Programming Books

Perhaps it's just in my nature, or simply just the way I was brought up (I'm always looking for a bargain)... but I didn't learn anything new from reading this book.

Having said that, Cheap Web Tricks! Build and Promote a Successful Web Site Without Spending a Dime is a book that covers a lot of ground making it a good point of reference for anyone wanting a site starting out from scratch. In fact, the first part of the book takes you through the process of getting a site online without dealing with all the unnecessary details that inevitably get in the way.

Needless to say, this was not what I was expecting when I first opened the book. I guess I was just blind to fact that the word "build" was in the title but I was hoping for a lot more pages on the promotion side of things, so that I could pick up a few new ideas on the way.

One nice surprise was the section on making money from your site as it wasn't something I was expecting. Not only does it give you an overview of the various different ways you can make money from a web site, but also realistic with describing the results you can expect.

This has to be the reason why I'd still recommend it for the complete beginner. Of course, the book simply isn't big enough to go into all the details, nor does it claim to, but it goes a long way to giving an overview of what's involved in owning a web site. For many beginners, this is exactly what they need to know before starting out!

I thought I was a web genius until I read this book. It is absolutely amazing. The author Anne, even responded to a question I had within the hour by email. If you want to build a succesfull website you have to get this book.

Never thought it could happen, but with the help of Cheap Web Tricks this formerly computer illiterate senior has created a dynamite website. And am actually getting inquiries already about the talents I apparently convinced the folk I can offer. Now I just want to get that money rolling in!

This one is worth every penny. If you are looking to see how the whole website experience goes together from planning the site, building the site, promoting the site and tracking the site then look no further. Martinez tells you how to do this and for free, in most cases.

As a webmaster myself I can say that "FREE" when used in webspeak translates to either limited or restricted or both but nothing comes closer than pointing you in the right direction than Cheap Web Tricks.

Some parts of the book may not be as in-depth as you would want but at least you don't have to go slogging through 10 or 20 different sources either. 5 stars for Martinez. Well done!

An amazingly thorough examination of just about everything you need to know about websites. I feared the book would be boring and a rehash of things I knew; that was not the case. The information builds nicely and there are many great tips. Even if you don't utilize the "cheap" techniques(which are excellent I might add) there is a lot of useful information. Hats off to this author!

I would not consider this book to be a "practical" book, where someone could find a practical advices, which could be straight used in his/her daily testing activities.
I've noticed this book on test designers' table and looked into it for several particular topics. It is pity, but noone of them contained useful info:
1. Chapter #7; "Setting clear phase criterias" (I read the Russian version book, titles in English version may differ): actually no any CLEAR criteria written, but some well-known measurable criteria critisized as non-practical.
2. Chapter #14; "Choosing defects management tool": 1 page of text without NO any criteria mentioned, on what particular functionality a tool should support for particular tasks.
3 Chapter #3; "Using emperical methods for rough estimation": most of methods are just reference to other books/articles (well, I'm surely will use it to find numerical figures for estimating purposes), all other text is a copy of project management methods applied to testing.

I need to declare, that I did not read the book from beinning to end, which saved pretty of my time, and may conclude that opening a book on 3 topics of particular interest and not finding a bit of usefulness - is enough to not recommend this book for testing professionals.

Rex Black helps you think about how testing can help your projects. In particular, the planning chapters (using the running example project) make many of the planning and risk management issues obvious. This book will help you determine which activities make sense for you to perform, how to analyze quality risks, how to estimate the work, and how to speak the language of the business (return vs. cost). If you only read the first seven chapters, you'll be farther ahead in your thinking about testing and preparing your group to test than you ever were before.

The prepare chapters (8-11) help you determine which people to select for your team, and how to prepare your test infrastructure, considering that test managers always have limited budgets, people, or time.

A particularly valuable piece of the perform chapters (12-13) is the discussion of how to manage the test builds, who owns what -- how to remove confusion from "which build do I test now?" to an organized plan of handoffs.

And in the perfect chapters, if you've been looking for a way to teach how to write test reports, chapter 14 is your answer.

