Applications Books

You've saved me from another deadline late-nighter. A short summary is in order: 1. Combo-box auto-lookup wasn't working 2. Read on-line help 3. Read Microsoft's Building Applications 4. Read O'Brien/Pogge/White 5. Read Viescas 6. Read p.346-7 of Litwin/Getz/Gilbert: Tah-dah!

The text is accurate and the examples work. I guess what made the difference is that the demo database was devoted to the specific subject that I was interested in, instead of having to wade through Orders or Northwind yet again.

Is there a Pulitzer for computer books?

I bought it when it came out.

Great book for Access97. Great chapters on string handling in the enclosed VBA book as well.

Werd.

Daily employed subjects, very good explaineds and an useful INDEX to found what you need. That is aplicable to the whole serie "Access xxx Developer's Handbook". I own all of them!. The best book about MsAccess.

These guys know their stuff. First of all the layout is a masterpiece. I don't know if the publisher should be thanked more then the authors. The font styles, size; page design is very pleasing and professional to say the least. The material is presented with a first person view. The "Event Model" is broken down so that you really know what happens when you create event driven functions. Coverage of VBA classes is a charm. An entire chapter for printer control is an award winner. I can't sing enough praises of the Access Developer Handbook. Pick up a copy and you'll see for yourself. Note: The book assumes you know some VB or VBA, and a light knowledge of the Access environment.

P.S. I only wish that the authors would co-develop a book such as this on MS Visual Foxpro --We desperately need one!

I've bought every edition of the Developers Handbook since Access 2.0, and convinced every employer of mine during that period to buy a copy, too. I used to be amazed at how I could look for the solution to some Access problem in three other books and never find it (or even clues that helped!); then I'd look in Getz et al and find the *exact* solution, on a silver platter.

In the past few years, I'll admit, I have on a very few occasions looked for something I didn't find. Once the answer was there, in quite thorough form, but I missed it because I looked in the index instead of the table of contents! The only reason I even mention this is that the Developers Handbook is the *only* technical book I've ever come across from which I have, almost subconsciously, begun to expect not just excellence, but PERFECTION! I realize how terribly unfair this is, but I can't help myself.

I'm pleased to see the scope of the Developers Handbook being expanded into SQL Server and Visual Basic, since high-end Access development can no longer be done in isolation from those tools. Having a resource like this one provided by Ken Getz, Paul Litwin, and Mike Gilbert is far from the worst reason you could have for choosing Access, SQL Server, and VB over some other set of tools.

If you're a developer and value your own time, you'll want this book. If you employ developers and you're lucky enough to have one or two who will actually *use* a book if it's available, buy this book now. The only way it won't pay for itself is if *nobody* ever opens it. And I'm not even sure of that. I think it might even make your developers better at what they do just by sitting on the shelf of their office!

The company I work for installed the new office and when I first started using it I couldn't find anything. I went through a few Powerpoint books and found this one to have the best explanations. It covers just about everything I need, making a deck look impressive.

To be honest, I've always been jealous of PowerPoints that I see during company meetings. How do they make them look so good? Finally, I decided to invest a little time. My friend's friend works at Microsoft and told me that his co-workers wrote a book. I figured I would give it a shot. Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed the book. I thought it would be really complicated, but little things go a long way to make slides look good and this book is great at pointing those out. Now, my presentations look clean, professional, and people are asking me for tips! It's great. If you want to impress your boss/co-workers with your PowerPoint skills, then this is definitely a good place to start.

As a student, I have only ever been expected to create the simplest of slide shows, and so my belief of the extent of PowerPoint's capabilities only stretched so far. However, with Microsoft's 2007 update, I thought it would be a smart decision to invest in a book that would guide me through the newest edition of PP. Well, after going through the book, I realized I got much more than I expected. Full of neat and useful tips, I believe that this book will truly benefit all of its readers in the long run.

Lots of useful tips on PowerPoint 2007. A lot of things have changed in Microsoft's 2007 update, and it's always nice to have a good reference so you can find/do what you want. I have not seen a better PowerPoint 2007 book.

