Web Books

If you love cats, and you love the Web, this book is for you! Innovative, creative and funny! Take time to look over all the Web sites in the book -- there's lots of great material (and great cat photos too!).

In a format that reminds me of the old Mad magazines, Jon Mathis and Mary Shomon have compiled a book of web sites for cats called "Scratching the 'Net" that would make a great gift for anyone who loves both computers and cats. My favorite site was for Ross Purr-oh, who is apparently still running for president (backed by United We Purr, of course!). Shaper Claw has several pages of its on-line catalog, featuring items such as the Spray-Away Robot, for those times when the cat just can't be there to protect its territory.

From the web sites to the tool bar (including such buttons as Back to Sleep, Open One Eye, and Find Toys), this book is definitely a cat's eye view of the Internet.

I give it 5 purrs and a good lick!

Best book to receive for Christmas: light, smart and fun to read! Pokes fun at humans without offending cats; G-rated for the whole family and cat-lovers from 2 to 82. I'll never again sit at my computer without wondering what my cat Tiger has been up to overnight.

This may become your favorite "coffee table" book, as it is not one to read once and put away. You'll find yourself coming back again and again to pore through this devilishly delightful spoof of web pages for cats. Just spend a few minutes absorbing "Deepcat Chowdown's 'The Seven Spiritual Laws of Laziness' " and if you aren't chuckling with delight, you have no sense of humor at all. Every page is designed to tickle and titillate, with outstanding success.

I don't like cats. Never did. I'm a dog person, but reading this funny book (someone gave it to me), made me laugh out loud. I hope the authors come up with something as great for dog lovers! It was a perfect break from the ever so serious world of the net.

This book was fun, lightly suspenseful and magical. I could really relate to the characters. Very nice!

The magic has drawn you to this book! In this book Song of the Unicorns, by Rachel Roberts, there are three girls who have magical gems and powers. Adrian is fearless and brave. Emily is happy-going and caring. Kara is the drama-queen.
The book starts out in New Mexico. In this book the three mages find baby unicorns. The unicorns grow their horns and become more magical. But an evil warrior comes to steal the unicorns' newly attained magic. The unicorns, helpless with out their magic, will surly not survive, or will they? Read the book to find out. In my opinion this book is thrilling. It keeps you on the edge of your seat. It is full of magical action. If you like fantasy, you will love this book. I myself think this book is perfect. The book is absolutely thrilling!

This book is Awesome!! This book totally deserves 100 stars. Emily invites her friends with her Colrado to visit her dad thouh she tries to get along with her step mother. Anyways she then finds these baby unicorns and quickly has to send them to Dalrida before somebody else will capture them first. U must read this book it is awesome and you won't regret it.

Now starting the quest for magic series the adventure contuines as Emily invites her friends to New Mexico but... is upset with her dad's new wife and Emily tries to ignore her.As Emily and the rest of the group things are going to be normal their wrong big time. Baby unicorns come to Earth and the mages quickly have to send them back to Dalradia before this evil knight will capture them first. As they will Emily the healer has this dream thats almost like a vision of what may become of the unicorns if their to late to save them.

Bingo! I've been waiting for this ever since I saw it advertised, and it was even better than I thought it would be! It's a great doorway to another Avalon series with great new characters. The mages seem to have gotten quite a handle on their magic--well, except for Kara, who's having problems with hers.

And the big question that's answered is--is the magic always there, even if you sacrifice it?

Come to this book! It's calling to you. Listen! Hear it???

This book provides a great foundation for the classes I am teaching in e-commerce. It's chapters on site server also are excellent! I found the fundamentals section to be outstanding for handling the task of getting new students up to speed.

This book is really useful from the standpoint of providing an overview of what ESD is doing today, and how e-commerce tools from Microsoft are making it possible for organizations of any size to buyild their own sites. I found the chapters on managing a new site useful with some good suggestions for getting everyone on the same page from a development standpoint. Good reference book and teaching tool for new administrators.

I have been studying up on e-business and found this book to have a personable tone and many insights into how I could get up to speed quickly with terms and concpets to manage the outsourcing of our company's website quicker. I liked the chapters on building a framework for organizing solutions and found the chapter on electronic software ditribution very enlightening. An easy book to read.

