Desktop Publishing Books

This is the first product I've written a review on - but after completing the book and its projects I had to. If you want to learn both Flash 8 and Action Script 2.0, this book is what you are after. Everything is explained throughout the book - the author does not take anything for granted. I would say this is for the Beginner Plus - it explains all the steps, but you will learn key aspects of Action Script as you progress. The Action Script you will learn is very useful, and most importantly, transfers to your own projects. My background is two semesters using Flash and action script, and I wish I had this book at the beginning of the first semester. I saw some comments there were errors in the book - I beg to differ. Every error message I received was my own fault - mostly through mis-typing the script. However, with a little effort, and backtracking, I figured out my error and fixed it. To sum up, at the end of the book, everything worked the way it was supposed to!

I'm not one to write reviews. But I was compelled to take the time to do this. As someone Brand new to flash, I picked this book up and was actually having Fun in no time! What I thought would be tedious reading turned out to be humerous, extremely accurate, and user-friendly information, for someone like me very unfamiliar with the program. My faith in self education has been lifted even higher.

I wasn't planning on reviewing any of my school books on here. This was a great school book though so I couldn't resist.

I got this book for a course that I was taking on Flash. It is a great book and I am happy the teacher recommended it.

The chapters are arranged in easy to follow exercises that teach all the basics of Flash. I really liked this style of teaching because it forces you to open up Flash and do the exercises. Much more useful than a book that you just sit and read.

The author of the book is also very good about telling you multiple ways of doing something. In the course of the exercises there are little colored boxes that will talk about how you could have done the above action this way or this way or this way. The fact that these tips are usually separate is nice if you don't care and want to skip the additional information.

So far I am about 3/4 the way through the course and the book and have been very happy with it. A great book; especially for a newbie that doesn't have any programming background.

I had to learn flash and create a site quick - and this book had everything I needed - thanks!

Excellent for beginners - easy to follow step by step format.Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Beyond the Basics Hands-On Training

The tutorial is old - is has been online for years. It was presented at SIGGRAPH over three years ago.

The front of the book is obviously filler - over 50 pages rehashing 'story' and 'character' information that is so bland and unstudied it could be written by an accountant. This section should be left out of future tutorial books.

Trying to learn maya 2 with the manuals that came with it was a very daunting task. I quickly found I needed help. I ordered this book and after only 15-20 minutes knew more than hours of reviewing the manuals. I highly recommend this book. If you are running Maya 2.5 Complete or Unlimited there are some small differences in the user interface but if you review the online help and just play around with it you shouldn't have any problems. Good Luck and really try to learn this excellent package from Alias.

I have started using maya almost 3 mounths ago and I started it with this book right away. And although I am not new to 3d animation and I can say that I have read various 3d animation books but I have to say that I was realy amazed by the lights this book put in my way of using MAYA. And I sort of envy the authors for thair ability in using the software and thair ability in comunicating with others in a understandable way. They dont pay me to write this thing But for the efforts they have put in their job I just couldn't resist to share this with you guys.

It explains every tool and function. Most importantly it has "real world" tutorials to show how each tool fits into the modeling, animation, rendering, and effects workflow.

The offical maya manual explains functions well, but leaves you guessing as to when those functions can be actually used. I suppose that is part of the challenge of being a 3d artist, but if you're lazy like me and like to be held by the hand of professionals instead of wasting many hours/days experimenting, get this book. you'll cover ALOT of ground in very little time(compared to A/W's expensive maya encyclopedia).

I'm looking forward for the 3.5 Complete revision from the authors!

After going through the entire book and making notes in the borders of all the errors of explanation and omissions of details, I've come to the conclusion above. This book is NOT for the totally inexperienced CG person. I must conclude that this text was not given to a beginner for proffreading. However, this is not to disparage the software itself. Maya is not an easy program to master. Most of the exercises in this book are easy to follow, but some of the missed explanations and dropped details can be irritating to the extreme, e.g. there are numerous ommisions to use the Middle Mouse button for certain actions (Maya requires a three button mouse to operate). Overall, I give this book a "thumbs up", but the book reader MUST have an ability to problem solve.

This book isn't intended for the first time 3ds max user since it doesn't talk about the UI and viewport navigation much. However this is a must have for those looking to learn about the process of a production from start to finish. One of the best books yet covering everything from storyboards and concept art to post-production and network rendering.

