Web Design and Development Books

In general, i advise to stay away from this book. I found it greatly lacking. Basically, the information provided is the same that you would get with a simple web search. Doesn't really add anymore.

My recommendation: Save your money and don't bother.

Great book! I had been chewing around DWR with Spring for a while. This text presented all I needed to know in understandable terms with examples. The author's attention to the background understanding needed is appreciated. Now have DWR working with Spring.

The authors have taken good efforts to neatly introduce, analyses and compare various javascript tools specifically meant for AJAX.
The flow of the book is well managed and its very reader friendly.
This book is definitely a one stop reference for knowing what development tools, editors, libraries available for supporting AJAX in Java web applications.
Comes with 50MB examples source code. The source code has been configured to easily deploy and test using ANT.
This book mostly addresses the freely available AJAX tools.
Few drawbacks i found:
A lot of pages have been spent on describing and comparing between java frameworks, the authors could have avoided it since this book about using AJAX in java framework.
The code listings in the chapters (like html, javascript, jsp) were not well formatted, so it very difficult to read.
The authors gives more preference to JSF framework which is again not the context of the book.
Thats it.

Since the book is published recently(July06), this book covers many latest AJAX and JAVA Framework products, so its saves your time on finding a right tool
for your ajax based websites.
I dont want to write again the table of contents of this book but want to mention that you will sure learn all the bit and pieces that you need have for setting up a AJAX based
java web applications.

In researching AJAX-specific books, I found they all covered the raw core stuff (what XMLHttpRequest is, what it does, and how to use it) but most of them gave only passing coverage to the frameworks/toolkits available for AJAX and DHTML processing. (e.g., "XYZ is a very nice new toolkit for building AJAX-based web applications. Go to the XYZ web site and read the documentation that isn't there yet to see non-existent examples and learn how to use it.") "AJAX Hacks" came pretty close with some good examples, but without enough breadth and depth. (It is, after all, a "hacks" book.)

Just the presence of good examples and good coverage of Prototype, script.aculo.us, and DOJO in this book is enough to make it worthy of note. But the focus of the book is using AJAX with Java frameworks like Struts, Spring, and JSF, and in that regard it also does not disappoint. So you get not only some nice coverage of the client-side toolkits/frameworks that make Ajaxian things happen in the browser, you get a solid grounding in how to connect them to server-side applications using these Java frameworks.

Some deeper coverage on things like JSON and REST would have been nice, though.

I really don't like this book, and don't understand the positive reviews it got. It's a vague and shallow overview of a bunch of ajax-related framework that will not help you get anything useful done. Buy only if you have money to waste. If you are a Java developer interested in Ajax, and looking for a useful book, try "Practical Ajax Projects with Java Technology". Not perfect but worth some money.

If you are looking for a book that just dumps in a lot of spaghetti uncoordinated meaningless text where you have to brake your head every other paragraph to find out what the authors intended to say, then this book is for you. I am going to list the points I don't like about this book:
a. Paragraphs are very hard to understand.
b. The code is just thrown inside without explaining it.
c. Ideas are repeated all over to just build bulk.
d. Almost no technical depth.
e. Doesn't get to the point.
By the way, I am an experienced programmer with over 8 years in the industry, so I suppose my opinion counts.

Given some initial hurdles, I fervently believe that Alex Homer's (plus 5 other authors) "Professional ASP.NET 1.1" is the most strategic book going, to really learn to program in ASP.NET. Or, from my life, it was the best thing I found after 3 years and more than $1000 worth of .NET-programming books.

In true fairness, I believe the up-front hurdles are NOT the authors' fault. Rather, they come from the massiveness, and the version-one nature, of .NET. Among my .NET-student peers, I have heard a strong consensus that NO .NET training class (one example, even from a world-class university), or book prepares you to "really program". So, before attacking Alex's book, you must "make your peace" that some work is required. For example, I recommend that you struggle to pass 70-315 certification. After 2-3 tries, or so, I think you'll start to see the "worth" of Alex's book; far better than many alleged test-prep books.

Finally, I recommend that you also develop the skills to convert Alex's examples to Visual Studio. While the "worth" is already there in the text-only aspx-page examples, I found the graphical nature of the Studio to be delightfully soothing to my "student" mind. For hours at a time, despite my habitual irritation with IDE marketing, even I was impressed with my own programming "power".

If you want to learn asp.net, this book is not the one. All it does is talk.

If you are really serious about getting ASP .NET knowledge and you are in real development environment where you need in depth knowledge of ASP .NET paradigm and controls, then this is the book for you. What I can't find at other places, this books describes it beautifully and clearly. I am very happy to get this book and I really enjoy reading it. I highly recommend this book for all types of developers, beginner, intermediate or advanced.

This is one of those great all-in-one tome books. Some of which are great, like this one. While others are little more than doorstops. The text is well written, though, like most Wrox books it relies heavily on code to do most of the exposition. Almost every topic you can think of is covered. Basic topics like controls, page design and security. Then onto more advanced topics like XML and mobile development. That's how you get to the tome size. But the coverage is consistently well written. So if you like your books in the all-in-one flavor, this is a good book for ASP.NET 1.1.