Chock full of good ideas and helpful hints. The examples are really illuminating and the writing is exceptionally clear, especially the section on the XML format (which was what I was most interested in). In both business and academic settings I've found myself having to maintain a large number of presentations. Often there are slight variations between presentations (different customer, different conference) and this book helped me streamline a lot of that process. For instance, now I can easily update tables with fresh data! A HUGE win. Now I finally have time to learn the clarinet!

When I first started looking at Web Parts I couldn't quite grasp how they were different from other web technology. Darren was able to clearly describe how individual parts are created, and how to integrate them into a cohesive whole and helped me enormously in building modern websites.

When I began to work on a web portal using .NET 2.0 in mid-2006, I found out about this book and anxiously awaited it's publishing. I wasn't disappointed. The material covered in this book goes into such great detail and is so full of great ideas that I recommended the re-writing of our portal using Darren's book as a basis of our new design. This was money well spent.

This a very thorough and complete guide to ASP 2.0 Web Parts. After reading this book, I gained more knowledge than reading countless internet articles, numerous blogs and a few cumbersome books on subject. This book is a MUST Buy for anyone who needs to understand and/ or implement ASP 2.0 Web Parts. One added new value is the concepts outlined
in his book also work on ASP 3.5.

A must buy book if your working with webparts. Darren (The author) is also extremely helpful if you post web part related questions on his forum. The book is clear, concise and well organised. You will not be disapointed!

Ps. I have bought many many tech reference books from Amazon over the years. This is the first time I have ever posted a review. This book has been an invaluable reference for a large project I am currently working on.

Paul Hale (Domainscanners)

An all in one great introduction to web parts and even to some advanced techniques.

Web parts are a strong web UI element and this book has done a great job of talking about ALL the things that are necessary for proper web parts development.

I have hundreds of books and manuals on various techie subjects and Ellen's AutoCAD 2004 Bible ranks high on my list for books worth the purchase. I have used AutoCAD for years but after moving up to Acad 2005 from Acad 2000 I thought I could use some tutoring. The book didn't disappoint. For nearly every topic there is a step by step, hands-on, example that the reader can perform. There are around 160 drawing files on the accompanying CD; one for each example in the book. You can open that file in Acad and follow the steps in the book and experiment to your heart's content.

All in all, this book won't disappont you like some I could mention.

I have had R14, 2000 AutoCAD Bibles on my shelf for many years now. I picked the 2004 Bible to use as a textbook in an advanced AutoCAD class that I teach 6 or so times a year.

I was very pleased with how well it meshed with the way I have always taught this class (13 years last month.) Plus it is a nice "value added" item that the students can take back to work. My first class was very pleased about getting to use the 2004 Bible while in class and also about having a reference to study after the class.

It was funny because I started saying "take your Bibles and turn to page ..." it was like we were in church! I can not say enough good about Ellen's writing style, her use of graphics throughout the book and her expertise! It is all there in the Bible.

I bought this to get refreshed in Autocad for a new job and would recommend it to anyone. I can't do without it.

A marvellous and first class, well written and referenced, extremely clear and as if having an AutoCAD instructer sitting next to you. I was a new user to this product and I feel today very comfortable to do my tasks on AutoCAD and feel that this book will be a good guide even for advanced users. Thanks to Ellen Finklestien and I laud your efforts and higly recomment the book to all.

I have read various book of autocad, but they all seem very complicated and dificuolt to understand. I found this bible and let me tell you that is the best book I have ever seem. I recomended to a friend of mine who wants to learn autocad. This book will challenge you as a beguiner, intermedite or advance user. It has lots of examples and this author know what she is talking about. Believe me this one of the best if not the best autocad book I have seem in the market in my 10 years of autocard experience.

Easy to read and follow. A good value even though it doesn't come with a demo CD.

Nice book. I've been an NLE dabbler for a few years, but never very serious about it. After finishing this book, I feel pretty comfortable with avid xpress, which was pretty intimidating at first. Good, easy read. I would have liked color pictures, though...

This is an excellent, well-written guide to the Avid Xpress Pro system, and while it can't replace the extended Authorized Avid Education advanced editing course, it is a great overview of the many different topics covered therein.

