Desktop Books

I start learning 3DS4 using this book and I found it very easy to understand. Anybody who want to learn 3DS should buy it.

This book is outstanding to learn and to enhance one's knowledge of 3DS4. It is fun to read, and is really quite a page-turner! It starts with the basics and moves logically to advanced topics, all while using easy-to-follow tutorials. The CDROM comes with some nice textures that are good for making your own scenes. I would recommend this book to EVERYONE learning 3ds4!

This book is outstanding to learn and to enhance one's knowledge of 3DS4. It is fun to read, and is really quite a page-turner! It is structured so that it holds your attention - i.e. it doesn't linger for 50 pages on one topic and mention another in passing.

It starts with the basics and moves logically to advanced topics, all while using easy-to-follow tutorials. The CDROM comes with some nice textures that are good for making your own scenes.

Plus, in an appendix, it reviews most of the popular IPAS plugins for 3D Studio R4. This reference is useful to determine what software to spend your money on.

I would recommend this book to EVERYONE learning 3ds4!

This is the best book of 3D Studio r4, in a couple of weeks you can learn almost everithing, starting with modeling, texturing, animating and scripting.

It is an excellent companion to everyone that wants to learns the powers of 3D Studio. Contains many things that help you to understand easy and quick. There is also a very good CDROM companion to this book that has many stuff to look such as materials, images or even some extra demo programs. I am completely satisfied of this book so I higly reccomend it

Geetesh Bajaj and Echo Swinford are both Microsoft PowerPoint MVPs. Both have written excellent books detailing how to get the most out of PowerPoint. Now they've joined forces to show you how to give your presentations a makeover. PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit contains eight case studies of presentations that need some help. Each presentation is OK as it has been done, but Bajaj and Swinford show how, in just a few steps, each presentation can be made better.

The book starts off with a section detailing how PowerPoint 2007 differs from previous versions. There are a lot of changes that have been made, especially the Ribbon menu interface, and it's important for people who have used previous versions of PowerPoint to understand how these changes affect how you use PowerPoint 2007.

Once the basics have been covered, the case studies start. Bland corporate presentations, basic and boring school project presentations, kiosk displays -- they're all covered, and all made over. The addition of Themes in PP 2007 helps designers a lot -- you can give a consistent look to your PowerPoint and other Office documents, and Bajaj and Swinford use Themes to great advantage in this book.

Of course, the book includes a CD-ROM. Each makeover, both before and after slides, is included, as well as many templates and themes, images, and PowerPoint tools. The CD content is valued at over $100, so it's certainly worth the price of the book just to get the CD!

But the book is valuable in itself. You can read and read instructions on how to do something, but sometimes it doesn't really sink in until you actually do something on your own. You can sit down with the 'before' slides in this book and follow along step-by-step with the book, or you can try your hand at doing it yourself, using the techniques you learn in the book. And then you can get to work on all the dull presentations you've got on your hard drive, kicking them up a few notches.

Obviously, PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit assumes you know how to use PowerPoint, and that you have a copy of PP 2007 of your own. But PowerPoint users of all skill levels can learn something from Bajaj and Swinford.

As a program director for a university that presents conferences and seminars, it is my responsibility to review powerpoint presentations given by our speakers. To be perfectly frank, the majority of the presentations are "borrrrrrrrrring". This kit is the perfect tool needed to turn the presentations into presentations that are not only easier to read, but much more interesting to view. The easy to follow exercises make even a "newbie" to powerpoint look like a pro. It's "hands-on" approach is by far the best teaching tool I have encountered. Kudo's to the authors - GREAT JOB!

Where Cutting Edge PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) ends PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit begins. This book is a wonderful addition to any library for those who want to quickly design exceptional PowerPoint presentational slides. Each section is thorough and complete in its content and detail. The authors show both before and after images and instructions to enable the novice to easily gain the talent to completely revamp their own projects.

Whether you envision a simple presentation or a complex Trade Show Loop with all the capabilities PowerPoint has to offer you will find the tools you are looking for within the contents of this edition.

This is a excellent compliment to my own, Presentational Skills for the Next Generation, self-help book.