If you're a manager, you'll use this book on every project, even if you only review the checklists to see if you've missed anything. If you'd like to become a test manager, read this book. Rex describes numerous ways of managing the testing and working with your peers across the organization, to become successful.

I highly recommend this book, whether you're starting a project, in the middle of a project, or completing one.

Sometimes a book comes along that just has to become part of your virtual profesional toolbox. Mr. Black has just given us poor testers another such book.
For me this book provides me with all the tips and tricks that I need during a project and that I would have to think of myself instead of just picking up this book and reading about them.
Even better, I now have an excellent source of course materials for our test engineers. Mr. Black explains and justifies every aspect of the testing process just about perfect and his gift for the metaphor makes this book a good evening read.
The checklist approach that he employs is a great planning aid. Our projections are much more precise this method.
I have added this book to our technical library for this project, and I will insist on making it part of every future test project that I will be part of. That is until Mr. Back publishes his next book.

Rex Black's latest book, "Critical Testing Processes" belongs in every test engineering library. Rex's book is logically organized; Part I, Prepare, embraces Chapters 1 through 7. He begins with a discussion of Planning, the first phase in the testing lifecycle, focusing on Quality Risks to assist test planning, He provides one of the best step-by-step examples I've seen to develop a test estimate. Rex sets the stage for us by showing how testing fits into the larger project context, and defining a 15-step testing process. He defines the context of his case study on the Sumatra project. In this chapter, Rex shows one of the nicer examples of the classic "V-Model" relating the development and testing lifecycles.
In Chapter 2, Rex explores the subject of Analyzing Quality Risks as the basis for his test planning, and shows a variety of templates and techniques that will assist the reader in performing this process, and links them to his case study. Note that using Quality Risks may have to be coupled with requirements/feature coverage on contracts with a government customer.
I believe that Chapter 3 (Gaze into the Crystal Ball; Estimate the Work Ahead), is one of the most helpful guides to Test Estimating that I've seen. Rex provides a variety of templates to assist folks unfamiliar with building a testing estimate.
Chapter 4 shows how testing provides "value-add", and gives the reader insight into aligning the initial estimate with the financial constraints of the project. Rex discusses ways to reduce cost by focusing testing based on the Quality Risks, in the context of the Sumatra case study. Templates, spreadsheets, and methods for calculating testing cost and return on investment are supplied.
In Chapter 5 Rex shows how to take the realistic estimate that was created and sell it to the project team. He also has a section titled "Predict with Honesty", which emphasizes the necessity for Ethics in our business.
Chapter 6 discusses the significant efforts in continuous test planning, It uses a variety of excellent figures to illustrate the author's points; however, note that there are 2 Figure 6-5's in this chapter, which results in the remaining figures being mis-numbered.
Chapter 7 goes into detail on how to get stakeholder support for the Test Plan. The Test Plan is the keystone for successful testing. Rex also provides an interesting section on what to do "When Key Players Don't Support the Test Plan" and how to work in a regulated (e.g., export restrictions) environment.
Chapters 8 through 11 are the section titled "Prepare". Chapter 8 on hiring testers is another area of the book not dealt with in many texts, but is extremely critical to successful testing. There are several parallels here to the Perry/Rice book "Surviving the Top Ten Challenges of Software Testing".
In Chapter 9 Rex provides pointers to career growth in a testing team, and assessing skills of the team members. He gives some tips on creating job definitions. He also addresses the challenges posed by having to accept team members other managers don't want, and use of contractors and consultants. Good chapter!
Chapter 10 gets back into the more technical side of test management. Through his Sumatra case study, he provides some insights into stress testing, and use and support of test tools.
In Chapter 11 Rex discusses details of approaches to test coverage, test design, selection and implementation of automated tools. He also takes some time to discuss approaches to "vague requirements", which is a problem most of us face.
Chapters 12 and 13 are Part III, Perform. Rick provides an excellent discussion of management of test releases in Chapter 12. This discussion is nicely illustrated through the case study. Note that you need to have the ability and a mechanism to UNINSTALL any release.
In Chapter 13 Rex defines a test execution process, and then goes on to show how that process works. He defines a set of test tracking worksheets, and illustrates use of the process and the worksheets on "the Big Build".
Chapters 14 through 17 are Part IV. Rex defines the Bug Reporting process. He describes use of this process through application to "the Big Build". He goes on to show how to, and how NOT to, report bugs, and emphasizes the necessity of describing one symptom per bug report. One caution in this chapter; Rex uses shaded boxes to emphasize points. Several of these boxes were misplaced in the book assembly process, so the reader needs to use care in navigation on pages 391 through 394.
The title of Chapter 15 seems a little misleading to me, in that it doesn't deal with writing a Test Summary Report (IEEE definition), but rather with the critical, on-going process of reporting test metrics. Rex focuses on describing the creation of a "test dashboard", and use of that dashboard for providing a succinct delivery of test status. Rex describes what I believe are a useful set of metrics charts. Unfortunately, the book assembly process resulted in Figures 15-2 and 15.3 being reversed, which led to much confusion on my initial read.
In Chapter 16 Rex discusses change management as it applies to bug fixes. The Sumatra case study is used to provide an informative view into the change management process. Rex notes that such a process must balance considerations of features, schedule, budget, and quality by assessing impacts from all project groups.
Rex concludes his book with Chapter 17 with some thoughts as to how testing can provide value.
Rex finishes up with a Glossary that defines his terms.
A suggestion for the interested reader. Read Rex's book in concert with the book from Drabick titled "Best Practices for the Formal Software Testing Process: A Menu of Testing Tasks". Drabick's book shows the reader "What to Do"; Rex Black's book shows "How to implement the What".