I found this book to be OK as an introduction, but not very deep on the UpdatePanel, which is one of the core components for Microsoft's AJAX solution. Also, the book is based on the earlier Atlas CTPs, and the newer [...] Betas have drastically changed some things. Worthwhile, but I'm not finding it a reference that I have by my side all the time. Probably should be updated when GA comes out.

If you're not already using Microsoft's new framework for building Ajax-savvy web sites, you should be - and PROGRAMMING ATLAS is the perfect vehicle to take you there. It may look like a 'cookbook' of recipes, but it's not - it's a survey of the underlying technology concepts that make Ajax work, from those most often associated with Ajax to understanding its design and tool intentions. With these basics in hand programmers will find Atlas a snap to master - thanks to PROGRAMMING ATLAS.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Programming Atlas, by Christian Wenz, is a good treatment of the upcoming ASP.NET Ajax release. Microsoft decided to change the name of the product from Atlas to ASP.NET 2.0 Ajax after more than two years in development. Even though the name may be out of date, the material in this book is not.

Wenz does a great job explaning how Ajax works and the role of JavaScript in it. He quickly covers basic JavaScript syntax and moves quickly into client side programming using Atlas. His methods of presenting segmented and documented code examples followed by the complete example is very reinforcing.

The topics covered are broad, including:

Client Side Ajax
Server Side Programming for Ajax
Atlas Controls
Databinding with Atlas
Creating custom components
XML-Script
Ajax.NET

I was confused when I saw the chapter on Ajax.NET. I wouldn't expect to see a chapter on Castle if I bought a book on Spring.NET, or IBatis.NET in a book on NHibernate. It seems the space could have been used for a deeper treatment of other topics.

The book is well written, with very few errors. I would recommend this for anyone who has some development skill, works in .NET 2.0, and does web-client development.

Are you a web developer? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Christian Wenz, has done an outstanding job of writing a book for developers who are using ASP.NET and would like to take their applications a step further by using the Ajax technology; and, for developers who are using another technology, but are interested in the Atlas framework.

Wenz, begins with an overview of Ajax and the Atlas framework and then covers the installation of Atlas, a review of its structure, and a first simple example. Then, the author conducts a concise introduction to JavaScript. Next, he explains the technologies beyond the hype. The author continues by describing the client-side controls that come with Atlas. He also covers how you can perform declarative data binding, meaning that you can program without having to write code. Next, the author shows you the built-in behaviors of Atlas and how to attach their functionality to client-side controls and components. The author also focuses on graphical effects you can implement with Atlas, including opacity animations and automatic positioning of page elements. Then, he describes how Atlas enriches the functionality of client-side JavaScript by adding new OOP-like features and even re-implementing some classes ofthe.NET Framework so that they can be used on the client side. The author continues by explaining how you connect to databases. He also deals with XML web services. Next, the author focuses on the extender controls in atlas that do what their name suggests. The author also shows you how easy it is to use the Virtual Earth API from Atlas. Then, he shows you ways to reuse Atlas components. Next, the author introduces the Atlas Control Toolkit and shows you how to write custom extender controls. He continues by proving that some parts of the Atlas framework are not tied to ASP.NET 2.0. Finally, he presents alternative ways to use the Ajax technology with ASP.NET, be it with ASP.NET.x or by using ASP.NET 2.0 without Atlas.

This most excellent book is also suitable for JavaScript programmers who would like to avoid some of the headaches caused by the necessity of writing cross-browser code. More importantly, this book will show you how to create professional, dynamic web pages by using the Microsoft Atlas framework.

This book rovides a good background for understanding what Atlas is, however, since the release of Web Extentions (formerly Atlas) Beta 1.0 it is severly outdated. Most examples no longer work and some discribed features have been eliminated.

Recommendation is to pass on this title and wait for a release version.

Much of the info can be found over the internet. However, the book format is good for a beginner. All the info in one book can be nice.

I'm a web developer and bought this book hoping that it would--as advertised--teach me how to setup and install a working LAMP server. I found this book to read more like a checklist than anything. Install this, uncheck that. The book provided little insight as to the reasoning behind these decisions, nor did it provide any detail on how to fine tune or configure some of the more arcane components like email or ftp. It definitely did not teach you anything about how to live and operate in the Linux environment. These I had to figure out on my own. This book reads like a free website article repackaged and bound. Stay clear of this one.

50% of its contents can be found in a general Red Hat Linux book. Most other parts can be found in the web sites of Apache, Webmin and so on. This is the worst book I bought from Amazon.com, the first book from Sitepoint. I wouldn't buy a book from Sitepoint for a long time. I feel sorry for my company which paid for the book.

Are you a systems administrator, but know very little about Linux? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Tony Steidler-Dennison and Stuart Langridge, have done an outstanding job of writing a practical book that shows you how to build, configure and maintain servers running the LAMP open source Web application platform.

