Books and Tools For Developers

Creating Video Demos With Camtasia Studio

Ged Mead — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:28:00 GMT

I've been meaning to blog about the tools I use regularly and find useful and I've managed to get a couple written this month. I'm always a bit concerned that blogs like this might end up looking like some kind of infomercial. But I eventually came to the conclusion that I've always thought that personal recommendation was the best kind of recommendation, so if I like a tool I should tell the world. Whether the world sets any store by my opinion is a matter for the world to decide! J

I have been using Camtasia Studio on and off for a couple of years now. When I first got hold of a copy, I needed it to create some demo videos. What I really liked about it was that, with no previous experience of screen recording, I was able to make the recording successfully after only a couple of tries. OK, so when I look back at that effort now, maybe "successfully" is an extravagant claim, but it was good enough for what I wanted to do at the time.

Although there are still some (many!) features that I haven't yet got round to using, it has still been a really useful tool for me. When I first got it, I was more interested in grabbing the screen action and recording some audio narration. More recently, I needed to improve the narration side and so was looking for a way to record the voice independently and (often) edit parts of it without having to re-record the whole thing for the umpteenth time.

Camtasia Studio comes with a subset of handy little apps, one of which is their Audio Editor. This has been really useful, as it enabled me to make those voice recordings and edit them easily. I also found myself doing a lot of "Inserting Silence" to replace the intakes of breath and the occasional unwanted clunk when I'm waving my hands around and hit the boom mike.

The tutorials are excellent and there is a lively set of User forums. FAQs are available to help you with those tricky things that should go right but somehow don't.

The work area is as easy to use as you could reasonably hope for with an application that seems to have so many options. As you can see from the screenshot, the timeline allows for more than one audio track.

Version 6 of Camtasia comes with even more presets to help you create the best screen size, resolution and (often important for web distribution or viewing) file size.

I'm currently working on creating some courses, all of which contain video demos. As I get more used to using it, I am of course finding that I can get from starting idea to finished production much quicker. When I've finished my current project, as a long term plan, I hope to be able to create a set of short videos to be made available for free here on VBCity.

All in all, I'm really pleased with it and many a time I've silently thanked the friend who first put me on to it. You can download a free 30 Day trial version from the TechSmith site here.

Pro WPF with VB 2008 by Matthew MacDonald

Ged Mead — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:02:00 GMT

Friday was something of a Red Letter Day in the Mead household, because that was the day that the book I've been looking forward to getting for months finally arrived on my doorstep. At last - a WPF book aimed at those of us who prefer to use Visual Basic for the code behind. The book is Matthew MacDonald's "Pro WPF with VB 2008", published by Apress.

In the couple of days since it arrived I obviously haven't been able to get too deeply into reading it - although my wife might offer a different opinion on how many hours I've spent with my head in this book since Friday! However, it's immediately clear that this is another well-written and comprehensive piece of work from a widely respected author.

Unsurprisingly, large chunks of content have been ported directly from his earlier WPF book, which was based on .NET 3.0 and has C# as the code behind. This makes complete sense as it is only the code behind aspects that need the different approach. We VB-ers are just as able to understand the general WPF and XAML explanations as our allegedly "sharper" developer brethren.

Because this is based on WPF 3.5 though, there are some additional items, such as binding to a LINQ expression in Chapter 16. There is also a completely new additional Chapter 26, which deals with the topics of Multithreading and Add-Ins.

I don't think Apress have the full chapter listing on their site yet (or at least I couldn't see it if they did). However, rest assured that the whole gamut of WPF topics is covered in this book, from Layout to Dependency Properties, Routed Events to Navigation - in fact everything from Animation to Z-Index.

The author has a very useful list of links that you can simply click on to save you (mis)typing them yourself from the book. These links and the downloadable code samples are available from here.

In my opinion, you should buy this book for two reasons.

First, it is an excellent, wide ranging, clear description of what you will need to know in order to get fully to grips with this exciting (but not always intuitive) technology.