One you have moved on from the UI fundamentals and instruction in basic modeling and animation then the next step is to read this book. Even though I am using 3ds Max 2008 now I still keep this book around for reference.

I have been working with this book for several years. I have never been able to anything more than the modeling tutorials. The scripts do not function, therefore the UI's do not work and you are unable to finish the book! Additionally, you are unable to contact the authors to obtain corrections. I have purchased every book that Michele Bousquet has published since 3D Studio Dos 1. This book is not her best effort. Great idea to take a student from start to finish on a project but there-in lies the rub, a student nor could most instructors use this book for a reference must less a book to use for classroom instruction. Wasted time and wasted money..............

I was a total newbie when I bought this book, and it have really made me improve in almost every aspect that must be known in 3ds max. Of course if you already know advanced techniques you'll probably get bored with the book. In the animation aspect I think is a bit short (talking about teaching you how to simulate motion like the walking cicle for the alien and so.)But the tutorials in modeling are excellent and very easy to understand.
I really don't know if this is useful but I must say that I completed this tutorials with 3ds max 5 and there was no problem.

Mastering the Art of Production with 3ds max 4 is definatly worth every penny! The instructions are clearly written and easy to follow (not to mention pictures of basically every step). The entire book is about creating a 30 second commercial for a company. It even explains working with clients! Anyone who wants to sharpen their skills with 3dsmax, this is the book to get. Also, the book has a section on Combustion for post-production.

I was a total newbie when I bought this book, and it have really made me improve in almost every aspect that must be known in 3ds max. Of course if you already know advanced techniques you'll probably get bored with the book. In the animation aspect I think is a bit short (talking about teaching you how to simulate motion like the walking cicle for the alien and so.)But the tutorials in modeling are excellent and very easy to understand.
I really don't know if this is useful but I must say that I completed this tutorials with 3ds max 5 and there was no problem.

This is a pretty good book filled with quite a few tips. The writing style was difficult for me to enjoy per se but the content is there. It was extremely distracting however for nearly every photograph in the book to have the caption "Photo by Ellen Anon". Over and over and over....Even multiple steps in a procedure apparently required a credit on each photo. Just a small gripe but it would have been easier to say at the beginning all photos by Ellen Anon unless otherwise noted.

I had been muddling through Photoshop for years, learning how to do things mostly on my own. This book, however, was an eye-opener. First off, although being nature photographer-centered doesn't mean it is impractical for other subjects, the nature focus does preclude the types of portrait and architecture examples of other books that really don't help the nature-oriented photographer very much. I find this to be a big strength.

The book is fairly inclusive of most of the basic tools needed to produce quality photos, but some areas are a bit lacking, notably with respect to sharpening. Specifically, there is no discussion of high-pass sharpening, nor of the multipass sharpening process (capture, creative, and output sharpening) that Adobe is now embracing. If you are interested in getting the best out of your photos, I strongly suggest googling these two subjects and learning more.

This book, as do all books on the subject, also suffers from that fact that parts of it are partially obsolete almost from the time it was printed because of advances in plug-in technology. This is especially the case with the recent upgrade of Camera Raw to version 4.1 (now available for free download from Adobe's website), which has tools (sharpening, notably) that could not be covered by this book because ACR 4.1 didn't exist at the time it was written. Again, this isn't a flaw of the book, just the nature of the beast. Heck, I'm sure someone reading this review a year or so from now will be remarking how obsolete ACR 4.1 is, once ACR 4.2 comes out.

I like the fact that there are two authors for the book because they each have ideas on how to best accomplish their goals. This leads to multiple options being presented to the reader. The sidebars by well-known photographers are also quite valuable, although it seems that they were written based on earlier versions of the book (i.e., once centered on CS2, and possibly CS). As such, some of that information is a bit dated. Still, there is a lot of valuable information in there.

I can't comment on the tutorial CD, because I haven't used it, but for those of you who prefer to learn by doing, I imagine it is a very valuable resource.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this book to any newcomer to Photoshop who shoots primarily nature photos.

