visual basic

I wish I had this book a year ago when I first started developing with .NET! Even though I'm no longer a newbie, I'm already using this book as a one-stop reference. I tested it against other books, and this one gave me the quickest solutions for making thread "wrappers", serializing objects in different ways, and writing a timer-based Windows service (three tasks I had in an average week).

Overall, this cookbook has a little bit of everything, and the dense examples and explanations are so much better than the typical .NET programming book (most are full of fluff and theory). Even experienced developers should find a few new tricks here. For me, the security chapter was the best new material (including how to restrict permissions on dynamically loaded assemblies, encrypt objects, and use XML signatures). The ADO.NET chapter is good, but I would have liked even more. The ASP.NET and web services chapters are also good, but hard-core ASP.NET developers will probably want a dedicated cookbook for this stuff, because many topics are not covered. The early, more basic chapters, were also great--you'll be surprised how useful it is to have a list of the core .NET interfaces (for making objects serializable, convertible, disposable, comparable, etc.) and examples how to implement them. Overall, this is a great book for browsing, reviewing, or just honing your skills.

Finally, a book with one-stop shopping for VB.NET! I've read several cookbook-style programming titles in the past, and I was pleasantly surprised to find this has much more depth than I expected. It can't cover everything (.NET is huge), but every time I pick the book up I learn something new. There are so many highlights--just browse through the table of contents and you'll see what I mean!

Here are some of my favorites:
* Send keystrokes to another app
* Create a thread-safe control wrapper
* Great data-binding tips (image-to-picture box, etc.)
* Factory, Registry, Singleton, Memento, and Lazy Initialization patterns
* POP3, FTP, and Ping classes in the networking section
* How to change a password into a salted hash for storage in a database
* Use ZIP and PDF files (disclaimer: some third-party code is required, although it's free)
* Manage print jobs that are underway
* Get Windows accounts and roles
* Do hit testing with custom graphics
* Defend against SQL injection
* Dynamically generate an ASP.NET graphic
* Add ASP.NET controls on the fly
* MAPI and MCI (unfortunately, just through the ActiveX controls)
* Upload binary data with a web service
* Use a web service in VB 6

FYI, when using the code in Chapter 8-4, "8.4 Ping an IP Address", all seems well and you get the different ping times in your console window. However, I referenced the dll provided in the sample code in a fresh application, and used it to ping ONE ip address several times (which was a machine on my same network segment sitting about 3 feet from me) and I got the SAME EXACT responses as the sample app did, which "SUPPOSEDLY" was pinging yahoo.com, SETI.com, and the local loopback address. In fact, no matter what ip addresses I tried to ping, the ping times were always the same approximate numbers. I would say that the only explanation for this is that the generation of the numbers is hard-coded into the dll, rather than being actual ping times. I would love to hear the explanation for this...