This book is written for the test manager and/or project manager who oversees one or more testing efforts. The author has done a great job of taking his own personal experiences (good and bad) gleaned from years of "in the trenches" work, and threading them together into a single fictional story that he uses to illustrate his proven method of managing testing projects.
Part 1 (Chapters 1 to 7) talks about the stuff you need to do to Plan for a testing effort, such as; convincing senior management that spending money on testing is a good Return On Investment (ROI), how to get a realistic ballpark estimate for how long the testing is likely to take, and when & who should get involved in the project.
Part 2 (Chapters 8 to 11) deals with Preparing for test execution; selecting test strategies & techniques, putting a testing team together (and keeping them together), and determining the appropriate measure(s) of test coverage
Parts 3 & 4 (Chapters 12 to 17) first focuses on perhaps the most stressful phase of a testing project - test execution. When the "heat of battle" is most intense; it's useful to have examples, templates, and checklists that a test manager can draw upon to help them manage and report on the test execution in a controlled and credible manner. The book then wraps-up by discussing process improvement; what went well, and what could have been improved (no witch hunts please!).

In summary, I believe Rex has built a very comprehensive and detailed composite documentary on how he has defined and deployed the most critical processes needed to support a software testing effort.

In the vain of "full disclosure", you should know that I've known Rex for many years, and consequently I cannot be considered a completely impartial reviewer.

The Delphi 2 Developers Guide is the authoritative source I consult for advanced programming topics in Delphi. This book is aptly marketed as an expert level book. It goes well beyond the scope of the "This is Delphi" books typically found on store shelves. An underrated feature of this book is its comprehensive appendices of error codes. I highly recommend this book to anyone serious about Delphi programming

When many computer books today are just a rehash of the documentation, this book stands out as a real problem solver.
Although this book is not geared towards the beginner, if you are serious about developing applications in Delphi, this book should be on your shelf. In depth explainations and real world examples make this book well worth the price. Specifically helpful chapters include explainations of Windows Messaging, the Win32 API, multi-threaded applications, OLE, and more. There are also some very good chapters on porting your applications to Delphi 2 (32-bit) and differences between 16-bit and 32-bit applications.
As a Delphi developer, I keep this book handy at all times, and I am looking forward to the Delphi 3 version

Xavier and Steve do an excellent job of delving into the more advanced aspects of Delphi 2 and Win32 development, without wasting a lot of time on the 'newbie' stuff. Highly recommended!

