Desktop Books

First part of the book while describing Distributed Systems, Middleware and EAI lays strong foundation for Web Services. Second part of the book provides an extensive reporting about Web Services Architecture, related standards, service composition and BPEL. Though at the outset this book looks like serving academic purpose but it also provides the great insight of the subject to the programming community.

This book is must have which draws detailed conceptual and architectural views on Distributed Systems, EAI and Web Services.

This book is a little more expensive than most of the flashy Web Services books these days but it is well worth the money. Set in small font and not wasting pages on chapters like "History of XML and SOAP" this book is dense in content on the architecture of distributed systems, including Web Services. We get to learn about the issues of distributed transactions and the differences between conversations, coordination and orchestration. The text is precise but nevertheless easy to follow. One of the best books I have seen on Web Services architecture.

You can find a sample chapter on the author's site:
http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/alonso/Web-book/Chapter-5.pdf

I am using this book for a graduate level class about Web Services. I like the books approach on giving you enough background about middle-ware evolution that makes it easier to understand what Web Services are trying to accomplish. Given that the actual technology (implementation details) change so much in this area the books approach makes a lot of sense. I also found explanations to be concise and clear.

Advice: if you are looking for a hands-on how-to book about XML this is not the book to pick up. Otherwise, if you are looking for a good fundamentals book that will help you paint a big picture of Web Services this book is great!

A very nice introductory book on Web services, much different from all the others on this topic.
Excellent overview of the problematics of service oriented architectures on the Web and of their relationships with their EAI counterparts (corba,rpc,..).

If you want comprehensive high level overview of today's enterprise software landscape, this is a must-read.

One of the best books which answers the question , Why Web Services?? Unique perspective on middlewares in general.

Do not expect any code examples or details of any particular middleware.

I loved this book. It is rare to have a computer book that you can read cover to cover but this is one. It is meticulously researched and written, with good questions and exercises at the end to test what you learned. The only thing I didn't understand was why there were only answers to odd questions, but it didn't really matter. Finally there were excellent online references for future learning. This is a classic.

As a Flash beginner, I found this book to be the perfect starting point: concise, clearly written, and full of practical advice for creating basic Flash animations.

Kay writes in an accessible and engaging style, walking readers through basic Flash concepts like vector graphics, the stage and timeline metaphors, up through more advanced topics like coding interactive behaviors and working with sound. Finally, he introduces readers to the basics of Actionscript, the advanced Flash programming language used to create more complex applications.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this book for beginners like me who are interested in getting started with Flash.

The Web Wizard's Guide explains not only how to use Flash, but how to design with Flash. Tech-manual writers are notorious for leaving out context when describing a software interface, which makes learning most programs difficult. Kay's down-to-earth writing style simplifies the process. He uses practical, realistic examples to explain the concepts behind each menu command. He teaches you to know when to use Flash, and when not to use it. Read this book to learn good Flash design and keep the product manual around simply for reference.

I am a busy Art Director/Designer who, at last, is making the necessary transition from print to the web. The Web Wizard's Guide to Flash by Michael Kay has just become my most recent bible. I just love this book and can't put it down . . . it's like having your own web wizard always at your fingertips.

Michael Kay has done a great job in presenting a lot of intimidating technical information in an accessible way. The instructions are direct and clear and the language of the text is simple and friendly--not loaded with dull or confusing tech speak. The format of the book relies on well honed step-by-step technical objectives which, when applied, give fantastic results.

Best of all, I have been able to use these lessons directly in my day to day layout and design process. After working through this book, my web pages are now alive with animated motion and pizzazz, finally breaking me out of the amateur design crowd!

I highly recommend this text as a must read for any web designer or student or teacher who wants to learn and apply Flash - fast - in a painless, easy-to-read-and-use format. It should also be made more available on book store shelves in general.

as a web design instructor, i've read many books on flash and i am always looking for new reference/learning material to recommend to students. this one covers all the important topics very well. from the basic screen tour up through the nitty-gritty of actionscript, this book does a fantastic job of breaking down a difficult set of topics for a beginning flash animator. i would suggest this book to someone just starting out with the program, or for a person who's self-taught and is looking for the 'correct' way to do something. definitely a good investment.