This book has interesting information about Microsoft's Site Server applications, and shows the plans for electronic software distribution Microsoft authored with key industry leaders. it is decidely pro e-commerce and provides an interesting approach to managing web development through cross-functional project teams.

I found this book to provide a level-set for my staff, who is working on the definition of our websites, and what we could reasonably expect with the resources onhand. This book gave us hands-on guidelines and advice from experience we could use for getting our site completed in the minimum amount of time with the least disconnects between what we wanted and what we ended up creating. E-Commerce is constantly changing, and this book brings all the change into perspective. Good teaching tool.

This book is amazing. I have some experience with Flash video and video production techniques, but I felt like I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge. This book covers everything I need to know, and the included code is priceless. If you want a robust Flash player, with auto-detect, auto-update, etc., but don't care to learn the ins and outs of Actionscript, just use what's provided. You'll have Player up and running in minutes.

I ended up sharing the book with our Video Production team, too. They used a lot of the instruction about good compression, proper aspect ratios, and creating alpha channels for FLVs.

Rob Reinhardt is the master of Video deployed in Flash. I was so happy to see he finally has written a book that captures his knowledge, experience, and excellent teaching skills. Rob is clear, concise and you can be guaranteed that he has tested, used and deployed all the techniques he demonstrates.
Bravo!!!!!

There's nobody more prolific and comprehensive in the world of Flash video delivery than Reinhardt. Considering the enormity of topics and goals addressed in this book, he's really outdone himself this time. Essential for anyone interested in serious deployment of Flash video.

this book is a decent hands-on approach to creating video players using AS3 & AS2. Two of the missing things that I think are necessary are creating custom volume controls and handling full-screen mode.

My company bought other Flash Video books, but this book had the ActionScript 3.0 code I was looking for. The DVD included with the book rocks--I've always wanted to test HD footage in Flash, but didn't want to spend too much time looking for huge files on the Internet. The DVD has lots of HD content to use as sample content.

I love this book. It should be required reading for all undergraduate and graduate business students. I'll be looking for Windham's next book.

I must congratulate Ms. Windham on her excellent book "Dead Ahead". I think I must have read it more than three times by now. I am a consultant and my company is involved in web design and development. On many of my assignments, I relied on this book as a guide and many of her ideas have worked very well with my clients.

Our company provides e-commerce and web presence solutions. We use "Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business" by Laurie Windham extensively to help us provide effective solutions for our clients.

Dead Ahead covers the 'new rules' of web-based commerce, from using existing businesses and strategies to succeed to establishing recognition and associations via the internet. Important chapters on investing in the right technology and conducting e-business make for important insights on the rules and atmosphere of the web.

This was used as a text book in my e-business MBA class and would recommend it to others outside of class. It covered a lot of issues relevant to the topic. I enjoy reading books like this that are up-to-date in a dynamic industry.

In learning how to use FrontPage 2003 step by step, this is the book. It's very colorful & informative, it provides all you need to get started in the development of your own website, you're going to like it very much.

I bought this for my daughter and she said it was very easy to follow. She has already started designing web sites for her friends.

I have just begun to use this book. I am an extreme beginner and find the book attractively laid out and well-illustrated. I have not finished my web site yet, but I'm on my way. There are a few details that are "over my head" but I think I can work around them and still get good results.

FrontPage was a new application to me and somewhat different than other web page applications. I was asked to take over website updates and didn't have time to go through a class, etc. This book enables the user to look up the task at hand and then basically follow the step-by-step instructions. It has been a fabulous tool. It is very user friendly for the novice but still has enough technical information to satisfy the HTML hound. I found it to be a more effective tool than Microsoft's on-line classes.

If you can only have one book on FrontPage, this should be it.

I am just learning about web page development and bought Microsoft FrontPage. I needed help understanding the program and bought this book. I find it very helpful. The layout of the book is most useful. I needed assistance with taking the first steps, and this book is serving my needs. It would probably be too basic for someone with web development experience.

This is definitively a must have in the bookshelf of all .NET AD Developers. I have been working with ADAM since .NET 1.1 and have always struggle to find answers to simple questions like how to make an LDAP query to run efficiently or how to define complex queries; this book has that and a lot more.

This book is everything I was hoping it would be. I'm working on a project where I need to get computer accounts from AD (TENS of THOUSANDS of them) and move, delete, enable, disable and set account expiration dates. Everything I need to know is in this book. The AD paged search, useraccount properties, etc. Some of the routines I was able to use as-is (the VB versions from their web site download). These guys do a great job of explaining all the stuff I couldn't find anywhere else. Highly reccomended!

