Programming Books

This book teaches with extreme clarity everything you need to know to program for Director/Shockwave 3D. A rarity amongst programming books due to the didactics, organization, and clarity/accuracy of code. It is current with Director MX 2004 and I suspect it is current with Director 11 given the information Adobe just released. You cannot go wrong with this one. The only problem is that it is hard to find, I had to buy my copy from a reseller.

I have every book publish about developing interactive 3D using director. This is the best one of the bunch. After reading this book I wish I hadn't purchased any of the others. Although the book is for director 8.5 it still the best book for Director 3D +

As anyone knows reading this review knows Director is the only program that will allow you to create 3D games and programs for the web. Hopefully Adobe will update it rather than let a very powerful program fade away.

This is an excellent book for Director and Director 3D. It is very in depth and involved, although a bit hard to understand at times. This book is not for beginners and requires a lot of hard work to obtain its end results, but they are very much worth it.

Other reviews have captured the gist of this wonderful, accessible, and thorough treatment of Director's 3D functionality. What I would like to add is that Catanese's book is just as current with Director MX as it is with Director 8.5.

If you plan to do 3D in Director MX, either games or presentations, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

I'm an IT student and possessing VB & C/C++. I have never learn about 3D and Director before. So when I want to make a Director project (game), I need a book!
And this book is the great answer. Everything you need about Director 3D is in this book! (although this book doesn't cover about Havok Physics Engine).

This book tells you WHAT and HOW, I mean, this book not only tells you HOW to make something (ex: primitive object) but also explains about that thing. (ex: what is a primitive object). So, you're not only able to programm but also understand about WHAT are you doing.

This book explains from basic and the last page explains advance technique. So, if you start from first page and finish the book, you'll become an advance 3D Director programmer (even before you read this, you're nill in 3D Director).

OK, I'll tell you what I get from this book, here is my project: a Multiplayer First Person Shooting (FPS) game! (like Counter Strike, Quake, etc). Notice that this is my FIRST 3D Director project! And I got A!

NB: if you're NOT a programmer and don't WANT to possessing 3D Director programming SERIOUSLY, I don't recommend this book, for this book is code heavy, full of code programming, just try "Macromedia Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio for 3D: Training from the Source" (by Phil Gross).
Just a note: I learn about Multiuser form Director 8.5 Studio (you won't find about Multiuser in Director's Third Dimension).

It covers majority of the database topics and is a very useful reference.

I am a MS SQL DBA learning Oracle and this was the first book I read after going through the Oracle's official curriculum. Here are my thoughts.

1)This book is definitely not for the beginners. I highly recommend you start with a more basic book that gives you an overview of Oracle. Oracle tools are highly unintuitive and using them can be a frustrating experience especially for MS SQL DBAs *smirk*. Learning to just to connect to an Oracle database is a learning experience that will take knowledge on how Oracle's network and security function.

2)If you already have a working knowledge on how to operate an Oracle database, this book will no doubt provide a more solid foundation for your knowledge (except RAC). I particularly found its chapters on RMAN and IMPORT/EXPORT utilties particularly helpful.

3)Perhaps the best part of this book is that it encompasses what the author believes is the most essential knowledge to becoming a highly competent Oracle DBA. The book does not try to be a reference for every Oracle topic. Instead, the author has smartly picked the most important information needed and presented them in a readable format.

4)My only issue with this book is that it is wordy. The book is 1200 pages long and it could easily have been 1000 pages or fewer.

An excellent book covering all essential DBA topics for Oracle 9i Administration. Explained very well covering In-depth details, Illustrations and examples makes this book invaluable. I use it as a true source of reference and I will strongly recommend this book.

This is a great book. All Oracle people must have this.

I just got this book from the library and I decided to read through it before I buy. I think I will buy a copy of it. The book touched pretty much all the areas of Oracle 9i. It is a book to have on your desk as key reference. I will recommend this book to new DBA. The author did a pretty good job. The book seems too big but very useful. I give 4 stars.

The problem I've seen with technical books is that either they are in tutorial/textbook format which includes lessons and then review questions at the end of each chapter, or they are purely reference type books ideal for looking up things on occasion and not really good for a beginner to learn the subject matter. This book was the first one I felt that was ideal in both textbook form as well as a reference book for looking things up.

