Human-Computer Interaction Books

Of course this book dosen't metion the web. It was written back when the WWW was not even a twinkle in Netscape's eye. Forget the black and white preaching of Jakob Nielson this is the true holy book of digital interface designers. I've been in interviews where they ask about this book.

It's time for this book to be re-collected and updated, I think. Parts of it (particularly the essays grouped under 'Creativity and Design' and 'Users and Contexts') are very useful for today's interface design world. However there are sections (particularly the section on 'New Directions') where it feels *very* dated and really suffers from being written before Internet time.

An extremely impressive group of writers participates. Including: Howard Rheingold, Don Norman, Bruce Tognazzini, Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, Timothy Leary and Gitta Salomon. It's definitely worth a read, but don't be afraid (unless you're a Macintosh history buff) to skip large sections.

This book really wasn't what I thought. It's hard to read as it is outdated (like Mac II days), hardly any examples, a lot of text and not many picture examples. I'm also not sure where the "art" part is as most examples and explanations aren't very creative and lacks getting to the point which is what good visual interface design is all about. I became sketchy reading the book for advice because of this. One of the pictures in the book even had a large monkey playing on a computer keyboard. I simply thru the book in the trash because it was big and didn't want to carry it around. The only thing this book did teach me was what "not" to do when writing a book.

Don't get me wrong, this book has a lot to offer: 500+ pages of it! But it was written in 1990 and it shows.

Almost everyone who has written a paper for this collection has some link to Macintosh (except for Timothy Leary of course). All examples are Macintosh based. And we're not talking G3's here. We're talking Mac II's.

No mention is made of the Web (how could it be?). It does, however, make a lot of good points that are applicable for all User Interface designs.

So, in general, this is a good book for it's time, but it's time has well and truly passed.

This tome is older - there's no getting around that. However, we don't throw out calculus because it is old. This book contains the principals of interface design, and they still apply. (I didn't like the binding, my copy having fallen apart after about 5 or 6 years of use). It is always a refreshing and lively read - even after the eleventeenth read!

User Interface Design is a very complicated subject. This colossal book mimics closely a telephone book with a large amount of text-heaviness. If you get over the fact that there are a wall of words on most pages, the book actually has some great content and ideas. It generally talks about user interfaces, as opposed to web interface/design. It talks more about the distinction between them and what their purposes are. It talks about different controls and the best solution for a problem that a client has. You find out a lot of things that are like, "Wow, I never thought about that, but that makes so much sense".

I am mostly a web designer, but knowing the purpose of GUIs is a great skill since there is going to be a boom in RIAs(Rich Internet Applications) in the coming years. It probably could have been condensed quite a bit, but there is a lot more good than bad, so I give it four stars.

The field of interface and interaction design is formally known as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It is significant that a large amount of HCI deals with non-programming issues such as psychological approaches to end-user experience, social manners of the audience, and more. The Essential Guide to User Interface Design provide a comprehensive overview of the essentials of interface design.

The Essential Guide to User Interface Design focuses on the actual design of the GUI. While Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction explains why a user may react a specific way to a GUI, The Essential Guide to User Interface Design details the principles and techniques effective for GUI design. Although the book does focus on end-user interaction with systems, the bulk of the book focuses on the actual interface design and layout.

The book provides numerous examples of how small changes can affect end-user productivity, including how the selection of the appropriate component can be used to make a more efficient application. From a business perspective, Chapter 1 shows how one company saved a fortune in operational costs by simply redesigning one window in their application. While ROI is generally not a case for better GUI design, it is a compelling byproduct, nonetheless.

The book is divided into two parts. The first two chapters make up Part 1 and provide an overview of the importance of the user interface. The basics of HCI and GUIs are also detailed in this section.

Part 2 constitutes the bulk of the book (Chapters 3 through 16). In Part 2, the author describes 14 steps involved with the user interface design process. Steps 1 and 2 involve understanding who the end user is and the business function. Steps 3 - 14 go into the nitty gritty of interface design and address menus, windows, control selections, text and messages, and more. The Essential Guide to User Interface Design also provides screen shots that illustrate how to properly design effective user interfaces.

I was dissapointed by this book. This book is too wordy, using repetition until you get exasperated and wording the paragraphs the longest. At the end you get tired of reading but nothing is left, only fatigue.

Besides the book doesn't have enough examples, and the ones it has are outdated. The book itself is by now outdated although it was written in 2000. The author did made a great investigation on certain subjects but for a designer and programmer like me it doesn't help at all, because I want concrete conclusions.

I don't recommend this book at all unless you like to read literature.

Bill,

In regard to "The Essential Guide to User Interface Design", 2nd Ed, please note the following:

1) Subject matter poorly organized. No chapter summaries, and the "overview" of the chapter is wordy, and doesn't directly link itself to details in the chapter, but rather vaguely talks about the chapter in ambiguous terms.

Action needed: Concise summaries and overviews, bulleted, using the same terminology as the chapter body.

2) Section and paragraph headings use the same font type and nearly the same font size. Distiguishing between a main heading and a subheading is nigh impossible. Juxtaposing the thick lines for sub headings and thin lines for main headings give the impression of similar importance, and destroys the coherency of each main subject.

Action needed: Double under-lines for main headings. Make them thicker as well. Single thin underlines for subheadings. A significant font size change between headings, subheadings, and lists. Italicize the list headings.

3) Repetitous material. The division of your topics, rahter than taking a top-down view and noting similarities of each component, you have taken a bottom up view and established a need to repeat material that applies to all topics. As an example, you have (paraphrased) said "control a can needs consistency. THis is how it is achieved." Rather than "All controls need consistency. here is how to acieve it in all situations"

Action needed: Divide the theory from the practice. Place general information (consistency, symmetry, readability, standardization, etc.) in one discinct portion of the book. Place the control explanations and tips in another. Also, quit utilizing synonyms as separate topics. Symmetry is Balance. Standardization is consistency. Stop taking single topics, finding synonyms, and writing on each one.

4) The lack of cited material in your text is disturbing. Your references pages are extensive, but no real effort has been made to link the material to the references.

Action needed: Put in-text citations.

5) Use the power point presentations to hightlight the text, not repeat it word for word.

I bought you book in new condition (never used) for less than ten dollars. I have no idea why the instructor chose it. It is painfully obvious that the instructor has no real world programming experience. It is also obvious that while you have a pedigree printed in your introduction, you have little actual coding or direct design experience. For someone that is supposed to specialize in media communications, your text is very poorly done.