Steidler-Dennison and Langridge, begin by showing you how to install Linux successfully on your server. Then, the authors explain hot to run and how to manage your Linux server on a daily basis. They continue by identifying those extra capabilities, and discuss the command line's advantages over GUI. Next, the authors discuss the lot as they take you on a tour of the Linux system administrator's toolkit. Then, the authors explore some of the basics of Apache itself, including how it works and how it fits into the Linux environment. Then, they focus on a selection of handy tools that will help you to configure your LAMP server and add new packages to it. They also get a feel for working with SSH, which allows command line access to a server across the network , and VNC, which enables you to access your LAMP server's GUI remotely. Next, the authors give you an introduction to backup tools. Finally, the authors set up a firewall on their LAMP server, and install intrusion detection services as a means to identify remote cracking attempts.

This most excellent book gives you the knowledge you need to build, configure and maintain servers running LAMP open source Web application platform. More importantly, this book will show you how to build a Linux server, and help you decide which flavor of Linux best suits your situation.

The focus in this book is on one of the most common implementations of Linux; as a complete Internet solution with a Linux server, Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP language. This combination is commonly called a LAMP installation. The authors lead the reader through how to pick an appropriate Linux distribution for your needs, install and configure the Apache web server, use MySQL to store data and use PHP to build Web applications.

The authors assume little or no knowledge of Linux and so include a basic introduction to Linux including common daily tasks and administration. Once your Linux server is up and running they also cover how to use various utilities to administer it remotely. Other chapters include information on server security, GNOME, file system, and permissions. This is not a bad introduction to Linux and Apache but it does almost nothing with MySQL and PHP. This is a basic text on how to get a LAMP server up and running. It is not a text on how to program with PHP or how to create and administer a MySQL database. For this information you will need to consult other texts. However, since a LAMP server is one of the most common uses of Linux and there are specific techniques to get the Linux server, Apache, MySQL and PHP all installed and working together seamlessly this book is very valuable for this specific task. Build Your Own Web Server Using Linux and Apache is recommended to anyone who wants to get a LAMP server up and running with a minimum of frustration.

Although I generally tend to "lurk" and read reviews rather than write them, I felt compelled to write one for this Zend Studio for Eclipse book.

I am a professional PHP programmer, and have been a Zend Studio 5.x user for two years. I knew every nook and cranny of Zend Studio 5.x. I had only praise for the product.

When Zend released Zend Studio for Eclipse, I switched over to it. All of a sudden I felt incompetent. I literally couldn't figure out how to do anything, it was so different than what I had gotten used to in v5.x.

The Zend manuals didn't help, there was too much background about eclipse to know in order to do the most basic things. As good as eclipse is, it is not the most intuitive piece of software.

So, try as I did, I just couldn't get anything working with ZS4E, even with the Zend manuals.

Frustrated, I went back to 5.x, in the hope that the zend documentation would eventually improve. I spent several months back in the 5.x product when I decided I would once again try ZS4E, but this time with the help of this book.

Contrary to some of the reviews below, about the book not adding value beyond what is available in the Zend manuals, I strongly disagree.

Perhaps the topics the book covers are the same as what the manual covers, but the book fills in so much background you need to know, and walks you through tasks which you need to do, that it - in my opinion - adds lots of value.

Thanks to the book I have been working in ZS4E for several months now. I repeatedly refer back to the book, not the manuals, when I need to do something new.

So that's the positive. I definitely recommend the book. It is miles ahead of the what the manuals offer.

The only thing I could suggest as a future improvement is to add to the current content by covering more of the oodles of config and operational options available in ZS4E. While the book covers the most important 95% usage options, and the remaining 5% would probably double the size of the book, it would still be nice to have. At least in an appendix.

All in all though, I feel, definitely worth the money, because ZS4E is a much superior product once you get used to all the new stuff and new ways of doing something. This book really helps get you into all the new stuff in a way that a terse manual couldn't.

Thank you to the author and those responsible.

Nice book, that helps me speed up PHP developing in Zend Studio for Eclipse.

Good introduction into Eclipse IDE and advanced PHP development topics like debugging or unit testing.

I cannot recommend this book to any target audience.

For experienced developers the book lacks any detailed information on how (for example) to get remote debugging working or to integrate any version control software. The sparse overviews provided have nothing you won't already know if you've ever used any IDE.

For beginners the book is rife with the kind of errors (the text does not agree with the sample code or images) that will drive them crazy.

The writing is clumsy and full of grammatical and spelling errors. The actual information doesn't go at all beyond what you can get by simply browsing the help files you got with Zend Studio for Eclipse.

Other than being able to read this away from the computer (not the most effective way to learn an IDE) there's no value to this book.

Computer libraries strong in Zend Studio for Eclipse for PHP/LAMP developers will find Zend Studio for Eclipse Developer's Guide an excellent survey of the core techniques and terminology that make up Eclipse applications. From code editing and galleries to unit testing, debugging and more, Zend Studio for Eclipse Developer's Guide is an outstanding addition to any Eclipse developer's library.

I've never been a big fan of Eclipse but I now use Zend Studio so I had to get used to it. I could not have done it without this book. Eclipse operates so differently than any other IDE I've used that it was like visiting a foreign land but this book was my translator.

