Software Books

This is a great commentary. In an expository manner, he explains each book of the Bible in detail. Wiersbe gives background information on topics that help make each passage more clear. It is always beside my Bible when I study! I highly recommend it.

I have found Wiersbe's commentaries very helpful in my study of the New Testament and in particular our recent study of Revelation - the Commentary on Revelation had many very helpful thoughts which I found very useful as I prepared Bible studies for my group.

I have not completed reading these books but so far they are exceeding my expectations. Great books for anyone wanting a greater appreciation of the word of GOd and seeking to know him(God) better.

As a Bible college graduate and youth pastor, I could not do without this commentary set. Wiersbe uses everday illustrations and gives a good explanation of the text. However as with many commentators, some difficult passages are skipped.

I use these all the time in my studies. Wiersbe writes at a level anyone can understand and provides many insights that his years of study and devotion have provided.
I would recommend both volumes to anyone wanting to gain a deeper insight into the New Testament.

How can one not love a book that probably has more trivia per page than almost any book written? And, what bettewr way to review a book of lists than to make a list of some of my favorite lists? So, here's my list of 6 of my favorite lists from the hundreds of lists in __THE BOOK OF LISTS__.

1. 10 Words you can't pronounce correctly

2. The 15 most boring classics

3. 10 memorable books that never existed

4. 18 famous brains, and what they weighed

5. 15 famous events that happened in the bathtub

6. 10 people not to invite to dinner

In order to give you a further insight into the book, I have listed below a few random facts that I found particularly interesting.

African Elephants have gestation periods of 640 days while Opossums have only 13 day gestastion periods. (These are the two extremes from a long list of gestation periods.)

A flock of crows is correctly known as a murder of crows.

Well before 9/11, Iraq had received military aid from the U.S., Great Britain, China, and the U.S.S.R.

Desi Arnaz worked as a bird cage cleaner before he became a bandleader, Gerald Ford was a male model before he entered politics, and Carol Burnett started her entertainment career as an usherette.

As you can tell, there is enough information here to add a thrill a minute to a trivia buff's life.

not sure what our "they're all screaming lefties" friend is talking about. why does an entry that mentions countries that 'could blow up the world' necessarily correspond with left or right? the list could include countries from all over the political spectrum that have that ability. does being actually concerned about arms mean that you're to the left of the political spectrum? duh... or "countries that have recieved aid from..." how is that politically aligned one way or the other?

"The Book Of Lists" never ceases to intrigue and fascinate me even when in truth I've been reading it so many times, and for quite long hours. Many faves include: "9 Stupid Thieves" (I laughed to tears at the story where, during the trial the defendant said to the witness who pointed at him as suspect, "I should have blown your ------- head off!... If I'd been the one that was there."), "Facts are stupid things" (slip-ups by politicians), "15 Strangest Stories" and little trivias like "things you didn't know had names"... oh, geez, there are loads to mention!! This is so entertaining, at times revealing and, very funny, utterly shocking ... absolutely educational and fun to read. Who knows, what have you read from the book might have any good use for you in your life.

This is so much better than (reading) those run-of-the-mill best-selling romantic paps. Always a refreshing read.

Really, even though its got a lot of mindless fluff in it (that's fun to read I'll have you know) it also has lists that are fascinating and important from a historical or geographical standpoint, such as thirty new names for old places (i.e. Ethiopia for Abyssinia.) Besides that, the other lists are interesting even if inconsequential (like "seven remarkable messages in a bottle.") And I bet you didn't know that Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry VIII, had three breasts! Just another amazing fact that one can find in this praiseworthy book to discuss on long car trips . This book seems to have the affliction of becoming ragged through overuse, as almost every reviewer it seems will soon have to buy a new one. I guess that's just a testament to its fortitude and quality.

I stole this book off of my father's bookshelf when I was 9 years old, and have pored through it over and over since then. It has so many different kinds of lists in it.. everything from magazine and celebrity compiled lists to obscenely obscure trivia, and of course, those morbidly fascinating ones! My husband and I make an occasional game of opening to random pages and seeing if we can guess what's on the lists. I've bragged about this book to friends more often than any other and I'm shopping for another copy now because my poor copy's about to fall apart. Beware buying this one.. it's a longtime addiction. ;)

This book is great for the self taught person with significant insignificant questions. In completing this book, all those questions answer themselves. None of that "cutsie" just great tutorial. Instruction is easily to understand and follow. I've gone through the book a couple of times and discovered something new each time. When I finished with this book, I knew what I was doing and why.