I was skeptical of getting a CS3 book since most of the ones I've perused were a bit much, relying on adept knowledge on CS2. This book, however, has been so easy to read and understand, I can't put it down!
It has a wealth of how-tos and information on effective photoshop CS3 editing. Highly recommended!

As a web designer I've been using Photoshop professionally for years. I've also worked on lots of photographs, both my own and those I've gotten from clients. I don't need a how to book on layers, cropping and levels. I've got a good understanding of the basic Photoshop tools, and have benefitted from Scott Kelby's Photoshop CS for Photographers. But Kelby's book is a recipe book both useful and well presented, but I want more.

What I want to do now is take my own photography to another level. Past a certain point, improving becomes less a matter of collecting tricks and recipes and more a matter of learning the entire workflow from experts. For that a basic how-to cookbook is no longer of much use to me. I could probably spend a lot of time working out a good workflow and set of procedures through trial and error, but why not take advantage of the experience of those who have already taken the art of nature photography editing to a high place?

Enter Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers. As one reviewer has stated, much of the introductory Photoshop material is covered in other books, but not in quite the same way. Photoshop has many tools, each of which has many settings and options. It's perfectly possible to be familiar with one tool or filter in one context and not realize that it can be used in combination with another tool to achieve a completely different result. I once read that when Einstein proposed his theory of relativity maybe three people in the world understood it. I wonder if more than three people in the world completely understand all of what can be done with Photoshop. What I was looking for and found here is an expansion of my Photoshop horizons, a deeper exploration of the art and science of nature photography and photo editing.

Anon and Grey offer an excellent look over the shoulder of experts in both practice of nature photography and in the use of Photoshop as a digital darkroom. I can't emphasize strongly enough how helpful that approach is for someone who has some Photoshop chops or who has used the program for another end and who wants to get great results with nature photos. Their workflow is time tested and produces excellent results

And nature photograph editing benefits from following a slightly different approach from that of product photography, with which I have some experience, portraiture, photojournalism and so on. Again, I'm struck with how specific and helpful the presented workflow, and the mindset that using such a workflow creates is. And placing editing in context with a specific photographic goal informs my picture taking too.

I recommend this book to anybody interested in nature photography who has at least some experience with Photoshop, though a dedicate beginner could work through the introductory phases with this volume. For someone who has used Photoshop in another context and wants to expand into the nature photography realm this book is brilliant.

I bought this book based on several positive reviews and also because of the focus on "nature photography". I was not displeased with it, but I was kind of disappointed. Most of the techniques given were stuff that could be found in almost any of the "how-to" books on Photoshop. Mostly it was just workflow, and workflow for nature photography vs other types of photography is not so different that a whole book can (or should) be written about it. On the bright side, I did pick up a couple of tips and techniques that I hadn't seen in other books. I was also pleased to note that the authors drew a distinction between documentary nature photography and nature photography to "make a pretty picture". They feel that so long as the photograph is not said to be representational of a moment in time, there's nothing wrong with compositing and modifying it to make it more aesthetically pleasing or artistic. Some of the resulting compositions are fabulous, and capture the "mood" of a scene beautifully. Since most readers of this book are likely to be shooting for their own pleasure primarily, this was good information.

Bottom line - if you have other Photoshop CS3 "how-to" books, you can pass this up, as there's virtually nothing that hasn't been told many times over. But, if you're fairly new to PS, focus primarily on landscape and/or nature, and are only going to invest in a couple of "how-to" books, then go ahead and get this one.

The service was very fast, received book within 3 days from when I ordered it. Book advertised as not new, but looked brand new to me. Very satisfied.

I found this book to be extremely helpful to those of us who are not graphics oriented. It explains in easily understood detail things needed to get you up and running with Adobe Elements. Now it is not for the novice user. It will require some knowledge of your computer before undertaking this program. Still I have found it a worth while companion to the digital camera and software I use today. Easy to understand and great for casual users too. A must even if you have the ÒFor DummiesÒ book (which I have and purchased this one as a companion and use it more than the other.

I found this book to be extremely helpful to those of us who are not graphics oriented. It explains in easily understood detail things needed to get you up and running with Adobe Elements. Now it is not for the novice user. It will require some knowledge of your computer before undertaking this program. Still I have found it a worth while companion to the digital camera and software I use today. Easy to understand and great for casual users too. A must even if you have the ÒFor DummiesÒ book (which I have and purchased this one as a companion and use it more than the other.

