Rating: 
Summary: For Hardcore VB/VBA programmers
Review: This is a very long book and actually very comprehensive. It
gives required information for you to do your own construction to access Win32 API calls in VB, but then it also gives you plenty of constructed code so that you can just use them right away. The meat of the book is Part2: Win32 API Functions. Here is where you'll find conversions already done. You can simply go
to the appropriate section of the book and look for your function conversion. The index is rather well put together, start there of course. But you may ask: "What if my conversion isn't in the book?" Well, theres good news -- he explains how to do the conversion. And whatever section (for example, Bitmaps and Icons) of Win32 your funcion falls in, in Part 2 there is a chapter for it, and in the beginning of that chapter Dan goes on and on about relevent attributes about the potential data type (e.g., Handles, or Device Independent Bitmaps) you'll need to find a VB counterpart for. This book is exTREMELY long, so don't think that you'll be reading through it. It's not designed to be read that way. Here is how you use the book. Look for the Win32 function in the index. If you dont see go to the section of the book that most likely deals with it (for example, go to Device Contexts to find SelectObject). If its there simply copy the conversion. If its not read how to do the conversion then (don't read how to do it until you need to do it -- save yourself some time and thinking). Why only 4 stars? Eh, it's kinda boring. And I'm one of those C++ guys at heart. And we SelectObject()s the old fashion way. =) Me.SayGoodbye()
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic...
Review: This is the first time in a long time that I haven't been able to put a programming book down. I have been borrowing a colleague's copy for about 6 months and finally decided to get my own (at his request), because there is just too much information contained in there. Appleman start's the book off slowly (if you are new to the API) and gives you a good idea about what's going on behind the scenes of your VB app...it's content is even accessible for beginning/intermediate VB programmers to grasp (if you take the time). There is a lot of powerful stuff in this book and I've been hacking the API for the past year and I am glad he has this book out...I sure wouldn't want to go back to C/C++ to do some of the relatively advanced procedures I can do in a fraction of the time in the VB environment. This book is actually worth the price just for a pretty near perfect copy of his API32.txt file (it blows away Microsoft's copy that is viewed in the API viewer. Half the reason most API calls fall short is Microsoft's lousy WINAPI32.txt file). If you want to take your skills to the next level and put your apps over the edge...GET THIS BOOK!
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