Money well spent on this book.

Straigh-forward writing with no pretension. Some knowledge of 3D graphics vocabulary is helpful but not necessary.

Book is one example from beginning to end; presumably the author. Starts with some pictures and, step-by-detailed-step, ends with an avatar.

The only fault I found is that he doesn't mention Poser in the list of 3D modeling programs for human figures.

If you want to learn how to model a detailed digital human,this is THE book for you! You start out with totally empty viewports,and if you follow the book you'll end up having created a model with an incredible amount of detail.

The author explains in great detail the process of modelling every body part (head,neck,arms,hands,legs,feet and torso) with anatomical references where they're most important.

I wanted a book which I could use as a definitive guide to model a detailed and anatomically correct human body or body part,and I'll look no further when I have to do so. It's also got a clever chapter about modifying the same model to create very different ones, and a good chapter about texturing and UVW unwrapping. Finally, it refers to cloth and hair (somewhat briefly) and,no,it DOESN'T cover rigging. But it does cover, extremely well, human modelling, which is what mr.Brilliant had set out to do,I assume. Very very good!

I used this as a class textbook and it worked fairly well. This is not a single program book so this will work well with whatever program you model with. Although, depending on what you model with, depends on if you need to go out and find plug-ins that will do what he does. The book is really good going through step by step. Although there are some occasions where he leaps forwards ahead with really telling you what to do. Also, sometimes when he gives instructions, there aren't any images to go along with them, so you have to end up guessing what to do.
This is modeling for realism/cinematics and if you want to use this book to model in-game characters, you are out of luck. The was he teaches you to model is extremely high poly (especially in the head). The CD doesn't do much for you, it mainly just has naked pictures of the guy he models on it so you can copy exactly what he does. The book does give good information on the differences between modeling men and women, although it is fairly brief. He does go into UV mapping pretty good as well as modeling hair. The book doesn't, however, go into modeling clothing fairly well, just a short chapter. The book also doesn't even mention rigging, which I think is a crucial part in character modeling.

Given that you are already familiar with some type of modeling software, this book is the best resource you could have! The non-software specific approach of the book keeps it focused on the concepts of creating a good model rather than the user interface. Every detail of the body is covered with step-by-step diagrams, and a lot of it focuses on creating a topology that is animatable and will subdivide correctly (ie the mesh is mostly in quads). It also covers texturing, rigging, facial animation, both modeled and simulated hair, and simple clothing. The book discusses anatomy to the extent that it is needed to create a realistic model, and uses those concepts to demonstrate how the male model you create can be changed into a female, or into a fantasy character that looks completely different.

One thing that did make it a little difficult to use was that in the screenshots, the mesh was transparent and therefore you couldn't tell whether vertices were at the front or the back of the model. More screenshots with an opaque mesh would have made it easier to see the topology.

Overall, the explanations are concise and makes the task seem efficient, easy, and fun.

At first glance you may easily dismiss this book; featuring a rather dull cover; size that is dwarfed by the more "popular" C books - do not be fooled! This is an excellent text for learning about the C language.

Admittedly, if you're new to programming in general, then this book may seem a little difficult. For instance the first chapter launches straight into a discussion of C idioms: keywords, variables, operators etc. If these are foreign to you I would recommend you also buy an introductory programming text, then return to this book when you understand these concepts.

These assumptions aside, Kalicharan clearly and concisely discusses control structures and arrays, functions, character handling, data types, input/output and more. The concepts of each chapter are thoroughly explained and incorporated into numerous programming examples.

Indeed this is one of the strongest points of the book. In particular I liked the way Kalicharan introduces the three programming constructs; conditional execution, looping and iteration first, BEFORE discussing for example, the printf statement like most other C books do - which can be highly confusing to the novice C programmer. (Kalicharan leaves it until chapter 9). Thus a strong grounding in the fundamentals of programming is emphasised from the very start and is a consistent theme revisted throughout the book.

Unlike other C books, Kalicharan gives a brilliant discussion of pointers. What is dismissed as "too hard" in other texts is covered with ease and again, numerous examples to illustrate. For this chapter alone, one should buy this book.

Following the chapter on pointers is a good introduction to "advanced" data structures, linked lists and binary trees. These are left out of most other C books, bar those dealing with data structures specifically (university texts etc) but it is here that the power of the C language becomes apparent.

