Desktop Books

If you are looking for a general, introdutory to intermediate-level Internet book, this is THE ONE. It will give you a good grasp of Internet concepts. You'll find it quite up-to-date (including Windows XP topics), accurate and concise. Specially interesting is the fact that it provides you with clear explanations throughout the pages, including lots of helpful examples and procedures, giving the "how-to" for many, many tasks within the Windows family of operating systems and the major software packages available for Internet.
Internet connections, Web bowsing, e-mail, chatting, newsgroups, security issues and so on, are all well covered with lots of real-world tips.
Notes:
1.Being for the beginning- to intermediate-level reader this book does not cover advanced Internet issues such servers, firewalls, network OSes, and so on; 2.The book comes with no CD-ROM (what in part, explains its reduced price)

In short, if you read my observations and found this to be the kind of book you are looking for, I assure you: You will not be disappointed.

One more thing: I'm using the book to prepare for CompTIA's i-Net+ certification and I can tell you that I find it to be one of the best references books out there for that target.

Thanks Margaret (et al) for writing such an excepcional book.

from Maputo, Mozambique,
an Amazon's customer

Astrogildo A. Guetsa, MCP, A+,CST, Network+, CNST
Systems Admin. of MEDIMOC SARL

I paraphrased a chapter from this book, by Margaret Levine Young. It is truly excellent. It was a Christmas present. ...:-(. There is a chapter entitled _Classic Applications_ which covers UNIX Shell Accounts. There is also a phenomenal amount of info on the history of Usenet! A truly excellent book!

I am 70 years old, have used the `Dummie' and `Idiot' books, plus several more. Not having ANY experience with computers, up until 2 years ago, I go where I please and do what I want, thanks to the good books on the markey. This book, was the most expensive; but by far, the most helpful! (My wife thinks so too.)

I have learned sailing, chess, computor languages, photography, tennis, and other skills out of a book. Personally Photoshop is a very user unfriendly software package but also the most capable one as well. After getting this book 1-2 years ago, it has been used extensively. The directions are excellent and the clarity is remarkable. Without question, I would recommend this book to any begginer using Photoshop. There really is no better book. I still refer to it often.

Before I use a book, I give it a feel test. I'm looking for a useful feel; is it inviting, does it compel me to open it, are the pages easy to read, is it easy to navigate, does the index work? Julie King's Everyday Photoshop for Photographers, passes all my preliminary feel tests with high marks.

The pages are laid out so the chapter headings flip across the top in an easy to read fashion. They are large and descriptive, so when I searched for masking, I flipped quickly to Chapter 6, Selective Editing: Masking in Photoshop. The right hand page lists the Part section in vertical type. I really appreciate a book that flips well.

The information presented utilizes brief concise paragraphs with lots of bulleting and bold headers. Snippets of important information are specifically color coded to content, Remember(Blue), Watch Out!(Red), and Time Saver(Green). These are strategically placed with excellent information.

However, when working with a subject such as Photoshop, it is extremely important to visualize the techniques discussed with images reflecting sometimes subtle differences. There's just nothing worse than portraying Photoshop results with lousy pictures. King has an excellent collection of high quality images that faithfully reproduce the techniques discussed. They are bright, clear and visualize even the most subtle Photoshop effects. The qualities of the images are crucial to the text and often self-explaining.

Included are excellent screen shots of Photoshop's tools and palettes. They are easy on the eyes in the context of the text. Tables list speed keys for tools and commands. King also added Tool Tricks, more blocked snippets of ready to use information such as:

Press a number key to adjust the opacity of the next stroke you paint with the Brush tool or Clone tool. Press 0 for full opacity, 9 for 90 percent opacity, 8 for 80 percent opacity, and so on. To adjust opacity in increments smaller than ten, type the specific value: 85, 23 or whatever.

King provides a basic background on the use of Photoshop, how to move around within it, providing basic element descriptions using common, everyday language that a novice user can understand and relate easily. She discusses manipulating photographs via cropping and color controls, masking techniques, levels filter use to control exposure and color variances, remixing and replacing colors, fixing defects with the cloning tool and healing brush. Her text will be useful to the novice or the expert.

Mary Kuster
Member, D-MAG.org

This is the second book about Photoshop that I bought. I started with How to Wow Photoshop for Photography... when I found you already need quite a bit of foundations to work with this book (I will let you know how it works when I get there). So the following week I went to the bookstore and go through all the beginners Photoshop books I could find.
This one caught my atention and I have to say that it has totally opened my eyes to PS. I haven't finished reading it yet (four chapters to go) but I am already able to adjust exposures and colors with levels and curves, adjustment layers, crop without altering the quality of the image... Awesome, all that in two weeks! Every single effect explained in the text has worked for me. The flow of the book, although a little boring at the beginning (two chapters making selections), works very well (I had to go back to those two chapters many times).
Also appreciated the lack of technical language and the moderate sense of humor that keeps you up without feeling you are being fooled with stupidities.
Overall, I am amazed of the profusion of details, for both PS 7 and CS, Windows and Mac operating systems, tricks to speed and improve your work, pictures ilustrating the before and after of the technique and almost every step in between!.
If you have been scared of Photoshop as I was, this is your book. It will help you go through the basic operations you need to improve your photographies and prepare them to print or share on the internet.