As a recent convert to digital photography I came across Photoshop Elements software and began experimenting with it on my computer. It was fascinating but I only used a few of its features - although realizing there were many more available. My attempts to understand the more complex functions like the use of layers got bogged down in the detailed explanations within the program and in the users guide. While they were sufficiently detailed to explain how each feature worked individually, they never put them into a usable context. After seeing a recommendation for Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions, I bought Mikkel Aalands' book.

It is a revelation. I feel I have gone from a rank amateur to a serious user after only a short time following the book's clear explanations and vivid examples. What this book does not do is explain every feature within the program. What it does do exceedingly well is provide practical examples of how to accomplish specific tasks that require you to group a number of features together and tells you step by step how to do so. It is helped immeasurably by an enclosed CD that enables you to follow the book's instructions and perform the steps yourself on your computer. Layers and a lot of other functions are now easy for me to understand and use. Disappointing pictures I have taken are now being transformed into really nice photographs.

Equally important it gives you the fundamental basis and the motivation to further explore how to use the program.

The book is written for both Photoshop Elements Versions 1 and 2. It helpfully explains where they differ.

I highly recommend this for users of the Photoshop Elements program and believe it will benefit newcomers to digital editing as well as experienced users.

Although the information in the book was informative, and I leared a lot about the Photoshop elements, the quality of the book was not. I had the book for less that 2 weeks when it started to fall apart, with pages falling out and the binding coming apart. If they are going to have this book for use as a manual it should be better bound.

This book is a really good learning tool. I have others that are my instant "go to" books when I've forgotten how to do something....but this one has things in it that aren't in my other books that are a definite PLUS!

This was my first exposure to Dave Cross - he is a consumate educator! I found PHOTOSHOP Finishing Touches to be chocked full of great tips, techniques and approaches to image manipulation. Dave's Finishing Touches goes far beyond the mechanical keystrokes to produce results - even though he does this exceedingly well. Gently nestled between the lines of names of Layer styles and menu bars Dave delivers critical information of great value to even the most advanced Photoshop users.

Finishing Touches has become my constant desktop companion.

Author: Dave Cross
Format: Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Peachpit Press (June 27, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0321337042
ISBN-13: 978-0321337047

Review by Karen Stansel
June 23, 2008

I know the book states CS2, and since the only version of Photoshop that I own is CS3, I was a little leery of buying a book that was written specifically for another version of this software. Was I going to end up with a book that made no sense to me? After all, I am a newbie to Photoshop and everything he is talking about may have been changed in the newer version. Well, I 'm here to tell you "no", that is not the
case at all. This book isn't just for CS2 users. It goes great with CS3, too.

Now where to start? How about the little things first.

I really like the feel of the paper, although it tends to reflect the light almost to the blinding point if you tilt the book the wrong way. However, it is a thicker paper and if you are anything like me and must highlight the stuff you find important, you will be pleased as punch to know that it does not bleed though to the other side. As it turns out, this is a good thing in my case, or my book would be one big puddle by now.
The book has 21 Chapters that are split up into 3 sections, which we'll go through as my review progresses.

Now let's move on to the really important stuff. The heart of the book.

The first thing that I learned is that Mr. Cross is a man of his word. In Chapter One, he begins to teach us how to be our own help desk when it comes to Photoshop.
He tells us it will be a short chapter. Well, yours truly had to stop and go look to see exactly how short it was. After I counted the pages, I was sort of stunned to find that this chapter was only 5 pages long. Yes, I said only 5 pages. I know...why bother right? As I flipped back to page 2 and started to read again, I was actually surprised to see just how much important information was in those 5 pages. It turns out to be a powerhouse chapter, that is essential to building a very strong foundation of how one works in Photoshop. This is especially true if you are new to the application as I am, or someone who has been struggling with Photoshop for a year or two.

To be honest the whole book is a powerhouse. In Section One, he gives us the building blocks to work in Photoshop the correct way.

Mr Cross shows us how to categorize problems so we can then concentrate on correcting them, instead of yelling NOOOOOOOOOOOOO at the screen and
just closing out the whole picture to start over again ( Oh come on, you know you've been there!).