If you know what you're doing already then this book will help you do it better. I probably picked up 25 things I'd either forgotten or never knew with this book. O'Rielly's are the best of the bunch.

I use this book absolutely every day, whether it be for doing cgi programming, javascript, html, or configuring a server. I wouldn't recommend the deluxe edition however, as it's just plain silly to read books on CDs!

I am consistently amazed at then depth and quality of Orielly's Nutshell series. Other Win 95 books costing at least twice as much don't cover even a fraction of this one. I considered myself extremely knowledgable about Win 95, but this book has taught me many new things. One example is the coverage of shell scripting in Win 95 which I haven't seen anywhere else. This book deserves to be at the side of anyone claiming to be a Windows 95 "guru". Kudos to Oreilly for both the unparalleled quality of their products and their resistance to price inflation.

It was refreshing to see a Windows 95 book that was (1) not too thick, and (2) not "For Dummies." There were 2 chapters I especially like: first, the section describing almost all of the commands for Windows 95, with command line switches! Of course most of us can't remember the switches that go with the commands. I also liked the section that explained the internals of Windows 95 (the 7 layers), because I was curious as to how Windows 95 was built, and now I have some idea.

My problem with this book (which is why I gave 4 stars) is that it has some typographical errors. To me, that's a major turnoff. (What can I say? I'm a perfectionist.) Despite this, I'm planning to buy this book (I first got it from the library), and I think anyone who knows how to use Windows 95 should get it.

I bought this book on the basis of O'Reilly's well-deserved reputation and the book's reviews here in amazon.com. Thanks for telling me about it!

I used to enjoy DOS but never really felt comfortable with Windows. Only the lack of applications for good old DOS and Win 3.1 dragged me kicking and screaming into Win 95, where I never wanted to be, and so I've actually taken up Linux, which is now my main desktop operating system.

Thanks to this book, I've begun to find Win 95 very interesting, even though Linux is still more exciting. I've been enjoying this book so much that I read it now at train stations and bus stops instead of that half-read Rushdie novel which took me a lot of effort to prise myself from last month.

Yes, this book points out a lot of Win 95 tricks that I didn't and couldn't be bothered to know existed. My friends know me as a Linux man. I can't wait to surprise them!

If you're not very knowledgeable on how to use, expand, personalize, and tweak Yahoo!, this book is for you! Author Paul Bausch, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that will help you do just that, in ways you never dreamed possible.

Bausch, begins by showing you how to become a Yahoo! power searcher by taking advantage of meta keywords in order to return more relevant results. Then, he shows you some unique ways on how to use Yahoo! Web Services, including monitoring your commute for problems, watching TV schedules automatically for appearances by your favorite celebrities, and visualizing your music collection. The author continues by showing you how to use the hacks to reach out and touch someone. Next, he introduces you to the backdoor that Yahoo! has opened for developers. Then, the author shows you how people are using Yahoo! data in their own applications and have a bit of fun in the process. Finally, he shows you how to get listed and introduces you to other Yahoo! components you can plug into your site.

You can read this excellent book from cover to cover if you like, but each hack stands on its own. Here, the author intends to show you what's possible when you view Yahoo! as a platform and inspire your inner hacker to take a new look at Yahoo!.

Paul Bausch's YAHOO! HACKS: TIPS & TOOLS FOR LIVING ON THE WEB FRONTIER tells how to personalize and use Yahoo! In new ways, from using keyword shortcuts and advanced syntax to get more from search queries to customizing Yahoo! Mail, using its blogging features and file share programs, and even building applications using Yahoo! web services. Everything there is to know about customizing and tweaking Yahoo! is in this book.