Sincerely,

Jared Davis

There is useful information in this book but it
could have been said in about 1/10 of the space.
Concept are repeated ad nauseum. And author uses
ancient GUI styles for examples instead of current
ones. Extremely painful to read.

I first read this book around the same time that I read The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition : A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth. Both are books filled with anecdotes, basically slice-of-life books about their areas of expertise.

Programming as if People Mattered gives a series of very specific stories about some software systems that the author worked closely with. The close-up view offered to the reader is (to me) invaluable. Plus, it has some great one-liners that will probably stick with you for a long time.

Programmers (and all technologists) should occasionally take a step back from their work to get the larger picture. This book will help to do that.

Writing a review of this book is not hard; much easier thanactually reading the book. On the one hand, there's a pony in here.On the other, you have to dig through a fairly deep pile to find it. My suggestion, if you buy this book, is to go to chapter 17 (p129 of 178) and skim the remainder; while there aren't really any well-stated principles to apply, there's some insight that may prove valuable. Overall, there's enough good stuff to make a decent sized article in InfoWeek; but not a complete book. Digging through the remainder is compounded by the arrogant and condescending style of the author. Most of his experiences are derived from the Andrew project at CMU.

Some of the reviews seem hung up on the "dated" quality of the examples. I think you need to look past this to see the underlying principles. For example, there is a chapter called "The quest for the perfect line editor". The example given is the change from line editors like ed to full screen editors like vi. The underlying principle is difficulty people have in accepting change. Or, the following quote "It may help to think of the user community as being like a preschool full of screaming three-year-olds. One doesn't have to rush to respond every time one of them cries a little bit, as crying is entirely natural for young children. But if some of all of the children begin to wail frequently, something is probably wrong and an investigation is warranted. If what they're all crying is "I want a cookie," that doesn't necessarily mean you should give them all cookies, but you might consider making them a healthy lunch to meet the underlying real need." Excellent advice, and a universal principle, from a chapter called "Listen to your users, but ignore what they say".

Once upon a time, "Programming as if People Mattered" might be mentioned in the same article as books like "The Design of Everyday Things." Alas, unlike wine, even excellent software design books do not age well.

Whereas "The Design of Everyday Things" has been updated and refined, this book is stuck in 1991. Many of the insights of the book are excellent, but there's a lot of material that is simply no longer relevant. I can only recommend this book to people who are willing to look past the pedantic style, occasional irrelevancies, and evaluations of decade old technology. I'd recommend Alan Cooper's book The Inmates are Running the Asylum instead, though that has its own problems.

If you can look past the obvious defects, there's a lot here for readers interested in user interface design. It's all anecdotal, but it's squares well with other quantitative works.

If you got this far in the review, there's a lot in the book to reward you for looking past the obvious defects. The primary source for Borenstein is his work on Andrew, a large Carnegie-Mellon University project, which, for various reasons, was reduced to a footnote in the history of computing.

One of the most notable observations a reader will make of the book is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Many topics are just as relevant today as they were in 1991. For instance, his discussions on standards still offer insight. Part one starts us off on the basic problems of user interface design, and the chasm between regular users and programmers. Cooper offers a similar analysis, though the tone here is a lot more constructive.

The title of part 2, "The Dark Night of the Soul: The State of the Art in UI design" is a misnomer -- its real focus is the various people involved in UI design, including the HCI folks, programmers, and "the men in suits." Those familiar with the players can skip it. Much of this ground is covered in other books. If you always wondered why you can't get the cool toys from the MIT Media Lab articles, this explains why. The analysis of programmers is similar to Cooper, but with much less inflammatory tone. You can get the analysis of the management role anywhere - though his comments on them in the next section are excellent.

Part three is the meat. Borenstein gives us the benefit of his experience, with his "10 Commandments of user interface design." These are most excellent, and worth the price of admission. There's a few that feel like he might have been grasping a bit to reach the requisite 10, but that's a minor quibble. Most of the advice here is still valid, and you can easily think of modern software that could have benefited from this commentary.

Part 4 is everything else. Mostly, it contains introductory primers on development techniques, usability study, and project planning. Oddly, there's a strong chapter on the fundamental flaws in computer science education (circa 1991) that will ring true for many educated in that period.

I would love to see an updated version of this book. Much of Borenstein's advice still holds true, and a second edition could bring this wisdom to the development community. In the meantime, use the advice of part 3, and program as if people matter.

Published over 10 years ago, this work still has a few interesting tales to tell. Most of the stories and analysis are centered around the Andrew Project, a collaborative effort of IBM and CMU to build a new software and hardware environment for University computing. The project provided an opportunity to perform Human/Computer Interface studies which are discussed throughout.

The book is an interesting look back at history. It has the text from the GNU General Public License from February 1989 and a chapter entitled "Information Wants to be Free." It also show how very lost the computer industry was at that time with regard to computer usability.

There are some war stories here about the cryptic and often dangerous UNIX command line. There are also some rants against the computers of the time (PC MSDOS, Macintosh, etc.) made by folks who made something they thought was better but "weren't getting any respect."

After rereading it recently those few interesting stories were still there but the book's disorganized structure, lack of index, and pedantic style haven't aged well. Those interested in HCI are better advised to read anything by Donald Norman, or any of the other excellent books written recently on HCI or cognative psychology.

If you are considering this book, Amazon includes the Table of Contents in the links to the left, where you can see the organizational structure of the 24 hours.

The error in logic mentioned in the second review was actually a typo in the layout codes...the code for a numbered list was used instead of the code for a bulleted list.

This mistake was first discovered in mid-February and has been listed on the book's errata page since late February. The errata page itself was made available in late October, 1999, after the book was first released.

For those who purchased the book before March, the mistake can be found on page 59 in Hour 5. This mistake (and several others) were fixed for the second printing, which started shipping in March.

I would have preferred to not rate this book, but it's a required field. I'm entering a 3 so that the current average remains the same. (Personally, I think it ranks higher than that! ;-) )

If you don't have the time or budget to go to a hands-on training class, this book is the best way to learn to use RoboHELP to create HTML Help. In 24 digestible chunks, the book leads you through all the major features of the product. There are plenty of tips to help you get started on the right foot, as well more advanced technical topics to help you "push the envelope" if you're inclined that way.

The author obviously knows her stuff, and I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a comprehensive introduction to RoboHELP HTML.

Looking through the TOC for this book, I was impressed at the extent to which it covered the applications of RoboHelp. But, once I started using the book, I found myself spending progressively more time trying to understand what the author was saying.

The structure for a good book is here, it just needs a few more months on the desks of some good editors.

