Computers Books

Well thought-out, clear and thorough book. I have several networks books, but this is by far the best I've ever used, even surpassing "Computer Networks: a systems approach". Another advantage of this book is that it has a website with quizzes and results to help reinforce the information displayed in it. A must have for anyone learning about networks.

I had to use this book for a graduate course. It has been very suitable for this purpose. The level of details is good, but not to the point of a protocol standard. If you need to master the concepts and do not want to refer to very superficial practical references or detailed standards this book is right in the middle. Lecturers will find it very appropriate and students will easly grasp the concepts. One can still use some parts of the book as a reference. If the required information is not there some of the references to RFCs and standards will guide the reader to more information elsewhere.

As a beginner, this book can deliver a full and clear picture about details of TCP/IP including each protocol alogorithm, characteristics and it's usage. One can easily understand the TCP/IP basic architecture even without any experience after reading.

Just recently, I began writing network drivers for my custom Operating System and found myself a little in-the-dark about the proper format for a TCP/IP packet. This book proved to be a great read, and also an extremely useful reference later on.
Two thumbs up.

This may be the best textbook I have ever used. The text is concise and to the point with no extra "fluff". The illustrations are fantastic. The author has spent a tremendous amount of time on these... they take you directly to the meaning of the text, and give a strong visual and intuitive foundation to what has been written. Example problems with answers are numerous, and seem to be placed at exactly the points where you need to stop and work through concepts with pencil and paper. I really can't say enough about this text, I've read it cover to cover. It imparts an amazing amount of technical information without being dry... again, I think it's the illustrations that are so helpful, and it's nice that the author's style is direct and not wordy. I don't think you can buy a better TCP/IP book, this one's worth twice the price.

This book is great for novices who don't know a lot about SEO because it's really easy to understand and contains tons of practical advice. I found it very useful, and my website moved up in the rankings almost immediately after I started implemented what it said. I can't wait to try other tips in the book and see what more great results I get!

This is a great book for anyone new to SEO and/or Internet Marketing. Currently, I am in the process of publishing my first web site and feel confident that all the bases are covered since implementing the strategies found in this book. Highly recommend this book to anyone wanting the latest and greatest in SEO strategy!

Jon Rognrud's writing style was compelling and to the point. I enjoyed his direct approach to providing so much useful information. As a business owner who does not have an abundance of free time, this book helped me focus on the tasks at hand to promote my consulting business online. As I prepare content for my new website, the insights into keywords, a seed list, social media sites and other tips to improve my SEO and SEM will be invaluable. Good job!

If you're new to search engine optimization, this book is a great place to start. Not only does the author teach you how to get started in SEO, he also teaches you how to construct a website that converts.

He uses cases studies throughout the book to show the common pitfalls of SEO, as well as outsourcing and promotion. Everything you need to know is covered, including a complete chapter on keyword research and linking.

I liked this book because it made the whole issue of learning SEO very straightforward. It also includes a disk full of tools, as well as a free membership, giving you everything you need to be a search engine marketing expert in no time.

Jinger Jarrett, Author, Internet Marketing for Free: The GUIDE: Internet Marketing to GO!

This SEO guide favors natural search over paid search. And half of the book is devoted to indirect topics.

This guide has some SEO good content but stops short. As Amazon points out, the book is illustrated, but the illustrations are not of SEO examples. And they're so faint and small as to be illegible. The book is missing examples of SEO in general. For example, what's the best way to work meaningful hypertext into a backlinked article? What's the best way to avoid a duplicate content penalty when creating a media room or distributing content?

Another issue with the book is the content which is semi-useful. There are lists and lists of resource links in the back but they have no descriptions. The chapter about psychographics is simplistic to the point of inaccuracy and isn't integrated with the rest of the book. The chapter on black-hat SEO is interesting but not overly useful. And there's a whole chapter devoted to long-tail keywords which combined may not surpass the results of primary keywords. The small chapter on conversion can't do the topic justice. The individual sections on dumping a server log to Excel and outbound links are intriguing but just plain confusing.