This book contains a hundred hacks to get Yahoo to work the way you want it to work. These hacks include tips for getting the results you want from a Yahoo search, dealing with advertiser cookies, tracking your stocks, getting news feeds and news crawlers, using Yahoo groups, programming Yahoo using various languages including Perl, Java, PHP, and VBScript and even how to plot multiple points on map at the same time. Of course the biggest question for many people is how to get your site listed at Yahoo and there is even a tip for that. Yahoo! Hacks is a highly recommended book to anyone who uses Yahoo or wants to know how to really master it.

When Yahoo! was created in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo it was the simplest of web sites. Just a collection of web pages laid out in a simple unordered list, the entire Yahoo! web site was only a handful of pages with only a single, simple use: to list sites on the web separated out by the content they provided. Probably when someone today thinks of Yahoo! the first thing they think of is that it is a search engine. Well the 1st generation of the Yahoo! web site didn't even have that. There wasn't even a form field present, the only thing being a bunch of hyperlinks which navigated to more hyperlinks for the few sites that were in existence back in the day.

My what changes a decade brings.

When you think of the Internet today, probably the first couple of web sites that come to mind are eBay, Google, amazon and Yahoo!. It is safe to say that with thousands of employees and millions upon millions of revenue that Yahoo! is one of the greatest success stories on the web, and to think that only 10+ years ago this site was just a simple list that grew into so much more. Yahoo! has evolved to not only provide a way of searching the Internet, but it is now a portal site that provides News, Weather, Sports, Games... basically if you can think of something that you can find on the Internet then Yahoo! is a great place to go to start your web experience. There is so much to do and so many places to go when you use Yahoo! that it can become mind-boggling and that is where "Yahoo! Hacks" can be used to make your net experience the best it can be.

Providing 100 tips and tricks of how to best use Yahoo! to your advantage, Paul Bausch pulls no punches and doesn't skimp on the details. From learning how to use and customize 'My Yahoo!' to setting up and controlling your mail to setting your own personal TV listings, you can learn how to do this with this guide. From tracking your investments to created advanced searches that remember personalized settings to installing Yahoo! Messenger, you will learn the ins and outs with this book. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to discussing all that Yahoo! Hacks has to offer. RSS, blogging, Calendar, sharing photos... the list goes on and on.

After reading Yahoo! Hacks you will soon feel like there is so much to offer from Yahoo! that you could do everything you needed to at one web site and never have to go anywhere else! Now with this guide you can get the most out of your Yahoo! experience and have fun while doing it.

This is what Hack books are supposed to be about!! For all Yahoo! enthusiasts out there who want to learn how to use Yahoo! to the fullest, this is the book for you!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." That quote might apply to Yahoo when you look at all the mindshare that Google has garnered of late. It's almost as if Yahoo is irrelevant and Google owns the search world. Not quite, and Paul Bausch's new book Yahoo! Hacks - Tips & Tools for Living on the Web Frontier reminded me of all the good and incredibly valuable things you can do with Yahoo...

Contents: Search; Services; Communicating; Web Services; Applications; Webmastering; Index

Like all Hacks titles, you have a number of cool tips and tricks that you can do using Yahoo as your technology starting point. In this case, there's 100 of them that cover a wide range of topics. For instance, tip #39 - Monitor Your Commute shows how Yahoo can provide updated traffic conditions overlaying a map of your driving commute. Even better, those traffic updates can be formatted in RSS and put on your My Yahoo page. I did that one right away. Tip #83 - Randomize Your Windows Desktop Background shows how, using Yahoo's web services API and some VBA code, you can create a random Windows wallpaper each day. Just hope you don't choose a search term that isn't "work safe". :) The whole Web Services chapter shows how you can access Yahoo's API using a variety of languages such as Perl, PHP, Python and a few others. Once you get the basic core structure down, you open up a whole universe of possibilities in terms of programmatic integration of Yahoo into your applications. This is really cool stuff...

I've been just as guilty as the next person of getting all "Google"-y eye'd at other search engines and forgetting the site that opened up a whole world of internet realities. Many of the things we take for granted now were ground-breaking ideas that Yahoo was pushing in the early days. Having two strong competitors in the search arena will lead to even more innovative thinking as they play off of each other. I can see how the Yahoo! Hacks title could go into multiple editions without even trying...