I have read, reviewed and edited many books on the topic of software and design. This is one of the most engaging and practical software books I've read on the specific subject of a specific application.

Bajaj and Swinford have used an engaging "makeover" approach to demonstrate the features of PowerPoint. This gives the reader an unusually (and welcome) practical application of the concepts--much more useful than reading a technical manual.

The ideas and lessons in the book are not limited to PowerPoint 2007! The design concepts are sound. (Just because you have a design tool doesn't mean you design well, so learn about both!)

If you use PowerPoint to communicate, influence or entertain, get this book.

I own and operate a presentation design and training company. With my responsibilities, it never hurts to stay up to speed with anything related to PowerPoint. This is an excellent resource and I have recommended it to my entire team. In addition, the CD which is included is a great value added item. Overall, this is a great read and resource.

+4 stars for such wonderful coverage of the topic. All the key attributes, major tradeoffs, and challenges are covered simply and completely.

+1 more for the *fantastic* book cover. Look at this thing, it's absolutely hilarious.

I have yet to find another text with as complete and thoroughly easy-to-understand treatment of distributed simulation as NetVE. Where is the next edition? Surely Singhal & Zyda have more wisdom to share.

This is the only book that I know of that is dedicated to networked virtual environments. This is a systems level book, so if you are looking for code listings or tons of algorithms, you will be disappointed. The author assumes that you have already obtained a basic knowledge of computer graphics, network programming, and virtual reality. This book simply integrates these sciences into the discussion of the trade-offs and decisions that must be made at a high level if you wish to design a networked virtual environment. Chapters one and two are suitable for non-technical people to read since they are discussing the promise and the origin of networked VE's. Chapter 3, "A Networking Primer", is mainly discussing networking protocols in the context of which one is best to use in particular VE situations. If you know nothing about computer networking before you read this chapter, it will leave you totally confused. Chapter 4 entitled "Communication Architecture" discusses client-server versus peer-to-peer architectures for multi-user environments and which does best in different situations. As with Chapter 3, if you do not already have an understanding of computer networking, this chapter will probably leave you confused. Chapter 5, " Managing Dynamic Shared State", discusses the issue of maintaining shared state among various hosts in a networked VE. Bandwidth, computation, latency, data consistency, and reproducibility are all discussed. To understand this chapter it would help to have had a course in operating systems on the graduate level, although, as with previous chapters, the discussion is kept at a high level. Chapter 6, "Systems Design", discusses the fundamental software architecture issues in the development of networked virtual environments. The issues covered include thread allocation for multi-threaded environments, real-time rendering and collision detection, and computational resource management. In this chapter it would help if the reader was familiar with the concepts of threads as well as computer graphics. Although the discussion is kept at a systems level, this chapter is more technical than the others, and the point of the discussion is to achieve as much of a sense of realism for the VE user as possible. Chapter 7, "Resource Management for Scalability of Performance", is even more technical than chapter six and gets down to a lower level of discussion with pseudocode being shown. The purpose of the chapter has to do with "scaling" your design so that it works equally well for small and large numbers of users. Chapter 8, "Internet Networked Virtual Environments", shows its age more than the previous chapters in that it has a pretty extensive discussion of VRML which has now become pretty much obsolete. The chapter acts as an examination of internet-based virtual environments. Also note that many of the websites shown as part of the bibliography of the chapter are now dead links due to the age of the book and the obsolescence of VRML. Chapter 9, "Perspectives and Predictions", is the final chapter of the book, and looks at the past, present, and future of networked VE's. However the "present" for this book is 1999, so this chapter has limited usefulness. This book was a five star book when it was published in 1999, and it still has many good insights, but the amount of time that has passed since its publication is starting to make it beg for a second edition. For this reason only do I subtract a single star from its rating and give it four stars. For a more recent treatment of virtual environment system design you might want to read "Designing Virtual Reality Systems : The Structured Approach" by Kim, which was published in August 2005.

This is an EXCELLENT book. Appropriate for beginners and experts in the Network VE area. Has good coverage both of technical and non-technical issues. Easy to read, informative, and presents many of the original contributions of the authors.

Provides a good grounding in issues that must be addressed by anyone embarking upon the development of massive multiplayer games. It also represents the laying of one of the first foundations of knowledge necessary for the building of cyberspace.

