Web Books

The Definitive Guide to Actionscript by Colin Moock is a must have for anyone serious about Actionscript. Moock explains object oriented programming with ease. There are many samples and examples making this book easily accessible to a wide range of programmatic abilities. This book is a great learning resource and also serves as a reference for developers.

i dont need to say more, I even pre orderd the second edition allready

It's all good... lot's of info, examples, details, etc etc...
I do have to comment though that everything you find in this book is EASILY found and sometimes in a way more deep and detailed manner in the Macromedia Flash Help section and in www.macromedia.com Flash support section... I would not consider this an essential book even though one feels secure to have it close...

Nice book, found it pretty pleasant at first, but it was too easy to digest (six, seven hours and you can toss it over your shoulder). The real answers I need (mostly dealing with movie clip behaviours) are only vaguely explained or absent and I found the book more of a frustration than otherwise from about 1 week onwards.

Having said this, there doesn't appear to be any other title for Flash that caters to those whose programming knowledge exceeds their experience as a graphical design user.

Finally, an actionscript guide that is superb in its production! My hat is off to Colin and Gary for this detail-oriented volume that has cleared the smoke out of my head and has made a programmer out of an artist.

Bravo!!!

If you find yourself stumped with how to improve your website, or don't know where to begin with looking at web statistics, this book has everything. It begins with going through the foundation of what web analysis really is and definitions and explanations of different metrics and how they can be useful. He then goes into detail with different metrics such as bounce rate, segmentation, and some things you probably never considered. It steps you through knowing what analytics tool to use and how to implement it. It has wonderful examples and sample reports that you can tailor to your own company.

This book is very actionable. I can only speak from a beginner's perspective, but this book is easy to follow and has golden nuggets that even experienced web statisticians can take another look at. The highest recommendation possible from me. I will be waiting for another of Avinash's books.

Thank you, Avinash! Avinash has done the impossible: he's made analytics fun, easy-to-understand, and clearly communicated how analytics is even more important than many of us have treated it. Avinash's "Trinity" approach of creating actionable insights & metrics from focusing on the right clickstream data, doing the right kind of customer research, all of which leads to knowing how to produce the right kind of dashboard. If you buy only one book on analytics, this has to be it.

In depth, easy to read, detailed from a web analytics pro. My only complaint is that he should identify himself as the Evangelist for Google Analytics. He recommends GA because it's free, but he should make it clear that companies that use GA are providing confidential company data to Google that could be used against them in the pricing of keywords.

I have read several web analytics books and Avinash's book is definitely the one I would recommend first.

What you can learn from the book:
- how to think about and how to approach web analytics -- this is where this book excels
- how to deliver actionable results - the mantra of Avinash
- how to start with the basic metrics

What not to expect from this book:
- you will not learn how to use any analytics software
- you will not learn details about the technical aspects, frequent problems with data and measurement, what to avoid etc.

Check out Avinash's blog to get a picture of what you can get from the book.

Before I begin I must apologize for the length of this review, I suffer from acute conciseness deficiency.

Avinash's greatest strength is his humility, and it comes through in this book and his blog in spades. All too often the broader analytic community (which I include myself in), is so caught up in its metrics, graphs, charts, esoteric calculations and acronyms that we forget that our fundamental purpose is to inform and assist in change. Even if we do not lose sight of that goal, we get so caught up in our analysis that we begin to think we know better than anyone else, including the people buying our products/consuming our content.

With the risk of sounding terse, Avinash cuts through all of that crap to right the ship as it were, and his resulting material can be summarized in 5 points.


1. Customers know best - should be self evident but really isn't (get over yourself and start trying to figure out what the customers want because you really don't know).


2. Capture data that can assist said customers - in other words, if the data and other pretty charts you are constructing cannot lead to an insight or action that will assist your customers; you're wasting your time. Yes, even that amazingly color coded spreadsheet with pivot tables and charts bursting out of every cell.


3. Quantitative data is limited in what it can tell you - another pitfall of the analytic community is that we're so caught up in numbers that we rarely stop to consider the source or validity of our observations, a particularly fatal flaw in an emerging industry with less than ideal methods of capture.


4. Context is king - When it comes to data, context is everything and a second piece of data, incorporated with the first, can have powerful effects. As a quick example, page hits, combined with bounce rate (a metric that measures how many people left your page within a predetermined interval), can indicate how many people are truly coming to your website to engage in its content). In other words, if you achieve a 100% increase in hits but 90% of them "bounce", you're not doing as well as if the same site achieved an 80% increase in hits with a 40% bounce rate. A very different conclusion would have been drawn if hits alone were observed in this case.