Why resetting Preferences is a better option most of the time then reinstalling Photoshop, because a file became corrupt and will not play nicely...and of course he tells you how to do it.

A list to live by, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to preventing
potential trouble. Oh and wait till you read his feather suggestion on page 7! Nope, no hints. You will have to buy the book if you really want to know.

Specific settings in the option bar for specific tools. Well, I believe it covers just about all the tools in the tools pallet. He also made sure to include nice, clear B&W pictures in this section.

He has a section on warning dialog boxes...66 different ones if I counted right. What I like, is that he has put them all into their own proper class, together with a picture of each warning box. This includes reason the warning has appeared, how to fix it, and when suitable, how to prevent it. Furthermore chapter 4, Creating Flexible Documents, is a must read for anyone who wants to become a proficient Photoshop user.

Section 2 is what this book is really all about; nothing but Questions and Answers!
Woohoo!!!! 13 Chapters of Q&A to be exact. Yes, like the warning Dialog boxes, he has taken the questions and put them into their proper categories. Chapter 5 is General Operations, Chapter 6 is Preferences, Settings, and Colors. You get the idea. However, I thought chapter 7 was really cool. It's the Tools Q&A chapter! Need I say more? I could go on about this section because Mr. Cross has just covered so much information though out this section, but for the sake of time I won't.

Section 3 is Customizing Photoshop. Oh yeah, make that software yours and show it who is really boss! In this section Mr. Cross shows you how to create actions, brushes, patterns, picture package layouts, contact sheets and much much more.

This is one book that will sit on my desk with a select few others, because I believe it will be a book that I will reach for often. This book is the Ace bandage for your Photoshop woes. Mr. Cross provides us with the information and the techniques to work the correct way in Photoshop. If you do nothing more then just read the first 2 chapters, you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration when it comes to dealing with Photoshop. I really just cannot recommend this book highly enough. Mr. Cross has a great ability for explaining things, and it shows though out the book. He obviously enjoys helping other people help themselves. He has taken the time to explain in a clear, concise way, that even someone new to Photoshop will understand.

You can find this book at Amazon. It is reasonable priced and in my opinion worth
every cent.

My primary disatisfaction with the book stems from the repetition throughout the book of the identical 2 pages of content to illustrate a particular feature. If it were better organized it would have eliminated at least 20 pages of redundency. The space would have been better used to illustrate additional photoshop solutions. Also, a traditional index in the front of the book would have better served the reader. Very much overpriced for the content provided

Fabulous book! I will keep right by my computer for continued reference! Excellent, easy to understand techniques to move your images to the next level! Throughly enjoyed the book and the author! Highly recommended!

I bought this book several years ago for my son when he was in high school. Since then I've kept it in work and it's been borrowed many times by ASP and Java programmers looking to broaden their knowledge, modify existing systems or to customized any of the many PHP based applications and frameworks that are available on the internet.
It's a great book to learn what is still one of the most commonly used language on the web.

After a long search and 3 PHP books later, I have finally found something that was perfectly structured and EASY TO UNDERSTAND. If you are looking to learn PHP fast, start with this book. 4 stars instead of 5 only because its a bit dated, though still an excelent foundation.

Perfect for a newbie programmer. I had more trouble installing PHP than using the book.

This thing was the best computer book that I have ever purchased. The way it was layed out was the easiest I've ever had to learn anything in computers...and I'm a network engineer, and have been for 10 years.

Great book...get it!

This book is a must have reference to PHP programming. It's a bit difficult to read, but it's great to have around. If you are an absoulte beginer looking to learn PHP, this isn't your book right away...wait a couple of months and then buy it.

Poor Richard's Web Site is a practical guide for any one who wants a straight forward approach to getting a private or commercial website up and running quickly. Although I am a fairly experience systems integration professional, I found myself somewhat intimidated by the latest internet technology. Fortunately, Peter Kent demystifies the terminology and technology so that you can focus on the truly important elements of your website (namely content).

Note that this is not a programming book. You will still have to purchase books on the specific technologies that you wish to use. It is a primer on how to run a website development project.

The book consists of four major sections. "Part I - Preparation" walks through the basics of deciding how to obtain a website (web hosting, domain registration). "Part II - Creation" addresses website design, HTML, site authoring, on line ordering and email integration. "Part III - Promotion" deals with how to effectively roll out your site once it is up. The final section is composed of the appendixes which contain a number of helpful checklists.

