Desktop Publishing Books

I lived actually in Spain and the sender estimate that my item will last at las more than a month, but it arrives in excellent conditions by the 2 first weeks.

The second edition was needed, but could be more meatier than adding a few extra insights from the first version. But hey, I love the writer.

Book has excellant information, good examples, and plenty of suggestions and recommendations. Easy to understand with many design images.

The book is an excellent tool to assist in text layout for various documents, ads, marketing pieces etc. Helps the reader to understand the reasons and components of what makes a layout eye apealing

This book was used as the textbook for a class I took. I was very dissappointed. The info was from first year design classes, and there were even suggestions given that are common "no-no's" in graphic design. It had several interpretations of each design problem, which was interesting to look at, but nothing too inspirational.

A very effective tutorial for learning a complex system, Adobe Photoshop CS3. Thorough and easy to follow exercises--learn by doing.

Deke has long been the #1 Photoshop guru in the world, and I've depending on his sage advice to introduce me to each new version as they are introduced. This one is especially good at showing you how to manage color, which has always been one of my weaknesses. Highly recommended.

This book is very detailed and easy to follow. The videos before each chapter ease you into this great learning curve.

I have bought about ten CS3 help books, most are good, this is the best. I don't think Deke has missed anything, and I use this as a handy reference. I don't think you will be disappointed here.

It didn't take long after installing my new copy of Photoshop for me to feel a bit overwhelmed with the software. I kept finding myself saying things like "I KNOW Photoshop can do this, but I can't for the life of me figure out how." I visited various web sites, read little blurbs here and there, and picked up lots of good tricks, but I still didn't feel like I really knew how to use this tool. I decided to get this book. I LOVED it. There's still plenty of Photoshop functions that I haven't explored yet, but all of the really useful ones are covered in this book.

There are a few things in this book that even an experienced Photoshop user may not have known, but only a very few. Most of the book is for people like me who need to start from the ground up.

Deke is a great technical writer--his instructions are easy to follow, there's lots of information packed into each lesson, and he still manages to be entertaining. If I had any complaints about the book, it would be these two things: 1. I enjoyed the lessons so much, I want to know more--500 pages is a good start, but let's have some more (even if it is less useful)! 2. This book came from earlier versions of Photoshop and as such, every now and then there will be a screen shot or a picture of a button or something that looks slightly different than what shows up on my screen. Not a big deal, but it threw me off for a few seconds. Despite these 2 things, I still rate the book 5 stars for a beginner audience, like I used to be.

I have learned an immense amount of useful information from this book. If the 'levels', 'curves', and 'adjustment layers' were ever scary words to you, then they won't be if you read through this book.

Many 'how-to' books and websites tend to exclude important comments such as "...ignore the fact that your image is covered with the selected texture." Comments like these are very reassuring and can make the difference in keeping some readers tuned in.

I'm still learning from this book, and plan on purchasing the new edition sometime soon!

This book is loaded with more information and tips than I could possibly mention here. It's interesting from cover to cover. Consider it a tool to further your education in the graphics, photo retouching field. Highly recommended!

I've read her other book on compositing and all I can say is I love her style of teaching! It's inspiring and not canned at all. She doesn't teach you to just dial in numbers, but instead she focuses on the concepts so that you can then decide what numbers you need by yourself!

I definately recommend this book for any photoshopper who is serious about making the most out of his/her software.

I was pleased to see this second edition of the classic guide to retouching your images digitally. As always, each task is presented clearly and simply, with everything you need to know to successfully fix your flawed photographs. Highly recommended.

Very detail lessons. Not for the Photoshop novice. A good working knowledge of Photoshop is needed. Excellent learning tool for those interested in all aspects of photo restoration and retouching.

The primarily reason to buy that book was reviews. There is no CD and no examples. So if you are a developer and want to see some code or examples, do not waste money on it. I think I am the only one who gave this book 1 star. This makes this book absolutely meaningless.

Real-time rendering is a perfect resource to bring always :) with you and read something about this world.

I find it really useful and elegant and complete

This is not a book of algorithms on computer graphics methods. Instead, it is a comprehensive high-level survey of rendering techniques for making the graphics appear to occur in real time. This book has a very academic tone to it, and with the exception of chapter 3 which is on matrix transforms, it has precious few implementation details. Some reviewers have called it a successor to Foley and Van Dam's classic text, but I find this misleading. That book is primarily about computer graphics techniques, and is not that concerned with real-time issues. The bibliography of this book is extensive and impressive, and if you are doing research on the subject it is probably essential, especially if you are interested in the subject of virtual reality where real-time presentation is a must. However, if you are just looking for pseudocode or more "cool effects" to insert into a game or graphics program you are writing/programming you would do best to look elsewhere.