5. Qualitative data is a key piece of the puzzle - as a corollary of #3, a truly effective analysis of a website will utilize qualitative and quantitative data to help inform ones decisions.



Avinish then does an excellent job of showing how one can go about creating, analyzing and acting out ones web analytics strategy within the framework laid out above. If one has even a cursory understanding of how a website is built and therefore how to input a simple tag into the relevant pages, one can utilize this book to get started analyzing their web traffic in a meaningful way, for free, this instant. In addition, and more importantly, you will have formulated the solid framework and understanding necessary to adapt as the industry changes, something it does at an exciting/terrifying pace. An excellent read.

If your a Java 2 developer then you need this on your bookshelf. It contains an enormous amount of useful information, examples, etc. for all the classes in java.applet, java.awt, and java.beans. You gotta have it!

The 1.st sentence of the preface says: "This book is intended as a reference rather than a tutorial". Well for an experienced Java programmer this is certainly true, but for a novice who has just grasped the fundamentals of the language and starts to write down his first lines of code this book is an excellent tutorial. Every class has a description and practically every method of every class has its example code where nearly every line is documented, with links to related methods. Looking into these examples one can quickly learn tips and tricks smoothing the learning curve a lot. The Chan's book is miles ahead, in my opinion, the unuseful example codes one can freely download from the Sun's internet pages, full of magic words comining from blue skyes not documented at all, where one has to figure out what any of them is useful for and where you are on your own. One more time: what I say is true for a novice; the senior Java programmer may feel at his ease with the API's documentation of the Sun's JDK.
My last warning: since in Java things change often this kind of books goes into obsolescence quicky. For instance: my copy is the 5th edition (October 2001) and it lacks completely the new Collections class framework.

This book really helps with a huge amount of information and examples for all of the classes in java.io, java.lang, java.math, java.text, and java.util. Wonderful reference book!

This is required on every Java developers bookshelf. It is a wonderful reference.

I strongly recommend this book to all Java users of all levels because no other book describes all classes of java.lang, java.io, java.net, java.util, java.text and java.math packages better. Every class, every method and every exception is explained by very understandable language with good and useful examples. There is no Java language problem you cannot solve with this book.

Web Standards Solutions is reasonably solid title that discusses the benefits and approaches of using web standards in the design of (X)HTML markup. CSS is also covered as a means to remove presentational elements from web page markup. Lists, tables, headings, hyperlinks, forms, quotations and layouts are all covered to a foundational level.

The information covered in the book is especially suited to new web site designers who are yet to understand these concepts. Web application developers - who might not focus their craft on the quality of their markup, would also benefit greatly. For others already possessing an basic understanding of semantic markup and presentation through CSS, the book might contain a few useful tips only.

Throughout each chapter the book doggedly follows a pattern that can become tedious. For each chapter, non-standards approaches are considered before the 'correct' standards based approach is shown. After this the 'extra credit' portion of the chapter provides practical applications of the given solution. Whereas the correct solution and extra credit sections are useful, the repetition of the defective non-standard approaches for in every chapter is sometimes repetitive and slightly contrived, and could be discussed more casually as required without dominating the format of every chapter.

Having said that, the book is easily read, has examples and practical applications, covers the breadth of the topic well and could certainly be used to bring anyone up to speed on the basics of standards-based approaches to the web page markup development.

With only a casual tinker in Dreamweaver split view under my belt starting out, I learned how to hand code XHTML and CSS with this book alone (well, and some web research here and there and CSS Mastery is an excellent follow up). It's written clearly and gives multiple solutions for each case, while explaining the advantages and disadvantages of each. I cannot recommend this book enough, as even after I finished it, it remains close by as an invaluable desk reference that I refer to here and there.

This is an excellent book that all web designers should own. When I look at people's sites, I often validate them just out of curiosity, and it is so rare that I ever find a valid site. I always pay attention to validation, and this book just validates (for lack of a better term) my opinions on the importance of following web standards. This book is good for helping with workarounds for certain browsers (cough, IE) that don't support standards that most others do.

Through simple illistrations and small code snippets this book covers pretty much what one would need to know in order to create great web 2.0 sites.