But, more importantly, it covers many things not in the official Avid training guides - things that after reading this book one feels really should be, like practical tips, tricks, and notes for a more truly professional end project. I would definitely recommend this for serious editors and people who want to get into the deeper strengths of the Avid system... it moves quickly, and might be confusing for a complete beginner.

I am just finishing up on this book, and after two solid days I have gone from no experience with avid to very comfortable. I don't know how well a new editor would do with this book, but if you already know FCP or Premiere this seems like an excellent way to learn all of the key concepts you need to run an editing app.
This is the best instructional manual I have come across.

I make my living editing digital video and this book is by far the best instructional material on Avid Xpress Pro I've seen. There are tips and suggestions it would have taken me years to figure out on my own. I'm doing better quality work in less time. I wish I had found this book two years ago.

This is a concise, easy to read book that seems to cover a large variety of publications and projects. I can open it up to any page and get new ideas and insights on projects I'm working on.

This book explains the basics (and some more advanced concepts) of good graphic design without overwhelming the reader with technical terms nor "dumbing down" the vocabulary for the novice. There are plenty of colourful examples and the book follows its own advice! This book lacks, however, the specific steps to accomplish the different design goals, but this is probably due the many publishing packages available. It assumes the reader will figure that out for himself (or herself.) The book is a compact 200 page document that is filled with useful information from cover to cover and is a great addition to any designer's reference library.

Yet another great book from the folks at Before & After. I have the Before & After Page Design book and subscribe to the PDF magazine. Even with all that, I still liked the addition of this book. It covers the usual business situations like newsletters, stationery, logos, forms and charts. The ideas illustrated and dissected here were found to be light bulb creating. I was able to apply a few of the tips right away to some projects I was working on at the time.

Some of the nuggets I enjoyed most were the comparison and discussion of what typefaces are best for what text that can be applied to all sorts of type, logo creation and thought process and the charts. The charts were not just your average pie charts, but great design elements.

Again, I'm impressed by another Before & After project. The illustrations and explanations help new and intermediate designers improve the craft. I'm sure seasoned professionals can pick up a few tips too.

I am a former graphic worker and I now teach this matter to students who have no ideas of the state of the art.
The book is professionnal and easy to use, and all examples are so helpfull to any people who need advices in business graphics.

Before & After is one of my favorite design magazines. The project examples, step-by-step guidelines and practical articles have always been excellent resources for designers of all education and experiences levels. With Graphics for Business, author, designer and teacher John McWade teaches the reader how to make their business look great. The book is not logo or corporate identity specific. In addition to logo design, McWade covers the creation of newsletters, stationery, sales pieces and forms, and charts, reports, calendars and maps. Still, the logo and identity section of the book (44 pages of the volume) explains logos very well and provides great examples of how to design lettermarks, wordmarks, monograms, ligatures and other forms of identities. Playing with type, words, shapes and illustrative elements are all presented in fun and well-illustrated manner. The book will be a great addition to the design library of anyone interested in producing a strong image for their business, or that of a client. - Jeff Fisher, writer of bLog-oMotives and the "Logo Notions" column at CreativeLatitude.com

I am new to programming.

This book starts at the beginning: building a graphical web page in Web Matrix. Following a entertaining blend of practical, funny and insightful steps, in a short period I was using Visual Basic.Net and databases to add dynamic features, controls and web services.

I was amazed at how easy it is to do. This book provides an enjoyable was to grasp a firm foundation in ASP.NET programming.

I am a college student having some programming knowledge but totally new in dynamic/ data-driven web creation. I found this book really helpful to get started from static to exciting data-driven stuff with ASP and MSDE. Although WebMatrix has a limitation(which was developed by a team of people from Microsoft at their spare time), it's a real great tool for beginner to get to know how to install database engine, create a data table, link to your web form with drag-n-drop and some hands-on coding (provided in the book). If you need to go on to industrial level, this book or WebMartix won't help.
Chap 1 starts with step by step instructions on how to install .NET framwork, MSDE (you need this if you don't have SQL running), then WebMartix (which has its own web server, you don't need IIS to run samples from the book). One of the great styles of this book is easy-to-follow-and-understand examples which has "Try It Out" & "How it Works" section which explains the code line by line in detail. I found Chap16 and 17 really helpful for general knowledge on "Web Services" and "Beyond WebMatrix," but make sure you finish this book first, then go on to more exciting Visual Studio .NET (which is a "bigbrother" of WebMatrix)
Oh..2 case studies at the back of the book, which explains step by step how to make a guestbook, reconizing customer and "log-on" stuff..and the CD includes some software WebMatrix, MSDE, etc..
Thanks to David Sussman and Wrox P2P

Great combination and perfect fit of beginning book and tool: ASP.Net Web Matrix. Excellent examples and basic ASP.Net concepts explanation.