If you want to do some serious work with Delphi, this book is for you. I covers virtually everything you must know about Delphi. Thanks to the authors.

THIS BOOK is art of perfection. No more to say. THANKS to the authors

As a data warehouse practitioner for over 12 years, I was recently challenged at my current employer to help assemble a global data quality team and process. Having done much of the work before on a piecemeal basis, we made steady progress.

When I received my copy of "Enterprise Knowledge Management," I found two important things:
1. We were definitely on the right track, and
2. There were some things we had missed.

David Loshin has put together an excellent field guide to all aspects of data quality. It is very easy to understand, and contains practical, effective suggestions. Most importantly, it is a true "soup to nuts" guide to data quality. There is very little that you might need to improve your company's "knowledge quotient" that you will not find here.

I have heartily recommended this book to a number of people when asked about data warehousing and data quality. You'll not find a better handbook anywhere.

David has written an excellent data quality book. He focuses on a real works around data quality. He presents a practical approaches how to solve a different types of quality defects and also pointed out main quality principles. But reader must think how to apply mentioned principles and approaches in reader's organization.

Simply, good reading with application on a real cases.

At the time the book was published I worked as a data quality manager at the New Zealand Ministry of Health focusing on the implementation of the Data Quality Strategy for National Health Databases. It was a great help for us. We've implemented many of David Loshin's principles. Most importantly it helped us to understand that the majority of our DQ problems were not due to the poor data management processes, but because of the inadequate system's design or poor data model, which was either conceptually or contextually incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate.

Most of the literature on Data Quality focuses on the challenges of creating and maintaining a data warehouse. Thankfully, for those of us trying to improve the integrity of the information in our OLTP databases, this book presents a methodology which is not specific to any one data environment.

This book is packed with lists of cases to consider for each step of the methodology. Each case is nicely documented. Actually, much of the book is taken filled with the documentation for each case, which may cause a person to lose sight of the methodology that is being presented.

I am person who prefers to learn concepts. I am not as interested in memorizing details. Hence, I would read this book, skipping most of the documentation in the lists, instead focusing on understanding the methodology. Thereafter, I would use this book as a reference when needing information on a particular step of the methodology.

While I am not a technical person, this booked helped me enormously to understand the management issues that surround data quality. In today's world, I am shocked that more companies are not using this approach to save massive sums of money. This book has given me the tools to do so within my company. I highly recommend it!

This book is unusually well written and presented. I find myself reading up on areas that I hadn't even intended to learn about. In fact, I'm having a problem staying focused; it's like discovering a treasure trove of wonderful detail. I am especially impressed with the coverage of IL.

Without exception, the presentation of this book is flawless; Simon has an extraordinary writing skill and technique. It's like getting advice from a wise man. You get the right level of detail that's not academic and impracticle, but rather exactly pertinant for immediate use.

I've purchased a lot of books over the years - well over 100 - and this is easily one of the very best books I'm come across, which is why I felt compelled to come here and praise it.

With .NET 2.0 so close, is it worth buying and reading a .NET 1.x book? The answer, in this case anyway, is definitely yes. .NET 2.0 builds on 1.x, making the majority of the material in this book relevant for years to come, and as most professional programmers will end up maintaining systems that, for one reason or another, can't be migrated to 2.0, having in-depth 1.x knowledge (which this book provides in bucket loads) is a great investment.

Even for those that think they know everything about .NET, this book will still educate. I've been a .NET and C# MVP since 2002, and I still found this book a worthwhile read.

If you have read Richter and Lowey and are looking for the next evolution in your learning THIS IS THE BOOK. As the CEO of a .NET consultancy all staff are required to read three books. This is the final book.

Right now the market is in a sad state. Only 1-2 in 100 can pass, as my company's interiew process (most do not know the difference in a value and reference type) is very, very hard

This is one of those magic books that is easy to read and will make you 'team Leader materiakl'.

Either lead, or 'get uut of t ey;.