This book is the 2nd one by Dan Cederholm that I bought and can be used as "Advanced Chapters" to his short but overall excellent "Bulletproof Web Design" (ISBN-10: 0321346939). These two combined will surely set your brains straight about standards-based HTML/CSS development.

It explains how to make your markup short. It shows why using purposeful HTML tags (such as "label") is preferred to using generic divs with classes. It destroys new and "hip" myth about tables being "taboo" for modern HTML.

This is the BIBLE for Cold Fusion. I have read a few too many compter books. This is the first one I finished and keeped around. The CD has codeing found in the samples in the book. Very easy reading for this type of book. It even teaches you some HTML. WOW.

This book was fantastic. Sure there are the few editing errors common with computer books. I knew NOTHING about Cold Fusion or database connectivity to the web before I got this and now I've written a dozen or so Cold Fusion applications for the UPS intranet. An EXCELLENT resource for beginners and professionals with a tag index for quick referencing. A chapter on SQL also for those who don't know it. It will teach you everything you need to know to get your application online and running. Great Great Great!

Forta's book is very interesting. I almost bought a book solely on SQL, but just bought this book because of its comprehensive SQL sections. As an Application Server Developer, I also have experience with ASP, and this makes ASP look extremely primitive. In fact, I used the concepts of Cold Fusion presented here to evaluate better solutions for projects in ASP. An example of this is the easy implementation of Dynamic SQL in Coldfusion. I then built a Dynamic SQL implementation. Thanks Mr. Forta for a great one. If you know ASP, this book will show you what you need to engineer within ASP to get it to compete with Cold Fusion. An awesome book!

I have very little programming experience and have this book to be very easy to use.

Forta takes you from the start of Cold Fusion and SQL. If you are new to programming and SQL, this is the book for you. I was writing data interface apps in a few hours. A great book overall. Worth the read. I still use it as a reference regularly! A must have for the Cold Fusion developer.

This book is pretty good for beginners. I have recently started teaching myself html and I was able to handle most of the things I was reading about without too much trouble. There were a couple of times I really needed to pause and go back and read it again. Then maybe I could put it together. Only one or two times did I just give up with total frustration. All in all it's a great handbook and I am sure I will get it all someday!

The text was easy to read and gave a great number of examples but lacked any questions or problems at the end of each chapter.

A very good book if you would like to understand how HTML works

I've been doing HTML work on and off for the last 5-6 years. This book is full of great examples for beginners or more advanced users who just forgot how to do something. You won't regret owning this book.

Although the author gives some superfials explanations on JavaScript, CGI & DHTML, this book offers and comprehensive and fairly complete explanation on HTML.
Higly recommended for those willing to learn and master HTML.

I graduated from the University of Redlands (California) with a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems degree a few years ago. Many of the textbooks I used were not very enlightening - I suffered through using them and immediately took them back to the bookstore for resale. This wasn't so with the CREATING COOL HTML 4 book. I use this as a reference book now.

One of the classes I took included a web design portion. How fun to create web pages that were exciting and not boring. It was easily accomplished using this book as a guide but someone who knows nothing about HTML design could easily use this and create.

The chapters are broken down from the basics to intermediate items. The author, Dave Taylor, explains exactly what entails a web page, what a URL is, basic html, graphics, tables, links, pointers, image maps, and other advanced designs.

Now many technical books are dry to read and often times leave the non-die-hard techies wondering what was just said. Not true with Taylor. He gets everyone to understand html - those creating their first web page to those who want to do more, those that want pizzazz on their pages.
If you're not a beginner, you may want to skip the chapters in which Taylor explains to new users about Web pages, how browsers work, what URLs are, and other basic concepts. (But it can be a good refresher for those who haven't designed web pages in a while). Next he expands into basic HTML, fonts, text styles, and gets the reader to understand the making of lists, special characters, pointers, and links. Next comes the explanation of graphics and the creation of tables and frames. But my favorite part is next - chapters on advanced items like background, marquees, image maps, JavaScript, forms, plug-ins, Dynamic HTML, style sheets, and much more.
Examples shown in the book are easy to follow and let the reader completely understand what the code does and how it will look on a web page. Nothing in CREATING COOL HTML PAGES is overwhelming and will let everyone create a web page of which they can be proud. I'm a computer programmer, and still use this as a reference. In fact, it's one of the most borrowed books in our office! This book is highly recommended for any level of html programmer.