I'm self-taught in a lot of different areas and have used a great many books of this type. The author needs to pare this down to the essentials before going into so many details. One problem is that she covers things like how to make DHTML effects before she covers something as essential as how to make a table of contents. She also tries to offer too much information in each page -- there are too many little "hint" boxes with information that you don't need to know yet. Larger graphics would be helpful, as I had trouble reading the text on many of them.

I'm self-taught in a lot of different areas and have used a great many books of this type. The author needs to pare this down to the essentials before going into so many details. One problem is that she covers things like how to make DHTML effects before she covers something as essential as how to make a table of contents. She also tries to offer too much information in each page -- there are too many little "hint" boxes with information that you don't need to know yet. Larger graphics would be helpful, as I had trouble reading the text on many of them.

I used to read comic books as a kid (I'm 30 now), so I was looking forward to this comic book about "Hackerteen". I work in IT, so the subject was especially interesting to me.

The quality of the binding, artwork and colors is very good. However the dialog and story fell short of my expectations. The story starts out with a one page intro in the current time. Then we flash back to 6 years earlier, and start to learn about Yago (weird name, I keep wanting to call him Yugo, like the automobile), the main character.

My main issues with the story were that it felt a little silly, and the technology terms felt like they were kind of just thrown in. By silly, I mean the dialog sometimes sounds like its aimed at an 8 year old. I don't know what age bracket O'Reilly was targeting with this book, but I didn't even start reading comics until I was around 12 or 13.

The way the technology was talked about in the book made it seem like it was being written by someone with a very cursory knowledge of the terms they were throwing around. Like - ok we need to mention "OpenOffice", how do we work that into the story? So at one point there is a frame of Yago getting a text message on his cell phone that says "Yago, your contribution solved the OpenOffice.org problem". There had been no mention of any problem, OpenOffice or otherwise before this nor was it brought up again afterwards. I get they are trying to "tease" you and leave it up to the reader to track it down and figure it out, but it just didn't seem to flow very well. Another example is when they talked about DNS. It feels forced, like they wrote the story around the buzzwords.

Most of the terms have an asterisk by them, and if you look at the bottom of the page there is a URL you can go to for more information. But they don't all work. Taking off the ".php" may get you better results. The book has been out for at least a month now, I don't know why they haven't fixed this yet.

I plan to give this to a 14 year old I know and then get his thoughts about it, I'll try to update my review when that happens.

As a fan of both tech and comic books, I thought Hackerteen was a very skilled effort.

I have a young niece, and in a couple of years I will pass this on to her. She is proficient on safe uses of the Internet, under careful supervision of her mother. As she enters her early teens, this will be a fun introduction to the computer world as we know it. My involvement with social networking sites is well known in my family, and I would take comfort knowing she has the knowledge bestowed by this graphic novel.

Hackerteen deals with safety of information, real world problems; such as banking and running a business, as well as genetic coding and the infiltration of evil large corporations into our society.

On the first few pages I noticed footnotes to hackerteen website, explaining key terms such as 'DNS (domain name servers).' The information on the website is well written for the young audience and thorough.

Hackerteen as a graphic novel does not disappoint. The art and colors are beautiful and the story as it folds out is cool. A team of young hackers (which is not used as a bad term) put their problem solving skills to the test as they contribute ideas to solving a global problem. At the very least, this promotes open source to our future programmers, but at the most it was a fun read! At one time being a 14 year old with my trusty old Commodore 64 cataloging my comic collection, this would have been a welcome addition to my shelf.

I've composed this review without spoilers, but that being said, Hackerteen Volume 1 does what all good comics do: leave you waiting for the next issue. I look forward to that day, and hope it is not too far away.

Hackerteen left me with a positive outlook on the future of computers in our society, and the hope we can give our next generation of Hackers.

When I picked this book up, my first thought was "This is a very non-traditional O'Reilly book". I dare say, this is O'Reilly's first technology book published in comic book form. But it absolutely makes sense as to why they did it. Take your typical teenager. How many of them would willingly pick up a "traditional" computer book to read up on open-source, linux, and internet crimes? Unless they're über-geeky, I'd say pretty much none of them would do that. This is what is so absolutely perfect about this book: it's exactly what I would have picked up as a teen--both for fun and as a way to learn more about technology.

The story is about Yago, a young assistant teacher at "Hackerteen", an elite school for gifted computer students. While trying to get some money to help his family out of a tough situation, he writes a program he shouldn't have. Shortly after, he must race to undo the damage his actions have done.

This is a graphic novel, which is a lot of fun to read. It shows teens examples of risky internet behavior and what some of the serious consequences of that behavior can be. I'd highly recommend this book for teens who want to learn more about internet technologies and ways to protect themselves online. It's a fun read and I loved the drawings. I can't wait for volume 2!

As a part-time teacher who focuses on technology I've struggled for years how to get kids interested in technology and get them exploring the different aspects of technology besides the obvious (gaming, web browsing, etc). Over the years I've tried thing such as the LOGO programming language, design-your-own games and the such. Yet, I always look for ways to get kids away from the computer now and then and read up on technology and find out how to use it for good (and the perils of using it for the not so good). In Hackerteen, I found a great book that I think will not get the kids involved in reading, but also introduce them to some different aspects of technology and computing.

Hackerteen reminds me a lot of the books that used to come with Tandy Computers back in the day. They use a series of characters to talk about different aspects of technology and you follow them through various plots and sub-plots. In this particular book, Volume 1, kids are introduced to a group of characters who believe in ethical computing and the problems that arise when one of the rising stars in the group tries to help out his family by doing something he knows is wrong -- but how bad could it be? He soon finds out how bad it could be and the implications it has.

I really wish the format of the book was more like a comic book so the price wouldn't be so steep. Budgets are always trained in the classroom and the price tag is a little pricey for most libraries and classrooms to swallow, especially if they want to get more than one copy so the whole class can read it. However, despite this, I think they are off to a good start with the series and even I, as an adult who has been in IT for many years, can't wait to see what happens in Volume 2!

I'm a computer professional, and I jumped at this book when I heard of it, thinking that such a format might help me teach my 10 year old about the risk/reward/usage of the internet.

The book has a nice semi-glossy, quality feel to it, and the art work is great. Just remember that it's a comic book. You may already know that, but Im just reminding you because I had initially envisioned my son and I taking turns reading it out loud together in the evening, and discussing it, like we do with the novels that he has to read for school. But a comic book is not suitable for that, because it often relies on pictures to convey what is happening, with comparatively few verbal explanations of the situation. A comic book is something that you have to read and understand for yourself, so it doesn't work as a teaching medium between two people, unless you each read it at separate time and discuss it later.