One more issue with the book is the lack of information, ex. on important HTML and page layout techniques that can boost SEO, on the fact that many search engines feed each other. Paid search content glosses over ad creation and omits bid strategy. The resource links in the back omit one of the major web analytics firms and all search engine monitoring sites.

While this book has some merit, it should have stuck with SEO specifically (not site development, psychographics, conversion, etc.) and provided more detail. As it is, it cannot be used as a sole reference. And the title's implication that the book can help the reader "make lots of money" is misleading. Even good SEO doesn't guarantee that.

I also used this book to prepare for the HP-UX CSA exam. The book is broken down into 3 parts.

1)UNIX Section
This section covers UNIX/LINUX in general and shows some differences between some of the flavors of UNIX
2)Programming Section
This section introduces you to the various programming language you will see on UNIX/LINUX Platforms. Programming languages such as C/C++, Java, Perl were shown
3)UNIX and Windows Interoperability Section
This section shows how to work and share files with both operating systems.
Overall the book is good and very useful for someone coming from windows background and going to UNIX world. I recommend this book.

Let me pay my respects to this beautiful beautiful book. There are a lot of pages, but the print is big and 90% of it is examples.

The book has tremendous scope - make this your first Unix book,
it is all you really need.

I will certainly target this author, when I move onto sys admin.

This book deserves five stars for unix users. For administrators it is neccesary to read more. Great book.

Perfect for pointing my junior SA's in the right direction! The shell chapters let them get more detail on the user environment, the administration and performance sections provide them a taste of real SA work, and the introductory chapters on programming give them a solid foothold on the way to deep unix.

I'm particularly happy with the included man pages. Too many books just give a short blurb on a command; reading the man page can open greater opportunities.

I recommend this book for any low-mid level unix admin. If you're a supervisor or manager, get one for all your SA's!

I'm surprised how much content was put in this book. They did an excellent job on covering a wide array of topics: Unix commands, XWindow System, File/Dir System, tools, Shell Programming, KornShell, C, and Bash environment, Samba, and Internet Programming. It also dedicates some time with C++, Perl, and Java, which made me happy. A plus for man documantion listings.

My only grudge is the index, which could've been bigger and more detailed when searching specific topics on the fly.

Excellent book. I am an attorney turned software developer, and I hate all the "secret method" sales for website optimization info on the web right now. This was the book I had been waiting for. A legitimate treatise that explained how things worked in depth and helped you understand the theory behind SEO. It was also helpful to understand how web standards development and SEO are separate but interconnected. Great book!

All in all I would say this book was excellent and as advertised. I like that it addresses SEO, SEM etc. as well a making your pages perform better, but the two do not make ideal bedfellows. Part 1 of this book is very business focused, and I think all engineers should know something about business, but at some stages it almost becomes a walk-thru on using Google AdSense.
Don't get me wrong, that is useful information, but if you are going to be turning your web page, I would hope you could work out how to use a GUI.

I suspect some of the details in this book will have a limited shelf life i.e. as new versions of browsers come on-stream some of the specifics will not be as relevant, but good principals for optimization are good principals. If JavaScript ever goes multi-threaded it may poke a hole in this book, but that would make us all very happy.

I particularly enjoyed the section on measuring the performance on your site, I have used tools like firebug, but was unfamiliar with the difference between how firefox handles CSS download/processing compared to IE and I realize that makes all my testing slightly jaundiced.

In my mind this is two very good books, with different audiences in mind, in one volume. If you considered from Dusk Till Dawn to be a logical flow for a movie, you will feel the same for this book :)

Anyone who is serious about building web apps should review this books.

This book is a comprehensive guide to improving the performance of websites from both a technical and a commercial perspective. It's packed with detailed, practical advice on how to professionalize your site's content and presentation, how to speed up the site and improve its search engine rankings, how to measure and improve the visitor's experience, and how to measure and increase conversion rates and ROI. The emphasis throughout the book is on quantifiable, evidence-based analysis of all aspects of your site.