Second, there have been at least five WPF books published in the past year that have C# as the code behind. Publishers are in the business of selling books and they couldn't care less about whether C# or VB are "better". So I guess it's obvious that their stats show that they will sell more C# books. If you want to keep VB as a viable language, fully supported by authors and publishers, then the only way to ensure this is to make it worth their while to publish VB based books.

So for either or both these reasons, I rate this book as one of the most worthwhile investments you can make if you are a VB developer (or student) and you want to fully embrace all the tempting offerings available in Windows Presentation Foundation.

Murach's Visual Basic 2008 - Book Review

Ged Mead — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:07:00 GMT

The latest .NET book from the Murach publishing house is "Murach's Visual Basic 2008". This book is essentially an update of their earlier book for VB 2005 which now includes additional coverage of new features such as Anonymous Types, Object Initializers and LINQ.

I've just been re-reading my original review of the 2005 book and much of what I said then applies equally to this latest version. Here's what I said then:

We all find that some particular authoring styles work better than others for us individually. Some of us like a mass of detail and repetition; some like a few terse lines of explanation. Some of us like to be jollied along with the occasional funny; some like to stay serious. Some like the pages to be jam-packed with screenshots and diagrams; others think this is a waste of teaching space.

It's an individual thing.

Murach have developed their own particular individual style. They use a "facing page" technique. Open the book up at any section and on the left hand page you will find a discussion or explanation of a topic. On the facing page you will see more specific information about this topic, possibly with a diagram or screenshots, or very often demonstration code samples.

The benefit of this approach is that the author has two bites of the teaching cherry. She (in this case, author Anne Boehm) can introduce a topic on the left hand page, cover the essentials and be ready to move on. The value of the right hand facing page though is that it can be used to show additional detail, display sample code and example results and also (this I think being very important) can summarise the key points covered on the first page. The reinforcement of learning points in this way can be a very valuable tool.

Essentially, the reader can decide if he or she has understood enough from the left side page to be ready to move on, or if not then they can opt to read the right hand page for more info, samples or reinforcement and confirmation of their understanding.

Personally I quite like the approach. I tend to dive into books almost at random sometimes, but often just needing to refresh my memory on a particular point. If I'm using a Murach book and need further detail, I can dig into the additional facing page info as much as needed for any one topic, or even specific part of a topic.

If there is a down side to the Murach approach it's probably that because of the facing pages approach they have to limit the number of VB.NET topics they can actually cover in the 800+ pages limit . That said, what they do cover is fairly comprehensive and contains plenty of material to keep a VB.NET beginner engrossed for many a long night. And, most importantly, those topics are covered thoroughly and clearly in plain English.

A full list of the book Contents can be seen here and as you will see, you can drill further into each chapter to exactly what is covered.

If you want to know if the Murach style will suit you, then you can take a look at two Sample Chapters here.

In summary, this is another clearly written, well laid out offering from the Murach stable. This book is particularly suitable for newcomers to VB.NET, whether total developer beginners or those moving to .NET from VB Classic.

Book Review: Pro WPF. Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0

Ged Mead — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:40:00 GMT

I've bought several books on Windows Presentation Foundation over the past few months and I've reviewed a couple of them already. As is usually the case, each of the books has something to offer and it's a rare day when you can find all the information you need on a complex, wide ranging topic like WPF in one book.

Without detracting from the other books that I admire, I think if one book does come closest to being a one-stop source then possibly it is the Pro WPF book by Matthew MacDonald. As with all his books, coverage of topics is comprehensive, detailed and accurate. At just under 1000 pages it's definitely a heavyweight, although you're unlikely to want to be parted from it long enough to use it as a doorstop.

The author's writing style is friendly without being patronising. There are no cartoons or corny jokes, but screen shots are used where appropriate and his approach is light and easy to follow - not an easy achievement in a topic as complex as WPF.