You will be amazed when you read it. It is a step by step guide. I highly recommend this book for ASP .NET so far.

This book is a not bad introduction to ASP.NET. The reason I purchased it is I really needed to master Web Matrix ASAP and Mr. Sussman's book was quite helpful in accomplishing that goal. Of course, it is better to begin with Visual Studio since Web Matrix is somewhat limited resemblance of Visual Studuo but Web Matrix has something nobody could resist - it is free.
Make sure you learn as profoundly as possible chapters about datagrids and reusable content; these two are absolutely irreplaceble components of practically any online database application. Also pay attention to inclusion of namespaces at the very top of your code, it is forgetable. The only thing which was not working for me is Web Services. Other code samples work fine.
I would recommend to start with this book to anybody who needs to master ASP.NET.

This book has an excellent ballance between practice and theory. It presents the bootstrap as the powerful tool it is through the ellucidation of practical issues. I strongly recommend this book for everyone interested in improving statistical practice.

This book is loaded with good text book examples and covers a wide variety of bootstrap applications. It is great as a reference book on the bootstrap or as a course text at a graduate level. Chernick (1999) is a little more up-to-date and covers the classifcation error rate estimation problem that is not addressed in this text. Chernick (1999) also has many more references. Efron and Tibshirani (1993) is another fine text that is a little more intuition based with less mathematics. Fieller's problem with ratio estimation and some other gems are well covered in Efron and Tibshirani but not here. Davison and Hinkley do the best job on time series of any of the bootstrap books with details about moving block bootstrap and some interesting applications. The second edition of my text Chernick (2007) just came out and is far more up to date with an improved treatment of time series. But Davison and Hinkley is still by far the best book for a course because of the many exercises and practicals.

People might have many different reasons to use bootstrap techniques and they might have various backgrounds therefore this is a good book for readers that want to learn the bootstrap. If you do not have strong background in statistics then the practicals section will help you to programm and analyze the data. If you have background this book does show you the theory behind.

This book is loaded with good text book examples and covers a wide variety of bootstrap applications. It is great as a reference book on the bootstrap or as a course text at a graduate level. Chernick (1999) is a little more up-to-date and covers the classifcation error rate estimation problem that is not addressed in this text. Chernick (1999) also has many more references. Efron and Tibshirani (1993) is another fine text that is a little more intuition based with less mathematics. Fieller's problem with ratio estimation and some other gems are well covered in Efron and Tibshirani but not here. Davison and Hinkley do the best job on time series of any of the bootstrap books with details about moving block bootstrap and some interesting applications.

This is a well-written book, and I had the basic bootstrap notion figured-out and implemented within a few days, though it will be some time before I develop any serious depth of mastery of the material. For those unfamiliar with the bootstrap method, by a system of resampling from an existing sample of data it provides a means of establishing the standard error for pretty-near any statistical measure (like the standard error of the mean in traditional statistics), as well as the determination of general confidence intervals for those measures, even when the distribution of the data is non-gaussian or unknown. I do find the author's symbolic notation a bit confusing - perhaps TOO compact, and many of the symbolic expressions would really benefit from an associated clearly written paraphrasing (difficult for me to remember all the conventions after putting the book down for a few days). Still, to go from being barely aware of the technique to applying it to the data analysis in a current research project over a period of several weeks suggests that this text does a heck of a good job at conveying the intended introduction.

For anyone that uses Camtasia Studio, Daniel Park's Definitive Guide is just that. With an engaging and easy to digest style, Daniel leads you through pretty much every aspect of using this program suite to it's full potential.

Along the way, he also covers the intangible and often overlooked aspects of preperation, planning, and time saving tips and tricks that make it possible to produce a quality poduct with Camtasia.