The good:

(A) Exposes reader to some potential bad uses of the internet
1. bad guy hijacks a teen girls webcam, records and then blackmails her, threatening to post the videos on the net (--she is shown in a towel in one frame, there is no nudity--)...after she had earlier remarked that she wasn't sure she set it up properly
2. bad guy wins a programming contest by stealing code from the laptop of a better programmer, but gets caught
3. corrupt politician works with software company to rig electronic voting machines in attempt to win a presidential election! ...also shows the spin campaign to get the rigged voting machines adopted into widespread usage.
4. bad guys hack the root DNS servers, causing the internet to almost grind to a halt, affecting commerce, business, email, etc.
(B) Emphasizes the value of teamwork, and mentions the value of open-source collaborative software development
(C) Sitting at a computer all day for self-absorbed/selfish purposes (i.e. online gaming, etc) is condemned, proposing instead that if one is so interested in the internet, that person should learn to use it for the benefit of others, contribute to the improvement of your society, etc., rather than just using the net to waste time.

The bad:

(A) Technical details. There are none. Now I'm an IT guy, so I would have been fascinated with the explanations of how the good/bad guys did their thing with the computer. But even the casual reader wants SOME idea of what went on. Many, many net users, even the teen audience, have an interest in HOW the bad guys are able to do what they do, and HOW the good guys can stop them. But the book skips over those topics completely. I was very disappointed with that aspect, because that is specifically what I was hoping I would find in a book like this. The book tells a story, demonstrates some virtuous IDEAS from characters, but stays completely clear of teaching or explaining any good or bad PRACTICES.
(B) Web links. There are a few times where a character mentions an internet or programming term, such as "open source", or "DNS server", followed by an (*). The asterisk is to act like a footnote, directing you to the bottom of the page, where you'll find a URL for the real world internet site, Hackerteen.com. I assume these are supposed to take you to definitions or explanations of the word in question, but I hated this idea for a comic book. They should have added a few more frames to the comic at each one of those points, to explain the thing, if necessary. The "go-to-my-website-if-you-want-to-understand-what-I-just-said" was annoying. I felt like they were pushing me to their web site for something that should have just been part of the story.
(C) The previous reviewer stated that these URL's weren't even valid! I have not tested that myself, since I did not have the internet available at the time I was reading it, and I don't have the book handy now. If what he said is true, and the URL's found on the pages of the book are still not valid, then I'm amazed. Can you say NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME? I hope they'll get their act together on that issue.
(D) The to-be-continued-in-Volume-2 part was also annoying. The major conflicts of the story are not resolved. You just suddenly come upon the last page, and you're told to wait for volume 2. However, this may be how all comic books work, so maybe thats just normal...but this costs more than a regular comic book, and I wanted an ending.

Overall, it is an interesting story, but Volume 1 doesn't teach you anything about the internet other than: bad guys can *somehow* infiltrate computers for evil purposes, voting machines software should be open-source so that the public will be safe from political manipulation, AND a naïve teen hacker with a good intentions can be duped into helping the bad guys if he's not careful.

That said, I probably will buy volume 2, because I do like the overall concept for the story, and who knows, it may have a little more savory details than this one had.

The fundamental premise of this book is that the soul and its intuitive life cannot be accessed through programs of efficiency or schemes of mechanistic imitation. Jack London's cry "Man is born to live not to exist." seem appropos here. Living is an art as Aristotle would say, not a function or adjustment, or any other kind of action derived from posterior analysis. The soul, to use the language of Kant, is fundamentally a-priori--a-priori to all of our actions as a sort of womb out of which we grow and then transform into our larger selves.

I think Talbott assaults the wrong target in his diatribe against computers, which is a little like the argument of gun control activists, i.e., guns not people kill people. Computers are tools and when used by men armed with the tools of the soul (the virtues) then they remain tools. When men and women without virtue use tools, they abuse them and degrade themselves in the process.

Curiously, Talbot doesn't talk a great deal about the soul, he doesn't talk about the five traditional Aristotelian powers of the soul: Movement, intellection, volition, growth and the sensitive power, which relates to sight and hearing. He also speaks little about virtue--the excellence of a soul in balance. What he does do in the first quarter of the book is show by example that the soul is there, hidden yet powerful and his depiction of this is masterful.

I would recommend How to Manage Your Destructive Impulses with Cyber-Kinetics [ASIN:1580083501 How to Manage Your D.I.C.K: Redirect Sexual Energy and Discover Your More Spiritually Enlightened, Evolved Self]] as a follow up book to Devices of the Soul.

One thing is sure: this book is part of the great restoration of classical consciousness that will be a hallmark of the new Millennium. The recovery of the soul and the cultivation of its real devices--the virtues and the sacraments of Roman Catholicism would do much to restore Western civilization.

Do you believe that fundamental change must be rooted in a transformation of the individual self? If you do, then this book is for you. Author Steve Talbott, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that challenges you to step back and take an objective look at the technology that is driving your life today.

Talbott, begins by looking at how technical devices have played a positive role in essential human transformation, and how today, in a kind of reversal, they can lull you toward unconsciousness. Then, the author juxtaposes certain tendencies of technology-based thinking, with the inner world and outer exploits of a blind man, with the experience of a Down Syndrome family, and with life in a community for the mentally handicapped. Next, he considers the natural world as an educational resource, and then follows a master teacher as she observes, often in horror, the actual use of computers in classrooms around the country. The author also offers a set of intentional provocations as a stimulus for discussion in schools. He continues by drawing some perhaps unexpected conclusions from baby walkers, video games, and sexual content on the Internet. Finally, the author shows you how the enthronement of information, as the distilled essence of educational content may render superfluous not only the university and teachers, but also students--and, in the final resort, knowledge itself.

The dangers the author tries to illuminate in this most excellent book arise, above all, when technology fulfills one's fondest expectations. Perhaps more importantly though, as you wield these tools, the resulting factor will be the mechanization of the entire society.

What becomes obvious, once you get past the well-written and interesting intro, is that the rest of the book is clearly and distinctly anti-technology: its title could as well be "How technology will ruin everything for everybody, if it hasn't already."

From what I read on the author's website, after reading the book, Talbott worked as editor-in-chief for highly regarded computer-book publisher, O'Reilly (there are at least 15 O'Reilly-published books on the shelf next to my computer), and O'Reilly's imprint on this book (in Technology/Society series), taken at face value, will inevitably (mis)lead potential readers to think that this is a balanced, in-depth look at technology's role in present-day society. It is not.

