Web Books

What use is a Web site if no one uses it? Too many Web design books and development tools provide cut-and-paste solutions to design problems without providing the developer with an understanding of fundamental principles.

This is where Dr. Badre's book enters the scene - in a big way. "Shaping Web Usability" does just what it promises, providing clear, cogent instruction in designing sites for people in all their needs and diversity. It promotes a robust methodology for Web design that can adapt to user requirements without sacrificing logic or cohesion. Badre's process also helps one communicate methodology and design issues to others. This book gave me the grounding I needed to explain to clients exactly why I had made a particular design decision and how it would benefit the site users.

If you are concerned about your site being used once it is published (and who isn't?), take a look at this book. It can't make your Web site for you, but it can help you identify and satisfy an online audience better than any other book on the shelves.

Dr. Badre has written an interesting work which thoughtfully examines two important concepts: genre and cultural context. In addition to plenty of solid HCI theory and empirical data, Dr. Badre provides clear examples of how close attention to the genre of one's site and the cultural context in which it is most likely to be viewed will provide a more useful and pleasurable experience for the user. With these simple and powerful concepts, Dr. Badre provides some excellent guidance to new and experienced website designers.

This book is unlike many other web usability books. It goes well beyond the cookie-cutter guidelines for fast web usability, and gets the reader thinking deeply about contexts of web usability. It focuses on the real important issues and concepts. However, it is not an abstract or theoretical book. The author illustrates the concepts and explanations with numerous real examples from the web. This book is a must read for web designers, information architects, and web usability engineers.

This is a serious work on Web Usability that attempts to define in detail the user context and to construct a user-centred methodology based on that context.

There are so many books on web usability these days and most of them are about web pages first and people second. Doctor Badre's approach, though, is firmly grounded on the human side of HCI and some of the material in this book is outstanding.

The chapter on "Older Adults" is a great example. Badre is fastidious enough to consider the different cognitive needs of people in this group and to consider the implications of those needs for the designer. Elsewhere he considers personality variations, the role of affect (or emotion), and many other individual differences.

In contrast, however, Badre has a strong leaning toward standards and predictability, which seems to contradict his comments elsewhere. Having identified the myriad reasons the web audience is uniquely diverse he nevertheless finds traditional HCI evaluation techniques attractive, and sometimes fails to bite the bullet.

For example, Badre insists that "Testing conditions ... should approximate the actual situation in which ...visitors are likely to find themselves." Yet he does not display any distrust of laboratory testing, questionnaires and all the artificialities of user testing that would suggest a more ethnographic approach.

The material on the test methodology is therefore somewhat weaker, but does not detract in any way from the main part of the book, where Dr Badre's experience in Human Factors allows him to illustrate with considerable skill the way design features can be adjusted to meet the cognitive abilities of real human users. In this arena, Dr. Badre is a leading authority, and it is for this, the main body of the work, that I would strongly recommend this book to web and usability professionals alike.

Clear and rigorous, Dr. Badre's book is an essential resource for the serious Web practitioner. Going beyond the usual lists of do's and don'ts, he gives the reader a strong grounding in the field of usability and how its principles apply to the Web. Web designers and implementors who read Shaping Web Usability will not only know what to do, but why -- so they can respond successfully to new and complex design challenges.

then get this one. I learned enough about the reasons for using it and also how to configure it to authenticate against an LDAP server.

Well worth getting and keeping on your shelf.

Squid: The Definitive Guide by Duane Wessels is a great book for someone with aspirations of setting up and getting the most out of Squid. It is lengthy at just over 400 pages, but that is to be expected and desired in O'Reilly's "The Definitive Guide" series. One point worth mentioning is that Duane Wessels (the author, for those with short synaptic cycles) is the one who started Squid and still works on it today. Each chapter builds nicely on subsequent chapters, so there isn't any skipping around. If you're just looking to set it and forget it, this book is probably not for you. Otherwise, read on.

The first three chapters are pretty basic: history of Squid, downloading then installing. For those with no concern of going through downloading and installing, there is a nice section describing each configure switch and, while weighing in at a healthy 48 options, it may be helpful to have this as a reference.

Chapter Four, Configuration Guide For the Eager, is an often desired, but often left out chapter in technical books. By just reading chapters one through four, it is possible to have a fully functional setup of Squid, albeit not very secure or ready for the pounding of the masses. You will, however, begin to understand how Squid operates. This chapter discusses the most often used settings, such as: minimum/maximum size of cached objects, log files and ACLs to restrict addresses, etc.

Chapter Five, Running Squid, covers what you expect. It includes such topics as, boot scripts, chrooting and rotating log files. Again, basic stuff, but necessary for the sake of completeness.

Chapter Six, All About Access Controls, covers one of Squid's major powers and attractions, access controls. ACLs give the administrator extremely fine-grained tuning. Some of the choice highlights for limiting access to addresses/domains include, but not limited to: filter by subnet, MAC, IP address or administrator assigned group. Furthermore, regular expressions can be used to filter URLs or URIs. A most likely seldom used, but very cool, feature is the ability to filter by BGP AS (Border Gateway Protocol Autonomous System) numbers. HTTP request methods such as POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. can also be filtered. Filtering by time or restricting access by user name is also supported. Each topic is assiduously explained and leaves little to be desired.

Chapters Seven and Eight cover disk caching with chapter Seven being basic material and then Eight covering more advanced topics. Discussions on object pruning, size limits, cache replacement policies and many other cache optimizations are covered in these chapters and are necessary to thoroughly understand if you are situated in a relatively large environment or just want to squeeze every bit of performance from your Squid.

Chapter Nine, Interception Caching, covers transparent proxying. This chapter discusses the benefits (no need to configure clients) and drawbacks (cannot do user authentication) of implementing such a system. It then goes on to discuss how to configure Alteon/Nortel, Foundry, Extreme Networks, Arrowpoint, iptables, pf and ipfw to perform the routing to the Squid box.