The chapters were basic enough for the beginner to grasp the material, and the lessons were rife with hands-on examples which I thought was the best part. I like to try things out as I go through the lessons and so the material was very useful for me.

The printing of the material was interesting and draws the reader into the subject, important notes and pitfalls are highlighted between the text to avoid the paragraphs from becoming too long and drawn out. The writer's diction is sometimes humorous to avoid the reader from losing interest.

The book is kind of bulky and thick so as a consequence of regular use, the glue based binding gave way somewhere in the middle of the book so when I open it, the first half of the book is attched merely by a shred to the second half, so I have to be careful now when I lookup things in it. I wouldn't trade this book for anything.

I have never taken any instructional classes on Perl scripting and can safely say that everything I know about Perl scripting I've learned from this book. That being said I am able to write fairly sophisticated perl scripts and have the ability to understand fairly obfuscated perl code without difficulty. I use perl as a very strong and useful tool in my day to day tasks for scripting and text processing needs and I often dazzle and amaze my colleagues at work with the tricks I'm able to pull off by using perl scripting and I owe it all to this book.

In short, I give two enthusiastic thumbs up for this book and the 5 star rating that I gave this book was merely due to the amazon limitation on the number of stars you can give in your review.

I started learning Perl two years ago. I first browsed libraries, free tutorials, news groups etc... It was nice for the beginning but soon enough I understood that's not the way :)

I started looking around for good Perl books and somehow got to this one. I think I can clearly say, that this book did the work. Teached me Perl from the ground up. I'm now planning on buying "MySQL and mSQL" to start working with databases. I also consider buying "Mastering Algorithms With Perl" & "Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software".

Anyway, if you want to start learning Perl, buy this book. I also use it as a reference.

The book is a good and detailed tutorial for all novices who want to learn Perl. No hit around the bush stuff and the chapters were well thought of. Credit should be given to the author and the publishing group for these helpful information. The Source codes on the CD-Rom comes handy when when you want to test out the sample codes in the book. The questions at the end of each chapter is a good revision after scanning the chapter. I strongly recommend those who want to learn Perl to get a copy of this book as their first book.

After the Camel book, of course. This book is very well paced with well thought out examples. I needed it as a refresher last year, and now use it as a reference.

The only down side is that the Web Based interactive segment is no longer available. not a big deal since it's the same quizes as in the book, but there was a gee-whiz, isn't it fun factor to have it available online.

This book covers everything from soup to nuts. It starts the learner off slowly with the basic perl syntax and then smoothly moves into subroutines, OOP, DBI modules, Security, etc. all with the same interesting and amusing style.

I don't know if it's mentioned in the Editorial review, but the author is the Editor of The Perl Journal (www.tpj.com) which is a magazine devoted to the perl programming language. So Jon Orwant *knows* his topic.

I've read and use most of the Perl books out on the market today, but none comes close to getting you going well with Perl as does Jon Orwant's book. I still use it as a reference today, but it is the best any money can buy for learning Perl. I'm back buying another copy because I loaned mine to a friend and I miss it so much that I want to make sure I'll always have a copy handy. My old copy is so well worn that a fresh copy is enticing also. As for extras in the book: the quizzes are great for testing your understanding, and someone has done a great job at proofreading this book -- I don't know whether that person is at the Waite Group or is Jon himself, but I know that anytime I have questioned an answer, or a script, or anything in the book I have always found the book to be accurate on closer inspection. It is very much like the Camel Book in being authoritative -- what Jon says is Perl Gospel Truth - if I had to pick two Perl books, I'd pick this one for learning and the Camel Book for ultimate reference. Jon's book should be rated a 5 and a half star - this is the best that it ever gets!

No obtiene la quinta estrella por no hacer referencia alguna al manejo de los archivos BVH. Por lo demás, genial!

This book has become one of my references for Poser 6. It's clearly written and covers topics from basic to advanced. I recommend this book for anyone learning or using Poser 6!

It was very easy to follow and made it easy to learn Poser 6.

I avoid buying software books because many of my past purchases were a complete waste of money. The authors rehash the software's free manuals and provide explanations and tutorials so basic that it seems their target reader is somebody who bought their first PC just last week.

