Computers Books

This book contains very comprehensive explanations and descriptions with practical examples which are sometimes not so familiar with me (I'm a physician.). overall, this is an excellent book and I regret not being able to meet such a book in a way more focussing on medical fields. But this has a critical shortcoming in book-binding. you should not read this book so many times to keep the original shape. that's a reason why I gave 4 stars.

When I study my MBA classes, this book helps me a lot. The book provides essential review of all Statistic knowledge in the beginning of each chaper, and then lead readers use SPSS step by step.
Especially the practical examples and funny illustration, I will say the book is the only one interesting and powerful Statistic book I can find. I highly recommand it for readers work for Marketing, Medical , Engineering , Finance, and MBA classes. The book can lead you to resolve many "real" problems.

The book is excellent in all ways: easy to read, fun to read, easy to understand.

No one likes statistics.... well some do, but it's a necessary evil of the program I'm in. As much as I dislike stats, this book made the computer portion of it much easier to understand and left me feeling better about my abilities in the subject.The Power of Inner Guidance: Seven Steps to Tune In and Turn On

I love this book. It covers everything from the most basic t-tests and ANOVAs to factor analysis. It tells you the basics of what the test is meant to do, what sort of data is appropriate for it and it tells you how to actually run and read the test in SPSS.

It isn't the best book for someone who wants a detailed explaination of how to calculate a statistical test by hand and it doesn't give extensive detail on the assummptions required for each test. Nonetheless, it's a great quick reference book, particularly if you've already had a statistics course and you just need a refresher. Graduate students will find it useful.

This is the book I've been looking for- tons of information and beautiful pictures. I highly recommend.

This book is filled with incredible pictures. It also contains topical infromation on different animals. The book is broken into sections that allows the reader to look up information easily. DK gives us another high quality informative book. A must have for lovers of animals!

Overall a great valve for the money. Pictures are clear and all in color. Explaines well the breakdown of species. For a book at this price it cannot be beat, but there are some items that I think should have been included. The first is the average life span of the species. It's mentioned for very few animals but it always facinates me to realize how long or short some of these animals live for. Another puzzling exclusion from the book is that humans are not included ... unless humans are not considered part of the Animal Kingdom. Puzzling choice not to include humans.

This is an excellent book! I could not be more satisfied. (However, it is a LARGE book. I expect to be spending several more weeks reading it in detail.)

My kids adore this book, as do many of their friends whom we've given it to. The pictures are excellent, and the level of factual detail is high without being numbing. I don't think we've ever tried to look up an animal what wasn't in here. I recommend it highly.

If you find yourself stumped with how to improve your website, or don't know where to begin with looking at web statistics, this book has everything. It begins with going through the foundation of what web analysis really is and definitions and explanations of different metrics and how they can be useful. He then goes into detail with different metrics such as bounce rate, segmentation, and some things you probably never considered. It steps you through knowing what analytics tool to use and how to implement it. It has wonderful examples and sample reports that you can tailor to your own company.

This book is very actionable. I can only speak from a beginner's perspective, but this book is easy to follow and has golden nuggets that even experienced web statisticians can take another look at. The highest recommendation possible from me. I will be waiting for another of Avinash's books.

Thank you, Avinash! Avinash has done the impossible: he's made analytics fun, easy-to-understand, and clearly communicated how analytics is even more important than many of us have treated it. Avinash's "Trinity" approach of creating actionable insights & metrics from focusing on the right clickstream data, doing the right kind of customer research, all of which leads to knowing how to produce the right kind of dashboard. If you buy only one book on analytics, this has to be it.

In depth, easy to read, detailed from a web analytics pro. My only complaint is that he should identify himself as the Evangelist for Google Analytics. He recommends GA because it's free, but he should make it clear that companies that use GA are providing confidential company data to Google that could be used against them in the pricing of keywords.

I have read several web analytics books and Avinash's book is definitely the one I would recommend first.