Thanks Pete and Ian, I owe you guys a beer if we ever meet in real life.

=C=

I was excited when I got this book, I read the database portion with great interest but the problems began when the code is not written in vbscript, even on pages that specify vbscript. The code is full of erroneous mistakes. I have had to take out any code I trried to use and go to another book writers site for help. By the way, Wrox always has its authors where you can email them, I cant find the guys who wrote this, I suspect they are hideing out somewhere but I guess if my code was this messed up i would too. This book should be outlawed and these men should have to repay any money they made off it.

This is THE book to buy if you want to learn to write ASPs in Javascript. I have done much searching, and have found no other useful books on this subject. Zero. Sure there are some books that claim to cover Javascript on the back cover, but usually their code is limited to a few examples.

If you're planning to use VB, then there are probably better books out there for you. But if you want to learn to write ASPs in JavaScript, this book is extremely helpful. Though ASP objects are the same no matter what scripting language you use, there are subtle differences in the way you manipulate them. If you try to start coding ASPs in JavaScript from a text that uses Visual Basic, you will undoubtably suffer through a lot of frustrating trial and error.

This book starts with the basics, and works up to some complex examples like a BBS and an online catalog. The writing style is clear and to the point. The CD is no frills, but at least you get all the code. Needless to say, you should already be familiar with JavaScript before you tackle writing ASPs in JavaScript.

A final caveat: There are a number of typos in this book, including a nasty one on page 153 that mixes up the constants for reading and writing files. If not for this, I probably would have given it 5 stars.

I found this book to be a well written guide addressed to an experienced developer who wants to learn ASP using Javascript (or jscript as microsoft calls it). The examples are of the right length and number.

I don't understand why some of the above reviews on this book came out so poor. This book is one of the very few to show large and useful examples of ASP written in JavaScript (JScript). I found this book straight forward, and with direct application to what I, as a developer, needed to know.

To me this book spoke clearly. Not coming from a Microsoft server-side background I needed to get up to speed with ASP. I already knew JavaScript from client-side programming, but most of my server-side programming was done in Perl. I didn't really want to learn a new programming language, and this book took that idea and put it to work. I was able to leverage my knowledge and quickly become proficient at ASP. Most if not all of the features available to ASP are shown using JavaScript, and most things have associated code examples with them.

True, this book is geared for programmers wanting to write web applications. If you are not a programmer you WILL need to get additional references - the authors don't really waste anytime to teach you HTML, or server side scripts or how to program - but that is not what the book is about and the book's preface tells you this. The authors have also included two appendices that will get most programmers up to speed on JavaScript and VBScript.

In terms of organization the book spends the first couple of chapters motivating why ASP is a great development platform and what sets it aside from other technologies out there. From there you get immersed into the basic 5 objects (Request, Response, Application, Session and Server) that provide most of the functionality that you'll need to develop your apps. In my case this was enough to give me a working knowledge of ASP for many projects. Continuing sections show you how to incorporate ActiveX components into your projects, access the file system and access databases. Other chapters are devoted to web issues like application persistence, error handling and debugging. Lastly this book also sports chapters on some less frequently used (but powerful features) server-side includes (SSI) and access control (authentication). Three of chapters are dedicated to `real world' type examples. One of them even shows you the code as most developers would initially write it, but then refactors it so that most of the code can be reused easily. This chapter provided great insight to me on how to take a web app and make it really easy to maintain.

I have looked for additional books on this topic, but none provides the breadth or depth for this one. GET IT.

Contrary to what other reviews say, this book does take a good look at ASP and how it can be used to create e-business solutions. ASP is in reality a very simple technology, and a competent programmer shouldn't need much beyond an exposition of what ASP provides and a few examples of how to use it efficiently. In this regard, this book is a success -- and a very easy read to boot. The initial chapters describing the different ASP objects seem disconnected from the rest of the text however, and the book would benefit from a better overview of how to practically use it all properly. The reader often has to search around to get to various concepts, but most are there. One thing to note is that the authors use "JavaScript" and "JScript" interchangeably in the text, when in reality there are some serious differences between the two. This text is one of few ASP references that provide a meaningful amount of JScript examples -- most are hopelessly mired in the VBScript found in Microsoft's documentation. The reader should check out Microsoft's MSDN site (msdn.microsoft.com) for ASP tips not found here.

There are errors throughout the tutorials, and several are major enough to halt the process of the design. That would be forgivable...IF there was an errata or the needed files on the publisher's site, but they give no support! Users have been asking for these fixes since June of 2006!

If I would have known this I never would have purchased this book. The potential is there, but the oversight and support are not.

Sorry but i'm writing in Italian:
Il libro non è male, focalizzato soprattutto sul disegno dell'interfaccia e tecniche per il passaggio da Illustrator a Flash. Non si capisce molto bene se è un libro teorico o tecnico, dato che tocca entrambi gli aspetti senza però approfondire abbastanza nessuno dei due. Molto interessanti le prime sezioni e la parte su Flash Video, mentre c'è qualche parte che di Advanced non ha nulla (esempio: la parte in cui ti spiega come usare la Penna di Illustrator...e le parti di ActionScript sono poche e veramente a Level Begginer)
Vale comunque il suo prezzo

When i first got this book, I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't know if it was going to be a design book or an animation book for interfaces. I guess what I eventually ended up getting was a little bit of both.