I am so pleased to have found a book on Arts & Letters that I can understand and use! I have learned more about this program in a week than I have in an entire year! After working through the projects provided by the author, I am creating objects and manipulating them with ease. Thank you Ms. Ballew!

I've been using Arts and Letters since its inception in the early 80's, but I've never had a book on it. Finally one is available. Ms. Ballew has done a good job of getting all of the program in the book, and it really covers everything.

I use this program in my business and it works great for me. I like this book and recommend it for anyone who has the program.

Wow! this is the book I've been looking for! I've had Arts & Letters for about a year now and have never been able to find a book on it. This book explains all about the program and about all of the menus and tools too. I like the examples and the files on the cd, and I can tell that Ms. Ballew has been using the program for a long time. Thank You!!!

I recently read "Graphics Programming with SVGALib" by Jay Link and I have got to say this book is an extremely well written book on SVGAlib and general graphics programming. I would like to congradulate Jay on writting such a wonderful book and also suggest that anyone that is wanting to learn graphics programming or how to do graphics programmming with SVGAlib should pick up a copy. It will be a valuble resource/referrence to anyone who does graphics programming.

This book is an excellent tutorial, not just for SVGAlib, but for graphics programming in general. I wish I had this one 3 years ago. Oh, well.

Excelent book, I wanted to get a Linux Gfx Book and i found it, Excelent explanation of SVGALib and many Gfx technics to success. I was able thanks to this book to create my own GUI Engine for Linux.

Thanks Jay Link, Nice Work! .

This is a great book! For a fantastic guide on to how to make videos to bring about change in your community check out Video Activist Handbook, also available on Amazon. Here are a couple of reviews:'This book is about media that doesn't just cover activism, it is activism, a crucial part of the process of reclaiming public space and communities.' -Naomi Klein, author "No Logo", 'The Video Activist Handbook' does exactly what it says on the label. Buy it. Read it. Act on it. Your world will never be the same again." - Charles Secrett, Director, Friends of the Earth. For a full copy of this review click here "Cover-to-cover with the kind of advice that budding video vigilantes should heed: everything from basic kit to broadcast....Thomas Harding has laid out his information in such an accessible, linear way that his book could almost function as a blueprint for any form of activism." -Extract from foreword by Anita Roddick (Body Shop). For a full copy of extract click here "You must read this book if you are in any way involved in campaigning" Robby Kellman Greenpeace "A masterpiece of empowerment. Accessible, friendly, and well-informed. No environmental or social justice campaign group should be without this book... Buy this book. It's inspiring" - Peace News.

This book listed all the budget plans and how to spend your precious money. It contains stradegys on how to get grants, loans and even studio space. I wrote this review in 2001 so the book is alittle outdated but trust me It helped me alot. It goes through the basics of what you need in a camcorder, the production and all the equitment you need! I thought this book was great!!!BUY IT!!!

Roth's complete expertise in video is matched by his outstanding writing. If you want to shoot a video like Stephen Spielberg, but spend money like you were using a Kodak Brownie, this is the book for you. I recently saw a short movie directed by Roth, and I know that sometimes those who can do it also teach. Thank God he is willing to share his expertise.

If your looking at the cheaper books that offer over 500 pages for around $35.00, FORGET ABOUT IT!! These books from Noble Destop have less than 100 pages for $75.00 and it is well worth every penny!! Why, you ask? I bought Sam's Teach Yourself Flash 8 in 24 Hours, and after reading almost 100 pages, I learned nothing more than how to rearrange the work station. The larger manuals may be great reference books, but if you want to hit the ground running with Flash 8, this is the book for you! I'm a beginning Flash student, and I pretty much have to teach myself at home. Within the first 20 pages, I was already jumping straight into symbols, instances, motion tweening, text animation, actionscripting, and making a few simple Flash animations. This book is structured for people that like to learn by jumping right in. The class files come on a standard CD-R with "Class Files" handwritten in black Sharpie, and the pages are obviously all photocopied, but if there was ever a moment not to judge a book by it's cover, this is it!! I am so satisfied with this manual, I purchased the Dreamweaver 8 and Photoshop CS2 manuals from Noble Desktop as well.

I am a web designer who has also taken a Flash class at Noble Desktop, and I continue to refer to the course book while working on real flash animation projects for my clients. The Noble Desktop book includes fun and interesting projects that teach you how to create movie clips and buttons, and how to write actionscripts to control those interactive items (symbols). You'll also learn how to integrate Flash objects with Dreamweaver pages using basic Javascript. The CD that comes with the book includes all the completed projects, so you can check your work as you go along, chapter by chapter. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn how to build an animated website.