The only problem I have with the book is that some chapters are written by different authors, making for an uneven, discordant reading experience. For example, the charts and graphs can vary greatly in style from one chapter to the next. Some chapters are intended for engineers, others for managers. In one chapter you're learning how to tweak HTTP headers and Apache mod files, and in the next chapter you're rolling your eyes at business-book bromides like "appeal to the value hierarchies of your customers". Nevertheless, there is so much useful information crammed into this book that I would venture to declare it essential reading for any serious web developer.

My biggest challenge was getting everyone to buy into optimization. I solved this problem by requiring everyone from development, design, customer support, and management to read Andrew King's book, "Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets." My advice is read Chapter 10 first. Chapter 10 of Andrew King's book explains why you should include these changes in your original design the first time, which then allows for the marketing team to start using Google's Web site Optimizer to test new ideas and theories.

I think everyone will have the same response after reading this book: the excitement of possibilities! The book explains why optimization is not hocus-pocus created by the marketing team.

The first line of the preface to this book reads, "We've had a website for years now, but it hardly pays for itself." This book aims to solve the mysteries that many site owners feel about the performance of their website. Some owners don't know any better, some don't know where to start, and still others rely on false metrics to make their site seem as though it is doing better than it actually is. This book doesn't contain myths. This book doesn't contain "feel-good" stats about websites. This book contains in-depth information related to every aspect of your website, and how you can turn your website into something that works for you and, ultimately, achieves the goals you set in the beginning. This may be a financial goal and your website is responsible for driving sales. This may be a social networking goal, where you want to nurture a growing community. This may be an advertising goal, where you can optimize your site for advertising campaigns. The core of this book will help you, no matter what the goal of your website. Andy King has done an incredible job of thoroughly covering the areas of performance, optimizing these areas, and then properly analyzing the results.

This book is divided up into two parts: Search Engine Marketing Optimization and Web Performance Optimization.

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING OPTIMIZATION

Natural Search Engine Optimization
Anyone who has ever been in charge of optimizing a website for search engines can attest to the many challenges they may be presented with. These challenges are, often times, unique to any given project. Andy starts off the book by introducing natural, or organic SEO. He explains the benefits, shows some of the core SEO techniques, and wraps it up into a very thorough ten step process to achieve higher search engine rankings. He covers many aspects such as using a professional design, the pitfalls of Flash, and lists out some of the barriers to SEO. I personally liked that he took the time out to explain what a professional design looks like. He introduces the concept here, and then goes into more depth in a later chapter. I have always seen this as one of the most important aspects to your SEO campaign. Having a solid look, feel, structure, and organization will ultimately help both humans and bots find your important content. I also liked the fact that he had a nice section devoted to Microformats while explaining the benefits of Meta Data.

Natural SEO Case Study: [...]
So how do we know what he says is true or even works? The next chapter dives into a case study. Enough talking about what works, let's see some real world examples. This specific example, [...], took a site that was not professionally designed, and turned it around into something much more meaningful. While the copywriting was re-organized, much of the re-structuring took place in the markup. By employing quality markup, he was able to achieve better results, as things were all put into context. He makes brief mention of using the Lynx test to make sure things make sense. Strip your styles away. Strip your behavior away. Does the content make sense at the core? By re-working the core structure and copy-writing, they were able to see much better organic SEO results than the first iteration. This is just the first step.

Pay-per-Click Optimization
What we have seen in the previous chapters were methods and techniques of natural, or organic, SEO. These techniques revolved around the things that could be instantly done without putting money towards any campaigns. Organic SEO was about setting a good solid foundation for your website. Now that we have that solid foundation, we can look to setting up a pay-per-click campaign. PPC advertising revolves around setting appropriate goals, and targeting the right keywords for the right audience. I found this chapter to be one of the most important chapters in the entire book. I read through it twice. He breaks down setting up PPC campaigns, and then monitoring their health. He has things broken down to their mathematical equations to let you truly gauge your campaign. He mentions many helpful resources and tools for selecting your campaigns, A/B testing your campaigns, and then making sense of the results. He also mentions some of the struggles you will ultimately face while trying to manage a campaign, and some things you can do to alleviate the pain.