Excellent read with lots of code you can use immediately. If you've wandered away from Yahoo for other pastures, perhaps it's time to wander back and see what other options are out there. Yahoo Hacks will expand your thinking as to what you can do with search engines...

Although the title doesn't mention Victorian, most of these designs originate in that era. They have influences other than the typical complex Victorian fonts. But they can be effectively be used with fonts from the other Dover title "Victorian Display Fonts". Well drawn, Mac and Windows, Postscript and Truetype...and what a GREAT price!

Weirdly, these fonts are all Gothic (actually blackletter), whereas the Gothic book in this series contains some Celtic (uncial) fonts. I think that the books were probably produced at the same time and mislabeled. Nevertheless, both are well worth buying.

The fonts included in this book will surely make a nice addition to your type library. Dan Solo had a huge collection of great old and new type faces. You'll find 24 of them here. Some, you might already have, and some are so nice that I believe if you find one gem here, it makes the price worthwhile. The fonts are in both Windows True Type and Macintosh formats. The pages have the complete alphabets and a character chart. Be sure to notice the "extra characters" that are offered in some fonts.

This is an excellent collection of 24 fonts, with printed examples and indices of the special characters for Macintosh (access to Windows special characters is described in the ReadMe file). They represent a fine collection of Baroque and Gothic lettering, but very little of the material could really be called truly Celtic. Any church could spice up its documents for special occasions with this collection. The `sz' of German formal text appears in a variety of forms. Also present are many other accented letters used in various European languages but not always included in more current fonts. Try it! Use it! There is creative material here!

I find that anyone wishing to learn 3D and solid modeling should read,"3D Modeling in AutoCAD" by John E. Wilson. The book takes one from UCS positioning and rotation, to isometric projected drawings in no time. Watching your solid model drawing evolve after reading several chapters, gives one a sense of confidence. Not to mention, a better change of landing that autoCAD job.

As a 3D AutoCAD instructor, I am delighted with this book and as a textbook! My students are successfully able to 3-D model most objects, independently, without emphasis on step-by-step directions. Althrough this book provides step-by-step instructions as Chapter exercises; primarily, each Chapter explains the variety of modelling usages for surfacing and creating solids. This book guides the student with alternatives to solving 3-D modelling techniques.

An excellent reference with very thorough, easy to follow explanations and exercises. John Wilson is an exemplary instructor, laying a solid foundation, and then building onto it in a logical manner. If you have any difficulty understanding "Paper Space", for instance, read John's explanation - he makes it crystal clear.

This book by John E.Wilson provides answers for a reader at any level of expertise. It gives you clear examples of useful problems instead of dwelling on obscure ones. All options of a command are shown and explained so you really learn to use the software to full advantage. I really like the detail because I can now pick up the other areas I never understood. I especially like the chapter on rendering and applying textures. I tried some of the examples and the rendered parts look real, especially the transparent ones.

It is great for teaching class on the basics of MS ACCESS.

Byron Giles
www.gilestechgroup.com

Each chapter is a Project. Project 1 took you through what you should already know about other Windows applications. I felt that I would not be trying to learn Access if I did not know how to use "Help" in other Windows applications.

Anyway, this was a great BASIC Access book. I did, however, have to send an email to Prentice Hall. After a week, I still have not heard from them. There are sections in the book called, "Discovery Zone Exercises". They let you figure out what to do by using "Help". Sometimes "Help" is no "Help". My advice to you is, if you can not figure out the "Zone" exercises just go on. I found one answer in the "Intermediate" book. Another at a book store.

With all that, the book is well written. They have you do the same thing more than once and sometimes in different ways. It earns 5 star's.

I am now starting on the "essentials Access 2000 intermediate" book. Look for that review.