Topping off the book is a chapter in file handling. Text and binary files are discussed.

The range of topics, clarity of expression and *working* examples (I compiled every program in the book without error...) makes this book an essential addition to any C programmer's library. I hope another book from this talented author is on the way soon! (How about Java or C++?)

I had Noel Kalicharan (UWI) for my Year 1 programming. Used many of the books he wrote and can vouch for the calrity and ease of use of his books, overall high quality. Even better when combined with his lectures.

A friend recommended this book after I complained of the difficulty of learning C, having tried more popularly recommended books. I'm glad she did, for this book made C easy and fun to learn. An excellent book, strongly recommended.

This book is one of the best books explaining ANSI C. It starts from the newbie level and delivers the knowledge needed for any good C programmer to survive.

The writing style is very nice, the author has done some fine efforts in keeping his threads of thought clear and easy to follow.

For people who already know C, this is also good as a quick reference and is something concise to quickly refer to, in small issues. They could also just use it to quickly refresh their knowledge of C every once in a while.

It doesn't cover any advanced topics, but it does what it promises to do, so there's nothing serious to put this book down.

This book could have helped me greatly when I was just starting to learn C programming, but it didn't... Just because I only bought it too late, at the end of my C programming days!

-Mokhtar M. Khorshid

A fantastic book! Its simple, clear and systematic presentation and explaination of concepts along with the abundance of examples make learning to program in C an easy task. And all the scary stuff you may have heard about pointers in C become mere rumours after reading the relevant chapters! An excellent book for learning and teaching.

This is a great book for a quick hands on learning for XML. I really like it and it solved my problems. I always thought parsing the XML was too damn confusing but with this book I now completely understand the DOM and SAX parsing.

This book does a great job of introducing the basic concepts and getting you into code soon, so you can see the concepts and syntax in action. The topics included XML, CSS, XSLT and XPath, DOM, SAX, and XML Schemas. All these abbreviations are explained in the book. The core concepts are well introduced without being overwhelmed in syntax, and advice if often given on what is best to use (for example "Can I use DOM or SAX instead of XSLT?").

The use of an 8 character "CodeNote pointer" allows obtaining additional information from the codenotes web site while keeping the book a readable size and price. For example the paper chapter on SAX included examples in Java, but the online "CodeNotes" allows obtaining the source in Visual Basic. In the chapter on installation, I found both the instructions on the book and the online web site out of date, so they might want to update the web. The online notes on Sample architectures was particularly helpful, so don't neglect the section on "additional material" at the front of the book. I would have also liked an actual completed application demonstrated online.

This book is probably the best value of any of the technical book I've purchased. At only $..., this book covers all the important aspects of XML in a very understable and enjoyable way. It's laid out well and the examples (and following explanations) are clear and very helpful. If only all technical books could be written this well. And is that the most aesthetically pleasing cover you've ever seen or what?

This book presents the core of XML in an organized, no-nonsense fashion. If you need to get up to speed quickly on XML this book is a great investment (and quite inexpensive too).

I used this in conjunction with an Infusion class I took and what a great book! fantastic job!

The book is well layed-out, and descriptions are clear and concise. The first 95 pages or so are relatively basic. I have used a crusty version of Homesite to create a few basic Websites in-the-past, so those first 95 pages didn't teach me anything that I didn't already know. Except perhaps for the design and paper and pencil preparation.

After page 95 (or so), you jump right into Dreamweaver and are instructed as to its' functions. The Webpage you're building is a basic HTML page, and does not use any server-side technology like ASP, or PHP, or CGI/Perl.

It too is well layed-out, and step-by-step. I only wished that a deeper discussion of CSS integration was employed.

So, for the beginner, or for someone who likes to paper & pencil prep, I'd have to say that this is a worthwhile buy.

For the more advanced user, I'd have to say that you may be better off with more of a reference-style tome.

All said, I do not regret the purchase.

This book takes you from web-site zero through building a basic client-side only web site using Dreamweaver 8.

My only critique is that it seemed like we didn't even get to actually using Dreamweaver 8 until about page 100. Before that was an intro to general web-site concepts and HTML.

Anyway, it's an attractive and informative book that is priced lower than most.

If you are looking for website building software, you might want to take a look at Dreamweaver 8: Design and Construction. This book educates the reader on the various aspects of Dreamweaver 8. It also shows the reader, step by step, how to build a website using this software. The author also includes all sort so tips, illustrations of what the reader will see as he or she builds their site, and helpful tech talk boxes that explain some of the more technical issues in an easy to understand way. Everything in this manual is suitable for those with little or no knowledge of website design or website design software.