PPC SEO Case Study: [...]
Again, instead of just talking about what you could or should do, Andy presents us with another Case Study to put his words into action. Here was the kicker for me: This case study wasn't all about the success of the campaign. He presented the campaign, setup the pricing, and then dove into integration. However, this was for items that were in a very competitive market. While improvements were seen, they didn't always come easy. The end of this case study was not a magical story of success, but a story of planting a seed and nurturing your campaigns - even in a competitive market.

Conversion Rate Optimization
At first glance one might confuse this with PPC Optimization. Andy defines CRO as

[...] the art and science of persuading your site visitors to take actions that benefit you, by making a purchase, offering a donation, or committing to some positive future action.

This chapter presents us with the social aspect of being on the web. We started with a core foundation, and moved to setting up campaigns based on our keywords and target market, now we look to converting the visitors into users of our site. This involves an array of tactics that revolve around the Psychology of Persuasion. This psychology is broken down into many useful strategies and topics. Next up he provides us with an exhaustive list of factors to maximize your conversion rates. Each of the 10 factors he mentions are discussed in great detail. He wraps the chapter up with important advice to Test Everything. All of the lists, and understanding how users make decisions, are useless unless you can test against them and make sure you are still achieving your goals. He shows how to test each aspect by using your analytics, but ultimately each scenario will be different based on the needs.

You have just finished the first half of the book, and you studiously implement the suggested plans and techniques. You find out they were successful and brought loads of traffic to your website, only to have your website crumble under the load. Now it's time to shift gears to a more technical aspect to find out how we can optimize our Markup, our CSS, our JavaScript and Ajax, and our Server.

WEB PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION

The two-fold nature of this book may turn certain people on or off, but all of this comes under the umbrella of optimizing your site. I encourage you to read (and possibly re-read) through the different areas, even if they may seem too deep. While the first part of the book was about keeping your visitors happy, this half makes sure your server is happy.

Web Page Optimization
This chapter seems to be a quick overview of what is to come in the next few chapters. He gives a brief introduction into some of the common performance problems that servers can face, and then gives us a list of things we can do to optimize our site for the request and response life-cycle. This list is exhaustive, but many of the items are discussed in more detail in the coming chapters. This is just to get your feet wet and understand some of the common pitfalls. These include items such as optimizing your markup and removing the load of tables, optimizing your images for display on the screen, optimizing your CSS and using things such as CSS sprites to keep your styles lean and re-usable, and optimizing your JavaScript.

CSS Optimization
Some of these items may be commonplace for different developers, but include a good discussion nonetheless. He breaks down the anatomy of a CSS file and the rules inside of them. He advocates the use of a Reset Stylesheet, and then dives into another list of ten things you can do to optimize your CSS. This chapter is about not just taking CSS from a WYSIWYG output, but truly crafting your CSS to fit your needs. It's about making the CSS readable, re-usable, and taking advantage of the Cascade that we have. Simply accepting the output of an editor isn't enough. I have said it before, and I'll say it again: There isn't an editor out there smart enough to understand your cascade and needs. The advantages of crafting your own CSS means that it's more extensible, maintainable, and semantic. You can group items as your needs require, and by using the cascade and CSS2.x and CSS3 selectors you can begin to achieve an array of different effects that would otherwise be achieved through dirtying up the markup (content layer).