I acually read this book cover to cover theres alot of information in the book and its a great book to refer back to. Its really good as a companion with OpenGL. theres some directx stuff in it too but there seems to be more with OpenGL references.

I was greatly disappointed with the first edition of this book. There is nothing new herein that cannot be culled from the latest presentations/whitepapers posted on NVIDIA/ATI websites, from the standpoint of real time graphics.

That being said, the book in conjunction with the book's online resources site is pretty much a stand alone reference on the state of the art in rendering techniques today.

I have Sandro's 2nd book, but I'm not a broadcast guy, so I thought this book would be a better match for me. It took me about a month to track it down as its out of print. Although its "old" by computer standards, it is full of classic animation knowledge that is applicable to Flash. I heard Sandro Corsaro speak at Flash Forward this year and he mentioned there might be plans for another release. Lets hope so!!! This is a terrific beginner's book to animation.

I agree with that reviewer from Nashville. This book was quite disappointing. I thought i'd learn in detail how to create animation in Flash. DID NOT HAPPEN. I bought an animation book along with this one as a supplement sort of. Now I'm glad I bought the extra book, so I don't feel like my purchase and weeks of waiting were totally in vain.

Corsaro only comments about well known features of flash and interview some friends. The only valuable thing is the CD-ROM so you can explore the files. If you are a Flash pro look at Flash Cartoon Animation: Learn from the Pros from Friends of Ed (ISBN 1590592077) it's more production centric.

I bought this book based on reviews I found here on Amazon. I expected to receive a relatively complete guide to creating animations in Flash, but I was disappointed with what I received. While unique, this book does not go into either Flash or animation very deeply. It is more a compilation of various tips and techniques than anything, and I found that much of the information in the book covers material that I already have from either animation books or Flash-related books.

Certainly, the book is interesting reading material, and I'm sure that the book is useful to many others, but it appears to be geared towards those who know how to animate well and who also know how to use Flash well, but who don't know how to integrate the two. If you fit that description, you'll probably like this book.

In the two years since this book appeared, Flash's popularity has skyrocketed. Professional studios now use it for broadcast. Numerous independent animators use it to show their work to millions on the web. The term "Flash" has even become an unindelible part of web nomenclature. Not only that, it has liberated countless wannabe animators. It has made the once impossible possible.

To a person just starting out in animation, the immense learning curve involved may not make itself readily apparent. Not only should animators know how to draw (on paper or on a computer) but they should also know some basic animation principles. On outlining these principles, this book does a pretty good, but not indepth, job. When discussing the use of Flash, it's even more sketchy. There's a reason for this. In the introduction the author states: "This book is intended to teach you about animation first and Flash second." So the focus on animation theory shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

So no, this book won't teach anyone everything they need to make incredible Flash animation. No one book can do that. However, it will give wannabe animators a great basic foundation for continuing on with Flash animation. Consequently, the book's title seems a little vague and could mislead people who don't skim the introduction before buying it. Those who buy the book thinking that THIS IS ALL I NEED!!! will likely end up disappointed.

Still, the book covers a lot of ground. Lots of juicy stuff gets introduced here for newcomers. The most important of which include: some basic animation history up to the time of Flash; Stretch and Squash; basic character design; flexibility and follow-through; staging; exaggeration; arcs; walk and run cycles; dialogue. Also, regardless of the author's "Flash second" claim a lot of Flash topics get discussed: timeline; drawing; tweening; frame rates; symbols; Onion skinning; tips on special effects (fire, water, lightning, glass); file size issues; sound. The final chapter on preparing Flash for broadcast is probably a bit dated by now, but again it includes some useful information.

Also, the book attempts to be version-independent. Flash 5 is mentioned in chapter 10, but apart from that no references to versions appear. This fits with the overall goal of the book: to give a bird's eye view of what it means to use Flash for making animation.

The interviews that scatter the book don't elucidate much. They really only give a cursory view of working in animation. Unfortunately, the audio interview with Iwao Takamoto (on the CD) contains a lot of noise. Parts of it are unlistenable.