Overall I think that most people will find the straightforward language and real world examples to be very helpful in planning the development of a website.

This comprehensive, updated book effectively points out that there is more to building a website than learning HTML. The author gives guidelines and points out what you must know or learn and then tells you how to get there. This is an excellent book for both beginners and advanced web site designers.

Poor Richard's Web Site is a practical guide for any one who wants a straight forward approach to getting a private or commercial website up and running quickly. Although I am a fairly experience systems integration professional, I found myself somewhat intimidated by the latest internet technology. Fortunately, Peter Kent demystifies the terminology and technology so that you can focus on the truly important elements of your website (namely content).

Note that this is not a programming book. You will still have to purchase books on the specific technologies that you wish to use. It is a primer on how to run a website development project.

The book consists of four major sections. "Part I - Preparation" walks through the basics of deciding how to obtain a website (web hosting, domain registration). "Part II - Creation" addresses website design, HTML, site authoring, on line ordering and email integration. "Part III - Promotion" deals with how to effectively roll out your site once it is up. The final section is composed of the appendixes which contain a number of helpful checklists.

Overall I think that most people will find the straightforward language and real world examples to be very helpful in planning the development of a website.

Every business needs a Web site. The online brochure has replaced the printed brochure because it is easier to change and cheaper to distribute. With your "store front" open to the world, customers will come to you.

There are a lot of specialized books on html written in geek-speak. Peter Kent covers the whole field and makes it easy. He discusses the preparation, creation and promotion of your site. For coverage, click on Table of Contents in the left-hand column of this page. Includes checklists and an index.

Peter Kent is the author of more than 30 books about computers and the Internet.

As the author of 113 books (including revisions and foreign-language editions) and over 500 magazine articles, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is in business. DanPoynter@ParaPublishing.com.

If you're thinking of setting up a web site but you're not very familiar with the web or with the logistics of setting up and maintaining a web site, "Poor Richard's Web Site" is definitely a good place to begin your research. He covers the various things you need to consider and the decisions you'll have to make from figuring out the equipment you'll need, to finding a web host, to actually creating your site and getting people to notice it. The book is definitely geared toward small business owners, but almost everything applies to people who just want to build their own personal web site as well. Many links are contained in the book that lead to further resources, which is useful, but there are also self promotional parts of the book which can get a little annoying. And surely, with better editing, this book could be much shorter. But the good stuff generally outweighs the occasional plug for Peter Kent's other books or for Top Floor publishing, and though it's too long it's easy to skim over the fluff.

This is an essential book if you find yourself writing product documentation and do not have the luxury of an editorial staff or company style guide to tell you right from wrong. It's simple and easy to read, and just tells you what you need to know, nothing more or less. You can go through the whole thing cover to cover in about 12 hours, and then you'll have a pretty good sense of how you should be structuring information. I find the examples useful (if somewhat contrived), and I agree with the book's advice in almost all cases. (I'm a professional tech writer, and I *did* have the luxury of an editor for several years! Regrettably, no more.)

Whether the book "enshrines mediocre technical writing," as someone mentioned, is debatable. The goal of product documentation is simple: Answer the user's question as fast as possible, and get the user productive as fast as possible. There's certainly a place for creativity, but one can't lose sight of the goals, and I think the book's merit is that it focuses persistently on those goals: How do you, the writer, best serve the user's interests?

It's also important to have a guide like this because if you work in a small company, other folks are going to have strong ideas about how the documentation should look. They will want to constantly be inserting feel-good "marketing" messages into the documentation, reminding customers of how wise they were for buying the product. They will have strong opinions about what "concepts" should be stressed over and over. As a writer, you represent the user's interests, and you have to be able to stand up and say "that doesn't work to the user's advantage, and we shouldn't do it like that." If you have a reference to back you up on these points, you'll be much more comfortable taking a strong stand in favor of Usability. And, in the end, that is exactly what any documentation specialist should be standing for. (Yes, I did end on a preposition.)

