Windows XP Under the Hood

I have found this book incredibly useful. Without it, I doubt I could have put together some sorely-needed processes such as a developer-friendly build for a large system with several VB6 components with complex interdependencies, communicating with .Net components via Interop, therefore regenerating wrappers on the fly. The options are controlled by an XML file that has quite a lot of backward references in it, necessitating recursion in the parsing, and VB script's regular expression support was handy as well. Unix people tend to be surprised at just how capable a non-object-oriented technology can be (well, there is support for objects in a limited way, but it's not like Java!) Before I had this book I had never heard of WSC objects. What a nifty idea for the Windows environment: a source (script) code object, with methods and properties, that you can register and access like a DLL from your scripts. No compilation, no DLL hell. Once you have the strong foundation in scripting principles that this book gives you, it is easy to add in topics that it doesn't cover. There's plenty of information on the Web about things like using ADO from VBscript, or HTA applications (a nice way to show a GUI display from a command-line script). Strongly recommended.

As a Windows author myself I tend to be very demanding when I look for books about the Windows operating system. I was overly pleased with both the book's content and presentation. This book never even found my bookshelf. It has a permanent home on my desk.

Brian Knittel gets an A+ from me for being one of the most lucid technical writers I've ever read. I'm a social worker by day and a hobbyist at night who likes to tinker with the command-line. I have found the book easy to understand. Chapters are well laid out with ample reference sections. kudos!

This book is perfect overview of VBScript and Scripting Windows XP. Author explains every aspect of Scripting without going into too much of details. Beginners will probably need additional info. But if you ask me nobody could do better job explaining of so many topics in one book. There are plenty examples you could use right away on the PC. Thumbs up!!!

The perfect book for coming up to speed on Windows scripting.