In the end, "The Flash Animator" would satisfy a beginner who wants to learn about the various principles underlying animation. Knowing these principles will improve anyone's animation abilities. Readers who have animated in Flash and have already read books on animation may pick up some tips or new ways to go about accomplishing an effect, but no new startling revelations will bop the cortex.

I've been working with Flash for years and I have found this particular book by Kerman to be very complete. I'm surprised by many of the negative reviews this book has received; it is one of the best Flash books I have in my library. Wrt it being verbose, well, it can be. But READ IT and you'll see that Kerman chose his words very carefully. There is a lot to be gleaned from this book if you are patient. I suggest reading it once, fighting with Flash afterwards for a week or two, and then come back to Kerman looking for the answers to your questions...you'll find what you need...I promise. Great book!

This has been a really good buy for me as a novice on flash actionscript programming. Phillip is writing in such a way that it was easy for me to understand, and follow the book.

It's a must have for beginners I think.

I recieved this book for my ActionScript class in college. When I first looked at it, it looked difficult to read. Later, when I did start reading it, it was easier than I thought, but, it's a lecture. The book doesn't talk about this then show you that, it goes on for many chapters before you get to the second part of the book that actually shows you programs to work on. You really should be almost in love with Flash and ActionScript to read this book if you are an expert. This book looks like it would be a fair to above good book to have AFTER you read another easier book (one by Derek Frankiln and Jobe Maker: Flash MX 2004 ActionScript). This book, unlike the claims of other reviewers, is not for the beginner. I find all of these 5 stars unbelievable. Look, if you are really interested in this book because of the 5 stars, instead of buying this, what should be for the more advanced, get yourself a library card and check this book out, then decide if you want to buy it or not. I'm trying to save you some money. It's maybe a 3 out of 5 for experts, I plan to reread it after I'm better with Flash, then maybe I'll give it more stars. Oh, I should point out some of these reviews on this review site are copies(5 stars).

like mr. kerman, i shall fashion my comment into 2 parts, the negative and positive.

NEGATIVES:

I dunno about you people who gave this book a big 5 star "yipee", it just ain't the same for me. I'm a Comsci grad and i've been using flash since version 5. Yeah, i've mastered the basic animation tools like tweening and some basic AS along the way. but it makes me cry whenever i read the book and think that i spent $27 for something that i've already learned. Yes, the book tackles programming basics and the like w/c is very good for the novice flash user who didn't take up a 4 year computer science course w/c is being accustomed to the "foundations" of programming. but it all boils down to LEARNING ACTIONSCRIPT. yeah the book teaches AS but you only get to touch AS after reading 18 chapters of foundation AS. sure there are code snippets for the user to try out...only to find out how the heck are they supposed to implement the code?! an example would be the debugging chapter w/c started to infuriate my learning curve and tested my very looooong patience. the code required me to associate the dynamic string to a variable. how the heck am i supposed to associate the string to var when kerman didn't even show me what a var looks like and where i can find it!!!! HE ONLY TELLS IT 3 CHAPTERS AFTER! if i didn't scour the book for much needed answers to the book, i would've burned the book to motion tweening oblivion.
which draws me to points when buying a book:

- always search for negative reviews before buying a book. negative reviews contain 100% more truth than those 5 star reviews.

- if you're new to some application, find a book w/c suits your learning style, unfortunately for me...i needed more diagrams rather than lengthy text for me to understand what kerman was talkin' bouts.

- always look for a book w/c poses samples and exercises at the end of the chapter. heck, i just wanted to learn the AS syntax, but kerman decides to teach theories on AS and not the actual exercise.

- never buy a book w/c CONSTANTLY REFERS TO OTHER CHAPTERS. trust me, if you need to learn it, it should be taught NOW.

- this book is not for people who wanna read long chapters and try snippets of unclear code to understand what the author's talkin' bout then go back to readin' sum more boring chapters.

in closing, i am giving this book 1 star to alert potential buyers of this book that o'reilly books are the best. even though i haven't read one.

POSITIVE:

there are some cool sample w/c you won't understand, although its still cool though, like the instant replay thingy.

No stars. The text is too verbose, poorly organized and very confusing and downright cryptic. This is more on 'theory of programming' than hands-on work. The examples are non-existant, and the workshops hardly justify the price tag for this book.

The author constantly refers to unintroduced topics and assumes reader knowledge for topics that are not even addressed till later in the book. For example, we have to get to chapter 10 before we actually set text in a text variable. This is advanced?