Chapter ten, Talking to other Squids

Scalability is another favorable attribute of Squid. Running in parallel with previous chapters, this chapter details the advantages (load balancing and increasing your cache hits) and the disadvantages (security problems with having to trust neighboring Squids) of a caching hierarchy. In addition, it explains how to configure connect timeouts and other tweaks to keep Squids aware of when their siblings are down.

Chapter eleven, Redirectors, covers another great attribute of Squid. Redirectors can be used, among other possibilities, to remove advertisements in web pages or rewrite client requests based on their given URL or URI. This chapter details how they work, from a protocol level, and provides example configuration settings such as sending only specific users through the redirector or conversely, letting specific users bypass the redirector altogether.

Squid can be configured to use various user authentication methods to allow or deny access. Chapter Twelve, Authentication Helpers, covers these options. Squid can talk HTTP Basic, HTTP Digest and NTLM. Each type is well explained in how it works and detailed in how to setup.

Chapter Thirteen and Fourteen fully explain logging and monitoring. The logging chapter explains the type of information each log file catches, a full description of each error or information type (which is a great reference that I made full use of) and configuration directives that change what is logged or how it is logged. Monitoring Squid covers the Squid Cache Manger (A web front-end to many great statistics), a brief mention of using Squid-RRD and using SNMP. Such monitoring statistics include, file descriptor allocation, byte hit ratios, cache hits and cache misses and a wealth of other useful information.

Chapter Fifteen, Server Accelerator Mode, explains Server Accelerator Mode, which is also known as Surrogate Mode. It is a neat trick where Squid stills runs as a proxy, however, the Squid server is proxying the world (or a select few) to your server. One obvious advantage includes performance (or Slashdot hardening if you will). There are several config directives explained here as well as some gotchas.

Chapter Sixteen, Debugging, is the is one of the few chapters that I did not need to reference. Although, if you need to, there is some good information provided.

Appendix A comes with a config file reference that actually provides more information then the comments in the configuration file (Holy moley!...they better trademark that idea before other authors catch on!).

Appendix B briefly covers memory caching and optimization.

Appendix C shows how to use delay pools to limit user bandwidth.

Appendix D details file system performance benchmarks to show you filesystem and operating system differences.

Appendix E discusses running Squid on Windows using Cygwin.

Appendix F covers auto configuration of Squid clients to avoid needing to physically visit the many machines you administer.

In conclusion:

Pros: This is "The Book" for Squid. No skipping from chapter to chapter, the author was also the designer and still one of the maintainers, fuller descriptions of the configuration file directives that the configuration file comments. It is a great reference.

Cons: Really the only thing that I didn't like was that he only discussed HTTP proxying. There is a brief mention of FTP and SMTP, but only a couple of sentences. To be fair, in the preface he did mention that he would would of liked to written on these topics but didn't have time.

For the new comer I recommend to buy this book if your finding an alternative for Microsoft box like ISA or MSProxy 2.0.

Squid is robost and a very stable Proxy Server, you can use it even in Entreprise consumption..trust me I use it since 2001.

If your looking for technical books or documents about Squid, this is the one your looking for...

Back in 1998 when I was running my own ISP, Squid was a lifesaver because it allowed me to provide excellent web response to customers over a very modest upstream connection.

When I moved on to consulting Squid was the answer to a wide variety of client problems from employee Internet access control (Redirectors) to company website performance (Server Accelerator Mode) to plain old web page load times (Proxy Cache).

Now that I've moved in-house in a large corporation (30,000+ employees) and I've found out what commercial vendors are charging for their solutions to each of these problems, I have gladly used my knowledge of Squid to save us money.

Of course, that knowledge was not easily won, at least not for me. Because Squid was an open source project there was a lot of information available on the Web, but, of course, because Squid was an open source project, it was hard to find a definitive answer to my particular problem without asking a lot of dumb questions on newsgroups or making a lot of trial and error attempts tweaking compile time options, system changes and configuration file settings.

I have waited for this book for a long time.

I was concerned that it might be too detailed to be readable. Thankfully, Duane Wessels, the primary architect of Squid , has laid out this book to provide simple access at the Macro level. The chapter arrangement and organization are very intuitive. And yet the book still contains enough information to satisfy almost every question.

The one caveat I would make to a reader is to maintain situational awareness while delving into a chapter because, without noticing it, you can suddenly be confronted with pages and pages of configuration file details. There's no avoiding it, when a book says `Definitive Guide' on the cover you expect to have full coverage. It's just that the book is so lucidly written that the transition from high-level discussions to detailed facts might catch you un-aware.

And, really, it's that kind of feeling that lets you know that you're reading a very valuable text. I spent the first hour after I got this book skimming each chapter, happy at each additional topic I discovered. Then I went back and asked it the two hardest questions I have faced using Squid over the past year, in each case the answer was easily found and fully explained (Mr. Wessels deserves an award for making transparent proxying understandable).

The wait for this book was well worth it. I highly recommend it to any person working with, or thinking about working with, Squid.

This guide will pay for itself many times over. If you are considering a caching server for home, office or business you need this book.

My previous experience with proxies was MS proxy server 2.0 and I was a little apprehensive of this project; not to worry. Forty six pages into the book, squid was running; total time invested including installation of the program was about 2 hrs.

Another two hours of reading and precious few changes to config files and my log files are rotating, all ports I need exposed are open and the rest are hidden. I have already been able to tune squid to accelerate delivery of content using *only* this book as a guide. I haven't even had to look at the online documentation for squid (the first time I ever recall that happening).

Not only is my internet connection now available to all users, but also every one is browsing faster than they were before on single dedicated dial ups.

