Software Books

I like this book. It hasnt wowed me, but it is a good tool for learning a few of the many features in photoshop.

Step by step instructions, very easy to understand, with download excercise files make this one of the best photoshop Book.

If you're a professional photographer (or aspire to be one), get this book.
Unlike other books, this book skips the worthless cheezy stuff that professionals
aren't likely to be interested in to begin with. This book focuses on tasks that
photographers and graphic professionals are most likely to need during post processing.

This book is simply a "must have" for those who want to get straight to the point,

without having to flip through hundreds of pages of worthless fluff, just to get the
most out of Photoshop. The book is easy to follow & well written.

#1 If you want to be able to make great composites, work with layers and masks, etc.,
on the level of someone who's trying to create a composite for a cover of say Redbook
Magazine, to be imported into InDesign or Illustrator for polishing- then THIS is your
book!

#2 If you want to remove portraits from horrible backgrounds, and engage in the common
advance post processing procedures common to professional photography, then THIS is your
book!

#3 If you just got a digital camera last week, and you're just now trying to figure out
how to work Photoshop- Get THIS book and immerse yourself. To be honest, anything less
probably a gross waste of your time in the long run as this book focuses on the tasks
that are most needed for taking your photos to a professional level.

Lastly, it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to regret purchasing this book if you make even a
modest attempt at learning the material. Like anybook, the single most reason people
don't learn software is because they don't READ the material. People want stuff spoon
fed to them. Hint: If you make money from photography, and you don't know how to do
the things in this book, but your competitors do.. you will be at a HUGE disadvantage.

Good luck!

This book is a must have for designers! Eismann makes masking an easy task and offers some really great tips on how to mask difficult objects such as veils, water bottles, glass, and translucent fabrics. And of course HAIR!

I have other photoshop books, but this one explains it the best.

~Stacey~

Ms. Eismann hits all the areas necessary for one to become proficient in masking and compositing. She is recommended by all the current photoshop gurus for a very good reason. This book is an excellent primer and also delves into advanced techniques. It's a great resource book and I've got post-it flags everywhere. You can't go wrong with this book.

Debbie Schmidt
dsh Solutions
http://www.dshsolutions.com

Much of this book is spent explaining what should be obvious to the best managers, but which corporate culture and priorities tend to work against. In general, the book looks more at typical mistakes than at recipes for success. At the same time, the advice is solid and they often provide data to back up their assertions.

If I was a manager at a typical and mediocre corporation, I would not recommend this book too much-- it is hell fighting against corporate culture. However if you work for the best or you are starting a business and want to be the best, this book is extremely important. (If you are a manager working at a mediocre corporation, start your own business or get hired by a better company after you read this book!)

The main premise of the book is that people matter more than management or technology. Any business leader worth his salt knows these two points, yet most managers or leaders ignore them. This book helps give form to the ideals and specific guidance to get there. It is well recommended to everyone who manages software projects.

It's hard to find at Amazon a book rated with deserved 5-stars. Even harder if it's got a good review by Joel Spolsky. Peopleware is one of them.Simple language, short chapters with plain ideas inside and a touch of psychology, altogether produces a confusing feeling. It seems as if the book tells you nothing you didn't already know but there is where its power lies: you end up thinking that you could have written this book.

I've got the second edition which is splitted in six parts. The first one, it's a general and enjoyable review of what the hell managing people is and why it's so hard. After that, we're explained how our noisy office environment sometimes makes our productivity plummet. Don't worry! Low-cost solutions are also included. Next two chapters are both about people: how to hire the best and how to bring them up within productive jelled teams. Watch out, you must keep teamicide away from teams. It also talks us about CMM and what it calls "The Big M's", explaining its influence over creativity.Last but not least, this second edition adds several chapters dedicated to topics like chaos control, organization learning, process improvement...all of them from the corporation-level perspective.

All that stuff just to conclude that people is the most valuable resource in any organization. This book doesn't taste like one of those stale books about business emotional intelligence ...it just shows plain concepts and applicable daily ideas. What turns this outstanding book into a classic is that its principles can be applied to almost any project or business (related to IT or not). My piece of advice would be "if you manage people, read this as soon as possible".