The titles of Talbott's articles and presentations published before (and listed on his website) might give potential readers a better idea of what to expect inside this book: "Deceiving Virtues of Technology," "Is High Technology Turning Us into Zombies?", "How Technology Can Enslave Us", or "Virtual Spirituality and the Destruction of the World." Before buying this book, I recommend checking out the chapter titled "Evil" (p. 201-2), with its memorable quote which, for me, well encapsulates the books tone and overall sentiment: "If we follow this path of arrogance, the destruction we call down upon the world may be unparalleled."

Some readers may find this a satisfying read (especially since, in terms of style, Talbott's writing is very polished). I was disappointed, not just because I disagree with author's views (I disagree with Birkert's "The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age" as well, and still would highly recommend it), but because I hoped for something more balanced, and better researched. I expected a solid, sociological and technological analysis, and got (very articulate) musings of latter-day Luddite, tinged with religious spirituality instead.

Regarding topics addressed in the book: For those interested in the "holistic" approach to knowledge (mentioned in the chapter on environment), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, offers a much better, in-depth look at the topic. For those interested in the promise and risk of genetic engineering, the novels "Never Let Me Go" and "Cloud Atlas: A Novel" address those issues with more insight; for film fans, the topic gets explored in Gattaca, which manages to make a similar point, in a dystopian vision that is quite complete, balanced, and articulate.

I was a little surprised when I ended up with a review copy of Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines by Steve Talbott. Back in January, I attempted to read the galley manuscript, and wasn't able to make it past chapter 2. But with a promise that it would get better, I decided to give it one more chance. Looking at it from an overall standpoint, it *did* improve enough for me to understand the message that Talbott was attempting to convey. But I personally think that only certain types of readers will get the most out of it. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.

Contents
(I'd normally list the TOC here so you could see the chapter headings, but somewhere between home and Ireland the book went missing. I'm guessing I put it in the plane seat pocket when I was done, and forgot to grab it on the way off.)

The main message, as I understood it, is that we as a society are giving up too much of our humanity to technology. In many cases, we bend our view of the world to fit the technology that we want or need, and as such we ourselves become more machine-like in how we frame our outlook on life. Just because we could have our refrigerator track our food and order staples for us, doesn't mean that we should be giving up the control and ability to make those decisions ourselves. Or take our ability to communicate worldwide with people via instant messaging. Talbott would contend that by doing so, we've actually isolated ourselves from regular human interaction that used to take place face-to-face. That's the general theme that runs throughout the book.

I don't necessarily disagree with his basic premise. Geeks automate things because they can, and they build to the mindset that *they* have (which is often quirky and strange to begin with). I also recognize that to make a point, sometimes you have to be a bit extreme to catch someone's attention. But personally I found the message obscured in far too many words and analogies to mythology. If I were more introspective, I might have found this thought-provoking. I know some people who would think this was an outstanding title. Personally, I wanted something far more practical. I don't do "subtle" well, and I likely missed many of the nuances that he was trying to convey.

If you're a contemplative reader who wonders why machines are taking over, you might really like this read. If you're more of a "can we move on and *do* something now?" type, you may well be frustrated as I was.

This fine book is unusual in so many ways! O'Reilly is generally known as the publisher of authoritative technology study and reference books with animals on the covers. This book, however, has much more to say to the individual about themselves than any technology they may be interested in learning.

First, let me say that this is not some new age, tree-hugging, abandon the Internet and head back to nature manifesto. The focus of this book is understanding human potential and technologies place in it. Talbott makes the point that increasingly technology requires us to give up control of important aspects of our humanity and delivers a poor and inferior replacement. In contrast, he explains that technology can be used with appropriate restraint and respect for the person.

The book is spiritual but only in a sense that humans are special and largely more special than we know because so much technology removes our need to discover. Stories from the Amazon jungle, WWII French Resistance, Greek Legends and communities for the differently abled will inspire you to see people around you differently and relate in a better way to those unlike yourself.

If you enjoy reading, you're likely to come away from this book with a new list of books. Talbott recounts stories and details from classic literature, biographies and history in ways that illustrate his point perfectly and will encourage you to want to read more.

And will "we" still be here when we get there?

Digital Soul is about the nature of our world when machines become as intelligent as humans and beyond. It is also about the nature of those machines. It is clear that Georges has thought long and hard about the subject, has read widely and has compared notes with other futurists. His expression is reasoned and reasonable. There are no muddy sentences or mystical ambiguities. He has worked hard to make sure that his ideas are accessible to a wide range of people including those with no expertise in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Clearly the problem is to derive benefit from super intelligent machines without letting them take over our lives. Georges believes that it will be difficult to do that since, as the machines get smarter and smarter and we allow them more and more latitude and we more and more depend on them, they will come to control us.

But this is where I think Georges goes astray. The question I would ask is, would they WANT to control us?

Georges implies that human-like values, such as that of self-preservation will automatically follow from machines becoming intelligent. But actually the machines will have no values at all and no desire, either. They will have no inclination to act except as such inclinations are built into their make-up.

Georges also implies that he knows what qualities or values are desirable in a machine. He speaks of "nicer, testosterone-free, superhuman beings" as opposed to "greedy, violent, barbaric, self-absorbed" beings. (p. 212) While these are surely agreeable preferences, it is not clear that artificial creatures designed according to human choice would long survive.

It is also not clear that we would want to design machines according to human values. We would want to design them as tools (which they are) to assist us in following our desires and supporting our values. Notice the difference. Machines that work toward fulfilling the desires and upholding the values of human beings are not the same as machines that contain the desires and values of human beings.

What I think Georges temporarily forgets is that no machine is going to "want" to do anything unless "desire" is built into the machine. The machine doesn't care whether it is plugged in or not unless we somehow encode such a desire into the machine. What Georges seems to assume is that somehow the complexity that we will demand from machines will somehow necessitate that we inculcate desire, self-preservation and the like into the machine. I think this will not be necessary at all. Indeed I suspect our machines will tell us that they will be able to function just fine without the institution of some kind of supercode or primary instruction telling them to protect themselves and have ulterior motives. (Such notions led to HAL 9000's murderous behavior in Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

I think a more likely future (and one that Georges addresses) is a symbiosis between people and intelligent machines in which the machines have the knowledge, skill and intelligence necessary for making decisions, but that the actual decisions and the impetus for action remain with human beings.

However, should intelligent machines, as Georges fears, somehow acquire purpose and goals and desires such as self-preservation, then there is a great danger of our lives being taken over and controlled by intelligent machines. He warns us that we have to guard against that danger.