The early chapters of the book are definitely not "AdvancED", but give some good insight on some topics that are normally overlooked. The one problem with this book is that it was trying to fit information about a lot of combined programs, such as Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash. However, this HAS to be done because of the way Flash interfaces are designed these days, so as a downfall it can be excused because sometimes it is unavoidable (and sometimes very handy) to know how to use all those programs.

There is a chapter on colors which is great, but the end of the chapter (page 56) talks about the Color class. The Color class is deprecated as of Flash 8 and I wish they would have went more in depth on using the new classes in 8, such as ColorTransform and the likes.

Now that we've got the negatives out of the way, it's time to cover all the very formidable positives that this book has to offer. It has great explanations in every chapter of how to deal with good user experience and interface design. It's obvious that the authors (award winners in this subject) know what they are talking about. For instance, on a personal level, I hate bringing in graphics into Flash from Illustrator and seeing all the miscellaneous graphic symbols that it makes while importing. Some people don't clean this up in the library and it's VERY frustrating to see all those symbols and have to go in and clean them up. These guys stress highly the importance of a clean library and have a great section in chapter 7 that shows how to clean these graphics up. I can't tell you how many times I'd wished that people who work with me could make nice, clean libraries before they hand files over to me, but sometimes thats too much to ask for.

There is a chapter that makes mention of video and the best part about this chapter, after having recently made a project for AT&T that used Flash video, is the fact that it makes mention of the Flash 8 Video Encoder that comes bundled with Flash 8 Professional. It's a stand alone application and nobody in my office actually knew what it was or how to use it (which for a large company such as I work for could be a bit mind boggling). They take you through the encoder and show you example usage, which is VERY handy when working with encoding FLV files. This chapter also boasts a great explanation (which I actually wish I had read before looking like a fool in an initial project meeting) of the video playback options that Flash has to offer (Streaming, Progressive, and Embedded video).

The middle of the book has a great color pullout (it's not really a pullout, but ya know...) that demonstrates examples from the book and coincides with the color chapter (since obviously you want to see colors in a color chapter...). Chapter 9 is also an outstanding chapter which takes you from start to finish on how to design an interface in Photoshop (and 10 follows up with the proper way to import it into Flash so that you can work with those graphics). There is a section in this chapter titled "Moving from Photoshop to Flash" (pg. 232) which is a HUGE bonus. EVERYONE in the world who is a Flash designer/developer should convert graphics in the way that is described in this section. It saves a lot of time and headaches later on when you use the process outlined here.

Overall, the book was a treat. It started off a bit slow but definitely picked up a lot of momentum by the end. I'd definitely recommend it to someone who normally takes graphics from programs such as Illustrator or Photoshop and brings them into Flash. Conversely, I'd recommend it to designers who design for Flash developers as there is a lot of good information to learn from here.

AdvancED Flash Interface Design is the latest installment from Friends of ED. Incidentally, while reading an interview with Chris Mills, I recently learned that the ED in the title is capitalized for a reason. "Friends of Every Designer" is what the company name stands for. Read blogs folks, you'll have many serendipitous moments. Anyway, this book was very practical, filled with an enormous amount of information, all of which is very applicable on a day to day basis. This quote from Chris' blog sums it up quite nicely...

"You know those tech books you read and go 'yeah, this is all well and good, but would I ever REALLY do any of this in my work?' Well, this book isn't like that - it's nothing but real-world Flash design teachings for those of you who have already got past the basics, but want to take your work further, with creative, inspirational techniques."

Since my official job description is Web User Interface Designer / Developer, I figured it would be right up my alley. I chimed in with a comment on his blog post regarding this book, and he was nice enough to send me a review copy. It was written by a trio of talented Flash guys: Michael Kemper, Guido Rosso and Brian Monnone. What I like is that while this series is geared towards Flash, it covers fundamentals that are essential to any sort of visual or graphic design.

Like any book, it starts with an overview of the topic, pointing out some of the benefits of Flash, while also acknowledging a few of its drawbacks. They are quick to point out that long loading times and inaccessible content are a stigma which Flash is helping to overcome. Loading times can be avoided through smart planning of content (ala Ajax, loading things as needed) and Flash can actually be used to add sub-titles to video and such.

Chapters two through five focus on user experience, color theory, interface design and vector drawing. The content therein could be used for a design class as a textbook. Seriously, it's that good. Also, I like the way the book is planned out. Most of it is black and white, with figures that are contained in a color section. This is a great compromise between keeping printing costs low, while not missing out on some design nuance, because there are color pages too.

Chapters six and seven delve more into the Flash interface itself, covering advanced uses of the timeline and layers, and showing how to use Flash for vector drawing. In the past, these tools were considered to be sub-par, but as of version 8 it has really come into its own for creating non-destructive effects. These same effects can also be manipulated, created and removed with ActionScript. It should be noted that there is also a fair bit of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop techniques covered, throughout the entirety of the book.

