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This book could be half the size it is because the first half is basically an introduction to programming in Visual Basic. If you are new to VB5 then this covers the fundamentals well, in a clear way. However, new users may find more help from one of the dedicated VB5 tutorial books. This book becomes useful, however, when discussing the creation of ActiveX controls, including issues regarding design and techniques. Writing ActiveX controls is notably different to normal Visual Basic applications, but the reader is helped with the differences. A major issue comes with debugging; a chapter is dedicated to this. Reading through the sample control chapters makes the whole process even clearer and certainly gives a good grounding in ActiveX controls. The samples include a calendar control as well as extended label and text controls.

This is more than adequate as a book on designing and implementing ActiveX controls. The large section introducing VB5 could have been left to another book, which would have left more room for actual discussion of the books title.