "loose" options. There's an especially good section on typeface. With this 12-hour course, it's possible to work through each lesson in about a half an hour, which easily fits the time constraints of most corporate learners.

There are four sections of lessons: 1. Slide Layout 2. Type 3. Color 4. Visuals

An integration section follows: 1. Critique 2. Gallery 3. Templates (before and after) 4. Makeover 5. Examples 6. Glossary

DesignSense subscribes to a minimalist school of design, proposing that the simplest possible design is the very best. Every graphic component should be tested against the question: "Do we really need this component?"

The program runs on CD-ROM and is not installed on a user's system. It's very simple to run and has no complicated manuals. The registration form asks you to "Please fill out the following information, or tape your business card here." Such a simple, useful idea mirrors the entire program, which is simple and useful.

This is one of the best computer programming books ever written. Eric Wells does a wonderful job of showing how to use Visual Basic for Applications in Excel. He goes beyond the standard detailing language features, and actually shows you how to do useful thing with VBA. I recommend it to anyone wanting to learn Excel, or Visual Basic. I have the version for 5.0, and have read it three times

This is an outstanding reference to Excel Application development. Easy to follow and a must for anyone preparing for Microsoft certification in Excel Application Development. It leads you from the basics of the Excel object model and simple application development right up to using Excel as a front end tool for remote database access

If you already know how to master Excel in the day by day and you want to start developing your personal applications not only to make your spreadsheet more appealing, the author will lead you to master Excel's powerful application language with a winning formula of step-by-step lessons to the building of sample applications. Far more than a simple reference guide.

I am an ASP.NET newbie and found this book very helpful in understanding authentication, authorization, role based security, input validation etc. I am a desktop developer and found the web development model difficult to understand initially but this book cleared up my mind in the security related parts. The book is written in a very clear and concise manner and uses diagrams to explain concepts which which I found very helpful. There are practical advices sprinkled all over the book along with the "why" of it.
In short, this is a very well written book which improved my asp.net knowledge and skills considerably. Highly recommended.

I really wish I could give this book 6 stars, it has been an indespensable resource for learning techniques to develop more secure applications. With so many dangers lurking out there it is increasingly important to not only be able to develop secure applications but to understand the .net security mechanisms as well. This book will leave no questions unanswered, if for no other reason purchase this book for chapter 8 on partial trust, I have not come across any resource that covered this topic so thoroughly. It's treatment of sandboxing and code partitioning alone make the book worth every penny paid. If your looking to continually improve the quality of your code and sites don't leave this book off your list.

This is a book by a MS Developer Security MVP for any and all developers writing ASP.NET 2.0 applications. Not only does it cover all the usual suspects and provides practical prescriptive guidance on how to deal with them with examples; it also deals with the tough "hot topics" like partial trust. The book is both complete in breadth and depth and really does provide a single good reference book on ASP.NET security.

I can not recomend it with more guster.

Confession I helped write the tools chapter which is why I know (and yes I am a fellow MS Developer Security MVP)!

Very detailed and well explained topics. Tom Barnaby shows MS distributed programing in a deeply manner.
I think that an architecture chapter or advices about MS distributed architecture would be useful. Anyway, an excellent book.

I have been working with .Net Remoting for a couple months and this book has more detailed information in it, than I could find anywhere. Not only did it help reinforce the fundamentals of remoting, it explores many advanced topics and gives easy to follow examples. The approach is practical and direct even with difficult topics. This book saved me hours of time by explaining in depth delegates and remote callbacks. I highly suggest this book for anyone working with remoting, web services or other distributed programming topics.

Also, the code used in the examples can be downloaded from the book's website in C# or VB.NET.

When I first started reading this book, I thought "Oh no - 3 chapters of intro and a large appendix". I naturally skipped over the intro and started reading what I thought was the first Real chapter. I kept finding interesting references back to an intro chapter "Introduction to .Net Remoting". I finally read this chapter and was pleasantly surprised to find a clear and comprehensive explanation of channels and contexts. The "This is .Net" intro chapter had a great explanation of versioning in .Net. So I'd recommend reading this book from the beginning - or at least start with chapter 2.