If I have a gripe about the book, it's the same complaint I've been making since the middle of 2007 - this is yet another WPF book that only has code behind samples in C#. (And in the case of this particular publication that's a piece of information the publishers chose not to mention on the cover). That said, the samples are still clear and I had very little difficulty translating to VB.NET where necessary. Bearing in mind that much of the new material you need to get to grips with in WPF is on the XAML side, this isn't quite as big a problem as it could have been.

Of the books I have on WPF, I turn to this one early in most researches - although as you'll have gathered from my earlier comments, searching for answers while maneuvering through the WPF minefield almost always involves more than one book, often plus an online search. On the subject of search access, Apress offer a PDF version of this book for an additional $10. For a book with this amount of content it's tempting. However, if you need to preserve your cash, the Index in this book is in fact particularly good. There's definitely something to be said though for being able to take a snippet of information you think you read in the book somewhere and do a trawl through the PDF version to home in on it.

Still with cash preservation in mind, I see that the Second Edition is due out early in 2008, this one updated for the 3.5 Framework, so you may want to wait for that one to appear on the shelves. I also note that a VB.2008 version of this new edition is on the schedule, but there is no publication date announced yet, so it's not likely to be any time soon.

I didn't see a Contents list on the Apress web site, so I'll list the chapters below:

Introducing WPF
XAML
The Application
Layout
Content
Dependency Properties and Routed Events
Classic Controls
Windows
Pages and Navigation
Commands
Resources
Styles
Shapes, Transforms and Brushes
Geometries, Drawings and Visuals
Control Templates
Data Binding
Data Templates, Data Views and Data Providers
Lists, Trees and Menus
Documents
Printing
Animation
Sound and Video
3-D Drawing
Custom Elements
Interacting with Windows Forms
ClickOnce Deployment

As I say, it's comprehensive. All in all, I consider this book to be a good investment. I have several of Matthew MacDonald's earlier books, which I have always found relevant, well-written and useful; this book is in the same mould.

Applications = Code + Markup by Charles Petzold

Ged Mead — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:34:00 GMT

Introduction

Charles Petzold is usually a very popular technical author, so it was unusual to see that this book has had some quite harsh and critical reviews on the various book sites such as Amazon.

The gist of most people's complaints seem to be:

(a) "There's no XAML until Chapter 19" and/or

(b) "There aren't any pictures".

OK, so I'm summarising and slightly trivialising the complaints, but that's essentially it.

The Complaints - are they justified?

a. No XAML

People making this complaint have in my opinion totally missed the point for several reasons.

Firstly, this is not Charles Petzold's "How to Write XAML" book. It's a book whose title explicitly tells you that it will approach WPF from both the code (C#) and markup (XAML) perspectives. Unusually (actually I think it is uniquely) he doesn't mix and chop up the two approaches, but deals with each of them in isolation.

Secondly, WPF is not XAML. You can use XAML, sure. You'd be silly not to in many situations. But XAML is only one part of the big picture. As this book clearly shows, you can successfully create an awful lot of WPF output with code alone.

b. No Pictures

Normally I would have some sympathy with Complaint (b) because it's always nice to see what the code samples should produce. But if you use this book as the author intended and actually run the samples yourself you will gain far more than any quick glance at a screenshot would give you. You will gain insight and experience in how to master this new technology.

So I really don't think there is any real justification for the outcry.

So, what about the book, then?

The best (I think, only) way to get value out of this book is to read it.

Yeah, yeah,I know that sounds trite: It's a book, you read it.

But, no I mean really read it - word by word, line by line, section by section, stopping to think about what you've just read several times per page. And then trying out his samples. Even the almost-too-simple-to-waste-my-valuable-time-on looking ones. Followed by trying out his suggested alternatives and your own tweaks as questions, thoughts and possibilities occur to you as you do that.

This isn't a "skim through it and get the idea" kind of book. In my opinion it isn't even a "dig into the index and find an interesting topic to look at" book. At least not until you've got a good grounding under your belt.

This is a book that very carefully works its way through the requirements needed for the reader to achieve a thorough understanding of the major concepts. One of the reasons why I recommend reading it - and using it - from cover to cover is that, even in the early basic chapters little gems of code and explanation are slipped into the narrative or the examples. Often these begin to deal with more complex topics that you will come on to in more detail later.