So...bosses, Peopleware is waiting for you!

Great book on managing people and their space in a technical environment. A must for technical managers.

Quick enjoyable read. Some interesting commentary on team dynamics and the social problems teams encounter. I wish more solutions/suggestions were offered.

I was surprised at how relevant this book still is more than 20 years after its initial publication. Depressingly, it seems the authors' suggestions have not been followed by many employers. I recently changed jobs and am in a cubicle for the first time. I have been struggling to think in my cubicle, and this book confirms my suspicion that it is my work space and not my brain that is causing the problem. Even when I am not being interrupted, I am always slightly on edge wondering when I will be interrupted. The down side of the book is that the solutions and suggestions for improvements are quite difficult to implement. I just finished the book tonight - I wonder if I will do anything differently tomorrow because of this book. Probably not - maybe the fun part of the book is grumbling about our common work situations.

Thick Oracle book which is intended for developers who might need to understand the Oracle internals and administration parts besides writing SQL. It's useful for them working in other database also as the general database concept is simlar. Developers can now have more DBA knowledges after reading before on-going performing some DBA task.

Gr8 stuff for all the Oracle ppl.

A true masterpiece, and a great way to learn Oracle concepts. No more to say.

I have been an Oracle DBA for about six years and this book is still the one I turn to when looking for deeper insight into tough Oracle problems. The author recently published a new book on 9i and 10g and that one is also quite excellent. When it comes to analysis and clear writing style, no one can beat Tom Kyte for excellence. Highly recommended.

I bought this book on cheap clearance after the original publisher went out of business -- the best $12 I ever invested. Remembering even 10% of this book makes you better than 90% of Oracle developers, modelers and architects. Mr. Kyte's real world experience and reliance on solid examples instead of folklore makes this light-years ahead of any other Oracle book; it's the only Oracle book I re-read regularly. If you can afford only one Oracle book, this is it. And you may not need any other.

This is one of the best devotionals I've gone through. I started it in January and am almost done. It's goes pretty deep and that's what I like about it. This one I ordered for a friend. I would recommend it to all.

This is an amazing devotional book, not only because of it's content, but because of how it relates. Currently my sister and I have been reading this devotional while we've been at college, my father is reading it while he's deployed, and my mother while she's at home. I find it to be a book that relates to many different generations, bring fresh insights for all. I very highly recommend this book.

I've had this book for many years and still read it every day. It has a dark soft cover. I was just disappointed in the size I ordered first. I then ordered the larger soft cover edition for my children. It does not have the extra lined area for notes as my original book does. That is why the 4 stars. It was a good feature.

I've ordered multiple copies of this book on three occasions, and will probably reorder more. This is a book with more than the typical daily devotion ... it has meat and it has substance. It is a great light to follow during your day and it contains plenty of 'food for thought'. I received my first copy of this devotional from one of my pastors and have shared 8 copies with other people in my life who need/want God's guidance in their lives. It's very easy to share; it's an excellent book. I keep mine at my office desk and read it every morning to start the work day.

Read this book if you have experienced the grief from losing a loved one physically as in my case or you are broken from a life circumstance. This book along with the word of God will uplift you and see you through those difficult days when again your tears seem to be the only medicine for your heart. I love that each day starts off with a scripture. I usually will read the scripture then look it up in my bible and do a small study on the scripture. I will then read the devotion for that day. This book and Oswald Chambers devotional book is what I read daily. I recommend it for anyone who has walked down the road of losing a child, parent or sibling. It also makes a great gift for someone facing cancer or for the single mom who is struggling to makes ends meet and feels hopeless. Whoever you are and wherever you are you will be blessed by the golden pages and by the sweet quiet whisper of Gods spirit revealed in the writing of this book.

This book is filled with everything you ever wanted to know about excel. Great reference with fun tips like games and making your excel talk!

Not really for true beginners, but an excellent reference book for those times when one thinks to themself, "How do I do that ___ again?"

