Francesco Balena has written many articles for the popular Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal, and he now releases this well awaited book. Many people have expected a lot from a programmer of this quality, and the book does very well.
When reading the book, Francesco’s style for going into detail sometimes ends up going off the topic. For a reader who knows VB, this is great because he takes you more ‘under the hood’ of what happens. But for a beginner knowing nothing, this may be hard to take in.
Aside from the more advanced parts of the book, there are many great bits for beginners. For example, he demonstrates how to use the Coolbar control to emulate the Interet Explorer toolbar system by using a transparent toolbar control with a background picture.
Inside the book, there are many tips and tricks from the Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal, that help you to understand the concept. Almost every topic has several demo projects, and the full source for these, plus other goodies can be found on the companion CD.
Overall this book is worth buying if you are a beginner, but you might need a helping hand to know when to skip certain bits. If you are an intermediate/advanced programmer, this book also contains useful information for you. This book is well worth the asking price, and I suggest that even if you don’t want to read all 1400 pages you can still use it as a reference for certain topics.