I bought all three book, beginning, intermediate & advanced to use in a course that I teach in Theories of Database. My students used these books to learn Access on their own. The book is very clear with practical examples. It includes many hints and tips that help avoid many of the pitfalls that beginners will typically encounter. Gives plenty of assignments and examples. My only complaint in that the binding on the spiral addition is pretty flimsy. I highly recommend this book for beginners or for teachers looking for a good access "workbook".

Great way to learn Access basics. Interesting examples, lots of stuff to help you along, plus neat tips and pitfalls. Good CD for practice.

This book is compatible for Access 2007 and 2003(title of book doesn't let you know that), what it does is answer questions that the author poses. Many of these scenarios are relevant. I have never bought an o'reilly cookbook previously, but this book is very refreshing especially when you look at the current books out there. This book isn't for new people, this book is for people who want real solutions to the problems that they might face. If your looking for a first book to get a real grasp of access, get Access 2007 Inside and Out, if your someone who has read a book or two, or has some experience but still runs into hurdles in data manipulation, get this book.

Any involved in database management in general and Access in particular will want the ACCESS DATA ANALYSIS COOKBOOK, a survey which shows how to solve common problems of extracting data and performing calculations from large databases. From developing better queries and applying them to inserting, updating and deleting data to managing text-based data and using arrays, this offers a wealth of high-level technical Access information perfect for managers who already have the basics down.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I am not sure if this was the intention of the authors, but I find this book to be amazingly helpful given my set of circumstances: I am pretty skilled in Excel and very new to Access, and I want to use Access in the same way I use Excel, but with much larger quantities of data. Of all the Access books I have been referencing, this one is by far the most useful. It provides lots of information on SQL if you are interested, but I'm ignoring that for now and still the book is great at providing the answers I need. I suspect there are lots of people in my shoes (heavy Excel background, but little experience with Access) and so I want to let you know about this excellent reference. I hope it helps you as much as it is helping me!

To be more specific, if you are skilled at constructing formulas in Excel to convert and reformat and analyze data, and you have at least a rudimentary understanding of Access (I have attended a few 2-hour workshops and that's all), and you find yourself stumped in terms of how to do something in Access that would be easy for you to do in Excel, but you can't do it in Excel because you have millions of rows of data, then I'm guessing you will love this book.

This book is not about designing forms, primary keys, or the use of built-in wizards to make easy queries or reports. This book is about applying Access to real-world business problems. The book addresses how to query data, how to move data to and from Access in various ways, the calculation of different financial and investment terms, and other such problems. The reader of this book should already have some Access experience and thus know how to get around the Access user interface, know basic table structures and relations among them, and how to construct simple queries. As long as you know this much or more, the book should be quite useful to anyone interested in business solutions using Access to analyze the data that is involved. The book consists of a series of recipes that provide example queries, programming tips, and also some requisite math. The following is a summary of each chapter's contents. Each section of each chapter is actually a recipe consisting of a problem - the section title - and its solution(s).

1. Query Construction - A variety of query issues are addressed, including the use of the AND, OR, IN, and NOT operators; creating union queries; and understanding join types.
1.1. Finding Unmatched Records
1.2. Making AND and OR Do What You Expect
1.3. Working with Criteria Using the IN Operator
1.4. Excluding Records with the NOT Operator
1.5. Parameterizing a Query
1.6. Returning a Top or Bottom Number of Records
1.7. Returning Distinct Records
1.8. Returning Random Records
1.9. Fine-Tuning Data Filtering with Subqueries
1.10. Combining Data with Union Queries
1.11. Inserting On-the-Fly Fields in Select Queries
1.12. Using Aliases to Simplify Your SQL Statements
1.13. Creating a Left Join
1.14. Creating a Right Join
1.15. Creating an Outer Join

2. Calculating with Queries - More on using queries to find solutions to business problems. It demonstrates how to apply aggregate functions, custom functions, regular expressions, and crosstabs.
2.1. Finding the Sum or Average in a Set of Data
2.2. Finding the Number of Items per Group
2.3. Using Expressions in Queries
2.4. Using Custom Functions in Queries
2.5. Using Regular Expressions in Queries
2.6. Using a Cartesian Product to Return All Combinations of Data
2.7. Creating a Crosstab Query to View Complex Information