I can't say enough good things about the book or the program. In 14 years of networking I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. This is one of those rare guides whose author is extremely knowlegable and the material presentation is flawless. I have a large computer science library and in my experience, it doesn't get any better than this.

Bravo Mr. Wessels!

This is an excellent book for helping technical authors accustomed to writing printed documentation in understanding how and why the structure should be different for online readers. Too often authors simply move the information online without any clear understanding of the context in which the reader is using it. I recommend this book to anyone developing software Help files or planning single sourcing documentation.

I have a shelf full of books on technical writing. Ever on the lookout for something new or better, I picked this up. As usual, Joann delivers only the best.

If you are serious about becoming a successful technical writer, I highly recommend purchasing this book.

Of all the books I have purchased, I refer to this one the most often. The CD is great because it has the entire text of the book categorized for easy access right from your computer!

Many technical writing books are outdated and were written BI (before the internet). This book focuses on technical writing using newer technology such as the Internet, WWW, and corporate intranets.

I can't count the number of times this book has come in handy. It is a great reference that you should keep close at hand. Great job Joann!

The approach outlined in this book has completely changed the way I tackle developing on-line documents. I have extensive experience in a technique called Information Mapping that is an analysis and document design methodology for paper documents. In many ways the authors' methods are similar to Information Mapping - at least at a macro level. After reading this book I've gained an appreciation for the vast differences between paper and on-line documentation. My "paper-based" thinking before this book resulted in a waste of the underlying capabilities of an on-line document. The authors show how to use technology to vastly improve your reader's efficiency and overall experience when seeking and reading the information you create. If you are used to writing for paper-based publications, or have deveopled on-line pages using nothing but intuition and judegement, this book will completely change your way of thinking.

Recently, I worked on an online help project and found various parts of the online communication process mystifying, which our online help writers take for granted. Examples that come to mind are:

- Standard length of each help file

- The need for popups

- Using the imperative form as opposed to gerunds

These are some of the things I was looking to have explained to me when I bought the book. The book turned out to be perfect for this. Not only does it cover the mechanics, reasons, and standards of online communication, it also contains many nuggets of wisdom regarding the various methods of writing that we apply as technical writers. It's helps me decide when weighing different ways of presenting the same information. So even if you are an experienced online help writer there is no doubt that this book would enlighten your approach to the everyday tasks of creating online/context-sensitive help.

Also, the book comes with a CD that has all the information in the book in a help file that is indexed and can be searched. This is excellent for quick reference.

Trust me, this book is a keeper if you create any kind of online help.

The content of this book covers key areas of course conversion and management to help prepare for online instruction and to update one's knowledge base in regards to the latest concepts in online learning. The faculty that I have trained while using this book have benefited from the rich chapters covering all aspects of online learning and teaching. I wish there had been such a book available when I began teaching online.

This book is well organized and contains many practical tips. It is a must read for those new to online education and would be helpful to those who've been teaching for several years as well.

Ko and Rossen do an excellent job of laying out a lot of basic concepts if you are involved in any kind of project that involves teaching online.

I have a read a few books dealing with this topic and this one does a better job than any of the others that I have come across in helping the reader to understand the big picture- from getting to know your institutions resources to managing student behavior online. There are a lot of great tips to help the online teacher deal with any number of potential problem areas.

My only complaint would be that some of the technology discussedd is a little bit dated, but it is still useful and I'm sure that will be updated in the next edition.

One other resource for which this book in invaluable is the collection of Web Resources at the end of every chapter that often provide real world examples of the concepts being discussed.

Ko and Rossen's paperback on TEACHING ONLINE is small in size and simple to read, but it contains all essential information needed by a teacher or professor who has suddenly found himself or herself thrust into the mushrooming world of online learning. More and more professors are being told that they must produce a computer-based class, and that they must manage that class themselves, but fewer and fewer universities are providing comprehensive training for this totally new technique. TEACHING ONLINE is the book that will save the day for these pressured professors. It will also guide the enthusiastic cybersleuth through teacherly tips about preparing a class, accessing online libraries, controlling unrurely cyberstudents, encouraging coversation, taking tests, and all sorts of other nitty gritty. And it does this in plain, simple conversational English that is peppered with interesting anecdotes supplied by seasoned cyberprofessors. No one needs to feel intimated by this play-it-straight-and-simple approach to this state-art-technique, and no one need worry that he or she will loose a long-time teaching slot, because they hadn't read every issue of WIRED ever issued. TEACHING ONLINE will get you up-to-date, and it will do it fast, and you'll love every minute of it. Even cybersaavy junior faculty will benefit from this book, because it includes generic information that will make or break any teacher, in class or in ether. Reading this book, chapter by chapter, in conjunction with your standard university training program, or as a stand-alone text, will make sure that you stay in the tenuous university teaching game for good. If you follow this book, you will gain skills, confidence, and panache you never knew you had, that you can translate into the classroom, and into the rest of your life as well. If you are just entering the job market, and fear that your unfamiliarity with computer-based classes will hurt any opportunities that await you, then read this book before you enter your interview, and you will sound so so so computer saavy, that no one will ever suspect you of inexperience. But don't loan this book to a friend when you finish it; be sure to keep it on hand, throughout your first semester, because it contains several quick-reference chapters that will troubleshoot you through the toughest times...and straight on to tenure.

So I've been tasked with teaching online, but I didn't know where to begin. Sure, I can teach decently in the classroom, but I wanted a book that would show me how to transition my existing pedagogy into a successful online course. If you are in a similar situation, THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU!

A quick look at the table of contents (available via Amazon's "look inside" feature) will reveal that this is more than a simple primer. This is a book written by people who have online teaching experience and can give you practical advice (as the title suggests). You can take a face-to-face course and get quite far in converting it into an online course.

The only caveat I have is that many of the web links included with the book are now defunct. Though irritating, this is not a major problem, because searching for the article or site via Google (or another search engine) you can easily find its new home.