The method of explaining is very confusing, very boring and very vague. I am up to chapter 12 now and I still cannot make head or tail of where the text is headed.

Save you money. Don't buy this book.
I will return it...

If you do not have this book, get this book. It is as simple as that. This book is a MUST have. That's it. No ifs ands or buts. GET THIS BOOK!

This book is an excellent source of killer tips of how to improve skills in Illustrator. Good for everyone, who already knew this program, comfortable with its possibilities, but want to learn more about it. Good examples, easy-to-understand examples and followable tutorials.

Best book for learning the more "advanced" techniques of illustrator. It is definitely for the advanced student. However, this book can't be beat for learning the basics of the pen tool. The excercise, "Zen of the Pen" found on the CD was what finally helped me learn the pen tool and that alone was worth the price of the book.

Some techniques were way beyond me, but time will pass and I'll pick up the book again and focus on a new technique and "get it."

The one thing that really really bugs me, and I hope it has been "fixed" in the CS3 version, is that the one thing I want and need to learn will invariably be the one item that does not have an example on the CD!!

Another great book that reveals the unique way professionals use Illustrator is Toni Tolan's book, Best Practice, the Pros on Adobe Illustrator. I mentioned this here because it is impossible to find this book on Amazon just by typing the topic, "adobe illustrator" on the Amazon search engine.

I bought this book because it had good ratings. I am a little disappointed.

As a newcomer, I expected a clear, clever, step-by-step tutorial. But it's more like a bunch of TIPS...as written in the (sub)title. It was not written by a single person and the global structure is not so harmonious.
But, If you have another tutorial/book to learn Illustrator, this book might be an useful "case study" book.

Why I didnt like it so much :
For each topic, you first have a few explanations, without screenshots (which makes explanations sort of vague) and then you have a big "excercise/case study" part where an artist shows some work and gives you a few hints to reproduce it (here, you must use the CD sold with the book, because the hints are too scarse to allow you to really reproduce it).
I didnt feel at ease with the way topics were splitted between "basics" and "advanced" sections, inducing redundant parts, and making the first "basics" part boring and the 2d hard to study.

Inside each section, I didnt find the order of the topics pedagogical. There's an explanation about this point, and then that point and no relationship between each point.

For people who are already using Illustrator, there might too much unuseful explanations on basics (like: what is a mouse? a cursor...etc). And since informations on a same kind of features are splitted around, it might be not so easy to use as a "Help" or "Dictionary" book.

No offense to Mordy Golding, but this is the only book on Adobe Illustrator I've ever seen that is actually worth the amount of money you pay for it. It's not something I would recommend to a person with reading comprehension issues who'd never touched the pen tool in their lives, but if you learn well through unstructured independent study, it's pretty hard to beat Sharon's work. There aren't any epic tutorials that drag on for pages and pages, so you can either read it cover-to-cover or flip through it randomly until you see something that catches your eye with equal degrees of ease and the text will tell you everything you need to know about what you're looking at. In the very few instances where the words fall short (the section on knockout groups has always felt a little murky to me), the example files serve as ample gap-fillers, allowing you to drill down as deeply as you feel comfortable.

This is a text to be used at New England Institute of Technology next quarter.

Required reading to anyone working online even though it is a couple of years old now the way it can be referenced across coloured sections to piece each project together is a real help.

It is too much to read it one go but if you take a problem to it and read again you can get more incite and solutions out.

Basically, this most valuable thing in this book is the extensive collection of patterns that anyone can use to create any website.
Follow this patterns guidelines and you will have an useful and usable website.
It's a "must" in any web designer's bookshelf.

While there are many books on the market that discuss patterns related to programming, architectural elements, etc., this is the first book I've seen that focuses on web patterns at the user interface level. The book is essentially an indexed, cross-referenced, best practices guide to building web pages that attract and keep customers. Or at least keep you from pissing them off. The authors have collected and summarized a great deal of HCI research (all listed in the resources section of the appendix) on web usability, so none of this stuff is made up--it's all based on time-proven, tested, and verified data about how people actually use the Internet (e.g., see Amazon, Yahoo!, Google, et. al.). A few of the patterns are no longer considered best practices, due to evolving standards (e.g., CSS) and increasing browser standards support. This is a very handy reference book, especially for an in-depth UI checklist.

The first part of the book is very valuable. The patterns described are on average rather shallow and don't touch on the real issues. For the 'novice' however this is a very relevant book to read. I do advice to deepen understanding by looking at actual websites to see how leaders have implemented the different patterns. Much more to learn there.