Ajax Optimization
Ajax became all of the buzz for a while. Everyone wanted it, but very few fully understood all of the impacts that it had on many outside factors. This chapter starts off listing some of the common problems with Ajax, and then lists out some proper applications of Ajax. Remember, the goal here isn't to just use Ajax for the sake of using Ajax, but to use it tastefully where it will ultimately enhance the user experience without negatively impacting your SEO visibility. This chapter also breaks down a list of many items you can do to optimize your JavaScript while building your Ajax applications. As with CSS, much of this refers to writing the JavaScript yourself (or assessing and relying on one of the many great frameworks out there) and keeping optimization at the forefront. Don't just accept the output from an editor, you can take the extra steps to make sure your JavaScript is performance friendly for the visitor. For small tasks, this also means you may not need to include a library. Read through this chapter to get a better understanding of what Ajax is, how it can be used tastefully, and how you can make sure it doesn't hinder performance. This chapter is by no means exhaustive on the topic, but it is an excellent primer.

Advanced Web Performance Optimization
Now that we have found ways to optimize our assets (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), lets look at how we can optimize the server to manage the requests. This chapter includes techniques such as server-side optimization, reducing DNS lookups and also utilizing DNS domain aliasing to balance the requests, caching your frequently used objects and using HTTP compression. I especially enjoyed the topic of caching, and the many ways you can manage caching on both the server and client side, and planning for a proper caching strategy based on your needs. This chapter focuses on squeezing the most performance you can out of each and every aspect of your website. Using CDN to manage assets, using mod_rewrite to map your URL's, and taking another step of optimization to your files in the process. Using monitoring tools will also help you monitor your HTTP requests and make sure they are being served in a timely manner.

Website Optimization Metrics
This last chapter brings everything full circle. Now that you have taken the time to optimize your website, how can you measure that any of this has helped? Through the use of many helpful tools and analytics programs you will be able to constantly evaluate the performance of your website. We have briefly seen the mention of analytics software in some of the earlier chapters, but this chapter takes it to another level. This chapter is all about breaking down the analytics programs and understanding the different reports and terminology, and how they are affected by the entire gamut of changes you have made in the previous chapters. I found this chapter to be rather dense, but very useful. Entire books have been written on this subject, so this is really just another primer - but an excellent primer for you to instantly start gauging the performance of your website. Using your analytics software will allow you to evaluate the performance of your pages, run A/B testing, manage PPC campaigns, and monitor your keywords. All of this is done under roof, and can be used to cross compare against an array of other sets of metrics to get any reports you may be seeking.

So, now what? (Summary)
Creating a successful website simply won't happen overnight. There are many aspects that need to be addressed, and this book covers those in great detail. If you are working on a high-traffic website, or simply want to find a way to optimize your website for goals, then you need to pick up a copy of this book. It is very well written and organized. You don't necessarily have to read it all in order, you could pick and choose based on the topics you are interested in. The writing style also kept things interesting along the way, making great use of lists and callout blocks with more information or resources.

I found this book to rehash information found in many other sources. It covers a wide range of topics, but none in sufficient detail. A good overview of the topics; for detailed information look elsewhere.

I have a nice little library of books that would put a small library to shame, but I find myself connected to a few much like the kid with his favorite teddy bear. Well, this book is like that teddy bear. I carry it 2 miles each day to and from work. Any good book is invaluable to a job/certification. This is one of them!

I read the entire book over the last few weeks and found that is was very helpful in giving me a better understanding of networking. I learned a lot about the basics and a ton about the advanced aspects of NT networking. I found out about how to use key NT tools and the book was a great resource.

I don't usually take the time to come back and comment on a book unless it's very bad. In this case the book is way better than I've come to expect from most NT books. There were so many extra topics in the book that I don't think I've seen elsewhere. Important registry setting are listed and explained but not ALL of them (with no explaination) just what is important. I liked the IP Management section and DNS overview. The capacity planning section that somebody else here mentioned was excellent and the tuning and troubleshooting chapter had a great section on problem resolution. It covers a very wide range of topics relating to NT and networking and does it very well.

-Tom

This book, along with Tony Northrup's Windows NT Plumbing, will put you a step above your other NT peers. Both of these books go into the nitty gritty details of how NT REALLY works in the real world and how best to deploy and configure it.