Georges rightly brings up the Fermi Paradox in Chapter 18. Since it would appear (to some at least) that the universe is teeming with intelligent life, Fermi famously asked, "Where is everybody?" One of the many answers (aside from "we are alone") is that "technological civilizations have a very short life expectancy, because they promptly destroy themselves during their technological adolescence." This insight from Georges on page 214 is another way of pointing to what he is worried about. Still another way (perhaps) of expressing this is to say that we will merge with our intelligent machines, and having acquired a sort of superintelligence, will find that the values that were built into us by the evolutionary mechanism are muted, values such as self-preservation, curiosity, greed, anger, vengeance, etc. Any sort of desire may be culturally evolved out of us. Why do anything at all? may very well become the unanswerable question. Perhaps this is what happens to technological civilizations in their adolescence, and that is why we haven't heard from them.

Beyond this I think we need to realize that evolutionary creatures, which we are, are just a place along the way to something else. What that something else will be is as much beyond our ken as understanding quantum mechanics is to bubble bees.

Regardless of some disagreements this is a very interesting book well worth reading from cover to cover. I agree with his enthusiasm about artificial intelligence and I agree that we should continue to pursue its development and not become neo-Luddites. But I am not afraid of a future without human beings as we are now constituted. We are imperfect creatures. We are appropriate and adapted to the present environment. When the environment changes, as it surely will, we may no longer be able to adapt and may go the way of the dodo. So be it. We know from looking at the past that all species eventually die. New ones come into existence. Should the future be any different?

As we see the limitations of humanity, as we see ourselves for the first time as we really are, perhaps it is time for a greater identification. Instead of identifying exclusively with human beings, might we not identify with a larger process that encompasses all life forms including those to come?

The topic of machine intelligence continues to inspire both worry and elation. This book is an interesting mixture of these two, for the author is both optimistic about the eventual rise of machine intelligence, which he argues is to a large degree already here, but he is also clearly concerned about its possible negative consequences. Failure to understand and adapt to the new technologies arising may threaten us with extinction, he argues in the first chapter of the book.

He also states in chapter 1 that in order to survive our "technological adolescence" humans must lose some of their "self-destructive evolutionary baggage." This belief seems to be a popular one, being pervasive in literature, performing arts, and philosophy. But from a statistical/scientific standpoint, it is clearly unsupported. In comparison to the total number of humans who have ever lived, only a tiny minority of individuals throughout history have ever hurt anyone physically; an even smaller number have actually killed another human being. The author's cynicism here is totally unjustified.

The author though does engage in interesting discussion on the nature of intelligence and why he believes that machines are already more intelligent than humans are in certain specialized domains. Because of this, he also argues (correctly) that the further rise of machine intelligence will take place incrementally, with no well-defined time at which one could say that machine intelligence has surpassed human intelligence. It seems as though we have learned to live with machines doing things better than we can, at least in some areas, but have not yet viewed these capabilities as being "intelligent". But, asks the author, if they are more intelligent, at least in these areas, how would one know if they are working properly? It is at this point that the author believes that one should worry about the future of humanity as the dominant life-form on Earth.

Throughout the book, the author shows keen insight into the real goals behind research and development in A.I. The main goal he says is not to create machines that think and behave completely like humans, but find solutions to problems and do tasks that humans require. This will bring about, the author believes, intelligent machines whose cognitive abilities are quite unique, and characteristically non-human-like. There are many examples of his opinions on these matters in current developments in A.I., such as genetic programming and automatic theorem proving. These two areas have exhibited solutions to problems that clearly are very different than what humans would have done.

In addition, and perhaps to the alarm of some philosophers, the author takes a pragmatic view concerning the question as to whether machines can think. He clearly does not want to engage in the arm-chair philosophical debates about this question, and considers them totally irrelevant. What matters to him is whether the machine "acts in all respects" as though it understands. The imputation of mental processes to a machine will assist in the understanding of how it works and what it can do, and this is perfectly fine with the author. But this does, in the author's view raise questions as to the legal and ethical status of thinking machines.

Because of the title of the book, it is not surprising to find a discussion of the "strong A.I." problem included in it. The author spends a chapter addressing the nature of consciousness and some of the ideas and myths surrounding it. He recognizes, correctly, that the doctrines of vitalism and dualism are not useful at all from a scientific perspective. The proponents of these doctrines adhere to the "irreducibility" of consciousness, and therefore to the untenability of its analysis. Pure speculation is thus the tool of inquiry, all of this done on the philosopher's armchair and not in the laboratory. The author though, thankfully, advocates a purely scientific approach, taking the physical nature of consciousness as an axiom, and then seeing how far this will lead. His analysis and commentary throughout the chapter are very interesting and connected with evolutionary arguments as to why consciousness is structured the way it is.

Most interesting is the author's discussion on the role of emotions in human cognition. Not viewing emotions as inherently undesirable or "irrational", he gives reasons for wanting to incorporate them into an intelligent machine. One of these is an algorithmic notion: emotions provide a "weighting scheme" that will filter out undesirable paths in the total path space of alternatives. Anyone who has attempted to design search algorithms will understand the importance of weighting schemes that will allow pruning of the search space. The same goes for those involved in the design of neural networks for pattern matching or time series prediction: bias nodes are essential for the proper function of the neural network. The author gives as an example the biases that are built into chess-playing machines, without which the machine's capabilities would be crippled.

The author definitely believes in the possibility of machines "taking over", devoting an entire chapter to the possible scenarios that might bring this about. But his cynicism acts against him here, namely his belief that humans, even though clearly expressing intelligence, are prone to extreme violence. His notion of intelligence therefore is too narrow: an alternative one is that the more intelligent an entity becomes, the less prone to violence it becomes. In other words, violence disrupts the cognitive flow of the entity in question, and it avoids it out of necessity: to maintain a state of intelligence that not only has survival value but may indeed be purely a subjective need. The degree of intelligence is thus inversely related to the violence participated in. There are many examples of this, billions in fact, these being the humans who have lived throughout history. The vast majority of humans have been superb thinking machines, and they serve as excellent examples to the ones which they are creating and will create.

In recent years a spate of books has appeared on the rise of intelligent machines and what that might mean for the future of humanity. "Digital Soul" is among them, and it purports to be a basic introduction to the subject of artificial intelligence and the future. Clearly written and at times engaging, "Digital Soul" asks a range of interesting questions: What defines life? What defines consciousness? Can a machine be alive, can it be conscious? If either alive or conscious does a machine the have rights and privileges that we extend to other living things? Do intelligent machines pose a threat to humanity as depicted in many popular science fiction books and film? Unfortunately, Thomas M. Georges does not offer a sustained and penetrating analysis of them.