Chapter 8 was a departure into the realm of video, talking about the various codecs that can be used. It also showed how to do green screen effects with Apple Final Cut Pro. Once you have isolated the video clips you want to make use of, they can then be taken into the Flash environment for seamless integration with your site's interface. Think of Adobe's own site, which has many full-motion video narrators who walk you through their varying content.

While Flash's forte is vectors, occasionally you will find yourself needing pixel-precision. Chapters 9 and 10 are about achieving this with Photoshop, and how to make raster (bitmap) images with the smallest footprints. This is usually done by exporting PNG files with the correct amount of compression and opacity. One of the nice things about Flash is that IE6 has no problem rendering PNG opacity when used in conjunction with Flash. Many of you CSS guys will know what a headache this is to do otherwise, using inelegant GIF files.

The last few chapters cover creating animated effects, Flash textures, and finishing off a site. They cover some nice tweening and transformation effects, and also show how to make water textures with distortion filters and a background image. If you've seen water in games like Unreal Tournament, you will know what I'm talking about. The final chapter covers attention to detail that will make the difference between good work and great work. It teaches how to sweat the small stuff, without being too much of a perfectionist.

My one and only complaint is that this book focused so heavily on Illustrator, when Fireworks is perhaps a more seamlessly integrated tool, and many people who have purchased Studio 8 for Flash and Dreamweaver already have it bundled. Nevertheless, many of the concepts carry over to whatever graphics program you prefer. All in all, this is a very strong title and a must-have for those who do a lot of cross-disciplinary work or just want to branch out into another aspect of web design. I like to think of Flash as SWAT - You don't call `em in for just anything, but it's great when you really need high impact.

I may be exagerating, but from the moment i bought this book i realized that the "advanced" part was easy for everyone to follow and put into good use.

I'm no big graphic designer nor a person usually capable of reading complicated books, and i usually get bored after the first few chapters. but this book is written differently, it's as clear and straight forward as if someone was actually there explaining to you how to drastically improve your basic flash techniques and give you that extra something to really make a site worth seeing.

it's as if the authors were giving away all their deepest secrets and techniques while writing this book. and on top of that, i have to repeat myself, it's as simple as reading a fairy tale and again learning comes almost naturally.

i suggest you try out this book just after you have understood how flash works, no matter if you're a flash guru or someone that builds sites just for a hobby, it takes no skill at all to learn it, a little time to read it, and just a few moments to impress everyone with your new web designing skills.

there are few books around like this, and it would be a real shame to buy complicated foggy and extra long books when you have a designer bible right here.

This is an outstanding book for ASP programmers ... It serves as a great reference source on a variety of topics. I have been very impressed with the depth and breadth of coverage (contrary to one of the reviews I read). Great value. It'll remain on my shelf for a long time.

I ordered the book and read it. I think that the book is not good for any ASP programmer. First, it is not complete. For example, it didn't cover server.transfer, which is an excellent feature in ASP 3.0. Second, the description about ADO is so simple that I cannot get any idea about ADO.

Why did I buy it? It is cheap and heavy. Another reason was the other users' review. Based on my experience, I suggest you to avoid this book as either study material or reference.

I'm an experienced programmer with 10 years of VB Client/Server and new to the WEB. The WEB is maddeningly different. This book has provided me with THE road map of modern ASP development. It is well organized. Each chapter is well selected. The content of each chapter is such that the subject is adequately covered and I can always get the book from which the chapter is extracted if I want more information. As one commenter put it, its like getting the work product of a half dozen research assistants, each of whom sifted dozens of books.

It is clearly aimed at the person who wants to understand the subject. There are no "To Create..." sequences that walk through the IDE to create a brain-dead and useless example so prevalent in the Microsoft programmer's guides. It assumes that the reader has a high school education, a keen mind and is willing to use both. Looking for a book that will do your thinking for you? This is not it. There are plenty of sample code snippets. They are there to give the reader working examples that augment the text.

I anticipate keeping this book handy as a reference on WEB ASP assignments.

There is a caveat for Microsoft oriented WEB developers. It does not address Visual Interdev. For that topic I recommend Wrox's "Beginning WEB Development with Visual Interdev 6."

I should also mention that this book does not teach one how to program. There are other resources for that. It does teach relational database principles, SQL, ADO, XML, and how to use XML in Microsoft SQL Server. The crowning glory is an excellent "class project," a walk through Microsoft's Biz Talk application.

Save the famous tomes; this one actually comes in handy.

Maybe it's just the size, look and feel of this little workhorse, or maybe it's because it feels like a super-thick pamphlet in your hands that you feel like you can treat in any way without regard to its physical condition, but somehow this book had surprised me my being so darn usable! I have rarely encountered a book that makes it so easy to get right to the subject you're trying to look up, get the facts/explanations you need... and get back to work. My pages are all dog-eared and highlighted. If you're a harried developer, I think you'll know the value of that.