I'm a part time faculty member at a Boston art school. At the school I teach a class on Digital Illustration using Painter. I myself use the Painter WOW! Book as an instructional tool, and it is actually a required text for the class. If you're at all interested in Painter, reading this book is one of the best things you can do for yourself, it's a must have! Cher's book does not just tell you how you "could" use Painter; she provides real world applications of the tools within Painter to show what you "can" do. Due to the seemingly complex interface, without this book, a new user could potentially be scared away from the application. The Painter WOW! will help you work through the entire application, progressing at your own pace. As for seasoned users, such as myself, you are sure to come away with many new tips and tricks; you'll wonder how you ever worked without them. I started buying the Painter WOW! Books back when version 5 had just been released. WOW! 6 was great, and WOW! 7 is better yet! Not only is this book chalk full of useful information, it's a visual delight. Bravo!

I love Painter--been using it since it was a simple black and white sketch program sold in an imitation cigar box years ago. But this program, which imitates art media digitally, can be a bit complicated to use.

Once you do get acquainted with the basics from the tutorial included with Painter, you can improve your layer techniques, web techniques and practice the projects in this book.

I frankly got this for the CD with extra brushes, papers, textures and stock material. But the ability to go through the examples in the book has improved my technique with Painter. If you use Painter 7 AND Photoshop, there is a chapter on combining the two. That's VERY valuable.

Highly recommended for Painter 7 users.

When I saw a recent review that said the book has only one portrait technique, I just had to point out that it has lots more than that! A quick search turned up "Sketching with Pencils" (OK, the subject is feline rather than human, but still it's a portrait, p. 64), "Drawing with Colored Pencils" (starting from a sketch, p.65), "Gouache and Opaque Watermedia" (also starting from a sketch, p. 84), "Sculpting a Portrait" (using Chalk variants, p. 88), "Oil Painting on Layers" (as the reviewer noted, p. 180), and "Cloning a Portrait" (turning a photo into a painting, p. 215). Wouldn't it be great indeed to have more detailed explanations of the pieces in the "Gallery" sections? But I'm afraid that would make the book too heavy to lift! The step-by-step detail in the techniques is great, and the "Galleries" are there to inspire us.

This book is a great asset in helping one understand and navigate the complex palettes that come with Painter 7. It really helps the artist fine tune and accomplish the desired effects for specific examples. It also discusses the various ways in which to start a painting, either from a photo, a sketch or from scratch. My only disappointment would come from the lack of details on how to achieve the truly great effects seen in the gallery images. I think this book is a wonderful tool for graphic designers like myself. But it really skims the surface on creating great works of art. I think a lot of people who buy painter would love to be able to produce portraits and paintings of their favorite photographs. This book only has one tutorial on portraits and it is oil based. It also spent a lot of time on effects for type, animation and web based graphics. Doesn't Adobe and Macromedia already have these areas well covered. I bought Painter because I want to paint.

I won't add much more to the previous reviews except to say "me too". The manual that comes with the program is very terse and often doesn't go into much detail on how to achieve a particular effect. The Wow! Book, on the other hand, is carefully organized to explore the software section by section, with LOTS of illustrations to us instruction-challenged people. You can use this book instead of the manual, IMO. And Painter is a superb program, it's nice to see it has a superb 3rd party book to support it.

This is one of those books that falls right in between, good for a screenprinter using photoshop, an good for someone who wants to learn Photoshop basics. The first few chapters is set more for a novice. Giving an introduction to settings an key tools. Once you started half way through the book, your learning good fundementals that you can apply to your screenprinting while using Photoshop. Don't just skip to the chapter about color seperations, stay on track an start from the beginning. By doing so, you'll either be brushing up on old tips, or learning a few new tricks to help become a better screen printer.

After searching far and wide, I cam upon this book and it is a great tool!

After getting frustrated with "Tutorial" disks from internet vendors, too messy, not organized.
This book by far gives you all the know how and insight how to use your photoshop 7 program for screen printing.
tips and tricks and all!
I highly recommend it

If you purchase this book just to learn about Photoshop 7.0, you may not get what you expect. However the way this book deals with the screen printing attributes of Photoshop, it has been an invaluable source for setting up jobs for the screen printing business. As an advanced edition of the already powerful application, it has proved extremely useful. I would highly recommend it to anyone with the special needs of the screen printing business.