I believe that the best way to choose website software is to understand what that particular program can do and how this may or may not suit your needs and your abilities. It doesn't help to buy software that can do seemingly magical things if you don't have a clue how to actually make it work. This book helps the reader understand the basics of the Dreamweaver 8 program with a taste of some of the more complex things that can be done.

This book is well written and laid out well (for the most part), but the lack of color really, really hurts this Dreamweaver 8 guide. Perhaps I am being a bit of a stickler, but a book in 2006 not only needs to have good content, but it need to also have a great layout as well. Deciding to go with 5 major colors (white, black, grey, blue, dark blue) not only makes the book seem dull and drab, it detracts from the reader the good content within.

For anyone that uses Dreamweaver 8 on a daily basis this is a great reference guide but the layout editor could have done a much better job. If you care about content more than pizzaz, I think you will be happy with this book

**** RECOMMENDED

Are you new to Dreamweaver 8? If you are, then this book is for you! Author Marc Campbell, has done an outstanding job of writing a book for people who are new to creating their own web sites from the ground up and all that it entails.

Campbell, begins by showing you how to devise your plan. Then, the author shows you how to develop a blueprint for your site. Next, he shows you how to add just about anything to the pages of your site. Finally, the author shows you how to take the working prototype that exists on your computer and publish it to the Web for all of the world to see.

This most excellent book serves an introduction to creating web sites using Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. More importantly, the focus throughout this book is that sound design and usability are inextricably linked.

This is an excellent book. It helps the beginners of "Dynamical Systems" to understand this branch of Mathematical Physics using Maple. It is very useful for undergraduate students as well as for teachers.

Thought I'd give a more in depth review than the others here.

Most advanced math textbooks contain one or two chapters that turn me off. I must say that every chapter in this book had useful information or very good applications.

The opening chapter is a brief introduction to Maple V (some Maple 8 commands are posted on the books website). Note that Maple 9 is now out and no doubt Maple X will soon follow.

Chapters 1-7 cover planar systems in some detail, vectorfield in DEplot is a real winner here. Chapters 8 and 9 cover 3D and nonautonomous systems - the poincare command in Maple is a real time saver.

Chapters 10-12 cover a lot of research results on limit cycles - the most lucid I have seen in any textbook.

The remaining half of the book concentrates on both real and complex discrete systems. There are the usual cobweb diagrams, bifurcation diagrams and Mandelbrot set. Where this book comes into its own, however, is in Chapters 16-20.

Lasers and nonlinear optics are investigated using complex iterative maps. Fractals and even multifractals are discussed in some detail. The book ends with a chapter dedicated to chaos control.

Overall, the book is concise with pertinent examples and applications. It is not dogged down with math notation, theorems and proofs.

Strogatz, Perko and Allgood are good books to practice more Maple programing techniques.

This book is a very nice introduction to the theory of dynamical
systems. It covers all aspects and even more than usually thaught
in a class on dynamical systems. Especially, I like to see
many examples for various applications. These examples and the
Maple programs make it well suitable for students to learn
on dynamical systems by themself.

A great book. Great web pages and short, easy to copy and edit
Maple programs. Lots of material not covered in other books on this topic. Maple is my favorite package. The others are not
as user friendly. I felt I must write again since amazon have been showing excerpts from book. What a geat idea. Chapters in this book that interested me were fractals, multifractals and
optics. Authors web-site is given on back cover of book. Enjoy!

This is only book I find with program files that work right away. Graphics in Maple is excelent for chaotic system and algebra very powerful. I like to rotate figures in 3D and use animation. I learn more about optics, it nice to see complex numbers used in applications. Lots of other applications also.

Book is best for students who want to get programs working quickly. There is a website with working programs. You should also look at Maple Application website for many many examples.

I recomend book to everyone.

I found this to be the best book to improve bridge for an intermediate player. I've read it four times and learned from each chapter each time. Since one plays defense on half the hands, it provides the best time investment to improve one's bridge play. It is also an entertianing read. I have recommended it to the bridge players I mentor.

Kantar is exceptionally readable, with a sense of humor which makes a difficult subject enjoyable. He goes through much material, but quite thoroughly and clearly. It's a book that needs to be studied - not merely read - but a good student will gain enormously from Kantar's work.