3. Action Queries - How to apply queries to perform activities such as inserting, updating, and deleting data.
3.1. Running an Update Query
3.2. Appending Data
3.3. Deleting Data
3.4. Creating Tables with Make-Table Queries

4. Managing Tables, Fields, Indexes, and Queries - Introduces how to programmatically create and manipulate tables and queries.
4.1. Creating Tables Programmatically
4.2. Altering the Structure of a Table
4.3. Creating and Using an Index
4.4. Programmatically Removing a Table
4.5. Programmatically Creating a Query

5. Working with String Data - Recipes on managing text-based data. Shows how to isolate parts of a string, how to remove spaces at any place in a string, and how to manipulate numbers stored as text.
5.1. Returning Characters from the Left or Right Side of a String
5.2. Returning Characters from the Middle of a String When the Start Position and Length Are Known
5.3. Returning the Start Position of a Substring When the Characters Are Known
5.4. Stripping Spaces from the Ends of a String
5.5. Stripping Spaces from the Middle of a String
5.6. Replacing One String with Another String
5.7. Concatenating Data
5.8. Sorting Numbers That Are Stored as Text
5.9. Categorizing Characters with ASCII Codes

6. Using Programming to Manipulate Data - How to use arrays, access the Windows Registry, encrypt data, and use transaction processing. Also covered are search methods, charts, and manipulating data relationships.
6.1. Using Excel Functions from Access
6.2. Working with In-Memory Data
6.3. Working with Multidimensional Arrays
6.4. Sorting an Array
6.5. Flattening Data
6.6. Expanding Data
6.7. Encrypting Data
6.8. Applying Proximate Matching
6.9. Using Transaction Processing
6.10. Reading from and Writing to the Windows Registry
6.11. Creating Charts
6.12. Scraping Web HTML
6.13. Creating Custom Report Formatting
6.14. Rounding Values
6.15. Running Word Mail Merges
6.16. Building a Multifaceted Query Selection Screen

7. Importing and Exporting Data - Different ways of moving data into and out of Access. Covers import/ export specifications, using the FileSystemObject, XML with XSLT, and communicating with SQL Server. Exchanging data with other applications in the Office suite is also covered. Also covers how to create an RSS feed.
7.1. Creating an Import/Export Specification
7.2. Automating Imports and Exports
7.3. Exporting Data with the FileSystemObject
7.4. Importing Data with the FileSystemObject
7.5. Importing and Exporting Using XML
7.6. Generating XML Schemas
7.7. Using XSLT on Import or Export
7.8. Working with XML via the MSXML Parser
7.9. Reading and Writing XML Attributes
7.10. Creating an RSS Feed
7.11. Passing Parameters to SQL Server
7.12. Handling Returned Values from SQL Server Stored Procedures
7.13. Working with SQL Server Data Types
7.14. Handling Embedded Quotation Marks
7.15. Importing Appointments from the Outlook Calendar
7.16. Importing Emails from Outlook
7.17. Working with Outlook Contacts
7.18. Importing Data from Excel
7.19. Exporting Data to Excel
7.20. Talking to PowerPoint
7.21. Selecting Random Data

8. Date and Time Calculations - How to add time, count elapsed time, work with leap years, and manage time zones in your calculations.
8.1. Counting Elapsed Time
8.2. Counting Elapsed Time with Exceptions
8.3. Working with Time Zones
8.4. Working Around Leap Years
8.5. Isolating the Day, Month, or Year
8.6. Isolating the Hour, Minute, or Second
8.7. Adding Time

9. Business and Finance Problems - Ways of calculating depreciation, loan paybacks, and return on investment are introduced, and investment concerns such as moving averages, Head and Shoulders patterns, Bollinger Bands, and trend calculations are discussed. One recipe explains how latitude and longitude are used to determine distances between geographical areas.
9.1. Calculating Weighted Averages
9.2. Calculating a Moving Average
9.3. Calculating Payback Period
9.4. Calculating Return on Investment
9.5. Calculating Straight-Line Depreciation
9.6. Creating a Loan Payment Schedule
9.7. Using PivotTables and PivotCharts
9.8. Creating PivotTables
9.9. Charting Data
9.10. Finding Trends
9.11. Finding Head and Shoulders Patterns
9.12. Working with Bollinger Bands
9.13. Calculating Distance Between Zip Codes

