Everything you need to know about:

• Creating stellar UserForms and custom dialog box alternatives
• Working with VBA subprocedures and function procedures
• Incorporating event-handling and interactions with other applications
• Building user-friendly toolbars, menus, and help systems
• Manipulating files and Visual Basic® components
• Understanding class modules
• Managing compatibility issues

Feel the power of VBA and Excel

No one can uncover Excel’s hidden capabilities like "Mr. Spreadsheet" himself. John Walkenbach begins this power user’s guide with a conceptual overview, an analysis of Excel application development, and a complete introduction to VBA. Then, he shows you how to customize Excel UserForms, develop new utilities, use VBA with charts and pivot tables, create event-handling applications, and much more. If you’re fairly new to Excel programming, here’s the foundation you need. If you’re already a VBA veteran, you can start mining a rich lode of programming ideas right away.

CD-ROM Includes

• Trial version of the author’s award-winning Power Utility Pak
• Over one hundred example Excel workbooks from the book

System Requirements: PC running Windows® 2000 SP3 or later, or Windows XP™ or later. microsoft Excel 2003. See the "What’s on the CD" Appendix for details and complete system requirements.

Book Info
Guide to Excel VBA, showing how to create UserForms and custom dialog box alternatives, working with VBA subprocedures and function procedures, managing compatibility issues, and more. Softcover.

The heart of Johnson's argument is something called the Sleeper Curve--a universe of popular entertainment that trends, intellectually speaking, ever upward, so that today's pop-culture consumer has to do more "cognitive work"--making snap decisions and coming up with long-term strategies in role-playing video games, for example, or mastering new virtual environments on the Internet-- than ever before. Johnson makes a compelling case that even today's least nutritional TV junk food–the Joe Millionaires and Survivors so commonly derided as evidence of America's cultural decline--is more complex and stimulating, in terms of plot complexity and the amount of external information viewers need to understand them, than the Love Boats and I Love Lucys that preceded it. When it comes to television, even (perhaps especially) crappy television, Johnson argues, "the content is less interesting than the cognitive work the show elicits from your mind."
Johnson's work has been controversial, as befits a writer willing to challenge wisdom so conventional it has ossified into accepted truth. But even the most skeptical readers should be captivated by the intriguing questions Johnson raises, whether or not they choose to accept his answers. --Erica C. Barnett --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Worried about how much time your children spend playing video games? Don't be, advises Johnson—not only are they learning valuable problem-solving skills, they'd probably do better on an IQ test than you or your parents could at their age. Go ahead and let them watch more television, too, since even reality shows can function as "elaborately staged group psychology experiments" to stimulate rather than pacify the brain. With the same winning combination of personal revelation and friendly scientific explanation he displayed in last year's Mind Wide Open, Johnson shatters the conventional wisdom about pop culture as pabulum, showing how video games, television shows and movies have become increasingly complex. Furthermore, he says, consumers are drawn specifically to those products that require the most mental engagement, from small children who can't get enough of their favorite Disney DVDs to adults who find new layers of meaning with each repeated viewing of Seinfeld. Johnson lays out a strong case that what we do for fun is just as educational in its way as what we study in the classroom (although it's still worthwhile to encourage good reading habits, too). There's an important message here for every parent—one they should hear from the source before savvy kids (especially teens) try to take advantage of it. Agent, Lydia Wills at Paradigm. (May)
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Past readers will find that the new edition has changed a great deal and grown considerably to encompass new language features, particularly run-time type identification, namespaces, and the standard library. At the same time, readers will recognize the lucid style and sensible advice that made previous editions so readable and enjoyable. Probably the biggest change is a substantial new section, well over 200 pages in length, covering the contents and design of the C++ standard library, the most important new feature of the C++ specification. The author has also added a substantial number of new exercises while keeping many from previous editions that have retained their value.

While The C++ programming Language is not a C++ tutorial, strictly speaking, anyone learning the language, especially those coming from C, will greatly benefit from the clear presentation of all its elements. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this book for anyone who is serious about using C++. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Dr. Dobb's Journal
Read the entire Review, including a chapter-by-chapter analysis of this book.

Bjarne Stroustrup's The C++ programming Language, Third Edition (Addison-Wesley, 1997) has been available for several months. This work, by the creator of C++, is the definitive treatment of the subject and has been since its first edition in 1987. I must confess that I did not care for the first edition. I had expected a tutorial approach as elegant as the classic K&R white book. But then, K&R was about C, a programming language that supported a familiar programming model. The C++ programming model was new to most of us ten years ago, and Stroustrup's first edition was daunting, to say the least. Looking at it now, I find it far less so and much easier to read.

Comparing the first and third editions of The C++ programming Language provides insight into how the C++ language has grown and changed in the past decade. The third edition has almost three times the number of pages and a slightly different organization. Whereas the first edition included a 67-page language reference manual at the end, the third edition includes only a language grammar section to represent formal language definition. This is appropriate. The ANSI/ISO Standard document, which is now the formal language and library definition, is itself about 750 pages long. Stroustrup plans to publish The Annotated C++ Language Standard (coauthored by Andrew Koenig, the ANSI C++ committee's Project Editor) sometime this year.

The third edition takes a tutorial approach with many of Stroustrup's personal programming philosophies. The author's explanations of how he uses language features provide examples for learning the behavior of those features. He also explains code idioms that some programmers routinely use but that he finds inappropriate.

As much as possible, the third edition reflects Standard C++. When small language features are found to be missing, particularly new ones, Stroustrup pledges to add them to a future printing

This book is an essential addition to a C++ programmer's library. It is not for dummies, and it wouldn't be my first choice for an entry-level, self-help tutorial on C++ for beginning programmers. It is, however, an excellent textbook for programmers who are self-motivated and students who study under the watchful care of a skilled instructor. As an experienced C++ programmer, I find the book useful as a reference to language usage and behavior. The author invented the language and then stayed close to the standardization and innovation process for the duration, always maintaining a careful vigilance over the evolution of his brainchild. Consequently, this book serves, for those who do not care to pore over the ANSI/ISO document (or the promised annotated version), as the authority on the Standard C++ language, how it works, and how you should use it. -- Al Stevens, Dr. Dobb's Journal --This text refers to the Paperback edition.