Georges suggests that the creation of sentient artificial intelligence is a virtual surety in the twenty-first century if the current level of advancement is maintained. Such a development, he believes, would force humanity to reconsider their everyday beliefs, scientific perspectives, political relations, and religious conceptions. As he put it, the creation of "superintelligent extraterrestrials" living among us on Earth must prompt a rethinking of deeply held beliefs and values.

This is a modest explication of a complex subject. It may be read with profit as an introduction of the possibilities for the future of artificial intelligence. But there are several other books of a similar nature that deserve more sustained consideration. For instance, after reading "Digital Soul" please also consider Ray Kurzweil, "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" (Penguin, 1998); Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, "Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species" (MIT Press, 2000); Rodney Brooks, "Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us" (Pantheon, 2002); Sidney Perkowirz, "Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids" (Joseph Henry Press, 2004); James Hughes, "Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future" (Westview Press, 2004); and Joel Garreau, "Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies--And What It Means to Be Human" (Doubleday, 2005).

Even so, I have yet to find a really outstanding book on this subject written at an introductory level. I will continue my search. Meantime, "Digital Soul" is one among several works that is useful, but not path breaking.

This is one of only 3 books I've been willing to review after giving up half way through. Georges is a crystal clear, and sometinmes entertaining writer. The book, though, is uncritical, unduly repetitive, and even superficial.

Am I expecting too much? This is, after all, suppoosed to be an intro book. No, my appraial is not based on a highfalutin motive. In fact, it is because this is an intro book that I think there is a disservice done by its surface level approach.

Each chapter (at least in the first half) follows a pretty simple formula. The author asks questions like can machines think, emote, reason, be conscious, understand, etc. Letitimate questions, all. His response, though, seems to be "Yes, they can do all. Why? No one has proved that they cannot; that's why." I suppose that in its own way, this is a legitimate reason to remain agnostic on whether computers could one day achieve these traits, but it is also an easy way to dismiss the question. Scientists do not - or should not - work that way. A theory is not viable simply no one has disproven it. Rather, evidence must first be martialled in its favor for it to be taken seriously. (Not that this can't be done for AI, but the author owes it to us to at least survey the arguments).

Second, the author takes these traits (emotion, consciousness, reason, etc) and in an effort to 'understand' waht they are and get some sense of how they might work, he offers a simple explanation: evolution created them. Now I believe wholeheartedly in evolution rather than creation and my qualm is not whether the statement is valid. Rather, it is whether 'evolution did it,' is an answer to his question at all. Saying that evolution created consciousness does nothing to illuminate our view on what it is and what makes it work. Of course, we don't have any really outstanding theories yet, but again, the author owes it to us to at least survey waht we do have.

Third, the author accepts UNCRITICALLY the thought that AI will create machine minds and even ones that outgrow us. While this is a possibility, an introductory book like this, should be examining the legitimate criticsism (By people like Searle, McGinn, and Lanier) against it. Rather, he answers criticism of strong AI by suggesting that anyone who denies it must be a mystic who believes in a soul or god or some other immaterial substance. Not true! There are legitimate criticms of AI and I get the feeling that the intro reader is going to come away from this book with the false impresion that there are not scientifically based criticisms.

The long and the short is that this book is simply lightweight enough for me to fear that the first-time reader will not be exposed to very much from this book. For those who want to read some thoughtful introductions, "Is Data Human" by Michael Hanley, "Society of Mind" by Marvin Minsky (which this book cites from) and "The Minds I" by Hofstadter and Dennett are good ones. With the exception of the first, all of these books may be a little more tedious (not much) than "Digital Soul" but they are also more informative.

Usually, I value the writing of scientists for the clarity, reason and sometimes poetry found. But this is just awful. It almost seems like one of those self-help books with BIG letters and about two paragraphs per page.

The idea is that we can create "mirror worlds", identical but virtual representations of any entity - social, geographical, testable - that we desire. At first this sounds exciting but as he explained it, I slowly got the idea that it was nothing more than (pardon the pun) "smoke and mirrors". I just could not understand the ultimate use of such a structure except perhaps for traffic control or future predictions of population trends or growth. Nice try but no cigar.

Mirror Worlds
Gelertner
3 stars

The book, first published in 1991 by Oxford University Press,
must be read in the context of its day to be fully appreciated.
At that time, in the pre-web world, there was a great deal of
discussion devoted to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the
Fifth Generation Project driven by the Japanese. If Gelertner
had limited his offering to only those topics this book could
be left in the pile of such books from that era without loss.
Luckily, Gelertner gave us more.

While there is much of the book relegated to the AI ideas of
that time, there are also insightful and practical observations
that have a more lasting appeal. For example, Gelertner delves
into the question "What is a program? What does 'software' mean?"
Such questions are explored in some detail and other observations
are made in the discussions. "Managing complexity must be
your goal... we can call it the pursuit of 'topsite'. Topsite--
the understanding of the big picture--is the essential goal of
every software builder. It's also the most precious intellectual
commodity known to man."

We've all heard talk about someone who "sees the big picture."
That, according to Gelertner, is "topsight": having perspective,
clarity, and a sense of proportion. Why is this important? If
we want to have machines (programs) help us see and understand
our world (in a "Mirror" of our world), we'll need to teach
these machines how to make sense of the information. Minimally,
they'll need to be able to sift through the volumes of data
and find that data which is "interesting." The very best programs
will be able to find those interesting things and present
them in a compelling way. All of this demands "topsight."

To drive this ideal, Gelertner and his colleagues created
"Linda" which serves as the basis for the
machinery of such a Mirror World system. The idea is simple:
create a Space where information (called a Tuple)
can be put, taken, or simply read or examined. Many programs
put information in the space. Other programs notice items
in the Space, take them, and perform some processing, and
put a different item back into the space in its stead.

This part of the book, the very practical nuts-and-bolts
part, is alive and well today and in active use. While
Gelertner's system Linda may not have achieved widespread
acceptance, the same idea in another form is quietly
thriving: JavaSpaces. The same notions described by
Gelertner to support his Mirror World now serves as the
heart of many commercial applications.

Gelertner has a lot to say. Yes, some of it now appears
dated and some of the ideas he touts have been
discredited. But, nobody said predicting the future was
easy business!

My recommendation is thus: forgive Gelertner the detours he
takes (that we all took) and find within the book all those
things which have inspired--and will continue to inspire.
There are ample enough thoughts within those pages to make
the time invested in a careful reading well worthwhile.

