As with most O'Reilly books, the reader is treated to a very good overview of the topic at hand. I'd recommend this book to anyone who has some experience with pre-.NET versions of VB and who needs to make the move to the .NET version. I found the chapters on strings and files especially helpful.

I would like to have seen more information on the Crystal Report control that comes included with VB, as that seems to be the only reasonable way to create integrated reports. I'm finding Bischof's "Crystal Reports .NET Programming" book very helpful in this regard.

There are various sections in this book that are pretty basic and unnecessary to even an amateur programmer but there are also lots of other sections that are just chock full of great stuff and even advanced programmers would benefit from them. It also suffers from the common tendency to say very simple things using a lot of words in order to take up a lot of space. I think I even found a tip or two which show up twice in different sections. That being said, there's still a whole lot of worthwhile material in this book.

'Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook: Solutions for VB 2005 Programmers' by Tim Patrick is a perfect reference and solution manual for any and all Visual Basic 2005 developers. Written in typical great O'Reilly cookbook fashion, this book is chock full of nuts with 700+ pages of goodness.

Chapter Overview

01. VB Basics
02. Development Environment
03. Application Organization
04. Forms, Controls, Other Objects
05. Strings
06. Numbers And Math
07. Dates & Times
08. Arrays & Collections
09. Graphics
10. Multimedia
11. Printing
12. Files & File Systems
13. Databases
14. Programming Techniques
15. Exceptions
16. Cryptography & Compression
17. Web Development

This is simply a fabulous book that any and all VB programmers of today need to pick up. Not only will you save time, you'll enjoy doing it while reading this wonderful guide!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

'Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook: Solutions for VB 2005 Programmers' by Tim Patrick is a perfect reference and solution manual for any and all Visual Basic 2005 developers. Written in typical great O'Reilly cookbook fashion, this book is chock full of nuts with 700+ pages of goodness.

Chapter Overview

01. VB Basics
02. Development Environment
03. Application Organization
04. Forms, Controls, Other Objects
05. Strings
06. Numbers And Math
07. Dates & Times
08. Arrays & Collections
09. Graphics
10. Multimedia
11. Printing
12. Files & File Systems
13. Databases
14. Programming Techniques
15. Exceptions
16. Cryptography & Compression
17. Web Development

This is simply a fabulous book that any and all VB programmers of today need to pick up. Not only will you save time, you'll enjoy doing it while reading this wonderful guide!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

If you're new to programming in Visual Basic .NET, but have programmed in some other langauge before, there is always this barrier that one faces when they know, to a certain degree, the task they want to accomplish, but often fall short trying to figure out the syntax or method to implement it here. That is what this book does. It's an essential cookbook, in the language of choice, that bridges that barrier.

It's also a great side-companion for beginners, mainly because the intro books do a fair job of getting people started, but they also need to figure out specific tasks or methods of doing things that tutorial books won't cover. It does not overstate the obvious, and it serves up pretty clear impressions and explanations on what it delivers.

Very helpful for a casual programmer like myself. Just remember to download the "recipies" to avoid retyping.

I've found this book quite useful. There are lots of practical tips, tricks and techniques for VB 2005. I've gleaned a multitude of ideas for use in an intermediate VB class that I teach.

I've found this book quite useful. There are lots of practical tips, tricks and techniques for VB 2005. I've gleaned a multitude of ideas for use in an intermediate VB class that I teach.

Lots of neat tips and ideas. Well written. Very good value. I've already used several "recipes" from the book in just a couple of weeks of owning it.

Over 300 common and uncommon tasks Visual Basic 2005 programmers face often are arranged in a solution-oriented set of examples which is based on 'recipes' and formulas but includes code, examples, complete solutions and even advanced projects. Particularly valuable for .NET developers as well as novice Visual Basic students, the Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook offers up a set of recipes for solving a wide swatch of common problems - and imparts the basics of pros and cons to the solving process.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

There are a many, many reference books out there. Some are good, and some are not. Most are arranged in the "standard" way. They contain one or more chapters about each of their chosen topics. Readers are expected to read these chapters in order to learn what they need. This book, however, is a bit different. It presents hundreds of "recipes", each solving a real-world problem. Some "recipes" are less than a page long, while others span many pages. The cool part is this: most of these recipes stand on their own. You don't have to read them in order. You can choose the recipe that corresponds to your particular need, read it, and apply it to your own program. Sweet.

The real worth of such a book lies in the quality of the recipes. Having hundreds of recipes available does one no good unless those recipes are actually used. I have to admit that at first I was skeptical. The first recipes were well beneath my skill level. The topics were explained well, but they were still very basic. The recipes became more interesting as I progressed through the book. Things got really interesting when I reached the chapter on graphics. From then on, I was sold.

Of course, those first chapters weren't interesting to me because I already knew the material. My son, who is very much a beginning programmer, was a different story. I asked him to read the first recipe and to write the example program. He found it quite interesting and helpful. In fact, this is the first book that I've found that he will actually read. That, of course, makes this book much more useful than all of the others.

I gave this book four stars instead of five for one reason; object disposal. All throughout the book, the authors show how to use objects that should be disposed. They don't, however, show you how to do this until halfway through chapter 14. Because the independent nature of these recipes, it's possible that someone might never read chapter 14. Those people might think that they are writing good code, but they would be wrong.

So, go buy this book, and don't forget to read chapter 14.