What you can learn from the book:
- how to think about and how to approach web analytics -- this is where this book excels
- how to deliver actionable results - the mantra of Avinash
- how to start with the basic metrics

What not to expect from this book:
- you will not learn how to use any analytics software
- you will not learn details about the technical aspects, frequent problems with data and measurement, what to avoid etc.

Check out Avinash's blog to get a picture of what you can get from the book.

Before I begin I must apologize for the length of this review, I suffer from acute conciseness deficiency.

Avinash's greatest strength is his humility, and it comes through in this book and his blog in spades. All too often the broader analytic community (which I include myself in), is so caught up in its metrics, graphs, charts, esoteric calculations and acronyms that we forget that our fundamental purpose is to inform and assist in change. Even if we do not lose sight of that goal, we get so caught up in our analysis that we begin to think we know better than anyone else, including the people buying our products/consuming our content.

With the risk of sounding terse, Avinash cuts through all of that crap to right the ship as it were, and his resulting material can be summarized in 5 points.


1. Customers know best - should be self evident but really isn't (get over yourself and start trying to figure out what the customers want because you really don't know).


2. Capture data that can assist said customers - in other words, if the data and other pretty charts you are constructing cannot lead to an insight or action that will assist your customers; you're wasting your time. Yes, even that amazingly color coded spreadsheet with pivot tables and charts bursting out of every cell.


3. Quantitative data is limited in what it can tell you - another pitfall of the analytic community is that we're so caught up in numbers that we rarely stop to consider the source or validity of our observations, a particularly fatal flaw in an emerging industry with less than ideal methods of capture.


4. Context is king - When it comes to data, context is everything and a second piece of data, incorporated with the first, can have powerful effects. As a quick example, page hits, combined with bounce rate (a metric that measures how many people left your page within a predetermined interval), can indicate how many people are truly coming to your website to engage in its content). In other words, if you achieve a 100% increase in hits but 90% of them "bounce", you're not doing as well as if the same site achieved an 80% increase in hits with a 40% bounce rate. A very different conclusion would have been drawn if hits alone were observed in this case.


5. Qualitative data is a key piece of the puzzle - as a corollary of #3, a truly effective analysis of a website will utilize qualitative and quantitative data to help inform ones decisions.



Avinish then does an excellent job of showing how one can go about creating, analyzing and acting out ones web analytics strategy within the framework laid out above. If one has even a cursory understanding of how a website is built and therefore how to input a simple tag into the relevant pages, one can utilize this book to get started analyzing their web traffic in a meaningful way, for free, this instant. In addition, and more importantly, you will have formulated the solid framework and understanding necessary to adapt as the industry changes, something it does at an exciting/terrifying pace. An excellent read.

What can I say.. I was looking for a book about WPF. I saw many, and many until I found that one. Then I stopped looking for more :)

This book stands out as one of the easiest to read technical books. The book is in color, is divided into many chapters and sub-chapters, and written in a casual style, which makes it very enjoyable to read. The coverage of the content is top-notch, save for the chapter on data binding which I think lacked better examples. I think this book falls into the category of a cover-to-cover read; meaning it is easy to get through the book in a couple weeks. There are other books that I would recommend as a reference book that contain more detailed technical information. If you are new to WPF and are the type to read complete chapters and books, then definitely start with this one.

I have over 25 technical books on my shelf (and those are just the ones I have hung on to). Without a doubt this is one of, if not THE, best technical book I have ever read!

This book really captures the excitement that surrounds WPF and carries that through into a book. They layout is exceptional (colour print is much less tiring to read). The chapters are thorough, especially on the key areas.

As I read through, questions would pop into my head. "Hmmm I wonder how that works?". Then I would turn the page and right there would be a detailed explaination. I was rarely left wondering how things worked, or how pieces fit together.

Don't think - just buy it!

So much is alreay said about this great book, so I will be short. I have read plenty of books aimed at developers, and this is truly the one that have made the biggest impression.

