While building my own comprehensive Visual Basic library (inproc DLL), I found that I had to browse the web for hours looking for a particular routine that I needed for my newest programming projects. I came across this book while browsing the VB library at a book store, and found that it contained a lot of the code I was looking for to complement my growing library.
What really sold me was the ZIP compression code included with the book. The code as presented is based on the freeware Info-Zip DLL library, and the example was not done well. The author didn't spend any time developing the ZIP routines other than showing how to access the DLL. So I took the sample and built a wrapper for the code, which gave me access to individual files inside the ZIP. I can now add and delete any file stored in a ZIP using my new wrapper. But it was based on the code and hints included with this book.
There are just TONS of routines in this book that I have found very useful, including a number of network API functions that are very difficult to come by without a reference like this.
If you are building a Visual Basic library of your own, then this book is a great asset, and I believe provides more functionality than many of the "commercial" Visual Basic libraries out there. The benefit is that you can see the code for yourself and make use of it in any way you see fit.
