Beginning ATL Com Programming

This book gives a serious coverage of ATL COM that will repay readers' efforts. It's far from easy, and the organization could be improved in places. For example, I'm one of those people who absolutely has to know what's going on "under the hood", but the implementation details come a little early (in Chapter 1). Had to experiment with the order of interface entries in the idl file and think a lot about vtables, interface pointer casting, multiple inheritance, and so on before I began to understand what Chap. 1 is all about. Some more explanation at judicious places in Chap. 1 would be helpful.To get the most out of this book, download the code from Wrox and fool around with it. This book really covers the nitty gritty of developing ATL COM projects from scratch. Marshaling, threading, connectable objects, persistence are discussed, and a full control is built in Chap. 8.For some reason, perhaps because the word "beginning" appears in the title, Wrox ranks this book below Professional MFC in difficulty (see the flow chart on the back cover of the book). Actually, it's quite advanced and belongs at the top of the hierarchy. I think it's more detailed and difficult (but also more rewarding) than other books on the subject.

This book reads like a novel. After reading 'Beginning Linux Programming' 2 yrs ago, I had no respect for Wrox Press because of lack of details, however, this book was a fantastic one. But then again, I have read "Inside COM" and "Essential COM" prior to this reading. If you have a good understanding of how COM works, get this book. It is an awesome intro to ATL. Check out "ATL internals" & "Proffesional ATL COM programming" as well if you are a serious ATL developer

I read this book after reading "Inside Com" and "Beginning MFC/COM", which were both very good. This book is very confusing. Its very difficult to follow the author(s) logic and they get frequently to in-depth for a beginner book. The examples should have been less in-depth as far background and technical specs go, and they should have applied more hands-on examples. It seemed as though they all took turns writing a paragraph and then passing it on because its not easy to follow.

This book was a real find! I found the programming examples understandable and the material presented in an appropriate fashion. For example, in Chap 3, the author(s) recommend that you browse the material on some of the obtuse macros and templates behind ATL; try the examples near the end of the chapter; then come back and reread the difficult passages. It worked! I have rarely come as far in understanding through just one book. And thank you Wrox for maintaining such a useful Web site!!

I'm usually leary of books with many authors. I'm afraid they're just thrown together to hit the market quickly. Not so with this excellent book, which had just what I wanted for learning ATL. Plenty of examples, under-the-hood coverage of ATL, good coverage of the many aspects of COM and how they're implemented in ATL, and a final fun full control example (treeview of URL's for use with IE4) that could actually be useful. The writing is excellent, with explanations of all the macros and such, and I've yet to find an error. The only thing that makes this a "Beginning" book is it's thin coverage of threads. But then, supposedly Dr. Grimes is coming out with a Professional ATL COM programming book to cover this and more--I can't wait.