***WARNING I AM NOT A SCREEN PRINTER NOR DO I PLAY ONE ON TV***

First off Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers is written for Microsoft Windows so you Mac users will have to translate, second it expects you to already have a RIP and a printer that prints on film to do the final output. Although it does go into output media such as Vellums (A semi-transparent media that is easy to print on like paper but shrinks like the dickens.) and Specialty Films or transparencies (A true transparent media that has been reformulated for inkjet printers and such.) the book does not really give a great deal of information about their use. That is the problem here, there really is so many brands and so many ways to tackle the job that you can easily get lost in the product information available and allot of the knowledge comes from knowing your printer and your capabilities and your press.

PHOTOSHOP FOR BEGINNERS
The book is laid out more along the lines of a typical Photoshop teaching manual, which is both good and bad. You begin with your basics in the Part 1: The Photoshop Interface, T is for type, B is for brush, blah blah blah. Then we have a whole chapter in corporate artwork Part 2: Creating Artwork and Logos and then on to Part 3: Working With Clients Files which from experience I can tell you boils down to telling them for the millionth time "No! I want you to save it as a J-Peg, No not GIF, NO NO NO this is not for your website its for a t-shirt!" and playing with computer color correction voodoo like Scanner Curves and Monitor Curves and the all knowing, all encompassing, Pantone Colors. "Well that red was not sooo red on my computer screen. What? You printed 500 shirts already?!"

COLOR SEPARATIONS AND THE DAMAGE DONE
Stuffed in the back of the book after page 389 we get to the big money shot of Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers, Part 4: Color Separations, here is where the price of the job and the amount of effort in printing come into play. The decisions you make in how many screens will be used and how many screens you can afford to make for the job effect the price you quote and the quality of the work you do. Will the image be photo realistic? Will the t-shirt be white or a dark color? How many Channels or colors will you use? How many stations are on your press? Is it automatic or manual? Do you really love your job that much?

So here the book separates the various tasks into four main parts...

SPOT COLOR SEPARATIONS
Spot Colors are for the simplest tasks in Screen Printing, used for images with very few colors involved and uncomplicated designs. This takes very little effort to setup and print and it is how most Screen Printers start off and make their money.

PROCESS COLOR SEPARATIONS
Here is where the going gets tough and the tough go mental. Process Color is used for all those photo realistic t-shirts you see at rock concerts, they are difficult to create, setup and print. This is also where you will find various companies such as $Fast Films$ and $Serichrome Seps$ selling you their software or their services. They are in essence selling you Photoshop plugins or Macros that do this task repeatedly, based on formula, for you. Just stick in the number of screens you want and the color of shirt you are using and there you go. Now it is great to have push button capabilities to do this work, but here you learn what they are doing and how they are doing it, so even if you buy a software package to do this task it is good to know what is going on and how to tweak those settings and Channels, that this software spews out at you, to your needs.

INDEXED COLOR SEPARATIONS
Index Color to me is an art form; it takes a more complex picture and limits the amount of colors to be used to only the main ones found in the image itself thus making it less complicated to print. You constantly run the risk of course or grainy looking prints and posterizing the image, it can be done though and I have seen some truly stunning shirts made using this process. Here is where the Screen Printer is balancing the limitations of his press against the gamut of colors needed to create the image, and the color of the shirt itself, benefiting the customer in price with the quality of work on the actual t-shirt, it takes skillz dude!

SIMULATED PROCESS COLOR SEPARATIONS
Not much to tell on this one, basically this is simply a hybrid between Spot Color and Index Color that is all.

PRINT DAMN YOU! PRINT! NO! GET ME THE AXE!
Now comes the weird part of Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers where I find the most problems. Why did they separate out the Part 5: Printing and not do anything with it really? This part of the book does not flow for me or provide the type of support someone using this book really needs. Most people going about doing Color Separations make a decision based on the image provided and then follow through from the choice to the actual printing of the film which is different for each type of separation process. In other words the separation process dictates the printing process.