Chapter 10. Statistics - The most math intensive of the chapters, it discusses statistical techniques such as frequency, variance, kurtosis, linear regression, combinations, and permutations. All the recipes here have great value in data analysis.
10.1. Creating a Histogram
10.2. Finding and Comparing the Mean, Mode, and Median
10.3. Calculating the Variance in a Set of Data
10.4. Finding the Covariance of Two Data Sets
10.5. Finding the Correlation of Two Sets of Data
10.6. Returning All Permutations in a Set of Data
10.7. Returning All Combinations in a Set of Data
10.8. Calculating the Frequency of a Value in a Set of Data
10.9. Generating Growth Rates
10.10. Determining the Probability Mass Function for a Set of Data
10.11. Computing the Kurtosis to Understand the Peakedness or Flatness of a Probability Mass Distribution
10.12. Determining the Skew of a Set of Data
10.13. Returning a Range of Data by Percentile
10.14. Determining the Rank of a Data Item
10.15. Determining the Slope and the Intercept of a Linear Regression
10.16. Measuring Volatility

One final word of advise is to purchase "Head First SQL" or some other good book on SQL if you don't already feel proficient. Although the book briefly explains each query it shows, I don't think the explanation is sufficient unless you see the stuff every day. A good thing about the book is that it shows screenshots of the application in just about every recipe and usually gives directions in clear numbered steps.

As a novice web page designer, this manual provided detailed, hands-on instructions that were easy to follow on everything from basic page creation to adding more complex design elements. The manual's format and structure is easy to follow and was valuable both as a primer becoming familiar with the software, and as a reference tool now that I've become more comfortable with the software. A great, practical resource for anyone using Dreamweaver.

As a graphic designer who does web sites only occassionaly, I use my manual extensively when I forget a Dreamweaver technique. It's easy-to-understand, clear content is a great guide.

I've used this manual extensively to create my own website and I refer to it over and over again for quick reminders on the Dreamweaver application. I had first purchased "Dreamweaver the Missing Manual" and "Dreamweaver Visual Dictionary" but found this Noble Desktop manual easier to follow. It has concise instructions and tutorials that are very useful and needed knowledge when designing in Dreamweaver. Whether you are looking for just a basic intro or a more indepth look at some of the bells and whistles of Dreamweaver, this manual is a must have.

the book gives you step by step (hence the name) commands to work on your own to create your own web sites. I was able to do it, although the complexity of the program precludes it from being effortless (would that it were). And the manual didn't have dummies in the title. Boy did i feel smart

I was also able to attend a tutorial session by the folks at Noble Desktop and I have to say that they are very thorough and consise in their direction for people like me who have always had a problem with this particular program. I was even able to go home and follow the easy step by step directions that are illustrated in the training books. They are highly recommended.

This workbook is a great learning tool if you're just starting out in flash. There is a cd included that has files and activities for you to work from. The book is very clear and gives you helpful tips throughout. You'll learn the very basics from using the tool palette to applying sound and inserting video. Overall, well worth the money.

Just like the classes given at Nobledesktop, the training manual is straightforward and easy to understand and follow. The exercises are practical, giving you the tools to get up and running quickly and to accomplish tasks that you will use daily in real life Flash production. Heavily illustrated. Gives instructions for both MAC and WINDOWS users.

After struggling forever with Flash, I just wanted a book that explained everything in a straightforward manner. I didn't want to read a 500 page manual to get what I wanted. This book was exactly what I needed. It's not that long, and just tells you what to do to make a simple animation. Basically it walks you through a lot of great examples and once you're done you can go do your own stuff. I feel like I *finally* get this program!