If you want to get up to speed in Flash quickly and easily, this is the book for you. Unlike some of those enormous tomes out there that purport to teach Flash, with this book you'll learn Flash in, well, a flash. It's all about the way the book is structured. If you signed up for classroom training in Flash 8 at Noble Desktop, New York City's legendary Web Design school, this is the book they would give you on the first day of class. Noble's courses are well received in the industry because the Noble teachers have luminous reputations for effectiveness. This course book was written by those teachers and you couldn't find a better how-to book anywhere. It's like having an instructor at your elbow.


Take tweening. Tweening, the Flash technique where one shape morphs into another, is one of the basic techniques for creating Flash animations. This book, because it's so effective and to the point, will have you doing tweens in an hour or so. All the other basic Flash techniques, from making text do an onscreen song-and-dance to creating genuine cartoon animations, are found in this book.


The price, at $75, might seem steep. But the Flash course at Noble Desktop costs almost 10 times that much so, in a way, you are getting a deal. Me, I took the course so I can tell you that you can't go wrong by trying out the course's course book. It's almost as good as the course itself and, in my opinion, far better than most of the Flash books out there.

Terry Dunne

Help please! I'm a longtime fan of Mr. Margulis and I've been dying for over a year to get this book. Unbelievably, it is out of print!!! Is there someone out there willing to share a copy? I'd even gladly pay for photocopies!

I've read two books and probably a dozen magazine articles by this guy (and look for new articles every month in various computer magazines). He's the only one who seems to know how to get Photoshop running on all 8 cylinders at once. This is a good Q&A book about what to do in all types of real life situations with Photoshop, often very simple concepts that seem revolutionary compared to the twirl-filter mentality of say, Deke McClelland (whose my 2nd favorite PS authority. Sometimes that twirl filter is handy).

Dan Margulis' "Makeready" is an excellent resource for anyone who works with Photoshop in a prepress situation. It is written in very understable and often humorous terms. This book has made my job much, much easier and helped me impress my employer and co-workers. A must read for any prepress people as well as designers who work with Photoshop. Also includes sections about the rise of cheap stock photos on cd and the proliferation of typography.

This book helped me learn to use this package in just a matter of days. The book is loaded with exercises that enabled me to learn by doing. I highly recomend this book.

This is one of the best technical books I have ever read. It helped me learn this complex topic in a short amount of time. The examples were clear and the provided exercises were great. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about parametric solid modeling.

This book will take the ACAD expert 1 step beyond. If you are proficiant in ACAD, this book will easily transform you into a Mechanical Desktop Pro!!

Groove

What is it?
A Tool Box for Project Managers or Information Managers
How does it do it??
Groove is set up with 10 to 15 tools that will assist in the process of infomation transfer. Each tool is explained to the "T", about not only how, but when & where the tool should be used.
Features glore.
The tools in MSGroove provide methods to track your meeting schedules, Meeteing Decisions, Meeting Notes and share the Project folders (Files), pictures, track issues, Alerts, project calendars, Integration of InfoPath forms, instant messages and the list goes on and on.
One important aspect is that the engineers realized you may need to use a specific tool over and over. Example is the calendar tool. You can create numerous calendars, for example, one calendar for each of your sub-contarctors, entering all the dates of expected work or information, then you can combine all the calendars into one complete calendar or combine any number of calendars together, somewhat like an overlay system adding one at a time to see if problems exist. Very Cool.
One small problem is that the sketch pad for doing your drawings needs to have an eraser for sketch errors
Groove can be a very powerful tool for any project PM or information manager. Combining this Program with "MS PROJECT" on the larger project side, provides complete project shareware anywhere.
Finally a ((secured workspace)) to share important information with your partners & Employees in business. Not only can you share information, you can also allocate responsibilities and see the follow up, through the use of the Alert system. This program works on a server or on any stand alone PC to PC. If your looking for better ways to control project information, this is your baby and Rick, John & Berry will take you through the information Step by Step.
My hat is off to the engineers of MS Groove.
Great Job Bill>"M"

Groove has been around for about 7 years now and since it was bought by Microsoft in 2004 has enjoyed increasing popularity and usage. What was always missing was a resource that allowed "Joe/Jane user" to really understand how to get the best out of this intriguing application.

Well, now you can quickly and easily make your self an expert or just a very competant user; thanks to this book. I have used Groove for a while and found some of the concepts a bit difficult to grasp. Groove is different and having an expert guide like this has helped me to open up a whole new world of possibilities and opportunites to use the tool to it's full extent.

If you have Groove (or are thinking aboout it) this is a MUST have!

A great book for the beginner to more advanced "Groover". The screen shots are very helpful as is the commentary. The book is easy to read and follow. A must buy!

Another excellent book from William Stanek! I nearly wore the first edition of this book out I used it so much. I bought the second edition as soon as I saw it was available.

William Stanek is the #1 Windows authority and for good reason: he's the best at what he does. I love his books. They are always clear, concise and useful. The book is packed with everything admins need for Exchange administration and has been the book I use all the time.

I'm always amazed at how much useful information William Stanek can pack into his books, and this is no exception. With 600 pages, packed with details, this handy pocket consultant is the definitive Exchange Server 2007 guide. Excellent for administrators, developers and anyone who works with Exchange.