Damon Carr CEO
agilefactor.com

The first two chapters (about 100 pages) on IL are worth the price of the book. I'd recommend for those who really want to get a picture of what is going on under the hood in .NET. Some of the later chapters are a little lite like the one on cryptography and windows forms, however, the coverage on topics like assemblies is fantastic.

A pretty intense book. Robinson aims to take you beyond the elementary books on .NET and its affiliated languages of C# and VB. Those often focus on simple syntax level explanations.

Here, he goes far deeper. Like drilling into the Intermediate Language. The basis for .NET compilers, that convert source code in various languages like those above into this form. Like Java bytecode. (Alas, though, no cute CAFEBABE here!) So you can program at this virtual assembler level if you have to. Maybe you need to optimise some bottleneck in your code?

Garbage collection is also studied. Related to this is how to improve memory performance, including showing how to use a profiler effectively. Nontrivial subjects. Some of which, like the chapter on cryptography, really only hint at far greater complexity.

Most .NET programmers may not need to go to the levels of this book. But for those who do, it is good that it exists.

This is not the first book on Access to own unless you fairly comfortable with developing applications using another tool. Check out Wrox's Beginning Access 2007 title. But if your goal is to create an application to sell or use within your company this book provides all the info you need to get started and succeed. As a read it I recognized a lot of the tips that I had gathered over years of work and research. Would have been great if I could have just bought this book years ago. Section 4, "Finalizing the Application" covers great material; some knowledge of .Net would be beneficial if you are interested in DLLs (like resource libraries) or the build utility that comes with the book. Next to the Access Developer Handbook series I'd say this is the best book I've read on Access application development and deployment.

This book covers a ton of Access coding techniques in an easy to understand way. The authors use a friendly tone with good, clear code examples. I particularly liked the chapters on adding advanced functionality to reports and forms, and the pragmatic security discussion. I'm an Access MVP and have been developing in it for years, but I still learned some cool new techniques from this book.

I recommend Access 2007 Programming by Rob Cooper and Michael Tucker to anyone wanting to start creating data applications in MS Access 2007. The style of the book makes it easy to understand the concepts that the authors intend the reader to learn. They cover all aspects of creating a robust application.
Chapter 6: Using SQL to Retrieve Data and Manipulate Objects is very informative and will help the developer learn how to best use SQL to make an application more efficient.
The book is a great value and a great addition to any Access users library.

I don't know how much I can add to the information that has already been said, but ... here goes. Expert Access 2007 Programming has been written extremely well: very clear examples, great screen shots, and verbage that real people use! The topics discuss are what many developers crave .. API calls, Automation, Late vs Early binding, Working with the Registry, the list just goes on and on! ...

I make the claim that this book will be legendary simply because it covers so much and presents it so well. I am sure MANY will use its wealth of information well into the future and beyond Access 2007.

Brent Spaulding
aka: datAdrenaline
Access MVP

As I was reading through this book, it became clear to me that this is one book anyone who develops in Access should have.

The book is written true to Rob and Michael's form: The content is clear and the information useful. I enjoyed discovering new "toys" in the debugging chapter, and the error logging code is a gem that will be utilized in deployed applications. Going through the Add Advanced Functionality to Forms and Add Advanced Functionality to Reports chapters was like walking into a candy store that carries your long lost favorite childhood candy -- a joy. The ribbon chapter enhanced the knowledge I had prior to reading it. I was first introduced to Ribbon customization while listening to Rob [passionately] presenting the topic in an Access developers' group, and this chapter built on that presentation.

If you want to get a book that will expand your knowledge on Access programming, this is the book to buy. Access 2007 Programming is a well worth resource to own.

This is a great book. Only until you work with it will you find how good it is. My favorite thing in this book is what the author calls contraction mirroring and is discussed in chapters 4,5,6,8.

If you want to read this book, there are a couple of recommendations from me:

First, review your math: number systems, mods, logarithms, trigonometry, functions.
Second, prepare yourself for a book that is packed with information in each line. Don't expect even a line skip unnecessary.
Third, if you want to make a full use of book, don't read it and put it aside. You have to bear with the author and work out the examples. These two facts, combined with your willing to analyze the code algorithms will make you learn the fractals -relatively- deeply.

