Dan Appleman's Developing COM/ActiveX Components with Visual Basic 6 provides expert-mode knowledge of COM controls along with a guide to some of the latest features in Visual Basic. Extremely thorough and densely packed with advice, this book is just right for the programmer who needs to know all the details about Visual Basic controls.
The author begins with a tour of ActiveX and COM, along with some common myths about the technology. His introduction to COM technology is good, but Appleman also explains the pros and cons of COM objects used as in-process dynamic-link libraries (DLLs), standalone EXEs, and remote processes.
When it comes to Visual Basic, the author gives plenty of expert knowledge on class and project options. He covers how to design objects in Visual Basic up close and includes some hard-to-find material on collections and multithreading programming techniques. Appleman also provides an interesting example, a live stock-quote server.
A good deal of the book concentrates on writing ActiveX controls in Visual Basic. Although some developers use the Active Template Library (ATL) and Visual C++ for high performance, it's clear that Visual Basic can do a fine job of creating reusable controls. The author presents a soup-to-nuts tour of ActiveX control development, with due consideration of such topics as properties, events, property pages, and even security and signing. Final sections on ActiveX Documents and the new Visual Basic 6 WebClasses (for ASP development) show off Internet development. In all, this book offers much useful material on expert-mode topics geared to the more seasoned Visual Basic developer.
--Richard Dragan
Customer Reviews & Comments
I believe Dan says it best..."understanding how something works can help you understand how to use it." I agree 100% Dan. This book is well balanced. It throughly explains, not only how to create ActiveX/COM Components, but the benefits and pitfalls of the different types of components. The examples in the book are great, unless your looking for an example to solve your problem. That's why I like this book. Dan is not trying to give examples to solve your problems. He is giving you examples so you can apply what you learn from his book to your problem. A way better method of teaching someone a new technology. If you want to just get code to type in your application buy a different book. If you want to be able to apply this technology to your applications, buy this book today.