It is crammed full of detail. Mostly it's the kind of detail that you really need once you've got past the "let's play with WPF and see what you can knock out in a couple of hours" stage. The detail you need when you move on to the point where you want to do something that isn't necessarily easy out of the box, but is achievable if your understanding is built on stone, not sand.

If I have a complaint, it's a minor one: occasionally he lets the Math geek get out and play a bit more than strictly necessary, but even that is fairly rare.

I'm also not 100% convinced yet of the value of the chapters which create panels in procedural code as this seems to work against the overall principle of separating look and logic. That said, I'm sure that knowledge of some of the procedural code versions of XAML will come in useful at some time or other - and it's certainly easier to pick them up from this book than searching through the documentation.

I'll be honest, I'm much more a "dip in a book and read the interesting bits" kind of reader by inclination. Superficially you get better (or at least initially) faster results. But, as we all come to know, unless you thoroughly understand the fundamental concepts then sooner or later you are going to struggle. And so with this book I'm putting my money where my mouth is and working my way through it. I still have quite a long way to go, but the rewards in terms of increased knowledge have already been substantial (and I've been working on WPF for several months already prior to picking up this book).

The code samples are in C# only. However, thanks to some of the guys on the VB Team at Microsoft some chapters have been translated to VB.NET and there are more to come. At the time of writing, the first three chapters are available and you can access them from here. You can link back from that Chapter 3 download by Young Joo to the original first two chapter translations made by Patrick Dengler. I'm told that six more chapters are on their way before the end of November. In the meantime, for later chapters, there are enough free translation sites around for this not to be a problem. And in fact I'm finding that generally the curly brace syntax isn't a huge barrier to understanding.

(I have uploaded some conversions I've made myself and will leave them available until the "official" VB Team ones come on line. You can see Chapter 4 here, Chapter 5 here and Chapter 6 here.)

Summary

If you are committed to fully understanding WPF then this book is one you really should buy. By all means get others too. I already have several; they all serve their purpose, are very useful and I refer to them regularly. But when it comes right down to the "roll your sleeves up, go sit in a quiet place with book and PC to learn, really learn, WPF" then I think Charles Petzold has produced a (not so little) gem that will be truly helpful to you in your learning endeavours.

Professional WPF Programming - Book Review

Ged Mead — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:12:00 GMT

This book sets out to introduce WPF to professional developers. Co-written by four authors, it covers a range of topics at varying levels . Inevitably this kind of multi-author book has the feel of being a collection of specialist essays by experts in the various areas rather than a coherent, empirical textbook. This may or may not be a bad thing, as the resulting book will have something for readers at all levels. (A good example of pleasing some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time)

Among the topics covered are general WPF development concepts, Styles, Animation, Bitmap Effects, Transformations, Custom Controls and Win32 Interop. The book also covers the kind of pro dev topics that often don't get as much coverage elsewhere, e.g. Security and Architecture.

I have read several WPF books and this is the first one I have seen that shows how to use Expression Blend as a core part of the development process. An interesting approach and one that is quite useful.

The code behind is in C# (as is every other WPF book on the market at the time of writing), but it would be better if VB.NET code behind was available also.. There are downloadable code samples for most chapters. I thought that the code demos for Chapter 10 - WPF and Win32 Interop examples - were a particularly useful inclusion in these early days of WPF.

Because it is a relatively small book (by modern technical book standards anyway, at 400 pages) I did feel that there was
insufficient coverage of some key topics, e.g. I would have liked more on Control Templates and Document display, for example.

However there are occasional little gems, such as excellent descriptions of particular new WPF topics - RoutedEvents, for example being explained very clearly. The two step by step chapters on Expression Blend have many useful screenshots. The Special Effects chapter includes examples of the kind of WPF showpieces that have caught a lot of people's interest.