This book is great for anyone who does AD programming with .NET it covers everything from the basics to some pretty advanced stuff and even some undocumented stuff.. a must have for AD Programemrs!

If you are or may be in the future, doing directory services programming then this book is a must have. It also suffices a quick reference as it has code sprinkled around so that you can get up to speed quickly.

If anything, it is sort of lacking on other LDAP directories. It does have the history of LDAP and does show where the differences are between AD and the others.

If your primary focus is other directories, this may not be the end all book for you, but should still suffice as a reference.

If AD is your main focus, buy this now, you won't be disappointed.

This is a very good book for[...] developers who wants to program against Active Directory. There are some good examples in this book that can be very handy. Other than examples in pieces, there is not a project or Web Site codes that a beginner could use.

If you want to understand programming the Flash Communication Server and it's capabilities this is a good place to start.

Although I'm using Flash Media Server 2, this book is still highly relevant as not much has changed. The core objects and language is the same so I would not hesitate to recommend it for anyone looking to use FMS.

This book is all about the design of applications using Macromedia's Flash Communication Server MX. FCS MX enables the building of media-rich web applications by taking care of the basic tasks required in the networking of the applications. Thus, you can focus on the application itself rather than worrying about low-level communication details.

Since this book is concerned with situations where multiple Flash applications will be executing on the same server simultaneously, there is going to be considerable effort involved in coordinating events, which is addressed by this book. You should already have FCS installed and running on your server and you should also have Flash MX available on the client. The following is description of the book by chapter:

Chapter 1, Introducing the Flash Communication Server - Acts as an introduction to FCS and an overview of the whole book.

Chapter 2, Communication Components - How the FlashCom communication components encapsulate commonly needed features such as chat, video recording and playback, bandwidth control,and user configuration. These components implement many basic building blocks for your application.

Chapter 3, Managing Connections - This chapter covers connections in more depth past the SimpleConnect component, including how to write custom code to handle various changes in the connection status as well as different errors.

Chapter 4, Applications, Instances, and Server-Side ActionScript - This chapter describes how to write Server-Side ActionScript and work with the objects that control application instances and the Flash movies that connect to them.

Chapter 5, Managing Streams - Offers a somewhat oversimplified but complete example that shows the basic steps in publishing one live stream and subscribing to a second.

Chapter 6, Camera and Microphone - This chapter explains how to use both the Microphone and Camera classes to record live streams. These classes are at the heart of most communication applications involving multimedia.

Chapter 7, Media Preparation and Delivery - This chapter covers many details for compressing and streaming audio and video.

Chapter 8, Shared Objects - This chapter starts an entirely new subject - shared objects, which provide a mechanism for the transmission of data between client and server.

Chapter 9, Remote Methods - This chapter also shows how to broadcast method calls to every movie and application instance connected to a shared object or stream, or send them to and from individual movies using RMI.

Chapter 10, Server Management API - Discusses the Server Management API and its applications, including monitoring a FlashCom Server, gathering statistics on application instances, and managing the log streams.

Chapter 11, Flash Remoting - Demonstrates how Flash Remoting can be used to add data connectivity to FlashCom applications. Flash Remoting can access web services, server-side scripts, CGI applications, XML files, or the local filesystem with the help of an application server such as ColdFusion.

Chapter 12, ColdFusion MX and FlashCom - Teaches some specifics involved in using Flash Remoting with ColdFusion MX and FlashCom. There are some practical working examples shown that demonstrate how you can leverage the benefits of Flash Remoting in conjunction with FlashCom.

Chapter 13, Building Communication Components - This is the first step in building complete applications, and is demonstrated through an extensive example.

Chapter 14, Understanding the Macromedia Component Framework - How to modify an existing component and how to create a new one. Also discusses server-side framework code and its core features and data structures.

Chapter 15, Application Design Patterns and Best Practices - Describes some of the best practices available to application developers. This chapter provides some useful design options, patterns, and best practices that will help you build better applications.

Chapter 16, Building Scalable Applications - Deals with building multi-instance and multiserver applications that don't bog down as the number of client connections increases.

Chapter 17, Network Performance, Latency, Concurrency - Traditional network design issues affect FCS also.