The premise of the book is simple: combine the good parts of other books into one. So Chapter 1, "The Microsoft Toolset" is lifted straight out of the "E-Commerce Developer's Guide" by Noel Jerke, Chapter 2 is "adapted" from "Visual Basic Developer's Guide to ASP and IIS" by A. Russell Jones, and so on.

The surprising effect of all of this is that it's like having a research assistant who slogged through a mountain of material (useful and otherwise) for you and then handed you the highlights with post-it notes so you can save time. If one of those sources interests you, you can always read the book it came from. Or cast it aside and move on to the next piece.

And as books go, it has a high percentage of lookup tables and code samples. Why? Because that's part of the "good stuff" worth "adapting" from the other books. This won't win any book awards, but it does get yanked off the shelf more often than most others.

The most valueable book for beginner and yet so usefull for professionals and advance users. If you don't understand and weak in programming concepts, you will find difficulties to cope with it because it is so stright forward to the point and not explaining much like other book. Please don't buy this book, you would regret it, however if you are experince programer then you must buy it!

The stated purpose of the CodeNotes series of books is to get a developer up to speed on a particular technology or topic as fast as possible. This edition does a fairly good job of meeting this goal--it won't make you an expert in web-based user interface design, but after reading through its 200 pages, you'll know a lot more than someone with no experience in this area. The book does a very good job of introducing a concept and then jumping right into the areas which present typical implementation decisions/challenges for the developer. For example, the chapter on JavaScript gives a brief overview of the object-oriented constructs of the language, and then dives right into JavaScript's Regular Expressions syntax and its application in building client-side form validation handlers--one of the most typical uses of JavaScript. Likewise, the chapter on XML/XSLT moves quickly into templates, matching, flow control, and how to use this technology to build web pages which support all user agents. Other chapters similarly cover user interface design theory, DHTML, DOM and CSS.

I've been developing web applications for more than 5 years, and though not perfect and not necessarily written for the beginner, I feel this is the best book of its kind available. Thanks to the authors for putting something useful out there finally.

The content of the book is great. There is no doubt about that.

However, the Adobe eBook format is far too restrictive. This is the first .PDF file that I've found only works in Adobe eBook Reader. eBook Reader is designed to prevent copying of eBooks: The eBook is downloaded...by eBook Reader itself, saved on the boot partition with a cryptic name, and secured so that it cannot be opened from any other location. And with this eBook, you are limited to printing 300 pages per year. Too many restrictions!

In addition,[some sites limit] the number of downloads of the eBooks that you purchase.

So, if you frequently need to re-install the OS on the boot partition, like I do, then you lose your eBook! This is not good for the customer or the publisher or the writer.

I'd like to backup the file that I've purchased rights to, but I can't! I expected the eBook format to be portable, like standard PDF.

...The majority of independent eBook authors on the Web using the .PDF format do not restrict the copying of .PDF files. Some of these files have no restrictions at all. Certainly, there are some people who violate the copyright, but many of these eBook authors are making bags of money in spite of that. Unfortunately, it seems that the traditional publishing houses are reluctant to take the risk of allowing the customer to keep backups of the eBooks they have the rights to use, and as a result infuriate customers like me, who never again will purchase an eBook for either Adobe eBook Reader or Microsoft Reader.

If you have some basic web skills, no formal training in design or development, and are looking for one small book to take you a little further in all aspects of web development, this book might be worth reading. However, I found it to be too basic to be of any use for me, but I have training both in design and development. It is also already feels a little dated. I would recommend a good book on CSS/DOM for DHTML, a good book on web usability, and as for design, well, that's a little harder...

This is a great little book. If you are like me who is not a programmer, but ends up doing lots the Web front end development tasks because the real developers " don't do scripting" as its beneath them. Then this book is for you. It gives real life examples that can be used to get you started on that dynamically cascading menu or that regular expression to validate your date entry field. Small and compact gives you well targeted golden nuggets of information about HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, XML and XLST not 100's of pages of theory and "hello world" examples.

While this book covers both ASP and PHP coding and the use of MySQL and ACCESS, the author does little to explain the 'why' behind much of the coding. This means that using the coding is not as straightforward as she would like it to be.

To start a book with the basics of HTML and then take a user through to complex database design would require more explanation and peripheral information.

I find that Larry Ullman's books provide far better explanations of the coding and help the user to understand how the coding fits in with a) the rest of the coding on the page and b) the coding that relates to subsequent pages.


I used this book as a textbook in a class, and most students encountered similar problems. If someone were to purchase this book, I strongly recommend another more hands-on book in tandem with it.