A witty and comic two-act play involving characters from history: Lenin, the leader of the Russian Communist Revolution; James Joyce, an Irish poet; Tristan Tzara, the Romanian founder of Dada; and Henry Carr, a man who had associations with Joyce. The play is told from Carr's point of view when he is an old man, and because memory often fails him in his old age, he has to retell certain parts, meaning that we get to see different reenactments of the same scene. Although it may sound repetitive, it not in the least dull, as each retelling is a little bit different. We see Carr's confusion as he struggles to retell the past correctly. Highly amusing. It helps to have some historical knowledge of Stoppard's characters in order to find the humor in the play.

Tom Stoppard was clearly showing off when he wrote "Travasties". In his research he cleverly discovered that V.I. Lenin, James Joyce (then young and in the midst of writing Ulysses), and Tristan Tzara, one of the leaders of the dadist movement, were living in Zurich simultaneously. Teamed up with Gwendolen and Cecily, two characters from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest", and Henry Carr, a former member of the British Counsular Service, Stoppard wrote a theoretical account of their interactions in 1917. The result is "Travasties", a wildly intelligent and humorous play.

The play is set in the faulty memory of Henry Carr as he reminices about his experiences in Zurich (yes, he was there too) during "The Great War". As it was, Henry Carr, a non-fictional historical figure, played the role of Algernon in "The Importance of Being Ernest" in a play company owned by James Joyce. When James Joyce refused to reimburse Carr for the few hundred pounds he spent on his trousers in his overzealous attempt to "become" Algernon, a lawsuit ensued, which Joyce ultimately won. Indeed, Joyce indeed attained total victory by writing Carr into Ulysses as a drunken soldier. So, as one might imagine, the play is full of small stabs at James Joyce, namely by the elder Carr (at present during the play it is 1972).

The integration of Lenin and his wife, as well as Cecily, Gwendolen and Tzara, is fantastic and extremely immaginative, and the experience would, no doubt, be enhanced by first reading all of the works alluded to in the play.

Despite Tom Stoppard's obvious attempt to promote his own genius in "Travasties", the outcome is so fantastic, so interesting, and so, honestly, funny, that all is forgiven. Travasties is 71 pages long, and a reasonably quick read... spend one afternoon curled up with it, see it if you can, and muse over the connections (but not too loudly with the "aha!"s) you find... and I hate to end a review so blandly, but enjoy.

i spent over 2 months working as assistant director of this play and it took my the entire course of which to believe that i had understood all of the jokes. Of course i then went on to read more of Joyce and Wilde and the play took on whole new volumes of meaning. Its that complex. Another review advised to curl up with it for an afternoon...fun, perhaps, but not nearly as rewarding as it could be having done the background needed to get this play. "Halfway to Finland Station with V.I. Lenin" seriosly folks, how many of us would get that reference off the bat? still, diffilculty aside, this play is so amazing and funny that one can spend the entire time chuckling with only the most cursorary of readings/viewings. There is an absolutly fantastic scene done entirely in limerick form where Stoppard stretches his poetic legs (which prove to be quite well muscled). Acadamians and ignoramouses alike, READ IT! IT WILL BLOW YOU AWAY!

This is probably my favorite Stoppard play. Everything about it is raised to such a level of excellence that it's difficult to imagine how it can be surpassed.

Stoppard showcases his linguistic talents at their most dazzling and expects the reader to keep up intellectually. Not to sound daunting, but in order to enjoy "Travesties" properly, it helps to know some rudimentary German, French, and Russian; be well familiar with Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and James Joyce's "Ulysses"; and also to have a good factual knowledge of the Great War and the Great October Revolution. If you do not have this background knowledge, you risk missing out on most of Stoppard's witty insight and leaving the theatre/closing the book confused and disappointed.

The most important thing to remember about Travesties is that it is essentially Stoppard arguing with himself. This really shines through in his "derailed" scenes, where the characters have to abort a scene half-way through because it's obviously going in a wrong direction. Basically, it starts out with the characters being themselves, but as it progresses, one can see that they are simply two sides of Stoppard's own mind speaking to the audience through masks. And then it's as if the author remembers to keep his distance from the audience and steps back into the shadows. The effect is rather mystical; it's as if we are granted a brief glimpse beyond the fabric of what we take to be reality. What remains unclear is whether we are now looking into the "true" reality or yet another scene setting.

In short, buy the book, read it outloud, amuse yourself, alarm your neighbors.

Zurich 1917, a marvellous subject. The meeting point of the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries on one side, and of the new « revolutionary » artists, be they James Joyce and the stream of consciousness writers, or Tristan Tzara and the Dada movement.

The first interest of the play is to situate the dynamic of each revolutionary movement very well. Lenin is the figurehead of the revolutionary politicians, James Joyce and Tzara of the modern literature movements.

Then Stoppard makes them meet. In Zurich it is more or less an artificial meeting though they share most of their ideas (the files that are unknowingly exchanged at the beginning and exchanged back at the end show how identical their ideas are) and yet they have styles, general postures that make them unable to have a real dialogue.

Tom Stoppard goes even further by tracing along Lenin's positions on art. He shows the perfect contradiction contained - as Walt Whitman would say - by the man. On one side (Tolstoy), he understands that a work of art is a reflection (hence not a purely identical image) of social contradictions and therefore of society, and also a reflection of the contradictory artist (all artists contain contradictions) and his contradictory position in society (hence in the social contradictions of this society). On the other side, once in power, he condemns, at first, then wavers on the subject, Mayakovsky and the Futurist mocement, and definitely considers intellectuals as bourgeois individualists. But the artists of 1917 represent exactly a similar contradiction between the absolutely nihilistic approach of the Dada movement, and the mentally realistic movement represented by James Joyce. The former rejects all heritage. The latter rearranges the full heritage within a modern man's consciousness, hence within a revolutionary or disturbing consciousness.