Here in Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers they decided to make a whole chapter on printing again defining the four main ways to separate an image and then showing you the steps to print it out. In printing out the image there are some complex decisions to make concerning Screen Angles, Moiré, LPI, and DPI and there is allot of ground to be covered in making these choices. Unfortunately these choices are done again in the step-by-step manner (slide tab a into tab b) that is used in showing you the basics of Photoshop.

I do not find this layout helpful or very well titled or sufficiently indexed in the back of the book. Joli Ballew does discuss some of the more advanced, confusing, and critical choices of printing Halftones along the way in various side boxes and in-depth explanations but these are not readily found in the index. You are making the person find this information after you have taken them through the process of Color Separation and you have not provided a way to identify the different choices made in the process of printing. BAD MOVE! I would have plainly labeled and titled and indexed the steps for CMYK Screen Angles for Process Color Separations and indexed the hell out of it mind you, even if this meant redundancy, before providing the excellent step-by-step commentary and those great tips.

A LITTLE SOMETHING MISSING
What I see as my main complaint though... If your book depends on Photoshop 7 (Which is already outdated, such is the shelf life of Adobe software.) Why not splurge and give the nitty gritty about what brands of printers, Such as the Epson 3000 most people are tending to use due to the acidic nature of the particular Epson QuickDry™ ink used in this one *low cost model* (acidic ink and film: true solid black on film guys) and other various whys and hows of products they are using currently? Why not show how to use free Post Script emulation software such as GhostScript so as to save yourself or your company money? Maybe a whole chapter devoted to various cheap or free RIP software and how some RIPs do Halftones while others do not.

This is exactly where Color Separation can become an expensive experiment for the person just starting and where there is not a whole lot of unbiased information out there and it would have provided the ability to use Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers much more easily to begin with.

Sure, there is incredible information in this book if you already have access to a Post Script printer or RIP software and a professional inkjet or laser printer but making it cheaper or easier to get these items would have meant more people benefiting from the various instructions provided here. That would have been technically challenging but also a major selling point. Because lets face it, most people buying this book are not likely going to be able to personally afford the hundreds of dollars associated with some of this software I am talking about.

So if anyone is interested and ready for the adventure and the incredible headache in attempting try this free or 'on the cheap' get your Google going and type in the following...
GhostScript, Gimp-Print, CUPS
PRINTFAB


A SUMMARY OR SOMETHING LIKE IT
I hate being negative about Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers since it is pretty much a one of a kind book and in the end a very necessary resource for Screen Printers. I just have had to beat my head again and again and again over various topics provided in this book and in doing so have a different perspective about the subject matter. Hopefully there will be an update and maybe a rethinking of certain parts of the book so that it can only be even more useful. All in all it is impressive in the amount of information it does try to cover and it does so providing at least a solid foundation to start learning and researching the more specialized aspects of the processes and materials covered. Excellent Job!
I fully recommend Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers to even the most advanced users out there.

This book is essential for beginners and advances photoshoppers alike. Many of the basic elements presented are overlooked in other photoshop manuals. Easy to understand and loaded with valuable information.

This is one of the best "how-to" books on computer imaging that I ever read. Each example is complete in itself -- they can really hold my interet throughout. The steps cross-reference accompanying pictures precisely. Everything is Thoroughly and methodically laid out -- no missing pieces or glibbed over details to stump readers.

This book really allowed me to learn masking in Photoshop. The step-by-step instructions allow you to follow the descriptions on your computer and see the results. It is rare to find a great book in Photoshop that teaches you so much. I would recommend this book to anyone who seeks to understand how to do collages using the mask technology in Photoshop. You won't regret buying this book at all. I can only wish there is the same kind of book in Illustrator and Painter and all the other graphics programs I use so that I can have a better understanding of the full special functions that are embedded in each of those applications.

Greg Haun is a master of Photoshop special effects techniques.
I was fortunate enough to take several of his classes at the Pacific Northwest College of Art here in Portland
back in '94 and '95 when 3.0 Photoshop was just out!
Greg always showed personal interest in what you were doing.
Greg is a professional among professionals, yet you would never know his level of expertise unless you asked him point blank! He was a very humble guy and believed you could learn techniques from even a novice.