This is an excellent resource to learn modern W3C-standards-compliant web design from the ground up. It is up-to-date , well organized, well written, and easy to follow. By the time you're done with it, you will be well on your way to being able to call yourself a web designer with a straight face. My only complaint is that the book is physically fragile and the binding completely falls apart even with moderate use. And given how great this book is in all other respects, mere "moderate use" is pretty much out of the question - this will be your constant companion as you take your first steps in web design.

I have had limited experience creating web pages. Learning Web Design has made the task so much easier. This book is very clearly written with great examples. I would highly recommend if you are just starting out or looking for a text to use in the classroom.

This is an excellent book if you are a novice looking to learn HTML and CSS.
The book is easy to read and follow, and includes a companion website which has downloadable code examples with which you can practice.
I purchased this book with the intention of using it as an easy CSS reference, but ended up learning some excellent HTML skills, as well.

This is, by far, the most useful and easy-to-read book on web design that I have seen / purchased so far.

I am a programmer by trade, but find it useful to be aware of, if not proficient in, web technologies. I purchased this book because I have been dabbling in web design for a long time now, but never as a primary task. This book is useful as a review of the current web standards and techniques, as well as an introduction for individuals who may be new to the topics discussed therein. The chapters are succinct, providing the reader all the necessary information to become informed without wasting time on details that may be distracting for review or overwhelming for beginners. I highly recommend this book.

I rate this book with 5 stars for being a solid introduction to (X)HTML and CSS and for being clear, easy to follow, and colourful.

I disagree with the previous reviewer BB, who said the book was not for beginners and rated it with one star. He mentions Jennifer N. Robbins uses vocabulary she hasn't defined before. Well, if he's talking about terms like web browser, web server, or link, I might agree with him/her, but hey, those words are common vocabulary words for any Internet user. Perhaps if he had pointed out specific words, I might have said a bit more on his review.

Let me convince you: I'm not a native English speaker and I got the information perfectly well.

It is a shame this book has fallen into 4.5 stars just because of one 1 star rating review informing about problematic issues with no sort of justification or examples proving what the reviewer is complaining about.

In any case, we have to respect his/her opinion, though I didn't take his comments or rating into account when deciding whether to buy the book or not; the book turned out just fine, as I had expected based on the other reviews.

Jennifer Robins has done a great job introducing the reader to virtually all html elements (I guess all, but a professional might notice a few of them are missing).

The contents are colourful as hell, well organised, and they follow a static format scheme that allows for easy readability; the author uses sidebars every now and then to point out key information; the book shows she has a clear mind on how to get a beginner to digest the information presented.

I think the technique she used to introduce us to the different aspects of html/css is just the more appropiate for a starter book. She goes over every aspect, then she writes a sample code about that specific one, and then she shows the resulting page. Once again, she'll colour-code the html code, and then either encase the result in a box, or take a screenshot.

Where I want to get to here is, you aren't going to find a ten pages long html code combining every single element she's gone over and beating the crap out of everyone who tries to read it and point out each section in the resulting html page.

That being said, and bearing in mind the other reviews, I guess nothing else can be said about this great piece of work.

This book is a monster brick of over 1300 pages with 70 chapters! Do not be misled by the book title because the 22 first chapters, which represents about the third of the 1300 pages, discuss assembly optimization. This book is getting a little bit old and a little bit outdated. For instance, this author covers optimization techniques for processors ranging from the 8088 to the Pentium and the Inner loops book covers the 486 to the Pentium Pro.

The second part covers low level graphics programming in assembly. The type of graphics programming that people were doing before Windows and DirectX.

Because assembly programming is not very popular anymore, for most people, it is not a good book to get but if assembly optimization is your thing, then you should consider this one as even if there are more recent books on x86 assembly programming, this one is the best that I have seen to lay out the basic concepts such as branch prediction, register contention, how to shuffle assembly instructions to optimize the processor pipelines usage and how to optimize the flag register usage. Armed with this knowledge in the back of your head, even when you write C or C++, you will be able to subtly change the way you formulate if/else blocks and for/while loops that will enhance your program performance without affecting the code readability.