The play is at times funny, at times realistic, at times dramatic, according to the points of view, but the essential one of these is the recollections two (minor) characters have of the period sixty years later. We are forced to accept that historical perspective : what it was then and what we can do of it now.

The conclusion of the play is typical perpetual movement, here perpetual syllogism : « Firstly, you're either a revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary... I forget the third thing. » Unfinished of course, like any historical achievement. History is always unfinished, in spite of Marx's dream of a contradiction-free communist society. This is the biggest sham of western philosophy ever dreamed of by a man of the amplitude and intensity of Karl Marx. You can be a genius but reality is more real than philosophy. The proof, as Marx liked to say, of the pudding is in my eating it. Full stop. Period.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

For those who know nothing about the web but would like to take their business online, this is a good book to read before hiring a professional. It will help you to determine if the person or firm knows what they're doing.

For anyone who has launched a website and is struggling to understand what's not working, this would be a good book.

All of the information is available on the web for free, but the author's done a nice job of packaging it and making it understandable for the novice. He's also addresses issues that are not tied to particular platforms (e.g. blogs), so the book won't be completely out of date as trends and technology continue to change.

If you have a few years of experience working with websites, the book may not be as helpful. Generally, though, it's always nice to read other people's take on what works and what doesn't. We are reminded of the solid basics and we always learn something new.

This book is well written and is packed with useful and practical information. It will get you well ahead of "the curve" on becoming successful online.

Well written,insightful and definitely worth the investment !
You can tell the Author has more hands-on experience than the average
Professor/Teacher who dwell on abstractions and vague concepts.
I just wish I had found this book first to save time and money...

I have gone through a host of books on the topic of web presence. This one, by far, made the most sense... It does not overburden the reader with a lot of technical mambo-jumbo; it focuses on what it truly means for the business. During the last two weeks, I have already gained more exposure; traffic increased threefold; and sales are up... Can you spell ROI?

This is an easy to read book with great information. There are lots of great tips. Anybody who reads this will get great value.

In the arguments about taxation of Internet sales, I am firm in believing that they should be taxed. For some time, I have thought that the only protection that net companies needed was from themselves. Launched without a great deal of forethought, market research or even a viable plan, many of them are now crashing. Business on the Internet is no different that any other business, and since that is the foremost point of this book, it is indeed one that could have made a significant difference if it had been published and read two years ago.
The author, a Professor of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon, was one of the first professors at a top-ranked school to teach the business uses of the Web. The approach in this book is all business, with Return On Investment (ROI), Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) equations being used to make the points. There is not one word of hype in this entire book. If there is one thing that has been so clearly lacking in the explosion of dot-com companies, it has been this lack of management by equation. Guerrilla marketing and fancy ads will get you noticed, but only a positive balance sheet will keep you alive long enough for it to matter.
The remainder of the book covers the modeling of a business constructed on the web using two that he has created, www.datingexpert.com and www.yesnomaybe.com. Both deal with online dating/meeting services and the models of need, perceived value and potential revenue points are "classic" studies in how to plan and execute a business model based on user-generated information. One of the most valuable pointers which shows how much the author truly manages the sites are the data points about how people find the site. For example, on page 177 there is the caption, "Only 1.3 percent of my Web sites' traffic is due to users guessing the site's address." I did find myself wishing that he had shared more information as to how this data was acquired.
While the business models used on the Web are different in degree from those offline, they are not different in kind. The basic rules of business still apply and as the author repeats so many times, it is what you do offline that matters. Lose sight of the business equations and the points where you add value and your company will be another dot.com Titanic.

This book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in creating websites with great business value. As a server-side applications developer, I've been mainly concerned with exploiting the web as a technological medium. This book opened my eyes to the web as an information medium, strategically used to improve a company's bottom line. It truly delivers on its claim -- [serving as] "a bridge from technical understanding to business savvy".

The book is extremely well-organized and has tons of practical knowledge and insight. Furthermore, all the principles are illustrated using easy to follow, real life examples. Excellent throughout -- highly recommended!

Until reading this book I thought I had a good understanding of what it took to design the underlying strategy and processes supporting commercial web sites. After reading this book I clearly saw how wrong I was.

The approach set forth in this incredible book is straightforward and focused solely on business imperatives. I suspect that the author and publisher realized that the title would attract IT professionals and consultants, which accounts for the inclusion of business 101. I almost skipped over this part and am glad I didn't. Even here what I thought I knew about business turned out to be superficial. The education you will receive in Business 101 goes well beyond the basics and I recommend that everyone read this regardless of whether you are an IT professional or have a business background. You might just discover that you've been misapplying common techniques such as NPV, IRR and ROI, or using the results in erroneous ways. In other words, the section titled "Business 101" is much, much more.

I loved the author's approach to value chain analysis, which is straightforward and based on a simple, but effective, notational language. Here, like in every other chapter, I learned techniques that will serve me well in general consulting assignments outside of web business engineering.

The web business engineering methodology itself is one of the leanest, most effective processes that I've ever encountered. I can only describe it as elegant. It's a blueprint for success when success is measured by how well a system is aligned to business strategy and goals. If you follow the method and resist the temptation to take shortcuts you will be rewarded with a system that meets all of your requirements and objectives whatever they may be - and you'll know exactly what the value of that system is to your organization.

A few observations about this book: (1) Give yourself plenty of time to read through this book and work through each example. It took me four times as long as it would for a book of approximate page count and topic complexity. If you're unwilling to make this commitment, perhaps you should pass this book up. (2) I fully agree with the author and a previous reviewer that web systems projects should be managed by business instead of IT. (3) If you're an IT professional get this book and read it from cover to cover - even if you never work on a web project you'll receive an incredible education in business factors and requirements analysis that will serve you well on *any* project. As a fellow IT professional I will assure you that this book will change your outlook.

