This book is very good.
I was looking for a way to build those fancy IE toolbands and was really disappointed with the Microsoft site, since all the reference about this subject there is on C++. Since those bands are COM objects, I was wondering whether someone had implemented it on VB already. Tried all the search engines and got nothing. Well this book is the only place (by now) where you'll find this information!
Programming the windows shell is a HUGE topic and certainly would require one of those "brick-sized" books to cover it properly. But J.P. Hamilton made a great effort on abridging the most "juicy" stuff, and then it's up to the programmer to develop on top of that information.
Some examples don't work on Windows 2000, but that's something I can understand since I guess most of the techniques shown on this book were developed before the Win2k release. Anyway, as the author states on the preface, this book is not intended for beginners or people who need to be guided on baby steps, but for programmers with some intermediate VB skills at least. This book is all about COM programming, so if you nothing about COM, this book may still be useful (there's a decent COM introduction on chapter 2), but I'd suggest you to play with COM first.
All in all, this is a "cover to cover" interesting book and that kind of book we should keep nearby for reference. Shell programming is a brave new world for VB programmers. I think there are lots of subjects which could be explored on a volume II.
Great job Mr. Hamilton.
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