I really want to find that book, I am only wondering how much will it cost. It is a precious bible for me. I have only the PDF version of it now, enough to study, but I must have teh brick! :)

My curiosity was caught by the chapters about pure asm optimizing at old (anymore) PC architectures, from the 8088 to the 286/386, 486 and the Pentium. I was really searching for something like that around, it was my child dream optimizing asm code and counting every cycle, but it seems that it's complex on the PC and I could hardly find some docs about it. It's really what I need because Michael Abrash seems to be a performance freak and knows what I ask for :)

And then, you get a lot of chapters in advance, about interesting VGA/Mode-X tricks that I never managed to try (regurarly used by older DOS democoders), plus some chapters about the 3d techniques and optimizations behind Quake, plus a lot of additional stuff.

It's everything I need, getting deep inside the philosophy of optimizing, X86 architectures from 8088 to the Pentium, explaining a lot of hardware VGA tricks, 3D algorithms and optimizations.

Perhaps this book is not as usefull for some programmers, since most people have moved already in C++ and DirectX/OpenGL, but definitelly it's a must if you think optimizing of older PCs in assembly as a sport. It was a child dream of mine, perhaps PCs got so old before I started coding, but I think I will still manage to read some more chapters and try something on my old boxes.

I also like Michael's humoristic stories and way of writting a lot!

I was a little worried I would need to be a guru to make any sense of this book. Not true. It's pretty accessible and has engaged me right from the beginning.

The book is out of print, but it is by no means rare. Keep an eye on online auctions and on this site. I bought mine here at amazon in "like new" condition, with the CD-ROM, for much less than the original price of the book. Be patient and keep checking. They're out there.

A number of years ago, I was developing an object oriented Ray Tracer for my thesis. I read every book on the subject, but practically none gave any form of advice as to how to render the results of my tracings on an SVGA powered 386.

If only I had this book at hand back then! While today's PCs have grown well beyond VGA, and are largely well catered for via the likes of DirectX etc., this book still presents the base set of knowledge (from 8086 -> Pentium, from VGA -> Acellerated cards) that any programmer involved in the development of graphics oriented software should have.

Combined with Michael's treatment of fast 3d scenery management, texture mapping and lighting models, this book really does become a bible.

But this is not all...

It's not been all that many years since every time Borland released a new compiler that MS would follow (or vice-versa). Dr. Dobbs would then review the two packages and present accurate results as to which compiler generated the fastest or smallest code. How times change!

The relevance to this book is that the first 20 chapters should be read by EVERY hard-core developer: Why are compilers never going to generate code as optimally as a good developer can write assembler? Want to know why your code is not executing at least one instruction every clock cycle? Ever wondered how to time your code effectively? So just how would you optimize a particularly efficient string searching algorithm into a neat 7 instruction operation?

It's all here - one of the most readable exposes onto the nasty features of the 80x8x processor families (why oh why didn't IBM wait for the 680x0?) and how to overcome these problems.

I don't do any graphics programming and much of the advice in this book is obsolete. Still, writing high-performance assembler and C code is essential to my job, and I can't begin to imagine how to become an expert on performance programming without reading the first portion of this book.

Abrash teaches you how to think like a performance programmer in a way that no one else does. Even the best (and much more current) books on performance programming like Rick Booth's excellent "Inner Loops" can't approach Abrash' skill at imparting the mindset of how one approaches code optimization. No wonder Abrash' earlier books (which are bundled into this one) have names beginning "The Zen of..." Michael Abrash preaches a discipline of constant awareness of the bus, the cache, and the pipeline in a clear and useful fashion. And of course, Test, test, test! Even if you are not a graphics programmer, you will have much to learn about writing tight code and good algorithms from the graphics examples.

Even though the book contains over 1000 pages, the real jewel may be the CD-ROM, which contains the complete text of the long out-of-print classic "Zen of Assembler". It is hard to express how influential a book on 8088(!) programming can be. That book begins by deconstructing a published article on speeding up a program by repeatedly applying optimizations that reduce the cycle count, eventually the cycle count was halved. Despite this, the "optimized" program ran slower than the original, and Abrash clearly explains why.

The chapter on Terje Matheson's wc program tought me more about assembler than any program I have ever looked at. (You can test your skill by rewriting wc to run well on the Pentium II and above. The Pentium code in the book runs into a devastating partial register stall on the newer processors. Then compare your solution to Matheson's latest, which can be found on the internet).

The bottom line is that if you are looking for a cookbook, stay away from this. The shelf-life of performance code samples is too short. On the other hand, if you are interested in really becoming a master of performance programming and are willing to work hard, this book will improve your skills more than you believed possible.