This book is among the best I've read on any topic or subject and should be required reading for anyone who is assigned to a web project. It's also, in my opinion, one of the most important books published in the past few years.

The author provides a business-oriented (and technology-free) approach to engineering an on-line presence that is effective and should set the standard for a methodology for how to go about such projects. This is embodied in a framework that is defined by four principles (1) work is a combination of physical and informational activities, (2) informational work is accomplished by propagating content, (3) valuable and innovative content can be found in existing manual methods, and (4) an on-line strategy should be based on off-line advantages. These principles are simple, yet powerful. They are also not as easy to adhere to as they seem, which becomes apparent when you begin mapping activities in subsequent chapters.

There are so many things I like about this book, so I'll stick with the highlights. First, the differences between the way IT/IS and business units approach projects are carefully examined. Understanding these differences will make or break a web project, and as an IT professional I fully agree with the author that IT is the wrong organizational unit to lead and manage web projects. Their role should be relegated to that of support.

Second, the author leads you through the basics of value chain analysis, business factors and financial analysis. This is an excellent refresher for business professionals and is essential reading for IT professionals, especially those who claim to be business analysts. I learned a great deal from the discussion on ROI, NPV and IRR. These are not new knowledge areas for me, but learning about the fallacies and pitfalls inherent in each approach that can trap you or lead you to bad decisions was priceless.

What I learned the most from was the Quick Primer on Diagnosing Problems and Opportunities. As in the rest of the book the author uses case studies to reinforce the concepts and principles. In this case you are led through a mailing cost analysis and some of the results are surprising. For example, after all of the cost drivers are mapped out on a spreadsheet you play with some variables and discover that commonsense properties of the model do not necessarily act in commonsense ways. Doubling productivity (assuming it is possible to coax such a thing from humans) only yielded a 2.5% reduction in costs. Using cheaper labor actually cost more in the particular model. As an aside, the model was not contrived to create these counter-intuitive results - it is a plain vanilla cost model that you would commonly encounter or build. In this chapter you are introduced to a step-by-step process that shows how to effectively perform a cost analysis and find the true drivers that can be changed to reduce or avoid costs.

A caveat about this book: it can be easily read, but is merely interesting unless you take the time to carefully step through each case. If, however, you take your time and work through the problems and trace the value chains--a tedious task--you will find that this book has many chapters that are profound. That's a strong word, but in my opinion an accurate one. I've applied the approach in this book on a real-life project and can attest that it works extraordinarily well - and that's the highest compliment one can pay to an author.

Building effective business systems and web applications requires an understanding of not only technology, but also the organization and the processes in which it will be implemented.

Nick Flor, a Professor of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon's Graduate School of Industrial Administration, argues that to create high-value business web sites requires business as well as technical knowledge. He draws a distinction between a mere web site, which he says, exchanges information and a business web site, which exchanges value - it generates significant revenues and/or drastically pares expenses.

He says three skills are required is proposed for systematically molding the Web to the specific requirements of the specific business.

1. General Business Knowledge.
2. An ability to analyze and diagnose business activities.
3. An ability to design Web treatments to address those activities.

To equip Web entrepreneurs and consultants with these requisite skills, Flor organizes his book into four sections:

1. Web Business 101 - This section covers the first business skill - the big picture. This general business primer includes a discussion of Return on Investment, Net Present Value, Payback, Internal Rate of Return, production, distribution and the effects of competition.
2. Web Business Engineering - Using the knowledge acquired in the first section, the book proposes a methodology that links technical knowledge with business specific knowledge.
3. Case Studies Putting Offline Activities Online
4. Case Studies Applying Web Business Engineering to Online Activities

Stick with the book until you reach the case studies. They add value to the first two sections.

This well-written book sheds important light on web development. By focusing on the author's definition of "value", managers and development teams will avoid aping successful online companies, building instead, systems that address what companies should be doing online based on their offline activities.

I just finished reading Web Business Success and was very impressed with the detailed, practical, hands-on knowledge the book provided. The author even tells you which web host and domain name registrar she uses! The book is full of that type of useful content. It has the best description I've ever seen of the shopping cart - gateway - merchant account process. The author starts you from the beginning, guiding you through the process of planning a web site. The book covers finding a host, promoting a site, and finally eCommerce. I've taught eBusiness courses at the MBA level, and I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to start a web-based business.

Don't read this review.

I'll tell you what I think of this book, but I'm prejudiced: I know and work with Susan Daffron, one of the co-authors. The reason I'm compelled to offer a review of Web Business Success anyway is that I've watched it in the making, but have now read it in print, and it's a classic--a classic set of instructions for setting up your business on the Internet. It's told in a clear way that techies will appreciate for scope, and non-techies for clarity and common sense. And it covers the key steps to getting it right from designing your website to cultivating your market and putting together the whole e-commerce component.

Web Business Success is full of good advice and tips from a technical and content team (Daffron and Byrd) with many years of experience and case studies under their belt. Take page 35 for instance, after discussing everything from the Zen of HTML to selecting a Web designer, it goes on to advise on the practical considerations of putting your business on the Web.

But again, this is not a level playing field. I know Susan and James services better than most newcomers to their work, and will have already been favorably impressed with the professionalism, results, and style.

I've watched their new book come into being during months of the authors' diligent efforts gleaned from years of their toil and focus. So there, I'm biased. Now, disregard my caveats and buy this book. You'll learn more than one or two things about launching your business on the Web and holding your own--and better--against the challenges of web e-commerce and the competition.

I loved this book. I rank it right up there with another book on the subject I like very much: The Web-Savvy Writer (ISBN: 0977830403). What I liked so much about this book is how it tells the authors' story of how they themselves moved their business online. One of the authors is a writer and the other is an IT professional. They earn their livelihood online for the most part and they have shared how they made the move to self-employment using their Internet connection and Web hosting.