If you decide to pursue WPF in depth, then this probably Won't be the only book on the subject that you'll buy. But for an overview of WPF, plus an introduction to using Expression Blend as a development tool, there will certainly be material in here that you will find useful.

Murach's ADO.NET 2.0 Database Programming with VB 2005.

Ged Mead — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:55:00 GMT

The Murach publishing house are unusual in that they only use a small group of in-house authors and all their books use the same structure and layout style. This style is their individual “facing pages” approach.

How it works is that each pair of pages throughout the book deal with the same topic or sub-topic. On the left hand page you get an explanation of the subject in hand. Many times this explanation will be all you need if it’s an uncomplicated topic or you‘re already partly familiar with it or it’s just one of those things you can grasp straight away.

But if you need further explanation or code samples or screenshots to clarify things then you will find these on each right hand page. It’s a simple concept, but a very effective one. If, like me, you like to skim (or go back sometimes and very quickly review) a topic, then this facing page layout is absolutely perfect.

The book is split into five parts, dealing with :

Introduction to Relational Databases
Three-layer architecture (splitting the application into separate sections that deal with presentation, business logic and database tasks.)
Databases in Web applications
Further detailed coverage of more advanced ADO.NET topics.
XML, Server Explorer and Crystal reports

Author Ann Boehm works through each of these complex and wide-ranging topics in a clear and logical manner.

One of the features of Murach’s books that I always applaud is that you can rely on them to take nothing for granted. For example, they don’t assume that the reader knows how to attach the downloadable SQL Server database samples. In a handy Appendix at the end of the book you will find help on key tasks such as:

How to install SQL Server 2005 Express

How to attach, detach and restore the database for the book and

How to grant ASP.NET access to the database.

While they are all easy to do - once you know how - these are the kind of things that will drive a beginner near to tears of frustration if they hit this hurdle alone. It is this kind of attention to the reader’s needs that sets Murach books apart from some others.

As is standard nowadays, you can download the full set of samples used in the book. Most of the samples are grouped into complete applications of varying size and this makes them much more much real world friendly than a bunch of small unrelated code snippets you may see elsewhere.

This is another high quality book from the Murach stable. Overall, if you want a good introduction to programming ADO.NET 2.0 in Visual Basic 2005 then this book is well worth the money.

Programming MS ADO.NET Core Reference by David Sceppa

Ged Mead — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:13:00 GMT

This is the second edition of David Sceppa's excellent and comprehensive guide to all things ADO.NET for both VB.NET and C# developers.

This book covers the whole topic in great detail and is packed with explanations and usable sample snippets. It will be useful for developers across a wide range of experience of database access, from relative beginner to experienced VB.NET practitioner.

Although it is possible to pick and mix from the various chapters, I found that I got by far the best value out of it by rolling my sleeves up and working through it chapter by chapter. This isn't generally my personal preference when reading large books. However , because of the empirical way the author builds up your understanding of this whole huge complex field of study, I persevered and was glad that I did.

One thing I did find was that it's an easy trap to just sit and read the explanations, descriptions and easy-to-follow code examples. You find yourself nodding your head, think that you've mastered that step and move one. Of course, when you come to try it a day or two later in Visual Studio, you discover you really only actually realled got 80% of it. Or at least that was my experience. So I would recommend that you create a project or two and actually try out his samples as you read each section.

Actually I got best value by taking the concept covered by his samples and rewriting them with a different database, different query, and so on, so that I was forced to think about what each line did. (And debug them when I'd got it wrong!). I've found this to be a much better learning device than copy typing from the book or - worse - copy pasting from the downloadable samples.

Bearing in mind what a wide ranging and often complicated subject ADO.NET can be, the author does well to keep it as interesting as possible Another problem with writing about ADO.NET is that so often you need to understand Topic A before you can really grasp Topic B, but to get to grips with Topic B you need to understand Topic C, etc. For this reason the book is peppered with promises that we will get to that subject before long, as in "I'll discuss the Topic B features in more detail in Chapter X". This is quite reassuring , as it's almost impossible to read this book without often suddenly stopping and thinking "Wait a minute! What about...?" or "How do I ...?" etc. In most cases, the author has foreseen this question and either provides a stopgap answer and/or one of those "I'll discuss ..." promises to tide you over the problem.