Jeanine,

Just wanted to let you know how helpful your book is. Before I thought, it was impractical to have two scripting languages and two databases. I said this because from my experience I started learning database from Access then learn Visual Basic Codes and Scripts. Originally, my field of profession is Financial Accounting. In the early 90's I learn Lotus then migrated to Excel spreadsheet programs. I was not satisfied for what Macros can do so I studied Access database. I was so amazed by it but there are things I know and hope will be easier and faster. I wanted to learn SQL knowing how powerful it is, but because how expensive commerialize DBMS softwares were it made me stick with Access. The internet period has arrived at that time, so I learned ASP with Visual Basic Scripting. I was not totally satisfied with it because VBScript is always tied up to a giant corporation and at the time I was learning HTML, XML &
JavaScript. This made me confuse, what direction am I going. I decided to continue what I learned so far, apply it then to whatever will make it easier. So, I studied ASP with JavaScript Langauge. Consequently, from learning and experience, I read about MySQL and PHP and studied it as well. So far your book is the best and most helpful, in showing how to connect to a server and for sure will SAVE me and my clients alot. Currently, I am a financial administrator and partly the intranet designer of a
University in San Francisco. My goal is to have my own server
company.

Thank you again and more power to you.

John

Jeanine,

Just wanted to let you know how helpful your book is. Before I thought, it was impractical to have two scripting languages and two databases. I said this because from my experience I started learning database from Access then learn Visual Basic Codes and Scripts. Originally, my field of profession is Financial Accounting. In the early 1990's I learn Lotus then migrated to Excel spreadsheet programs. I was not satisfied for what macros can do so I studied Access database. I was so amazed by it but there are things I know and hope will make things easier and faster. I wanted to learn SQL knowing how powerful it is, but how expensive commerialize DBMS softwares were it made me stick with Access. The internet period has arrived at that time, so I learned ASP with Visual Basic Scripting. I was still not comfortable & not happy with it because VBScript is always tied up with a giant corporation and at the time I was learning HTML, XML & JavaScript.

This made me confuse what direction am I going but continue what I learned so far, apply it then and whatever will make it easier. So, I studied ASP with JavaScript langauge. Consequently, from learning and experience, I read about MySQL and PHP and studied it as well. So far your book is the best and most helpful, in showing how to connect to a server and for sure will SAVE me and my clients alot. Currently, I am a financial administrator and partly the intranet designer of a university in San Francisco. My goal is to be a free lance web designer and to own a Web design company using MySQL (OPEN SOURCE database), PHP (OPEN SOURCE scripting language), Access database, and Active Server Pages (ASP).

Thank you again and more power to you.

John

I am very new to computing, having just learned the basics of HTML. I found this book very helpful. First of all, it does start out with basic HTML which was reassuring for me. It then adds JavaScript. It builds up gradually, with many examples in the text. There is also a complete set of code on the CD. The PHP with MySql and the ASP with Access are always compared with general previews. The book has many screen shots.

The book also has some examples of what the screen would look like if you did something wrong which beginners tend to do. I have not seen this pedagogical technique in other texts. I found it very helpful. The chapters on database design and SQL were also very good. I strongly recommend this book. It is an excellent book for anyone new to Web applications or someone with some experience, who wants to know more. In particular, if someone knows one of the technologies featured (PHP, ASP, MySql, Access, SQL) and wants to know how this one technology relates to others, this is a good source. The examples of the book are well-chosen, without any extraneous material, and are explained in a table, with code in one column and explanation in another. I liked the fact that that it is clear and concise since I like most people don't have a lot of time to expend on a lot of unnecessary verbiage.

I'm a seasoned (some would say salty) web developer, and I have been teaching web applications for two years both online and "on the ground." I've looked in vain for the right mixture of theory, practical application and humor (a needed ingredient for this type of instruction). I use this book for intermediate web developer students who have a solid grounding in HTML, CSS and Javascript, and some basic knowledge of either PHP or ASP (or other programming logic). I used to use Wrox's Beginning ASP, but at more than 1000 pages, and more errata than I could cover in a single class, I continued looking. With this book, I think I've found the right text for some of the classes I teach!

Dr. Meyer's work starts with a review of HTML and Javascript, with an emphasis on how to use the DOM in an application setting. Regarding databases, there are chapters explaining application concepts and E-R diagrams, as well as how to use the CLI client for MySQL. The CD-ROM even has SQL instructions for importing the material from the text; and for Access users, db files that mirror the work in the text.

But the real heart of the matter is the instruction in coding practices, from reading and writing to databases (using MySQL and DSN-less Access connections), to using cookies and session variables for data persistance. And this is where this book has no equal: it supports both the hugely popular open-source PHP/MySQL as equally as it shows ASP and Access. I've never seen such a universal attempt pulled off quite as well.

I recommend the book, but no work is perfect. I don't think that a book can equal the combination of education and experience (but as an instructor, I may be biased). The PHP code supplied in the accompanying CD-ROM utilizes global variables (which may be turned off in some production environments for security purposes)--but that underscores the use of the text as a textbook, and not a coding "cookbook" with samples that are "ready-to-eat." Also, the ASP uses the less-common, but more palatable ASP JavaScript (or JScript) instead of the more commonly utilized ASP VBScript (but even third-party ASP interpreters like that used in the SunOne Server handled the code).

I found that students should adapt and improve the code from the CD-ROM as part of their studies, so that they could fix some typos, and learn how code integration works. Also, they needed to create interfaces for the samples so we could stop staring at web forms and add some color to the examples! Students have created portfolio pieces using the concepts in this text like psychological profile tests, e-commerce sites, calendar applications and marketing surveys.