This is a must-have for WPF developers, and I'm sure that this book will become a legend in it's field!

I am new to WPF but an experienced ASP.NET and Windows Forms developer. The book contains much information although, naturally, part of it is a little bit old. However, what most annoyed me was the writing style of the book which I experienced somehow clumsy compared to many other IT books. Although my written English is not the best possible (my mother tongue is Finnish and I live in Finland) I am very sensitive about incoherencies in English text.

A very good idea is using full color printing. It is clearer and can delight the reader!

Osmo Saarela, Finland

This book is the perfect example of a good "Computer" book: It teaches what it needs to teach in a way you understand.
It covers all the important stuf like BSTRs, Smart Pointers, DCOM, TLBs, IDLs and other buzz-like acronyms.
I used it as an only reference for learning COM and I was doing complex COM projects within weeks. Andrew Troelsen is 'the man'!

Best regards,

I NEVER write reviews; however Mr. Troelsen for this effort has earned it. He has written by far one of the best written tech books on C programming I've ever read, and for COM/ATL this book makes writing interfaces for VB both understandable and accessible. Coverage and background is sufficient, and equally important for those who don't do this every day for a living, the depth in setting up projects in Visual Studio is also there so one unfamiliar with technical setup issues involved in setting up an ATL COM project are enabled to create their own. All I can say is well done, please keep up the good work, very much appreciated. Looking forward to your next releases.

Sincerely,
Dr. Mathew G. Pelletier, Research Engineer

Describe low level COM and then ATL internals and interfaces which can let reader easily understand such complex mechanism. Though the book is a little bit old, it can still be served as a good reference.

Apart from the fact that so many customers gave 5 stars to this book, there's another indicator of its value: it looks like nobody wants to resell it after they are done reading it. I, for one, intend to keep it for reference...

I've been programming in C# for a few years, and now I needed to learn COM. This book was the best tech manual I've ever read.

My recommendation is: if you need to learn COM, do not waste your money on any other book until you've read this one.

My current project at work required me to learn COM. I purchased several books to assist in the learning, and I must say that this book is absolutely indispensible, both as an instructional medium and as a reference. I highly recommend this book to anyone needing to learn about COM.

What's inside? It starts with a basic intro to COM, useful (dare I say it) for managers as well as the developer to get the big picture. Then it goes into a discussion of ATL and design patterns. This second section is incredibly important since ATL is for COM as STL is for C++. It finishes off with some of the more advanced areas of study in COM. Only a few advanced topics are not covered (custom marshalling for one), but considering it starts from an assumed ignorance of COM, it does reach a good level of detail.

Who am I? I studied computer science in University. However, I had never previously developped on Windows. I am primarily a C++ programmer, with some experience with Java. Knowledge of C++ (I would say more than just a familiarity) should be a prereq. to reading, but that's about it. It introduces most OO topics you need in the first chapters that most experienced developers can probably skip.

If your a Java 2 developer then you need this on your bookshelf. It contains an enormous amount of useful information, examples, etc. for all the classes in java.applet, java.awt, and java.beans. You gotta have it!

The 1.st sentence of the preface says: "This book is intended as a reference rather than a tutorial". Well for an experienced Java programmer this is certainly true, but for a novice who has just grasped the fundamentals of the language and starts to write down his first lines of code this book is an excellent tutorial. Every class has a description and practically every method of every class has its example code where nearly every line is documented, with links to related methods. Looking into these examples one can quickly learn tips and tricks smoothing the learning curve a lot. The Chan's book is miles ahead, in my opinion, the unuseful example codes one can freely download from the Sun's internet pages, full of magic words comining from blue skyes not documented at all, where one has to figure out what any of them is useful for and where you are on your own. One more time: what I say is true for a novice; the senior Java programmer may feel at his ease with the API's documentation of the Sun's JDK.
My last warning: since in Java things change often this kind of books goes into obsolescence quicky. For instance: my copy is the 5th edition (October 2001) and it lacks completely the new Collections class framework.