The book cuts through most of the hype most authors write about concerning Web sites. And from page one on the authors build rapport with the reader and you learn to trust just about every word they say. Since I use Frontpage to build Web pages, and the authors advise against using it, I don't buy into all their advice. But I can see where they are coming from, even though I don't agree with their point of view. The book has the following six chapters and a glossary:

1. Introduction
2. Creating Your First Site
3. Getting Your Site Online
4. Promoting Your Site
5. Creating an eCommerce Site
6. Business Operations and Practices

I would have liked the book better if it had covered as much on graphics programs as it did on WYSIWYG Web page programs. When I first started designing and building Web sites back in 1998 I found Frontpage to be very easy to use in building sites. The hardest part learning that program was figuring out how to use it so I didn't need Frontpage Extensions on the Web servers I used. That wasn't so difficult. However, I was not very skilled at using graphics software: Image Composer, Photopaint, Paintshop, and finally Photoshop. Graphic files are VERY important when trying to make your Web site attractive to surfers. And I think it would have been nice if the authors had said just a little bit more about the subject than they did.

I also enjoyed reading that the authors self publish this book using Print on Demand (POD) technology. Somewhat recently I read a book that explains how to do that economically. If you are interested, then take a look at Aiming at Amazon (ISBN: 093849743X). All in all, this is a great book for any entrepreneur to read and devour. 5 stars!

I've read a lot of books about doing business online, and I've never read a better one than this -- it's well-written and packed with practical advice. I especially appreciated that it had no geek-speak, it's written in clear English.

Whether you are only now considering an Internet business or you launched one years ago, this is a handy reference of all the critical information you need. It cuts through the hype and gives you the essentials about creating a site, promoting it, and making sure you've got the proper strategy.

I was glad to see that the authors advocate a highly ethical approach to online ventures -- I agree with them that's the key to success if you're in this for the long haul.

No matter what the nature of your business, you'll do well to pick up a copy of "Web Business Success." You'll find plenty of information that you can use to understand and improve your online business.

I recently revised my Web site with a new design, content and ecommerce features. Web Business Success clarified many options I wasn't aware of and helped guide me through the maze so I could make the right choices for this stage of my ecommerce business. I especially appreciated the information on hosting, search engine optimization, and ecommerce options.

The book is very user friendly, clear and has a minimum of technical jargon. My Web site is better, was created in less time and with less expense due to the very practical support that Web Business Success provided. I recommend it to anyone who needs a Web site that is designed to support financial transactions. It is an excellent guide both for hiring others or dipping into the world of do-it-yourself Web design.

As a very amateur web builder, I find this to be an excellent reference tool. Concise, to the point explanations are provided and I found the answer to my problem right away. Cuts to the chase without all the fluff.

I read this book in about three days. It is so clear and concise and packed with simple yet extensible examples to do just about anything a designer would want to do on a web page. It is also full of practical, pragmatic pointers that really get you to think about the goal of your site and how to acheive that goal. I was thoroughly impressed with this book - worth the money, a great reference, and a nice-paced read. You want to design web sites? No experience? Pick up this book. You been dabbling and want to improve? Pick up this book. Do you finally want to see what all the to do is with CSS? Want to stop using html the wrong way? You want to make your sites more accessible for the impaired and do it the right way? Pick up this book.

I've been doing HTML work for almost 10 years now. I currently own or manage four different web sites. Because of always changing standards regarding HTML and more recently CSS, trying to keep a web site compliant with these standards is not an easy thing. One of the more problematic issues is how certain functions are employed that seem to work on every browser out there, but suddenly a standards verification says that what is being used doesn't comply with official standards. Grrr...

Another problem is trying to get information that the average Joe can understand. More often than not, web sites that are dedicated to providing HTML and CSS information are very poorly done because they look like someone with no taste or style just threw the page together. (I'm sure that we've all seen the pathetic web sites with huge, dark letters on a black background, centered throughout the page, with needless graphics scattered about.) Other sites regarding HTML and CSS are far too technical and give a lot of details but no practical instructions, examples, or usage. The only thing to do at that point is to find a web site that does what you want to do and try to figure out what was done through that page's source code. Sometimes that alone is enough to make you want to give up.

Web Design Garage is one of the few books about HTML and CSS that actually is written for the starting web author who doesn't know where to start as well as the intermediate author who is looking to fine tune his (or, of course, her) web design skill and perhaps clean up the site a bit.

This book is divided into eighty-six separate chapters with each chapter covering a very specific topic, such as image maps, text elements, paths, forms, and so forth. This is very beneficial because you know that the whole topic deals with one subject, rather than have one larger chapter that deals with a number of topics for which you have to go searching. What's also very nice about the chapter design is that for appropriate topics the HTML chapter is followed by the equivalent chapter to do the same thing through CSS. This is a great way of letting the reader compare the two formats back-to-back for the specific goal that the reader wants to reach. This certainly beats the more commonly used method of having a larger topic dealing with a lot of HTML topics followed by another large chapter of the same number of topics in CSS, forcing to you to hunting through the chapters for comparisons or differences.

This book also contains hundreds of images, screen shots, and code examples. In a visually oriented world like the Web, being able to see how each bit of code works as well as a graphical example of the theories behind that bit of code make it easier to understand exactly what that chapter is attempting to accomplish.

The book also covers some functions that might not appeal to the beginner but would likely be considered to be of value for intermediate HTML/CSS designers. Such topics include blogs, forms, form validation, some Javascript, and even how to validate so that the code is up to W3C standards.