Daniel Parks' book Camtasia Studio 3 is an excellent resource for those just beginning to learn the application or with a fair amount of knowledge about it. Although he doesn't delve into certain subjects as deeply as I would have liked (e.g., limitations with certain options), at 550+ pages you're still getting a good deal of information.

I've found one or two areas of the book I don't believe I agree with Parks on in how to manipulate the software, but maybe I'm just not reading his instructions in the way he intended.

If you've never used Camtasia but expect to need some of the lesser-used options, I highly recommend you buy this book when you buy the software. Good job, Daniel!

This book is my Camtasia "Bible." It's well-written and has answered a lot of questions I didn't even know I had. Now that Camtasia has moved to Version 4, I wonder if the book will undergo a revision to cover all the great new features.

If I could give 10 stars I would. THis book is the definitive guide to Camtasia and much, much more. The Camtasia part doesn't even start till Chapter 5. You spend the chapters before that learning about the how-to and why of 1) training, 2) marketing and 3) demo presentations. It's a Camtasia book and a How-To-Do-Great-Presentation book in one. And all done in an entertaining by the author's warm personable conversational style.
I wish the author would write more books. About Sony Vegas, about Serious Magic Ultra 2, about search engines. He is so good.

If you are serious about getting a proper understanding of Camtasia, then you definitely need this book. As far as I'm aware, it is the only such book available. Sure you can try using the Help material supplied with Camtasia, but it is difficult to learn well enough that way.

Camtasia Studio is a complex video recording and editing package, and there is a great deal of detail which is difficult to understand at first. Even with this book I'm needing to re-read whole chapters in order to get sufficient understanding of the suitable techniques to apply. The book isn't an easy read, but essential if you are to get maximum value from Camtasia.

The author, Daniel Park, has actually worked for the makers of Camtasia in the past, although he now works as a consultant. This gives him both an insiders and outsiders objective perspective, which allows a reader to get a fuller understanding of all the intricacies. The presentation is well-informed and conversational, although more attention could have been given to the learning needs of a naive user.

All I can say is that my project fees have tripled by adding motion graphics and using an ipod Touch to show clients the completed video segments to seal the deal and get a check in hand for such profesionalism.

Great book for anyone who wants to get an understanding of Visual Effects.
Steve Wright's book explains a lot of techniques that are used on many films today.

This book is valuable because it gives the reader a solid foundation in a straightforward and fun way. I read slowly and it still felt like a quick read. Readers with a background in motion graphics (for example Flash or After Effects artists) who don't think of themselves as "compositors" will probably take away much that can improve the quality of their work. The author does a particularly good job at explaining the structure and attributes of digital images. The writing is precise and well edited. From learning the basics of color correction, to gaining a working knowledge of video and film workflows, the book delivers. It comes across as an industry veteran who likes what he does, giving "Aspiring Artists" a simple and strong foundation. Well done!

I had originally wanted to get Steve Wright's other book, Digital Compositing for Film and Video, Second Edition, but read another review of this book make mention that it is geared more towards a beginner. At first, I thought this to be what I needed and when I got the book and scanned through it, it just seemed like an overview of the variety regarding compositing. I was a bit disappointed, until I started to peruse through more thoroughly.

What I liked (and am liking) is that it is geared towards more of a primer in the sense of the fundamental operations involved in digital compositing. And ironically, it was also what I did not like. I expected to have a more thorough or at least a methodical approach (not necessarily step-by-step) towards teaching basic compositing principles. That is what the aforementioned book describes. (And I say this based on the Table of Contents.)

So, I give a 5-star review to let people know that if they want to get a handle on "essential" concepts, that is easy to understand and comprehend, then get this book. Even if you have no interest in making movies or working in a VFX field, this will be a fun read to see the tricks the pros build upon to create some truly imaginative results. However, if you know what bluescreen compositing is, multi-plane compositing, premultiplication, etc., then this book might be redundant for you.

Once I'm done with this book, though, I'll be moving onto his other text and will be better prepared to absorb more detailed techniques.

I first bought the other book from Steve Wright and I found it quite difficult. This book, 'Essentials' is just as it says. very clearly written with lot's of pictures. It covers every compositing aspect so it's very valuable.