Kantar today is more noted as a bridge instructor than a bridge player. But one must remember that he is both and his latest book demonstrated both the instructional and practical sides. It is (as usual) clear, concise and ro the point. I like Kantar's prose, his ease of explanation and the way he sets just the right tone. Of course, he discusses the bid, the opponent and, most important, keeping track of the play while counting the cards (the one thing that separates the professional from the amateur). Good book with tons of examples.

This is a great book on defense, because Kantar covers almost every intermediate situation comprehensively and give you black and white rules for every situation. He doesn't in this book consider varied leading/signalling conventions but just gives one way to play, but that's fine as he explains his method clearly and shows why he recommends everything he does. I'd recommend it to every player.

The book focuses on leads, signals (Attitude, Count, Suit Preference), and how to card (what card to play in 2nd or 3rd spot), rather than general defensive principles.

The content is excellent, well presented (humorous!!), and best of all, has lots of quizzes. None of this skimming a section and figuring you know it, the quiz will let you find out for certain.

2 warnings:

1) make sure your partner is using the same techniques, otherwise you may get worse results. Its not that the ideas in the book are radical, they are mainstream. But if pard doesn't understand your signal, they may do something weird and you will be worse off.

2) The book is a bit technical (5 situations where this is a suit preference signal. If Dummy wins with a Q then signal count, otherwise ... If you can see the X in dummy then pard will know to do this, else that, etc.
You will need to reread it several times, and probably make notes.

VALUABLE STUFF, but ONLY as part of a partnership that understands each other.

If you are using the Rational Unified Process, or considering doing so, and worried about applying it to a whole IT department rather than separate projects then this book could well be useful. The book has four parts - From RUP to EUP, Beyond Development, Enterprise Management Disciplines and Putting it all Together. Each section has several chapters and the chapters all start with a nice reader ROI section (showing the payoff for reading that chapter). The writing is clear and there are plenty of diagrams, tables and helpful tips.

The book starts of with some background in the RUP. I particularly liked the description of RUP as serial in the large and iterative in the small. Within the RUP there are also nine disciplines (Business Modeling, Requirements, Analysis and Design, Implementation, Test, Deployment, Configuration and Change Management, Project Management, and Environment). The authors outline 10 best practices they see as core to the EUP (they extend the original 6 in RUP) - Develop iteratively, Manage requirements, Proven architecture, Modeling, Continuously verify quality, Manage change, Collaborative development, Look beyond deployment, Deliver working software regularly and Manage risk. Each is clearly described.

In addition to the change best practices, EUP adds a Production phase and a Retirement phase. They point out that the Production phase is not just maintenance or just operations and support but both and more. I think that any organization building systems should spend as much time and effort thinking about production and running their application in production (which includes maintaining it over time) as they do in building it and I was glad to see this so strongly proposed. They also added an operations and support discipline, mostly but not entirely in the production phase. This discipline includes running the system and making hot fixes. I think the Retirement phase is overkill for most organizations but some will find it useful.

They also added some "Enterprise Management" disciplines for use outside the context of a project and this too is a good idea. The disciplines are Enterprise business modeling, Enterprise Portfolio Management, Enterprise Architecture (I particularly liked the idea that "modifiability" should be considered as part of an enterprise architecture - far too few organizations do this well and fail to differentiate between stable services and much more changeable ones), Strategic Reuse (Again I liked the called-out focus on this - without a real plan no reuse is going to happen), People management , Enterprise Administration and Software Process Improvement (Another good one and a timely reminder to all that you should keep improving your software processes)

Overall I liked the book, though it was a somewhat dry subject (as methodologies often are). There was a lot of good advice, some nice tips and some clearly hard-won experience being shared!

Many IT organizations still pursue pet projects and develop duplicate applications in isolation, only to address later crises in corporate reporting, portfolio management, IT infrastructure, business objectives, and other areas.

EUP gives a coherent roadmap of how to architect smarter and for the long term. For organizations that don't have a strong enterprise aptitude, this book is a lifesaver. The EUP provides the business case for implementing EUP that will help cut through the politics by addressing the benefits to the bottom line for pursuing an Enterprise Unified Process.

I will be referencing the EUP regularly, and passing it around to others in my organization!

The Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) unites diverse disciplines, including development, enterprise architecture, operations, production and portfolio management, reuse and business process modeling, under an easy to follow framework. It was refreshing to find a book that recognizes the need to accommodate the installed base of existing software as part of the planning, development and deployment process. This is an excellent guide for any manager who wants to ensure that essential IT disciplines are addressed.

