Review

If you know anything about Visual Basic, then you certainly know who Dan Appleman is. Dan Appleman is one of the most renowned Visual Basic authors. Some of his best selling books include, "Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API, "Win32 API Puzzle Book and Tutorial for Visual Basic Programmers", and of course, "Developing Com/ActiveX Components with Visual Basic 6".
This book is pretty dense, and assumes a substancial background in Visual Basic. If you're looking to move up a level and want to learn how to build COM/ActiveX components in VB, then without a doubt, Dan Appleman's "Developing COM/ActiveX Components with Visual Basic 6" is the book to read. Those who have read some of Dan's other works can expect the same winning tutorial format with this book. The book covers all aspects of VB COM/ActiveX with extreme clarity and detail. It is packed with tons of code examples. The author does a great job in explaining the pros and cons of COM objects used as in-process(DLLs), stand-alone (EXEs), and remote processes. The end of the book covers VB internet technologies such as ActiveX documents and the new to Visual Basic 6 WebClasses.
You may read other reviews for this book at Amazon.com, they are all excellent.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I Core Technologies

1 ActiveX Myths
2 ActiveX: A Historical (but Technical) Perspective
3 Objects and Visual Basic
4 The Component Object Model: Interfaces, Automation, and Binding
5 Aggregation and Polymorphism
6 The Life and Times of an ActiveX Component
7 ActiveX Components: What's in a Name?

Part II Code Components

8 The Project
9 Creating and Testing Components
10 Code and Classes: Beyond the Manuals
11 Events
12 Collecting Objects
13 Object Lifetime
14 Multithreading
15 Bringing It All Together: The StockQuote Server

Part III ActiveX Controls

16 ActiveX Control Fundamentals
17 The UserControl Object
18 The Extender and Ambient Objects
19 The Wonderful World of Properties
20 Property Pages and Others
21 ActiveX Controls and the Internet
22 Advanced Techniques

Part IV ActiveX Documents

23 ActiveX Document Fundamentals
24 ActiveX Documents and the Internet

Part V Selected Topics

25 Versioning
26 Licensing and Distribution
27 IIS Applications
28 A Matter of State

Index

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