This book really helps with a huge amount of information and examples for all of the classes in java.io, java.lang, java.math, java.text, and java.util. Wonderful reference book!

This is required on every Java developers bookshelf. It is a wonderful reference.

I strongly recommend this book to all Java users of all levels because no other book describes all classes of java.lang, java.io, java.net, java.util, java.text and java.math packages better. Every class, every method and every exception is explained by very understandable language with good and useful examples. There is no Java language problem you cannot solve with this book.

I bought the first edition of this book called Programming Windows Presentation Foundation (AKA Avalon) at the PDC in 2005 and read it completely on the plane home.

When I heard the second edition was released I didn't think much would have changed, but this is even better than the first edition. It's twice as big and covers all major (and not so major) topics in WPF (inc. an introduction to 3D and Silverlight).

I think this book will proof to be for WPF what Programming Windows, Fifth Edition is for WIN32 programming.

There isn't much yet on the internet about WPF, so if you want to get started using it, you really need a guide.

Not only is the book a well crafted introduction to WPF, I've just discovered that the downloadable source code makes an excellent companion to the book.

Questions that were not answered in another top-rated WPF book I found answered here... so whatever else you buy, get this book!

This book is the most in depth resource into WPF i have seen. And not just that, it gets to the good stuff that you'll actually use in your code and not just filler or lists of properties that you can get from intelisense. The examples are extremely useful.

The other benefit of this book is that it doesn't just tell you how to do things, but why. This is incredibly helpful in finding the best solution to your specific problem.

Thanks guys! great book!
Ralph

I say to ignore those reviews because they do not refer to this book. This is the second edition published August 28, 2007 with 863 pages. Those reviews are based off of the first edition published nearly two years before (September 12, 2005) and with only 447 pages.

Using Amazon's 'Search inside this book' takes you to the 2005 edition also. That shows only 10 chapters while this edition has 17. Most of the negative comments from the 2 and 3 star reviewers seem to have been resolved.

The biggest strength of this book is that it focus on using WPF programatically, not just laying out XAML. This is extremely useful if you are writing an application for 3D data visualization or a database driven application. You get to learn to create event handlers, generate meshes... all programmatically. I also believe that this book is great, not just as a learning tool, but as a reference guide. It is the most comprehensive book on the subject and a must for the aspiring WPF developer.

If you just want to focus on XAML, however, I will have to recommend "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" by Adam Nathan.

Web Standards Solutions is reasonably solid title that discusses the benefits and approaches of using web standards in the design of (X)HTML markup. CSS is also covered as a means to remove presentational elements from web page markup. Lists, tables, headings, hyperlinks, forms, quotations and layouts are all covered to a foundational level.

The information covered in the book is especially suited to new web site designers who are yet to understand these concepts. Web application developers - who might not focus their craft on the quality of their markup, would also benefit greatly. For others already possessing an basic understanding of semantic markup and presentation through CSS, the book might contain a few useful tips only.

Throughout each chapter the book doggedly follows a pattern that can become tedious. For each chapter, non-standards approaches are considered before the 'correct' standards based approach is shown. After this the 'extra credit' portion of the chapter provides practical applications of the given solution. Whereas the correct solution and extra credit sections are useful, the repetition of the defective non-standard approaches for in every chapter is sometimes repetitive and slightly contrived, and could be discussed more casually as required without dominating the format of every chapter.

Having said that, the book is easily read, has examples and practical applications, covers the breadth of the topic well and could certainly be used to bring anyone up to speed on the basics of standards-based approaches to the web page markup development.

With only a casual tinker in Dreamweaver split view under my belt starting out, I learned how to hand code XHTML and CSS with this book alone (well, and some web research here and there and CSS Mastery is an excellent follow up). It's written clearly and gives multiple solutions for each case, while explaining the advantages and disadvantages of each. I cannot recommend this book enough, as even after I finished it, it remains close by as an invaluable desk reference that I refer to here and there.