The focus of EUP is to enhance the commonly accepted Rational Unified Process (RUP). The authors have added new disciplines to RUP that include business modeling, portfolio management, enterprise administration, reuse, enterprise architecture and process improvement. The introduction of business modeling into the overall process is essential to weave IT processes and disciplines into the most essential driver of any systems initiative - the business. The enterprise architecture discussion was also refreshing given that many organizations have forgone this discipline and have created redundant, stovepipe applications and data structures that significantly stifle business agility.

The "Reuse" chapter raises the rarely deployed reuse strategy. It is critically important to not replicate business processes, models, systems, data structures, source code and interfaces. The costs and risks of trying to keep parallel assets synchronized have been written about extensively. This book promotes the idea that reuse is just another aspect of the enterprise unified process. It is also one of the few discussions about reuse that recognizes the value of harvesting existing assets.

Also of note is the portfolio management discussion that focuses attention on the need to incorporate project management with application management. It should be noted, however, that portfolio management has much less focus on applications than the traditional industry definition as promoted by Gartner, Inc.

Finally, this book makes great use of tips, tool references and citations to books or papers that readers can use to expand on their understanding of a given topic. The last chapter of the book takes a realistic and honest look at deploying the enterprise unified process, including its possible retirement.

This book is must readying for any organization using -- or attempting to use -- the RUP. The EUP's additional disciplines completes the RUP in a necessary and sufficient manner.
The book is written in a straight-forward manner, is easy to read and is well-organized. Each chapter reminds you to be practical (the antipatterns), explains how the additional discipline relates to the others and provides software tools and suggested reading.
Don't RUPture your software development efforts without having the more comprehensive approach of the EUP!

The book provides a very readable coverage of IBM's Rational Unified Process, as well as useful extensions that address important aspects of enterprise systems planning, development, and management. The systematic and disciplined treatment is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of much useful, pragmatic advice that draws from the practical experience of the authors in building real systems.
I quite liked this book. Although it doesn't give enough emphasis to conceptual data analysis (something RUP has always been weak on), it has loads of useful, practical content that make it a worthwhile addition to the literature.

This book is a great guide for all FileMaker Pro developers interested in working with XML. Beverly Voth clearly has a strong grasp of both FileMaker Pro and Markup Languages. I found this book well organized, easy to follow and filled with useful information.

I've read many books regarding FileMaker Pro. In the few that mention XML, it is an afterthought. Beverly Voth's book is in depth, detailed and formatted in a manner that makes it readable, understandable and usable to both novice and professional developers.

The page layouts and presentation of the code and formatting is first rate. I was able to put what I learned into practice on day one of reading the book. This is a must have for all FileMaker Pro Programmers. I've recommended it to all my programmers. I recommend it to all who plan to ride the wave of the future with FileMaker Pro's XML features.

Ray Clements

Beverly Voth has written the "bible" on FileMaker Pro/XML integration. She takes what can be a daunting subject, and leads you logically from topic to topic, with demo files and plenty of code examples to illustrate her points. From the eight-page table of contents (in outline form) to the detailed index, this book is exceptionally well laid out, and has plenty to offer both the novice and the veteran FileMaker developer. This book does not suffer from the "we didn't have time, budget or inclination to proofread adequately" syndrome that plagues so many computer books these days... it flows beautifully, and I have yet to find a single typo.

The release of Beverly Voth's Guide is well worth our wait. While exhaustive, the writing is clear and not exhausting. She has given us the definitive textbook on this thorny, difficult subject, starting at the outside and working in. While breaking apart the various layers into edible morsels, Ms. Voth does not sugar-coat the complexities of her subject; she simply makes them disappear.

Finally a handy book that clearly explains XML and XSLT from a FileMaker perspective.

It is obvious when reading through this material, that Beverly Voth writes from experience. Her book is well researched, has a firm grasp of the FileMaker XML grammars and provides lots and lots of examples that make it easy for a developer to adopt this technology.

This book is full of useful tips, hints and clear explanations. There are many simple step by step exercises, XML and XSLT examples along with many do's and dont's that take the pain out of the development cycle.

The guide is complete with a useful list of resources, links and references and a glossary of acronyms and terms.

I use FileMaker applications everyday, I write stylesheets and now I always keep this book next to my computer as a quick reference and useful guide.