If you are familiar with ADO or DAO from your VB6 days then you will appreciate the regular comparisons he makes between the old and new approaches . The code samples are offered in both VB.NET and C# (VB first, of course, as is only fitting <g>).

Here is a list of the main contents of the book:

Overview of ADO.NET
Building applications with the Data Form Wizard
Connecting to your database
Querying your database
Working with DataAdapters
Storing data in DataSets
Filtering and searching data in DataSets
Working with relational data
Submitting updates to your database
Advanced updating scenarios
Using strongly typed DataSets
Interacting with XML data
Building effective Windows® database applications
Building effective Web database applications

I usually try and find both Pros and Cons when writing book reviews. To be honest, I really couldn't find any fault with it . I found Chapter 10 a bit confusing, but I'm prepared to put that down more to my lack of experience with the various scenarios rather than seeing it as a fault with the book. It is written by a man who is a master of his subject. It's generally readable from cover to cover, so far as any book on a subject as complex as ADO.NET could be. It's sufficiently well structured and indexed so that it will be a useful reference guide to dip back into for a long time to come.

What else can I say? It delivers the goods.

Beginning SQL Server 2005 for Developers

Ged Mead — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 15:13:00 GMT

Beginning SQL Server 2005 for Developers - From Novice to Professional

Author: Robin Dewson

Published By: Apress

I have always found SQL Server, with its many Studios, Tools, Add-Ins, etc to be a vastly complex piece of software. And while I haven't been called on to create any serious applications with it (having always managed to duck under the wire and take the much easier MS Access route), I've always felt that I should have a better understanding. For sure, one day I'm going to need to use it, so it would be better to have an idea of how it works in advance of the day.

Many books have been written about SQL Server. I already have a few of them. Many of them claim to explain everything that a complete beginner needs to know to get to grips with the basics and beyond. Maybe I'm just a slow learner, or have a particular problem with SQL Server, but in my experience most of them fail to deliver on this promise.

It's usually the old "start line" problem. The author's start line of knowledge is way ahead of this reader's start line. As a result they assume that readers will have an understanding of all concepts behind this line. Sadly that often isn't the case and because minor but crucial pieces of information are not included, beginners often fall by the wayside before they've waded through the first two chapters.

So I have been searching for a book that would truly take a reader from zero to hero - and I'm talking about starting right from the point where you have taken the cellophane wrapping off the disc ready to install the software for the first time and moving from there through the key topics to a point where you can confidently tinker with the inner workings of the product.

With this book, I think I may at last have found it!

Chapter 1 gives an overview plus a walkthrough of installing SQL Server. Among other things, it clearly explains in layman's terms Accounts and Authentication Modes.

Chapter 2 introduces and shows you how to use the SQL Server Management Studio.

Chapter 3 is a mini primer on Dattabase design, then goes on to show how to create a SQL Server database.

Chapter 4 deals with Security in more depth than the brief intro that was offered back in Chapter 1.

Chapter 5 explains how to Define Tables.

Chapter 6 spends quite a lot of time discussing and demonstrating Indexes, then briefly covers database diagramming.

Chapter 7 covers database backup, recovery and maintenance.

Chapter 8 deals with how you work with the actual data, e.g. Select, Retrieve, Update, Delete, etc.

Chapter 9 demonstrates how to create Views.

Chapter 10 goes into the thorny but important topic of Stored Procedures.

Chapter 11 and 12 get deeper into T-SQL.

Chapter 13 is a fairly short chapter that covers the topic of Triggers.

Chapter 14 deals with SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services.

There is also a useful and fairly comprehensive Glossary at the back of the book.

All the samples that I tried worked properly and all the explanations made sense. If you are an absolute beginner with SQL Server then I would recommend this book as an excellent start point of your learning curve.