The bonus fact is that the authour explains how to create your own fractals in the last chapter.

As "the cons" I can say that the turbo basic programs are outdated. They need a good revision, possibly a port to C, Java (or maybe Ruby for the fans). In my opinion, a clean C code would do the trick.

Finally here is the chapter list:

i. Preface
ii. Acknowledgements
iii. Introduction

1. Counting and Number Systems
2. Numbers and Points
3. Meanders and Fractals
4. Spirals, Trees and Stars
5. The Analysis of a Fractal
6. Chance in Fractals
7. Poincare, Julia, Mandelbrot
8. Making Your Own Fractals

Appendix A. Complex Numbers
Appendix B. Programs
Bibliography
Index

In all my library of fractal books this one stands out as the most enlightening and the most useful. Hans Lauwerier is a master of Chaos and fractal theory. His method of analysis of IFS fractals is the best. He is just publishing a new book that should be rewarding as well.

This book is nicely written, well-organized and beautifully illustrated. It introduces most of the standard topics with a minimum of math, for example, iterated function systems, chaos, Mandelbrot and Julia sets, and random fractals. Among introductory semi-formal treatments of fractals I have seen, it strikes the best balance between concision, simplicity, and mathematical detail.

However, this somewhat dated volume needs a revision to upgrade the code from Basic to, say, Java. When the book was first published, microcomputers were relatively weak. Consequently, the book makes a few digressions into some rather involved algorithms designed to minimize memory use. Of course, today's machines are much more powerful. It is a lot simpler to use recursion (although this uses up memory liberally) in the fractal programs.

Finally, I think that the geometry could be made conceptually cleaner by mentioning that a general similitude (of which a contraction mapping is one example) on the plane can be written as a composition of rotations, translations, reflections, and scalings.

For more substantial treatments of fractals that don't demand too much math background, see "Fractals Everywhere" by M. Barnsley and "Introduction to Fractals and Chaos" by R. Crownover. However, one should read Lauwerier's slim and elegant volume before and after studying these more advanced works--before, as an introduction, and after, as a delightful summary and "bird's eye view" of the subject.

This is a nice book that will start you on the wonderful world of fractals. Contains BASIC source code for you to try. Very informative, you'll learn about the history of fractals and shows you the many different ideas and mathematical insights about fractals. This is really a good starter book (though you need background in algebra and trigonometry to follow the math equations).

I learned alot from this book and I have been programing foxpro from the dark ages in 1991! These guys know their stuff. If you program foxpro for money you need this book.

Granor and Roche do an excellent job of explaining the treasures and pitfalls of VFP3. I found this book after I had been banging my head against a particular problem for several days, and was able to find the answer immediately, where no other book I had checked gave the answer. They document both how VFP3 works, and how it _should_ work. Most of the book still applies to VFP5, and presumably it will still be good under Tahoe.

Even though this isn't out yet for V5.0, it's still worth the freight. In-depth discussions of each command, property, event, method, etc. It's saved me hours of aggrevation, and I even curl up with it in my spare time!

FoxPro is both wonderfully powerful and maddeningly quirky, as is well documented in this excellent volume. Having used FoxPro to develop and support commercial software products for many years, I have a large library of FoxPro books, and this one is by far the best. It is exhaustive in its coverage of concepts, features, bugs, and documentation errors, and includes many excellent examples. If you are serious about FoxPro, buy it.

Although the book was intended for VFP 3.0, it is an excellent introduction to FoxPro Object Oriented Programming. It is intended as a short introduction and command reference and it does that well.

I have six or seven "analysis of algorithms" type texts and this is a favorite. From time to time when coworkers notice the title on my bookshelf, they give me some grief for it, but I vigorously defend it. It is a very practical text (as opposed to just theory). I have a bookmark in the section on random number generators and like to point out the a reference about one of the methods: X(n+1) = [a * X(n) + b] mod c. He refers to about 150 pages of Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming for an excellent theoretical description as to how a, b, and c should be chosen, but then summarizes in less than a page a "good" way of choosing them that yields results good enough for most uses.