The rest of the book allowed me to complete a moderately size distributed project in a lot less time that I thought it would. There is also a great chapter on using transactions under Component Services. I was also able the complete my last MCAD certification test (VB XML) based mainly on what I got out of this book.

This book has no fluff and is packed with a lot of key concepts and practical code samples. The only downside was the brief coverage and dismissal of Web Services. The Appendix turned out to be coverage of ADO.Net written by Andrew Troelsen. I didn't read this chapter because I was already up to speed on ADO.Net. But having read a couple of Troelsen's other books, my guess is that it's pretty good.

At first I was skeptical, but then by the time I finished it, I had something I could actually use. The book goes where few management books dare to go - to actually talk about how to change a business culture. Wow!

There are precise examples of how change is made, with company stories, that allow for organizations to understand that change is possible. This book is now on my must reads list, and I will give it to every executive I work with.

I'd put this book before the Kaplan Balanced Scorecard books and even before Competing on Analytics. The style is concise, the case studies are relevant and the roadmap guidance to changing an organization is approachable.

I just finished reading "Drive Business Performance - Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution" by Bruno Aziza and Joey Fitts. Wow, what a fantastic book! It is one of the best I have read on the subject of Performance Management. It finds the right balance of not being too theoretical or too techie. I love the fact that it offers a broad education on the concepts and terminology associated with Performance Management but, at the same time, is highly actionable. It serves a diverse audience. I would recommend it not just to a CEO but for an organization's entire executive team. It offers the potential for some great post-reading dialog.

My favorite part is their defined "Six Stages of Performance Management Value". For those who know me, it aligns nicely with my "crawl, walk, run" approach to business application development. The "money picture" is how they show the six stages, listed below, in concentric circles; illustrating the evolution and associated benefits of a commitment to Performance Management.

This is actually a book that you can read cover to cover and feel like you get value from every chapter. Read it then buy a copy for your boss... then find a way to get to the sixth stage!

I manage a consulting firm and the #1 issue I see my business customers deal with is the perceived complexity of Performance Management. My customers struggle to determine the people, processes and technologies to turn their high-level strategy into a successful execution plan and results.

In this book, I have found a pragmatic guide that helps business managers and IT get together, assess where they are and start the discussions required to succeed in Performance Management. Sure - the book doesn't solve everything on its own, but it at least gives an easy and effective model to follow.

Finally, I enjoyed how the book reads. The authors give plenty of company success stories and have extracted some great best practice examples that help me remember them. Very sticky. I've also had success using the methodology, which appears well adopted given all the companies in the book saying they're "moving to a Culture of Performance". The Six Stages & 3 Capabilities (MAP) framework help me to assess what stage my clients are at today & explain the steps they need to take to garner greater competitive advantage.

All in all, a good & very useful read!

Aziza & Fitts provide an intelligent perspective on what it takes (and means) to create a "Culture of Performance". The book relies on real world examples rather than conceptual theories peppered with today's favorite jargon. Their approach is refreshing in that the content is backed by existing business environments with a proven track record for success. Empowering individuals and holding them accountable is an absolute necessity. Success is derived from surrounding yourself with the best possible people... and then staying out of their way. This book should be mandatory reading for all employees of any organization. True paradigm shifts occur when EVERYONE has a clear understanding of the goals and objectives - not just a few key players.

I've just finished reading Drive Business Performance and I'd recommend it highly to anyone trying to work out how to actually enable an organisation to realise the benefits of performance management. Many organisations have tried and relatively few have actually succeeded in putting performance management at the very core of it's DNA. This book provides a great blend of (new) theoretical concepts, blueprints for success from organisations such as Hilton Hotels and Fortis, and most importantly a well-structured guide for execution.