Chapter 18, Securing Applications - Specifically this chapter examines the three A's of security - Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting.

Excellent book, stuffed of examples very well explained, easy to read and to understand, essential for who desires initiate or even though to profound itself studies on FlashCom.
Obligator reference in projects involving FlashCom, either for fast consultations and advanced tasks.
Excellent approach of subjects as Design patterns and security, yonder a perfect demonstration about audio, video and much more.

If you're a developer looking into real-time server communication using Adobe Flash, this book is a must-have. It guides you thru various levels of application development in an easy to understand format, and provides well documented pieces of code to assist you in the learning process of putting together your project:

Topics covered include:

- learning about components and how to use them
- establishing and managing client connections
- publishing live and recorded streams
- local communication with clients
- remote communication with outside applications

The book also shows how to build and integrate your own custom components, and how to scale your application using the components that you've created. Other highlights include information on how to use shared objects and server management API, as well as ways to improve both design and performance.

I couldn't disagree with that last review ( 2 stars) more. I've been on the Net for three years and still find the Web guide a useful reference. Kennedy has put a great deal of work into collating a pretty damn useful cross section of the Web. I can't commend him high enough. I've bought several copies as gifts for friends - who've all lavished it with praise.

Even someone with a passing knowledge of the Internet, like myself, knows a good deal of what is in this book. The first half starts off useful enough, but like most books on technology diverges into sections that are seemingly "no briainers" and sections that are so specific as to be less than useful. The second half is mostly just addresses of sites and reads like a TV Guide.

Two stars, one for each of the pieces it was in when I finished reading it. Money ill spent.

I have been exposed to the Internet since 1991 when only universities or companies like Microsoft had access to it. So, I was used to surfing the Internet using FTP, Telnet, etc. When the World Wide Web came into existence in the mid-nineties, it grew faster than anything any of us could ever imagine (as we all know by now). I ran across one of the first editions of the Rough Guides about the Internet in 1997. Till then, inspite of being very familiar with the technology behind the Internet, I felt very uncomfortable about my knowledge of what the Web was all about. This Rough Guide was the reference I started using to change my ignorance about the Web. I bought every edition since then and have benefited tremendously.

So, why is this book so great? What does it offer? Well, considering that it is almost impossible for anyone to learn everything about the Internet, most people don't even bother to learn the basics. Not surprising, since you have to spend hundreds of hours reading too many books to even get a glimmer of understanding about this untamed beast called the Internet. This book addresses all the main topics in approximately 500 pages, and provides you the critical information that you need to know about the Internet in Plain English! If you like trivia, there is also quite a bit of it in this book on the history of the Internet. This book acts as a pocket reference, complete reference, listing of popular sites, dictionary and more - all for under [$$]

Being raised on British books, I thoroughly enjoy the systematic treatment of any subject that British authors tackle. This book is no exception - it is very thorough, complete and the facts are extremely accurate. Unfortunately, British books don't do that well in America (probably due to marketing disadvantages). But if you get a chance, check this book out and I am sure that you will be a fan of British books forever.

I have always bought several copies of each edition of this book that came out and gave them out as gifts to close friends and family that were new to the Internet. Every one of them has thoroughly enjoyed the new found knowledge gained through this book. I hope you have fun discovering more about the Internet by reading this book on a train ride or plane trip somewhere. Good luck!

This book is small, yet filled with more information than 5 of the Dummy books and i feel smart using it not like the dummie books. You will find ways to deal with problems on the Internet as well as a dictionary of site to run too. Great gift for the Computer user.

Excellent book! Love it! Highly recommend to all! One of the best internet guide books I ever got! Thanks rough guide :)

I didn't know any significant HTML prior to using this book. This book is a great starting point and will give anyone enough background to put up a pretty good page. I feel like I have gotten a good grasp of HTML from this book and now feel like I should branch out into Javascript to develop my pages further.

Oliver & Morrison offered good advice on what to do and what not to do when designing a webpage, and they also explained why they make those suggestions, which certainly assists in making later judgement calls on topics they don't directly address.

I would also recommend O'Reilly's HTML/XHTML book, which has come in handy in clarifying a few points. However, this book is sufficient for anyone looking to put up realatively simple pages and is easier as an introduction (and more motivating) than O'Reilly's book. That is, buy this book first and buy O'Reilly's book if you have a desire to learn more about HTML.