I think the book was very good at giving examples on doing things that you might run into while making use of excel. In between the examples, you'll find a tip on a shortcut key or other, "I didn't know that" type information. The two weaknesses that I would give it are:
1) No example CD so I could follow along with the book (this was painful because I had to take time to create similar examples)
2) I wish it would go over all the shortcut keys. Perhaps I missed this but I have found these to be useful and wish the material had been better organized so that you could find them all in one place rather than sporadically buried in an example that had no indication it was teaching you a new shortcut.
Alas, there is much more positive than negative and I would definitely recommend the book to someone wanting to enhance their excel skills and learn a lot of tips they might have never learned otherwise.

This book is very well done. It's straight-forward, covers a wide amount of topics, and is practical in how it uses examples to demonstrate available functions. The only thing the book could have fleshed out more is macros.

Great amazon seller. I really like this book. It was shipped promptly. Highly recommended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bravo!!!

This book is a must have, I have recommended to all my friends and family. Kudos to the Author for publishing such a wonderful book.

I have read may books on WFP and this is the one I go to when I need to figure out how to do something. Mine is full of tape flags, post-it notes and dog-eared pages because it gets used all the time. Another book, Essential Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) (Microsoft .NET Development Series) is also very good, but it isn't a refrence book like this one. If you want to program in WPF you need Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed bu Adam Nathan!

I had a lot of fun with this book, and it provided me with a fantastic foundation of knowledge for implementing WPF technology in my applications.

It's organized well, in that important tips are easy to find (no digging through paragraphs to find answers to common problems), and conversely thorough in detail; when more information is required. So it is quite versitile, whatever your reading mood. Whether it's casually flipping through, or digging deeper in to advanced topics.

The book's written very well, and most notably with a passion. The writer explains concepts clearly to the reader, and I'd highly recommended it to anyone interested in learning about this technology.

WPF is a remarkably inconsistent tool including contradictory settings, rules that only work some of the time, confusing shortcuts, and other inconsistencies. This book covers so much detail, that the many quirks of WPF sometimes get in the way. It might have been better if the book ignored some of the more arcane details. At times it gives so much information that things are more confusing than necessary.

Still, the book does cover a vast amount of information. If you just want an introduction to WPF, it may be a lot more than you're looking for, but if you want to know all about the weird details, this book includes a lot.

I ordered this book and Pro WPF in C# 2008 (Mathew MacDonald) at the same time. I read WPF Unleashed first because I saw the reviews on Amazon.com. I thought, wow, great book. Then I read Pro WPF in C# 2008.

I found Pro WPF in C# 2008 to be a much better book than WPF Unleashed. It's thicker, has more content, and dives much deeper. It also covers .Net 3.5 because it's newer.

Don't get me wrong, they are both excellent books and I recommend them both. But if you really want to understand core WPF concepts, Pro WPF in C# 2008 is the better choice.

dr. field has done an excellent job of making stats understandable and spss user friendly. as a social psychology grad student, i enjoy the ease of use found with the index. if i forget the differences in rotation methods for factor analysis, i can quickly find clear explanations in the book. i suggest to all grad students and advanced undergrads using spss to get a copy of this text!

This should be the first book you buy if you need help with stats and SPSS. When I first began doing empirical research I knew almost nothing about statistics or SPSS, and had to learn virtually everything I needed to know about complex multivariate tests on my own. I had suffered through many of the relevant, canonical books before I happened upon Field. It was a V-8 moment. Not only does the book explain everything in engaging, easy to understand, often hilarious terms (a favorite example is the caption of the photo of statistician Bonferroni: "Carlo Bonferroni before the celebrity of his correction lead to drink, drugs and statistics groupies"), but again and again it answered questions I had that other sources didn't address in a practical way. One example out of many is how to calculate and interpret effect sizes, which SPSS doesn't calculate for all multivariate tests, or calculates using a measure that has been widely criticized. Field describes the rationale behind several measures of effect size as well as formulas for calculating them, including clear indicators of where to find the data in SPSS output.

Other reviewers have commented that this book is light on theory. I don't know enough about statistical theory to know if this is a valid criticism. But, I do think the book provides ample and detailed "whys" behind the "hows" that I haven't found elsewhere and that were necessary to help me justify the tests I run and how I interpret them. The level of detail and abstraction, in my opinion, is completely appropriate for most researchers and students.