I purchased this text because I am trying to redirect my career. I have a lot of marketing and public relations in my background, but technical writing is a new area. I found the text easy to read, very informative, and exceptionally helpful. The only reason I gave it four instead of five stars is that it is weighted for web writers. Writing for the web is not a function of the job I am interviewing for, so that information, while interesting, was not particularly helpful for me.

I have been a technical writer for years. This book has made me re-think how I write technical articles. It is excellent. It has clear, concise instruction and examples. If you are planning to learn more about how to create technical writing this is the book.

This book is a mixed bag at best, advocating practices that help keep today's technical writing mired in mediocrity. For example: always use the 2nd person; and for heaven's sake don't try to explain anything to people, just tell them what to do! Much of this reads like tips for helping non-writers get by as technical writers, and for making technical writing into a kind of non-writing.

For devotees of the Jackson Pollock school of tech writing (throw lots of vetted statements at the page till they stick) or of the everything-is-a-numbered-list technique, there's probably much that's heartening in this glossy example of bad desktop publishing. (Jeesh, who decreed that tech writers can't learn typography and basic functional layout, or maybe hire someone that does?)

This book is probably ok for anyone writing product assembly manuals, or documenting GUI interfaces (press this, select that... yup second person actually works pretty well there). But for software? Or for anyone struggling to articulate complex ideas or just write a reasonably compact and self-contained conceptual overview (MIA from most tech writing today), there isn't much help here. Maybe it's time we technical writers focused more on good writing per se, on the things that good technical writing shares with effective prose (clarity, precision, range of useful styles, fiction (point of view) or even poetry (compression, effective use of embedded metaphor).

So, yeah, it turns out there're so many other rich directions and ideas for tech writers to pursue. For starters, there're the old standbys: Strunk and White or Wm Zinsser's Writing Well. And any of the wonderful books on prose style by Richard Lanham or perhaps Mark Turner's Clear and Simple as the Truth (which, suprisingly enough, addresses technical writing directly, albeit briefly, offering a number of classical examples). Also just about any of Edward Tufte's books, and by the way, did you catch his 2004 interview in Technical Communications Quarterly? Posted (free) on ET's website. I think it even mentions a time when he consulted with IBM about their tech writing and tried to get them to stop using the second person, and, well...

I've been developing retail software professionally for over 15 years and have been waiting for a book like this one. When I finally discovered the book, I was a little skeptic -- that is until I received the book.

If you are writing help, or any other technical documentation, this *is* the book for you. Coverage of the subject is just right. It's not too overloaded and it's not to light on the subject either.

The only thing missing that I wish they had was recommended templates for different types of documentation. If this book had a CD with samples, it would be worth 2 or 3 times the amount I paid for it.

I highly recommend this book.

Stanek did something 'heroic'. He wrote an overview in which every topic is written down in a clear and understandable way. The book is not just a summary, but it shows how several 'languages' could be used in web publishing, how to choose for a language, it's pros and cons, and how they can cooperate. It was about time that such a book was written, because many people could be overloaded with information without knowing what to do with it. By buying and reading this book you won't get 'overloaded'. Stanek takes you to a point from where he shows you what the possibilities are, what the differences are and how to make decisions in good design. For newbies and experienced people who are working in the field of webdesign, marketing and programming business a must! (Mr. Stanek, I owe you one..)

This book was great when I first started reading it....2 years ago. The author was well organized and very informative in his descriptions. If you want basic knowledge, and then to expand on present material, this is the book for you.

I just purchased this book, I am also a web designer, although it is already outdated the theories presented by the author makes this book relevant to newer versions of HTML etc.This book is still a must for designers and a would be CLASSIC!

Although this book has great content, the information is too outdated. According to this book Java and frames, are not supported by IE. This book is still teaching HTML 2 and HTML 3 (not 3.2). Don't expect to learn that much about Java and CGI from this book either because it explains what they are more that it teaches how to create applets and scripts using them.

I bought this book after taking on the task of learning *gasp* all of the facets of web programming and design, hoping this would be current information. A lot of it is. If you're still developing and writing HTML in the 3.0 version. I was surprisingly let down by this part of the Unleashed series, which is usually known for high quality info. Not that it isn't a good book, it's just out of date. ** Wondering how to get money back now **.. My advice.. keep looking. This one is just not current enough to be useful for so much of what's new now. Sorry Mr. Stanek, et al.