"Mirror Worlds" sketches, on a broad canvas, what we will be able to do with (virtually) infinite bandwidth and storage capacity. Gelernter's book provides key concepts and mental models for envisioning technological futures.

We're never quite prepared for the future when it arrives. Exponential technology curves yield thousand-fold gains in capacity and speed, but humans can't imagine thousand-fold improvements. One solution: remove the limits completely. For example, assume that infinite bandwidth and data storage capacity are available to everyone for free. What would this enable us to do? Explore the new applications -- the new ways of organizing work, communication, commerce, thought, and art -- that would become possible. Then work back from that vision of the future, to find the paths that will take us in that direction.

Example 1: Put video cameras everywhere, and record every moment. -- Remember, infinite and free storage and bandwidth! Why throw anything away? -- Use that real-time data to build a virtual model of your city - a mirror world. Then have your software agents roam through all those data/video streams and flag - or respond to - events that might impact your neighborhood or your decisions. The value is in the filtering!

Example 2: Any human with a PC and a net connection can become a television broadcaster. The TV broadcasting infrastructure becomes obsolete, just as the telephone companies' infrastructure does in the Stupid Network vision With millions of producers creating and broadcasting content streams into infospace -- and all prior broadcasts stored for viewing as well -- a highly selective "TV Guide" will be a key to survival in the post-literate society.

Higly recommended reading for visionaries, product planners and science fiction writers. END

Gelernter's treatment of the phenomenon of software development does clarify things considerably. We sometimes remember the author as one of the Unabomber's victims. If I remember right, he lost his hands to a mail bomb.

If you liked this book, please read "1939: The Lost World of the Fair." I enoyed the hell out of it; I'd love it if he'd consider writing more fiction.

Having reached a plateau in my understanding of MFC, I needed a resource to step me through the process of building and implementing owner-drawn controls, self-drawn controls, and implementing advanced user interfaces with MFC. This book was one of the ones I reached for, hoping it would provide some insight on those subjects.

It didn't. Nothing extreme or truly advanced here, it certainly isn't the "complete guide."

This book only covers the basics, and glances over owner-drawn controls. Self-drawn controls are only mentioned indirectly. Subclassing is explained in relation to edit controls (with an example). Due to the lack of depth, you will read some sections of the book wanting more, and end up looking at the source code examples.

The bulk of Bugg's book is focused on presenting the same information you can get from other books, albeit with a slightly better explanation and a little more depth (it explains the various options, and provides examples), in one singular volume.

I do like the layout. A chapter is dedicated to each control or resource: buttons, edit controls, listboxes, checklist boxes, status bars, combo boxes, toolbars, and the new common controls are covered, and are reasonably well explained. Also, the common dialogs are also presented. If you want to refresh your memory on something, like the common file dialog, you just go to that chapter. This means you can avoid having to thumb through several chapters like other MFC books.

Bugg also includes some neat tricks. However, I would point out that the code on pages 324 - 325 is unnecessary to add a beveled separator to a dialog. All you have to do is draw a picture box on your dialog with a width of 1, and check off the "Sunken" and "Border" properties in the resource editor. No code is necessary.

I would say this book would be a worthwhile supplement to the mega-huge-all-in-one MFC books on the market which touches one every subject without really teaching you anything in particular. It would especially be useful for programmers in the beginner to intermediate range. It just isn't useful to me, aside from being a reference.

I found this an excellent book for adding the final polish to my apps. I thought the author did a great job of sticking to the basic steps of manipulating the controls, screen, and other parts of the user interface. The book showed me how to add a lot of little touches to my programs that I'd seen, but never learned how to use. Things like tool tips, animated sequences, bitmapped buttons, etc. I also found the information on inserting the Date-Time control very useful and timely. Also, the info on the other new common controls was most helpful...

While not everyone is on the same level in terms of development experience, if you are getting up to speed with Visual C++ and want to give your apps that professional look, I heartily recommend this book.

--Jack

The book is well structured and the topics are very interesting. However, some controls are too briefly explained (i.e. TrackBar, Header) and owner-drawing techniques are not fully used. For instance, I was expecting a section on creating a flat-look style for command buttons, how to draw your own menus with bitmaps,etc... I think the author should have exploited this terrific idea of MFC UI more efficiently and should have gone deeper. Mr. Bugg leaves you craving for more UI knowledge and techniques. After all, on the back cover it does say "..here is the first complete guide..."

It is obvious that the authors do know their topic (Qt4 programming).
It is much less obvious that they master the technique to write a good programming book!

This book has lost of un-necessary verbiage but lack a clear sense of structure. The differences between the platforms (for me Windows/Linux) are poorly documented... so trial and error has been the mode to get simple things done.

Another comment would be the poor formatting of the examples (position of curly brackets etc...) making the example a lot less readable that their should be.

Conclusions:
1) I have not yet picked up another book, but this one was not my best purchase! I will probably at the usually good O'Reilly Books.

2) Usually Prentice Hall is a great editor, but this book may have been "rushed out" before it was ready. Suggest some prudence there, or possibly sell this book as a "Alpha Release" book?

The fact that this is the ONLY official best-practice guide to QT 4 programming makes it a 'must have' for any college-level or specialty computer library serious about catering to C++ programmers. QT4 enables developers to build stronger C++ applications that run on systems from Linux to Windows without source code changes, and this revised, expanded documentary includes the latest, proven solutions for all kind of GUI development asks. This update includes new coverage of databases, XML and other programming concerns. A 'must' reference for serious, advanced programmers and computer libraries.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Qt continues to evolve. This book gives a comprehensive description of the latest major release, 4. Why does Qt even exist? Basically because now any object oriented language that seeks broad usage needs an extensive widget library for the making of graphical programs. Java and C# are the prime examples. But of course C++ predates these by many years, and the intrinsic definitions of the C++ standards have no widgets. So Qt is offered as the [mostly] graphical extension of C++. Akin to how the Standard Template Library has data structures that extend the purely computational aspects.

In some ways, the book is pretty simple if you've coded in any other graphical language. The concepts are the same. An attraction of Qt is how quickly you can write code to put up windows with several widgets, and attaching callbacks to button widgets for functionality.

Qt also has important classes dealing with other issues. Like reading and writing to the filesystem or SQL database. And multithreading. Or parsing XML. These sections of the book can be harder to assimilate. With the graphical classes, writing test code and debugging can be easy, since the graphics gives you a tight visual feedback loop. But for [say] debugging TCP client server applications, low level bugs can be very obscure to hunt down.