Rod Stephens is a celebrity amongst the VB community; many VB programmers of all levels have visited Rod's VB Helper web site (http://www.vb-helper.com/) at sometime or another.

This book is a compendium of 173 code samples targeted at intermediate/advanced-level programmers. The book is not written as a tutorial, more a code sample reference. However, each sample is given a good introduction, which clearly states the objective and scope of the project, as well as hints as to how the sample can be extended.

The samples are sensibly arranged by topic and graded by difficulty. This makes navigation logical and the learning experience incremental. If you do not fancy keying in all that code, source code is provided on the accompanying CD-ROM.

The samples are not the obscure kind that you often find in code references; those that show you how to push VB to the limits, but leave you thinking; 'Impressive! But will I find this of any practical use in my projects?' Instead you are offered useful ready- to-run building blocks that every VB programmer will find of use. These include; program flow, variables, user interface design and controls, graphics and animation, working with the file system, menus, network programming, making API calls and manipulating the registry.

If you have got the VB fundamentals under your belt and are looking to extend your projects in minimal time, this is the book for you.