This is an excellent book that all web designers should own. When I look at people's sites, I often validate them just out of curiosity, and it is so rare that I ever find a valid site. I always pay attention to validation, and this book just validates (for lack of a better term) my opinions on the importance of following web standards. This book is good for helping with workarounds for certain browsers (cough, IE) that don't support standards that most others do.

Through simple illistrations and small code snippets this book covers pretty much what one would need to know in order to create great web 2.0 sites.

This book is the 2nd one by Dan Cederholm that I bought and can be used as "Advanced Chapters" to his short but overall excellent "Bulletproof Web Design" (ISBN-10: 0321346939). These two combined will surely set your brains straight about standards-based HTML/CSS development.

It explains how to make your markup short. It shows why using purposeful HTML tags (such as "label") is preferred to using generic divs with classes. It destroys new and "hip" myth about tables being "taboo" for modern HTML.

This is the BIBLE for Cold Fusion. I have read a few too many compter books. This is the first one I finished and keeped around. The CD has codeing found in the samples in the book. Very easy reading for this type of book. It even teaches you some HTML. WOW.

This book was fantastic. Sure there are the few editing errors common with computer books. I knew NOTHING about Cold Fusion or database connectivity to the web before I got this and now I've written a dozen or so Cold Fusion applications for the UPS intranet. An EXCELLENT resource for beginners and professionals with a tag index for quick referencing. A chapter on SQL also for those who don't know it. It will teach you everything you need to know to get your application online and running. Great Great Great!

Forta's book is very interesting. I almost bought a book solely on SQL, but just bought this book because of its comprehensive SQL sections. As an Application Server Developer, I also have experience with ASP, and this makes ASP look extremely primitive. In fact, I used the concepts of Cold Fusion presented here to evaluate better solutions for projects in ASP. An example of this is the easy implementation of Dynamic SQL in Coldfusion. I then built a Dynamic SQL implementation. Thanks Mr. Forta for a great one. If you know ASP, this book will show you what you need to engineer within ASP to get it to compete with Cold Fusion. An awesome book!

I have very little programming experience and have this book to be very easy to use.

Forta takes you from the start of Cold Fusion and SQL. If you are new to programming and SQL, this is the book for you. I was writing data interface apps in a few hours. A great book overall. Worth the read. I still use it as a reference regularly! A must have for the Cold Fusion developer.

I think it's the best srategy guide made for OoT. It tells you EVERYTHING you need to collect in the game (except for the sinking lure). And for those who admire OoT art and love the characters -- it has it all!

I'm not a kid, I just didn't want to reveal my account. Anyway, this is a very thorough guide and includes everything but the sinking lure, but the author uses the words d**n, cr*p, a**, and p*ssed throughout the book. This may not be a good choice for younger children.

This is the world's greatest strategy guide! It is so detailed and interesting that you could read it for pleasure (I did). With pictures and step by step instructions, any kid who can read could beat the Ocarina Of Time with it. I am almost thirteen and I've loved it since I was 9.

Many people say that this guide has too much language, it IS an E rated game but I say who gives a sh*t! HAHAHA! Also it doesn't tell about the best kept secret in the game the sinking fish lure. Go to the fishing pond in lake hylia as an adult ONLY, and search the perimeter of the pond, then go to the small stream in the back (that flows into the pond) and look in the rocks, if it's not there then go to then log in the middle of the pond, it'll be there and you'll know it when you get it. You can cetch the loach which is 36? pounds. The biggest i've caught is 20, with a regular hook the biggest was 19. Thank me later

This Book has got to be the best guide book ever written for a game. It has detailed maps, but they are not so detailed that it gives you a headache or anything. It tells you how to do everything, including how to get Epona the horse. It also doesn't leave gaps like other guide books that tell you about one room, then just skip to the next one, without telling you how to get there. It also feels like the writer is talking to you, and makes it enjoyable to read.