Because of those early years of study, I recently achieved my expert certification in Photoshop. I doubt that I could have done it had I not had the advantage of Greg's tutelage.
He made a difference in my life. I can't thank him enough...

This book is a must for the professional Photoshop user.

I was fortunate to take several classes from Greg during the early 90s when he still taught at the Pacific NW College of Art. He was very patient, very knowledgeable and a great guy. He always made time for you and always had an answer. This book is invaluable for Photoshop students of all levels! Buy it!

Mark Simon, Graphic Artist - Dex Media Yellow Pages - Portland, Or

As a certificate program graphic design student, I found this to be one of the best books on Photoshop, even though it was written prior to the new software versions. It is well-edited, and explains masking, layering, and blending images clearly and concisely with very helpful screenshots of what you need to do.

As all the collection of this books it is good to have this in your personal library to check out how filters work with different kind of pictures, of coarse these books are directed to professional photos, but you can maybe experiment with your personal as well, I just wanted to point that out because in the book the examples given are for applying filters to pictures you maybe wanna show or give to a client.

But as a reference book is just great, I mean someone took the time to write and visually show you all the filters in photoshop and as its name it is a real encyclopedia, where you can look every filter how is going to look like and then decide.

Buy this it will always be useful

Of all the things that Photoshop can do, the Filters option certainly is one of the coolest options available to users. Taking a digital picture or just a standard graphics file, you can use the power of Photoshop Filters to create unique art for whatever purpose you want. From a colored pencil effect to blurring images to one of the newest filters "Vanishing Point", this book is an absolute gem.

If you use Filters on a daily basis and want to see what can be done to take a normal image and make it stand out from the "blah" that is out there in the world, this book is for you. If you are a heavy Photoshop user but want to go beyond the basics of just resizing images and cropping pictures, you will also heavily enjoy this book. Of the 4 books in this Photoshop line I love each one of them and feel that all readers should rush out and pick them all up for their reference.

The only downside of this book really isn't a fair one at all, and that's that I wish there were more pages and examples dedicated to all of the filters covered here. Obviously this isn't a realistic gripe so it's barely even worth mentioning.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

For anyone who uses Photoshop in graphic design and or to correct or edit their precious photos, this book is a must have in your library of reference materials. It takes the mystery out of all those scary, misused, underused and never used filters in Photoshop by clearly showing and explaining how to use them and when to use them. This is one fantastic book.

The O'Reilly Studio put their thinking caps on for all ages and levels of expertise at Photoshop. The step by step instructions with options made this, as well as all their other Cookbooks, a delight to learn from and practice with, in an easy-to-understand format. I would love to see them come out with CD's for their books included.

To be frank, I bought this book because to get free shipping, I had to add one more book to my order of "Photoshop Cosmetic Surgery, by Barry Huggins. It was one of many that I could have chosen for this purpose, but I chose it because it appeared that it could illuminate in detail an area of Photoshop that I was interested in exploring in greater depth than I had previously been able to do. In general, I am satisfied with my choice, although there were some areas where I would have liked greater detail and explanation. This book is not for a newbie to Photoshop. It assumes a reasonable degree of familiarity with the program, and simply proceeds, without fanfare, to describe how to use the many filters and their settings. I recommend this book for a reasonably competent Photoshop user who wants to continue to increase his/her mastery over this wonderful and hugely flexible program.

A well organized, logical progression of accounting and financial concepts, taught and applied in a unified fashion to give the user a high level of understanding and control over his or her business. If you want to sincerly understand your business operations, to identify opportunites and to make it better, this book is for you.

As a CPA I found this book to be completely accurate and recommend it to all my clients. No book can be all things to all businesses, but this comes close.

I ended up looking for another book after receiving this book. It didn't seem to answer any of the specific questions I had regarding Quick books - It seemed to be more of a hardcopy version of the help function online which was a big disappointment. I would look at the online help in the software and if it works for you, don't waste your money on this.

A cogent resource for easily and thoroughly navigating QuickBooks. The author provides a comprehensive source enabling all business professionals to utilize QuickBooks for maximum business advantage. Highly recommended, its on my desk and should be on yours.