Both are excellent primers on networking and TCP/IP as well as NT specifics. Highly recommended.

Parece que si, pues aunque el libro cubre la mayor parte de los temas relacionados a configuracion de servidores DHCP, WINS y DNS utilizando NT considero que el libro es pobre en ejemplos ilustrativos, graficos de flujo, consejos y trucos.
Honestamente no recomiendo el libro si es que tienes un serio proyecto en mente para crear un nodo internet y deseas desarrollar toda la infraestructura de soporte TCP/IP.
Este es un libro frio, una clase magistral distante de hace unos 50 años atras sobre un tema tan moderno como TCP/IP, que mantiene al lector muy lejos del autor.
Veamoslo de esta forma matematica:
Este libro + Más graficos + Trucos y Consejos = Que buen libro !!
Espero sinceramente que mi revision te ayude a hacer una buena decision. Saludos.
Piyux.

It's clear and simple. Very good and usefull to understand the network computer.

If you're any way involved with the administration or planning of your NT network environment, this is a book you must have! I consider myself pretty good in networking, but still found myself referring back to this book every so often. A must have on any networking library!

I bought this book to use as a reference when I got my first IT job. Areas of TCP/IP I found confusing from the Microsoft course I took were cleared up nicely from reading this book.

I never found the need to buy a second TCP/IP book after reading this. You won't either.

I had studied other resources, including a training course to get my knowledge to a good standard. This book was the first that was really worth the effort. So much so, I am now looking for titles by the same Publisher to complete my MCSE

Very funny! Hilarious pictures, funny context. Whoever this man is, he is one hilarious, nuttyguy! This is a funny view of the Y2K problem, that everyone who panicks about it should definitely get. Bill Gates, watch out for Brad H. Olsen-Ecker! He can surely make anything funny, especially referring to Lady of the Water. Great Book!

That Olsen-Ecker guy is a real crazy kook. The book really puts this whole Y2K thing in a perspective we can all laugh about and silence the hysteria. Olsen-Ecker is one of the great creative minds of the 20th century. It is not just a book but a survival manual for the next millenium. Save those cheese doodles, take the stairs, and cancel that flight to Hawaii. The Y2K hysteria is upon us people! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!

Fear and loathing on the road to Y2K! A surreal journey in context, in type design, in photos. It's riveting. It's by my bedside. It's a must buy.

The author Bradley Olsen-ecker did a great job creating characters that really had personality. Giving the Y2K situation a very real identity. The story mad a lot of sense, and gave the readers an idea of how crazy Y2K will really be.

Buy this, read it, keep it on your desk. Any time you read in the "real" press that Y2K is going to bring disaster, open this book at random; remind yourself that *this* is what the pundits are predicting. They're nuts. (Well, the author is clearly nuts also, but I mean that in the nicest way.)

And, it's cheap enough that you can buy a batch and have them handy to hand to people who whine about Y2K preparedness. I did.

I have read both books by Savitch and Deitel, and Savitch is by far clearer, although Savitch could still buff the textbook out a bit more with explaining "Compositon" topic better and clarifying paramater type .

Also Savitch summarizes every subsection and I am not 100% sure this is necessary in all subsections.

Savitch should urge his publisher not to begin a new subsection at the bottom of a page!

Savitch should make available more solutions in a separate manaul for those wishing it.

Overall I would say Savitch saved my day with my 2 JAVA courses. Deitel starts out with graphics, assuming the student will graps Java better but Deitel introduces some rather major concepts when doing this and I don't think the students would appreciate the complex ideas without using Savitch step by step methodologies. Deitel assumes a student undestands the concept of "extends", "implements" etc and this is exactly what graphics class uses and Deitel assumes students will understand these concepts just because they are graphical in nature. Savithc covers these concepts later when other major concepts are covered so that a student will appreciate the "extends" concepts much better.