I stumbled upon this great book in algorithms called "How to
Solve it by Computer" by Dromey. I came across it when I was
finding material on the classic work by Polya "How to
Solve it" (1957) which is not directly related to Computer Science.

Dromey has applied Polya's work to CS and has even dedicated
his text to him. Although the book is fairly fundamental,
the style is excellent. He starts with the most obvious (not
so good solution) and *incrementally* builds on that
solution till he refines it to the most optimal solution.

The book also discusses relatively advanced materials like dynamic programming and Longest Monotone Subsequence.

The book was written in 1982 when Pascal was prevalent, so
the solutions are in Pascal, but nonetheless its a true
classic !

This book "How to solve it by computer" is a must read book for those who want to be programmer. Dromey he teaches each and every problem in the easy and understanble way.He does't use any particular language to solve all those problems, he just uses psudo code engish like language. Any persona who wants to be programmer should first read this book and then only start learning Porgramming languages.

This book should be treated as Bible. It starts with very simple examples as swaping two numbers and goes in depth taking you along with it. I have not found anything as good as this in many years. It gives a beginner programmer much needed confidence very soon. It does not use much programming language (It uses pascal syntax...but pascal is almost English). If you are entering into programming field..start with this book. You will never forget "How to Solve it by computers" in your entire life. This book has no shelf life. You will never need this again....but you cannot do it without first time. Computer Algorithm teaching at its VERY BEST!

I bought this book in 1990. I still read it from time to time. I could not have been a successful programmer without this. I would strongly recommend this to anybody who wants to be a programmer. The first ever book you should read. I will save this book for my children, grand children and so on.

I've bought a copy of the translation of this book to Hebrew, which covers Hebrew contents in HTML pages, and it's my favourite and recommended HTML book.

Actually, I have two copies - one is always loaned to a family member or co-worker who wants to study HTML quickly and easily, and I'm surprised this book is out of print without a newer edition (e.g. HTML 4.0) coming out.

This small book covers everything about HTML in a concise manner. For someone who knows the very basics of HTML, every chapter is stand alone - no need to read half a book to get a specific topic.

The coverage is very good. e.g. many CGI manuals assume the reader knows the HTML side of forms and continue straight to code, even though most people want to learn both subjects together (how much can you do with a form that has no script begind it ?) - this book covers the HTML side of forms clearly, complementing those manuals.

Though a few of the chapters that dont deal directly with HTML (e.g. finding a home to your pages) are a bit weak, those dont make the core of the book.

I hope a new edition of this book comes out covering HTML 4.0 and fixing the weak chapters (e.g. giving URLs to sites such as geocities and giving a short hands-on manual on uploading pages).

If you use HTML or any related technology (JavaScript, CGI, etc), I recommend you put your hands on a copy of this book and stick to it.

I hope this book is reprinted. It is the single source book of code that I keep on my desk. I have recommended it everyone who asks and I am sorry to see it is gone!!

This book is probably the best and easiest-to-use HTML books out there. It's a little out of date now, since browsers have been updated, but I still use it and recommend it for quick reference.

I also use this book as a text, even though it is a bit dated compared to Castro's Visual Quickstart Guide (which I also use). The layout of the book is the reason it remains of value, and will so for years. For someone learning the basics of HTML, each two-page spread covers an HTML tag. The lefthand page describes the tag and dissects it, describing all attributes and values they can take. The right side shows an example of the code and how it looks in a browser. There is no clearer way to explain HTML for beginners than this. One caveat, though ... the appendix with the numeric codes for special and reserved characters is seriously flawed. If there is an edition for HTML4.x, the editor of that book had best make sure the errors in that table are corrected.

I've really enjoyed this book very much. This book provides a disection of each tag and a picture of the source code and the outcome. As a reference it's helpful, because it provides a clear and consise format. Plus, it'a a great size to carry around. Can't wait for the next edition!