This book was an enormous help to me in writing my doctoral dissertation. Now, I am a Communications scholar and I did a content analysis, so I didn't need to master a lot of highly advanced techniques. But nor had I taken courses that taught statistics in any depth. I was feeling quite at sea on some things. And for a dissertation, you really have to understand things, so you can defend it at the end. Although I had other statistics books and they certainly were helpful, this one that walked me through the tests I had been doing and -- quite simply, with patience and good humor -- helped me to understand why they were necessary and basically how they worked. I liked the fact I could read much or as little detail as I could absorb at the time -- there are quick summaries, clearly marked, or longer, quite simple explanations for those in a hurry, as well as in-depth explanations for things you really need to know thoroughly. It was having those choices that made this book incredibly helpful.

This book is perfect!! Very informative, the layout is systematically and on top of it all; statistics becomes fun. It is a pleasure to read this book!!
Thanks to Andy Field which made my life as a PhD easier!!:O)

Useful and entertaining stats books are hard to come by but this one has hit the mark! Comprehensive and clear explanations of statistical theory are provided as well as of SPSS output. Love the examples and icons. Who would have thought a stats text could make me laugh out loud?!

Howie's book is much more than a primer on Google AdWords - it's an excellent, comprehensive tutorial on how to start and run a successful Internet business.

I've been marketing online for several years and consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable about Internet marketing, and I still learned a LOT from this book.

Well worth even five times the price.

this is definitely a good introduction to adwords with a lot of valuable tips and info.great work!

This is a good book on adwords.has a lot of information.well written and easy to read.

I found "Adwords For Dummies" to be a very well written, easily digested source of valuable information. The author, Howie Jacobson, presents the material in a very organized and simple to follow way. The book also references many current web tools, which can be used for SEO as well as Adwords. Additionally, the author maintains a free website that has the latest updates and developments in Adwords technology and tools. Also, there is a $25 coupon inside the cover that can be used as credit when opening an Adwords account. You can't go wrong with this one.

The book is an excellent guide on the topic for people of all levels. If you've been considering getting into AdWords and don't know where to start... or if you've already been using AdWords for a while and are looking for ways to improve your results - Get this book. Get it now.

The book is well organized and very easy to read. It captures both the novice as well as those who have been working in WPF since beta (or is that CTP). The only complaints I have for the book are really just complaints on WPF in general. A lot of the material in the book (as well as WPF in general) focuses on making fairly outlandish applications (getting all the wizz bang features and animations). What I find lacking are items like validation, threading (when having a long background task), and items more akin to Windows Forms development. This book was an invaluable tool while I put together my first WPF application.

A quick background of my skills prior to reading the book so you know where I'm coming from:
- Strong: C++, Win32, 2D UI
- Learning: C#, .NET, WPF, XAML, XML

Being extremely anxious to dig in to WPF, I was seeking a book that would hold my hand through the process but by the end, leave no stones unturned. This book comes close.

My first attempt at learning was "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" by Adam Nathan. I quickly became frustrated with the book because I was regularly feeling lost. You know, like when you are conversing with a really intelligent person who has a hard time helping you connect the dots. I do recommend Adam's book as a supplement as it's got good material and is in full color. After reading the reviews for "Programming WPF" by Sells & Griffiths I took the leap.

I read the book cover to cover minus 3 chapters: 3D, Interoperability and Async/Multithreaded -- about 700 of 800 pages. Usually books this fat have lots of useless pages. Not this book, no sir, which just goes to show how much there is to learn about WPF and XAML. In a word, the book is brilliant, written for experienced programmers who want to learn WPF and XAML.

It has the same feel as Petzold's Win 3.x books, i.e. Light-hearted, start easy and built to a powerful crescendo as the chapters progress. The latter chapters are no more difficult to digest than the previous chapters, but do build upon previous chapters. That said, I was extremely grateful that the book didn't have a grand project that was slowly built upon chapter by chapter; code examples mostly stood on their own and were plentiful (and they worked as printed!)