So Savitch and Deitel cover the same material, but in different sequences. And I believe that Savitch's approach works better and helps the student understand the more difficult concepts later in the textbook.

gerard sagliocca,
gerard_sagliocca@yahoo.com

I learned JAVA language a couple of years ago. As I have to reuse it recently, I borrow the 2nd Edtion from a computer science guy in the school, because many people told me this is the best one. After I read through it, I decided to purchase the newest edtion. It's INDEED the best one of the JAVA guides I've ever read.

Straightforward, and easy to understand, not tedious. This book is extremely good. My instructor isn't the best, so I end up reading through the book a lot, and have come to really appreciate it.

Important concepts are hit upon from several different angles to really drive points home (but not tediously and repetitive), code examples are very good, lots of tips, and warnings of frequent mistakes. I can go through a chapter in a couple of hours, this semester I've gone through a thousand pages in this book, but it doesn't feel like I spent more effort on this course than others, I have learned so much from it.

Also, if you want to skip ahead, he will tell you what sections you need to know before beginning a chapter, so you can hit some relevant topic without reading every chapter prior to it.

Effective use of formatting and white space, clear headings that really help to find and organize the information, chapters are nice and manageable. Important parts of the code examples are highlighted so that you don't have to read the entire piece of code to get the relevant information, but if you want to see how the piece fits into a working program, the entire code is there to be referenced. It helps you to be able to just look the code quickly if thats all you need, or really sit down and give it a thorough run through to see how it works in the program.

I wish all my textbooks were like this, I advocate it to everyone interested in Java.

It is BY FAR the best book on programming that I have read. I tried Java for Dummies, learning online, also the Java tutorials from Sun and they were a waste of time or money or both.

There are several reasons that make me love this book and the way this author teaches:

1. I read most of this book in seven weeks. After that, I took a second course on programming and I did great on my class.

2. The exercises are well designed to learn. Some are challenging but all go right to the core of what you learned on each chapter.

3. It covers the basics and even some advanced topics that I have encountered in following programming courses.

4. The explanations are crystal clear. It is hard to be left with doubts.

5. The organization is perfect. It builds a core and then it adds more to the core. After five chapters you can move on many different directions depending on your needs and the book will still make sense.

6. The code is transparent and clarifications on the margins do help.

7. It is up to date with the latest Java release.

In all honesty this book does not have a weak spot. BUY IT!!!

hernanM

I've tried three other Java intro books, and they either aren't well-organized or they take such a dim view of the reader's abilities that it's like reading Programming for Pre-schoolers. Absolute Java is well-structured with both breadth & depth: it doesn't ignore programming basics, but covers a much larger scope of material than other books I've tried, while still including detail about intricacies of more sophisticated aspects of the language. Uses lots of good, robust examples. Love it.

This book helped me learn how to use Curves in a very thorough way. I used to be intimidated with Curves and had preferred to use the Levels command instead.

Mr. Willmore also showed how to find highlights, shadows and gray areas and then adjust the colors by the numbers. You have to average the numbers of the highlights, shadows and the gray from each individual channel within the Curves dialog box.

I practice some images with extreme color casts. I managed to get rid of the color casts to make images more exceptable.

Mr. Willmore took the time to teach people the theory of using Curves.

The rest of the book is great too.

This is not your usual do step 1 do step 2 kind of book, the author goes in to great detail about every feature of photoshop. I'm not a photoshop guru but I'm no newbie either and this book was very helpful. It shows you how to do things in multiple ways which is very helpful. While reading this book, there were plenty of instances when I found out I was actually doing things "The long way." Overall, this book doesn't just instruct, it helps the reader understand Photoshop.

I see a lot of complaints from advanced users saying the books is just a re-write of the previous. Well for one thing, there usually are not that many changes from one version of photoshop to the next, and two, they obviously haven't been to Ben Willmore's website since he constantly adds new techniques and tutorials for the experienced user. If you want the best "how to" book for photoshop then look no further. Instead of telling you how he did some complex picture with techno babble, he explains the purpose, history, and the use of all the tools, and this is the most important part, in plain English. Only after he explains how to use the tools does you give some examples of their use. The only thing he assumes is that you have no clue about any of the features and goes into great detail. Ben Willmore is the equivalent to those teachers we all have had now and then that make the process of learning fun and nearly painless.