Having been out of web Development for a couple years, I needed confidence that my basic understanding was up to speed. This book HTML and XHTML in 24 hours, brought me up to date rather quickly. It provided the foundation that I needed both to build some basic web application prototypes, and to be able to begin reading more specialized books on Web Development. Specifically books on CSS.

This text will not make you a wizened internet programming guru... but it doesn't pretend to do so. What it does promise, and deliver, is a solid grounding in the creation of basic web pages. The book starts with the absolute basics; nothing is assumed. Finding someone to host your web site is covered, as is the creation of files using the Windows Notepad text editor and the uploading of files onto a web hosting computer. And, of course, there's a tremendous amount of detail in creating web pages.

It's important to note that there are two approaches to creating web pages today: you can create them by hand, using XHTML code written with a simple text editor like notepad; or you can use a web page authoring package, such as DreamWeaver or FrontPage. Using a program like DreamWeaver (most agree its the #1 program of its type) will allow you to create web pages much more quickly than by hand coding them; and unless you have an innate skill as a design artist, they will likely look better than something you hand code.

On the other hand, you'll never have a clue about how the code actually works, if you don't learn XHTML; and so you'll never be able to modify it. You'll be stuck with whatever the web authoring package can do for you. And there's also the cost factor: web authoring packages cost several hundreds of dollars, but notepad is free; it's part of the Microsoft Windows operating system. (Macs have a similar built in text editor.)

Most internet pros can do both; they regularly use DreamWeaver as a production tool, but know XHTML so that they can quickly modify what the program generates when the need arises. On the other hand, amateurs building simple web pages probably would never be able to justify the cost of a full blown web authoring package, so learning XHTML makes perfect sense.

Either way, learning XHTML is an appropriate way to start your web page building education; and this book is the perfect way to do so. Having read several books on the subject - including some thousand+ page hardcover whoppers - I can confidently state that this book does a spectacular job of teaching you exactly what you need to know. It gets right to the point, and quickly and simply teaches the core material. All the fluff is gone; everything in this book is solid. There's thorough coverage of graphics, animated graphics, even some javascript. There's a lot of reference to readily available tools on the net, and some indication of how they might be used. I was particularly impressed with the clarity of the instruction; the book does a spectacular job of identifying and teaching exactly what needs to be taught, while deftly avoiding extraneous discussion. Most universities don't provide a quality of instruction as crisp and as easily followed as that contained within this book.

So what's missing? Not much. There's no coverage of Flash to speak of, or CGI scripting. I didn't see any mention of secure HTML, so you'll need more than this book in order to start processing credit cards, or conducting commerce. And a few of the web resource links that the author provides are dead links, and haven't worked for years; they should have been caught during the revision process.

But these are mere quibbles; make no mistake, this book gives you an awful lot. If your desire is a really good book that starts right at the very beginning, and gives you enough knowledge to build really good looking web pages from scratch... then this is your book. If you want to set up a simple web page for yourself - or an informational web page designed to promote your home business - this is a great text. And if you plan on persuing a career as a web page developer, but have no previous knowledge of web design or HTML... then this is a great book to start with.

The book is now in its 6th edition, and that says a lot; publishers won't revise a book with poor sales. For a computer book to be revised and released 6 times is a dramatic testament to its popularity, and inherent quality. I can only think of one other book on my bookshelf - Muellers' Upgrading and Repairing PCs - that has shown such a continuing popularity level.

When you invest in this book, you get a lot of value. When you've learned and applied everything in this book, you'll be able to create extremely good looking and well written informational web pages from scratch, without having to rely on a web authoring package; and you'll be completely prepared to learn the intricacies of Java, Flash, and CGI scripting, if you so choose. However, probably 90% or more of the people who read this book, will never need to move beyond it.

For most web pages, this book is all you'll ever need.

I have been using a canned program to manage my company's web site, but I wasn't always able to do fine tune the pages the way I wished. So I decided to teach myself HTML. Working through this book, I was able to learn step by step how to design pages and manipulate the images and text. The book is very clear and concise and the exercises the author gives at the end of every chapter are extremely useful.

Best computer related book that I have ever read. I was somewhat familiar with HTML concepts, but never created my own web page. The lessons are organized well and are so easy to follow! They even go over applets, Active X, and JavaScript. Awesome, awesome book.