As noted above, I know very little about WinForms, and WPF is the obvious successor. Though parallels were duly noted, I was thrilled that there were not constant sidebars saying "Hey Mr. WinForms! Everything's OK! This is just new stuff and you can handle it. Rah! Rah! Rah!" As the authors make abundantly clear from page 1, WPF is light years ahead of WinForms.

As noted above, WPF and XAML are big topics so be prepared to get up and stretch your legs a lot, hold you head frequently and doubt the wisdom of learning new things.

On the down side, the book is weighted a bit too heavily towards XAML for my tastes. Since C# can do absolutely everything (and more) that XAML can do, I wish there were more dual examples that show how XAML does it and then how C# does it. There are examples like this but not enough. This would satisfy the curiousity of developers who wonder about how XAML "magically" achieves things.

Another gripe, now that I am attempting to apply what I have learned: I am frequently having to turn to a Google search to find details not present in the book. For example, the section about event bubbling covers good ground but I immediately had a problem when trying to use bubbling: I was attempting to use it with sibling elements and that does not work but (as far as I can tell) this was not noted in the book. It feels as though the book was not field tested.

And a final gripe: The index is sparse. I am regularly having to pencil in items.

Some brief notes:
- I really hope this book evolves along with WPF's evolution
- The material seemed fresh (as of Oct 2008) except the Silverlight appendix which has aged since Silverlight 2.0 has been released
- The corresponding errata website does not seem to be updated regularly (though I didn't encounter many editing problems)
- Even though the book only has a dozen pages of color plates, you won't feel deprived as the examples will light up your display in all sorts of fun ways.

I have both WPF books by Chris Anderson and Adam Nathan. I read initial chapters of both of them but never got so excited to continue reading and got astray into LINQ and other stuff. Then I bought this one from Chris Sells and all I can say is it is much better than both Anderson and Adam book and the book keeps you engaged making you eager to find out what next in very simple terms and wonderful example. I loved the way the data binding chapter was explained and am hoping to finish this soon.

Great Job Sells and Ian.

I'm almost ashamed to admit that after diving into WPF back when it was known as "Avalon", I haven't even touched WPF since. So I finally needed to suck it up, get started, and learn WPF.

As somebody new to WPF, I just have to give a huge "Thank You" to both Chris and Ian. This book is very entertaining and the quality of the writing between both Chris and Ian is just tremendous. The pace of the book is perfect and the teaching style is one that any developer can relate to.

As a Technical Evangelist working for Microsoft, I think that every "Evangelist" in the tech industry can learn from Chris and Ian on how to tell a compelling story that developers can relate to and "grok". We evangelists are all-too-willing to simply explain the technical details of an API while completely forgetting to answer the "why" (let alone telling a compelling story to suck people in). This is yet another area that this book excels at.

I can say with full confidence that this book is the first book I recommend to anybody wanting to dive into WPF. Enjoy!

Jason Olson, Technical Evangelist, Visual Studio & the .NET Framework
[...]

Writing a programming book is not an easy thing to do -- I know, because I've done it myself. And I have to say that I'm really impressed with the job that Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths have done with "Programming WPF". This is one of the best programming books I've ever read (and I've read a lot of them).

For a programming book to be good, it's not enough for it to simply contain all of the information that you need to know. If that information doesn't stick to your brain, then the book hasn't done it's job. If you want the information to stick, then the book has to be interesting to read. It has to have a lot of clear examples that show you real-world applications without extraneous fluff. And to be really effective, all of that should be done with a little bit of style and wit.

And I'm really pleased to say that "Programming WPF" does all of those things. I recently needed a refresher on WPF, so I just spent a lot of time over the last few weeks going through the book very carefully. And I have to say that I'm really impressed. It's engaging, interesting and they chose really good examples. And it's witty! (You'd be amazed at how the occasional chuckle keeps a reader from getting that "eyes glazed over" feeling that far too many books induce.)

I know from experience -- believe me, I know! -- just how hard it is to pull that off. And they did it with style. So first of all, congratulations to Chris and Ian for doing a great job. And second, if you're a C# developer looking for a good, hands-on way to learn WPF, I highly recommend "Programming WPF".