An invaluable resource for any business who
uses Quick Books. Concise, well-organized and complete
QuickBooks 2005 Bible is a resource we are already putting to great use in our business.

You've saved me from another deadline late-nighter. A short summary is in order: 1. Combo-box auto-lookup wasn't working 2. Read on-line help 3. Read Microsoft's Building Applications 4. Read O'Brien/Pogge/White 5. Read Viescas 6. Read p.346-7 of Litwin/Getz/Gilbert: Tah-dah!

The text is accurate and the examples work. I guess what made the difference is that the demo database was devoted to the specific subject that I was interested in, instead of having to wade through Orders or Northwind yet again.

Is there a Pulitzer for computer books?

I bought it when it came out.

Great book for Access97. Great chapters on string handling in the enclosed VBA book as well.

Werd.

Daily employed subjects, very good explaineds and an useful INDEX to found what you need. That is aplicable to the whole serie "Access xxx Developer's Handbook". I own all of them!. The best book about MsAccess.

These guys know their stuff. First of all the layout is a masterpiece. I don't know if the publisher should be thanked more then the authors. The font styles, size; page design is very pleasing and professional to say the least. The material is presented with a first person view. The "Event Model" is broken down so that you really know what happens when you create event driven functions. Coverage of VBA classes is a charm. An entire chapter for printer control is an award winner. I can't sing enough praises of the Access Developer Handbook. Pick up a copy and you'll see for yourself. Note: The book assumes you know some VB or VBA, and a light knowledge of the Access environment.

P.S. I only wish that the authors would co-develop a book such as this on MS Visual Foxpro --We desperately need one!

I've bought every edition of the Developers Handbook since Access 2.0, and convinced every employer of mine during that period to buy a copy, too. I used to be amazed at how I could look for the solution to some Access problem in three other books and never find it (or even clues that helped!); then I'd look in Getz et al and find the *exact* solution, on a silver platter.

In the past few years, I'll admit, I have on a very few occasions looked for something I didn't find. Once the answer was there, in quite thorough form, but I missed it because I looked in the index instead of the table of contents! The only reason I even mention this is that the Developers Handbook is the *only* technical book I've ever come across from which I have, almost subconsciously, begun to expect not just excellence, but PERFECTION! I realize how terribly unfair this is, but I can't help myself.

I'm pleased to see the scope of the Developers Handbook being expanded into SQL Server and Visual Basic, since high-end Access development can no longer be done in isolation from those tools. Having a resource like this one provided by Ken Getz, Paul Litwin, and Mike Gilbert is far from the worst reason you could have for choosing Access, SQL Server, and VB over some other set of tools.

If you're a developer and value your own time, you'll want this book. If you employ developers and you're lucky enough to have one or two who will actually *use* a book if it's available, buy this book now. The only way it won't pay for itself is if *nobody* ever opens it. And I'm not even sure of that. I think it might even make your developers better at what they do just by sitting on the shelf of their office!

Easy to read and follow. A good value even though it doesn't come with a demo CD.

Nice book. I've been an NLE dabbler for a few years, but never very serious about it. After finishing this book, I feel pretty comfortable with avid xpress, which was pretty intimidating at first. Good, easy read. I would have liked color pictures, though...

This is an excellent, well-written guide to the Avid Xpress Pro system, and while it can't replace the extended Authorized Avid Education advanced editing course, it is a great overview of the many different topics covered therein.

But, more importantly, it covers many things not in the official Avid training guides - things that after reading this book one feels really should be, like practical tips, tricks, and notes for a more truly professional end project. I would definitely recommend this for serious editors and people who want to get into the deeper strengths of the Avid system... it moves quickly, and might be confusing for a complete beginner.

I am just finishing up on this book, and after two solid days I have gone from no experience with avid to very comfortable. I don't know how well a new editor would do with this book, but if you already know FCP or Premiere this seems like an excellent way to learn all of the key concepts you need to run an editing app.
This is the best instructional manual I have come across.

I make my living editing digital video and this book is by far the best instructional material on Avid Xpress Pro I've seen. There are tips and suggestions it would have taken me years to figure out on my own. I'm doing better quality work in less time. I wish I had found this book two years ago.