If you are already an advanced user you'll find very little that is new to you, but if you are a brand new or intermediate then you are missing out on a great resource if you pass this book by.

This has a very thorough (so far--I haven't finished the book) intro to production work with Photoshop. My design program does not address technology and I've found it a very practical and cheap solution to learning production basics for my own classwork and as I prepare for the job market. So far it has demystified resolution, levels, curves, and I'm reading about color management now. MUCH better than the introductory classroom titles, and a required supplement to the manual if you ever expect to do extensive work with Photoshop.

I am a second year graphic design student at a tech-college and i must say this book has taught me more about Photoshop than any class I've taken or could take. This book has not only given me a priceless understanding of the application, but it has also given me the skills necessary to take my design to a whole new level. The time saving tips as well as the newly discovered tool capabilities has allowed me to get more done on my school projects. I hope you don't buy the book simply because if we ever compete for the same job my skills will prevail. Thanks Ben !!!!!!!!

This is an excellent book that covers many key points often only learned after many projects. The book covers topics such as multiple clock domains, reset strategies and optimizing for speed, power, or area.
There are many Verilog examples to illustrate key points as well, but techniques also can be applied to VHDL.

Early on in design and avoid many more in the lab by buying this book. I remember upon first read, I was expecting a text heavy on HDL syntax and Tool flow. Indeed there are several HDL coding examples and Tool direction hints, but most impressive is the detail taken in regard to practical issues in relation to clocking considerations, up-front design architecture, and other areas which require careful construction toward an FPGA functioning as intended.

I found the answers to several questions I had within an hour of reading this book. This one is for the real world!

Very good book, expecially for the advices presents in it, unfortunately for some implementation aspects, the author, focuses too much on the Verilog language.

If you're anything like me, you probably started doing FPGA design because it needed to be done and there wasn't anybody else to do it. It probably took you awhile to get up to speed, and you probably don't feel like you're a 'master.' Your design style probably evolved over time based on frustrating hours spent figuring out why your synthesis tool wouldn't accept what you thought was perfectly good HDL.

There are a lot of little "tricks" that I figured out along the way, such as the fact that including reset functionality in a state machine isn't all that useful most of the time, and often adds a significant cost in gate count.

Kilts hits on a lot of things in this book that I've had to figure out on my own the hard way, which makes it an invaluable reference to the practicing hardware engineer.

He takes the time to describe a lot of ideas that were never clearly explained to me anyplace else, such as how clock transport delay 'races' logic propagation delay in many designs, or why it's often better in an FPGA design to use a fast clock with an enable rather than a clock divider to drive flip-flops in your data path, even though clock dividers are more elegant from a purely HDL perspective.

Overall, the book is a very valuable resource and I have learned a lot from it. In particular the chapters on synthesis and place-and-route were very useful, and contained information that is hard to find (like what the 'register balancing' synthesis option actually does).

The only thing I don't like about this book is the sample designs. The book devotes a chapter each to four different sample designs, but they're not as fleshed out as I would need them to be in order to get any real use out of them. For example, the sample design of the SPDIF decoder was useless for me. I've never studied SPDIF and the author doesn't really explain how the format works so it was hard for me to understand what was going on in the reference design. I wish that the author had taken the time to explain _what_ he was implementing in the sample designs, and maybe spend some time talking about what happens in his Verilog during each stage of the data path.

Finally, this book assumes some experience - you will not learn Verilog syntax from this book nor will it teach you how to "think" in HDL. You won't be able to follow what Kilts is talking about most of the time unless you've already completed a few reasonably complex FPGA designs. However, if you're like me and you already have enough knowledge to be dangerous but there are some gaps in your expertise, you will find this book a very good read.