I enjoyed this book. It's about the Animorphs' discovery of a chat-site about Yeerks. I thought that it was an okay book, but they don't seem to mention the people in the chat-site anywhere else in the series (I'd have thought that a whole site full of Yeerk-aware people would be a major thing, but that's just my opinion), so if you are just looking for important books in the series, you can skip this one.

The book does not have enough adventure for it to be a good book. It should have fighting against the Yeeks. I think that if there was more adventure, and it had more Controllers it would be alot better.

In this book, Jake discovers a web site about Yeerks. He shows it to the others and they see the chat room. They decide to pay a visit to Web Access America (not AOL, A reader from U S A). They go to the airport because WAA is too far to fly in bird morph. There they fight over wether to morph flies on a United or Northwest plane (they choose United). Marco eats some shareholder's first class lunch and Jake (?) wonders if there will be an in-flight movie, and Marco (?) says not a movie, the flight's 1 1/2 hours long, more like an in-flight cartoon! Tobias in fly morph is funny. When there in the WAA building, Jake, in tiger morph, Rachael, in Grizzly morph, Cassie, in wolf morph, and Tobias, in his natraul form (hawk), mop the floor. An employee says there crazy, why are they mopping the carpet? Ax and Marco sneak in to the computers (everyones distracted) and find out who MegMom, Fitey777, and Gump (screen names from the chatroom) really are. It turns out Fitey777 is Joe Bob Fenistre is the CEO of WAA. Jake gets a rhino morph and They go to Joe Bob Fenistre's house. I'll leave it at that

Jake has made an amazing discovery: a web site about the Yeerks. Should the Animorphs investigate? If they do, they might walk right into a trap. And if they don't, they'll never know if they're fighting their enemies alone.

Jake and the gang go on a yeerk web page track down fenstre. the find out the the yeerk in side him is a twin of the yeerk in visser three thats why he ordered his men to shoot a the birds (rachel an Ax in bird morph) because visser three is the only controller that has the morphing abillity

Her book was the only book I got for creating a Website with Dreamweaver and Fireworks. Following her tutorials I built a fabulous Website with cascading style sheets, rollovers, the works. I was never bored or confused, and I understood the "why" and well as the "how."

I've just downloaded a trial version of Dreamweaver MX and came here specifically to get HER book on Dreamweaver MX. Sadly, she doesn't seem to have published one.

Lynda Weinman knows what she is talking about. I have learned quite a bit following her lead.

I highly recommend this book. It was an excellent learning tool for me as a beginner. The tutorials were fabulous!

I enjoyed the exercises and layout of the book. For someone who never did any web development this book is great.

I must say that Lynda is, hands down, the best instructor I've ever come across on the printed page. I've been using Dreamweaver for over two years and I learned so much from this book. The chapters and exercises were so concise, so ordered and really a lot of fun. I recommend this book whole-heartedly!

In Web of Lies, Collins brings her Hidden Faces and Chelsea Adams Series to a close. Annie Kingston witnesses a horrible murder, and is called on to draw the picture of the at-large killer. Meanwhile, Chelsea Adams has a vision of a girl being held captive. She feels God has called her to team up with Annie Kingston to find the girl before it is too late. As the two women work together, they soon discover a mysterious connection in the two cases that will lead them toward ultimate danger. Somehow these women must find a way to use their God-given talents to stop a mad man's deadly plans.

Not only does Collins raise the bar for other suspense authors, somehow she manages to make each installment better. Annie Kingston's first-person narrative effectively drives this series. Annie's struggles are real and we are able to relate with her as a parent and a Christian. As a single mom, Annie must juggle the demands of family with the intense responsibilities that come from working in law enforcement. On top of all of that, as a new Christian she faces an inward battle as she learns to rely on God completely. As Annie continually finds herself in the throes of danger, it is inspiring and encouraging to watch her faith increase.

Collin's writing is edgy, engaging, and absolutely thrilling. She knows how to take readers on a journey that will have them gripping their chairs and looking over their shoulders. This series is highly recommended for fans of suspense and mysteries, as well as those who love stories that challenge and inspire. (Originally reviewed as a series for Christian Library Journal)

I've long been a fan of Brandilyn Collins' women's fiction, but I was left high and dry when she started writing suspense. I don't usually read scary novels, but I got "talked into" reading this one and I must admit it was good! Definitely a page-turner that kept me guessing till the end!