What's really great about this book is not that it's written in layman's terms. It's not that this book keeps the specific topics relegated to their own, individual chapters. It's not that this book contains lots of information that even experienced HTML coders might find of value. What's great about this book is that is does all of this for a list price of US$29.99, so you know that it will be available for less than that in most bookstores. This is not a large book (roughly 530 pages) but the information that it gives for the price make is a great value.

I've been doing web pages for many years and have gotten many rave reviews on their designs, non-bloated implementations, and compatibility across almost all browsers. And even I found things in this book that I've been thinking of implementing but thought that they'd be too difficult to implement. Web Design Garage has proved me to be wrong. And if I can get value out of this book, I know that just about all beginner and intermediate HTML/CSS coders will be able to get value out of it as well.

If you're looking to impress people with fancy Flash animations or other such multimedia overload, this isn't the book for you. But if you're thinking of starting your own web page or you already have a basic web page and would like to spice it up, buy this book.

marc campbell shows one the things everyone know in their subconscience about a well designed site, but does realize when designing a site.

"Web Design Garage" is a remarkably clear-headed, concisely-written and feature-rich book about contemporary web design topics. It is part of a "Garage" series of hip-looking, style-laden books published by Prentice Hall (Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference -PH PTR) and is targeted at the "garage" level designer - small business professionals, hobbyists, and technophiles. It assumes some modest familiarity of HTML and working with Javascripts.

This is not a primer, tutorial, or concept-bound book. It is meant to provide practical guidance and solutions to the most common web design issues dealt with by web designers. Author, Marc Campbell, offers a set of 86 topics about web design problems and solutions. The format for nearly all of the 86 topics is to highlight a design issue and offer solutions using pictures, examples, and code snippets. Although a good and quick read from beginning to end, the book can be read piecemeal for information and guidance on a specific issue. One can pick and chose topics depending on interest or need.

There are no traditional chapters, but only a set of design topics of relatively short length organized into 8 general categories. Those categories include design and usability topics, layout, images, text, links, forms, and two others, - one of miscellaneous items and the last being an explanation of basic web design material. There is also an index and a short glossary of HTML, CSS, web, and graphics-related terms.

The fundamental theme of the book is that design and usability are, or should be, the same thing. Usability is paramount, of course, but the author's approach to web design emphasizes creating a "sense of place" so that good design unites pages so that they look like they belong together.

This is not an earth-shattering idea, but like most of all of the design treatments, the goal is to design pages which make it easy for visitors to use the site. Many good design virtues are virtually invisible to the casual user. There is a blend of design and usability. It's only when a design element doesn't work well that it comes to the attention of the user, and that occurrence is meant to be avoided. The author shows by example how design and usability are intertwined.

There are a handful of themes which guide the book. Admirably, the author emphasizes for every design element, a concern for accessibility. Many of the design guides refer to accessibility by screen-readers and non-graphic browsers. A second major concern is for compliance with contemporary web design standards as promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium. Consequently, there is much emphasis on the separation of page structure from content where HTML is used for structure and CSS is used for content. A contrast of HTML and CSS formatting is highlighted in many of the chapters.

There is a large handful of sections which express HTML and CSS formatting differences on page layout, text and image positioning, and other web design elements. There is clear discussion on how to work with Javascripts and stylesheets. The emphasis is on "forward-looking" coding, i.e., clean, standards compliant, and accessibility conscious. Campbell offers an experienced designer's insights on choices to be made in design components. There is much value for both inexperienced and seasoned designers.

Each topic is richly expressed with clear and straightforward text, illustrations, screenshots, and sidebars on a variety of related matters. Throughout there are sidebars titled "FAQS" and "Geekspeak" explaining concepts or terminology for the less-knowledgable reader. Then there are those called "Tips" which usually offer an insight to practical problems, especially dealing with browser compatibility issues. There are many useful tables and charts indexing specific tag attributes, with examples. In addition and most useful are the "Toolkits" which are sample code snippets. It would have been nice to have the code snippets available for downloading from the publisher's web site (www.phptr.com/garageseries).

This is a dense volume containing all sorts of information useful for the "garage" web designer. For some reason, the depth and weight of the content is reflected in the book itself, which is remarkably heavy, weighing in at a well-produced 29 ounces.

There are many books available on basic web design, but this one is unusually clear and well-expressed. This is the type of book one keeps handy in the bookshelf next to the computer to access for quick solutions to everyday web design problems.

This is an excellent book on web security.

It is dated, but has a ton of good info nonetheless.

I've read this book twice now. Once when I first bought it and again a couple weeks ago. My reaction after the second reading was an intense desire to unplug every electronic device in my house - even the microwave - and smash them with a very large hammer.

Why, you ask? Because there is no way, I repeat, NO WAY to truly, totally and completely protect yourself from invasions to your privacy in the modern world. It almost makes me sympathize with those radical survivalist-types.

Mr. Stein clearly and concisely lays out the hazards of surfing the web, sending and receiving e-mail, and doing a number of other things on the Internet. He gives a lot of the history and background of various technologies (JavaScript, Cookies, etc.), explaining how things got the way they are now, and where they are going in the future. He further gives practical suggestions that anyone can implement to practice "safe surf".

Web Security contains content for systems administrators, web designers and lay-people alike. Better yet, these sections are cleanly separated making it easy for technical and non-technical folks to easily get to information that most interests them. Best of all, the entire book is written in English - not techno-babble - so you don't have to have a degree from MIT to understand it.

If you have been looking for a good introduction to security issues on the Internet, this book is a must-have!

Explains the basics of Web Security very well. Discusses public keys, SSL, certificates and related issues in plain English; provides meaningful figures/diagrams. Nice book to own and have handy on your bookshelf.

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Before reading the book always thought that what are the ways to secure the confidential info on your web site? This book will gives you a answers to all the question. After reading the book now understands how and why? Every Project Lead plus Project Manager involved in anykind of Web development needs to have this book in their shelves.