The fourth, and concluding, book in Brandilyn Collins' "Hidden Faces" series--
WEB OF LIES--is yet another excellent effort by this extraordinarily talented mystery and suspense author. While apparently some overlook her works--as they do with those of Terri Blackstock, James Scott Bell, and others--simply because they include underlying testimony to a strong Christian faith--these page-turning novels match, and often surpass those written by best-selling secular authors. Try one or two and prove it to yourself...these are very special books!
--R. Howe (aka `Toby Martin, II) Erskine, MN.

How could I have not ever read a book by Brandilyn Collins????? Her mix of crimes & Christianity totally enthralled me. My only complaint? This was the last book in what appears to be two different series. Ack! Of course I had to run out and get all the books I missed because I loved this one so much!

Web of Lies brings together forensic artist Annie Kingston and "visionary" Chelesa Adams, closing out two different series. The "Hidden Faces" series which revolves around Annie and the "Chelesa Adams" series. What an incredible idea! As a reader who devours every book written by an author I like the concept of wrapping up two series with one book is awesome. I tend to fall in love with all the books I read and I always wonder what would happen if characters from different series were able to interact.

Annie Kingston has witnessed a shooting in broad daylight. Several hours away God has show Chelsea Adams a horrible vision of a murder about to take place. Bring the two women together and what happens? Layer upon layer of faith and terror as the women race to uncover a murderer who wants to get personal with one of them.

What can I say. Web of Lies is a page turner! It's well paced, action packed and accurately portrays the challenges of faith I believe someone in that situation might have. Thank you Christian Fiction Blog Tour! I've found yet another new author. Barnes & Nobles also thanks you because I've dropped a few extra bucks there this week buying Ms. Collin's other books!

If you've read Christian fiction in the past and it left a bad taste in your mouth - check out this "Seatbelt Suspense". It'll totally change your mind!!

Best-selling suspense novelist Brandilyn Collins continues her string of compelling faith fiction with Web of Lies, a harrowing forensic thriller that pinpoints the collision between fear and faith.

Annie Kingston, a forensic artist, teams up with Chelsea Adams, a woman who receives terrifying visions from God -- as the two find themselves trying to rescue two kidnapped people before they are murdered by a psychotic killer with a spider obsession. Web of Lies deals frankly with the struggles of a Christian in professional life -- especially when that professional life includes murderous lunatics, arrogant lawmen and irresponsible journalists.

Brandilyn Collins once again proves herself a master of the page-turner. Just make sure your doors are locked and you've said your prayers for the night -- because once you open to the first page, you are in for the ride of your life.

Easily the most readible treatise on DB weblishing that I've seen, Greenspun's book covers all the bases without descending too far into geek speak.

Your VP will understand it, and your MIS manager will be able to use it for something.

My copy is dog-eared. You can get the book online; I still prefer dead trees in hand.

You can read the table of contents and get a feel for the book. But what is best is Greenspun's attitude.

I think his best comment is that the hard part is the design and the easy part is to "Write a couple of programs that parse the HTML forms and turn them into actual database transactions". (pg 172) And then he provides examples of doing just this.

But as I said, Greenspun has an attitude that is very refreshing.

Some of the specific technology described in this book is a little outdated now, but the core techniques live on.

Greenspun's writing is a delight to read, and the information he shares here will provide you with the foundational knowledge on which to build a wide variety of web applications.

Buy this book (or read the online version at philip.greenspun.com), follow the examples, and start building yourself (and others) great, content-filled, easy-to-use web sites.

Philip Greenspun is a rare find: a techie who knows how to communicate. He doesn't even limit himself to one media! While other books may take a schlolarly approach to building websites, Greenspun's story is told by someone who's rolled up his sleeves. As the reader, you get to view web-database design through Greenspun's eye for detail. All tech books should be this good.

This book focuses on the goals of Web site design rather than the nuts and bolts. Although the book contains specific code fragments, it is not a coding book. Rather it is a chronicle of Greenspun's experiences in setting up more than 50 Web sites over the years. This chronicle contains many hard-won lessons that will help prevent the reader from making similar mistakes.

Greenspun has an easy-to-read writing style and a wry sense of humor. (The book has no CD ROM attached to the inside back cover but a picture of a CD ROM with the international "No" symbol overprinted. All code an more is available from Greenspun's Web sites, as you would expect from a book about Web sites.) He also emphasizes esthetic choices and subscribes to a minimalist visual style, in the book and for Web sites, that enhance reading and make downloads as fast as possible.