Based on strong reviews, I took a chance and bought Practical Poser 6. I'm not going to cover the content, which is already described very thoroughly in other reviews here. I'll just say that if you have tried to use Poser without any tutorial or learning aids, this book is for you. I had a copy of Poser 5 and had just bought Poser 6 a few weeks before getting this book. My measure of a good instructional book is how much it taught me that I didn't know already. I estimate 50-60% of this book contains info that I'd only have learned by painful trial-and-error, and was really useful to me. And this is not to say that it's for experienced users only -- whether you're just starting out with Poser or already have a few years of experience, there's some explanations, tips and general good reading in this book for you. Highly recommended!

I found Practical Poser 6 a valuable training tutorial into the world of 3D graphics. Not only did it explain the functions and usages of Poser 6 in understandable terms, it illustrated examples in easy to follow, step-by-step instructions. This book is a recommended must-have for individuals who are thinking about entering the realm of 3D graphics or serious artists who want to refine their technique and squeeze a little more 'mileage' from their programs. A first-rate, well written book in it's field.

This is among my favorite computer science books. I read the first edition straight through from cover to cover, even though I had some prior knowledge of the subject. I have since purchased the second edition, which exceeds the high standards set by the first edition. Scott's book would have made the programming languages course I took as an undergraduate much more enlightening, had it existed at the time.

As a software engineer, I tend to be picky about my books, but this one is very in depth and a good read. You will learn a lot about different programming languages, and why certain languages are better than others for solving different types of prroblems.

Over the years the Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition) (also knwon as the dragon book) has become the de facto standard for introducing compilers and related topics at universities. This is very unfortunate because "Programming Language Pragmatics" is in a completely different league and should be the one used instead. It gives the student (or the self taught) a complete and through overview of parsing, grammar, automata theory and other key language constructs. What really differentiates this book from others (and most notably the (in)famous "Dragon Book") is that it does so in a easy to understand manner and with lots of well written examples.

Many people find compiler and language theory to be dark magic, and it would be wrong not to acknowledge that these subjects are considerably harder than say creating a web page in PHP or writing a small Java/C# program. But much of the confusion also stems from the long history of porly written books which all have lacked explaining key areas or assumed that the readers just know some obscure CS topics beforehand. This book does not travel down that road, it is well written, contains both simple and advanced examples and is simply a delightful read.

Overall, "Programming Language Pragmatics" (PLP) is a very good book. According to the Preface:

"It aims, quite simply, to be the most comprehensive and accurate languages text available, in a style that is engaging and accessible to the typical undergraduate....

At its core, PLP is a book about how programming languages work. Rather than enumerate the details of many different languages, it focuses on concepts that underlie all the languages the student is likely to encounter, illustrating those concepts with a variety of concrete examples, and exploring the tradeoffs that explain why different languages were designed in different ways."

I'm not knowledgeable enough to pass judgment on "the most comprehensive and accurate" part. But, I'm pretty happy about the book meeting the rest of those goals. I read through the book on my own and have only a few significant gripes:

- Chapters 2 (Programming Language Syntax) and 4 (Semantic Analysis) are tough to get through. They're basically trying to teach enough about Alphabets, Languages, Regular Expressions, Context-Free Grammars, Finite Automata and Push-Down Automata for the reader to understand what the rest of the book is based on. I've read Cohen's Introduction to Computer Theory, which is dedicated solely to this material and I still had some trouble. With an instructor in a class to walk through the things, it should be doable. But, for a person reading the book on his own, ugh.

- All of Section III: Alternative Programming Models, seems to depart from the format of the rest of the book (as noted in the Preface) where the author talks about the concepts and then how the different languages implement them. Instead, he focuses on the languages themselves and almost seems to be trying to cram a primer into his text. Since the section seems to be a special case, it wouldn't be so bad except that the languages covered are a bit out of the mainstream and so that degree of depth gets pretty unreadable at times. Again, with a professor around, things would be better.

- At a more pedagogical level, the author has a tendency to merely explain what his example Figures are doing in general terms. The problem is that a lot of the code/pseudocode involves fairly advanced structures in several languages (many of which most people won't have run across). It would have made things a lot easier if he had walked his way through each of those Figures line-by-line and explained what each line did. Once again, this wouldn't be that much of a problem in a normal teaching environment since a professor could do it.

Other than those three things, this is a very good and readable book. I rate it at four stars out of five.

Every good programmer should know more than one programming language, that much is almost a consensus. But more than that, every programmer should educate himself about programming languages in general, what they mean and how they work. It's important to know at least the major programming paradigms, because they form the "mental model" of computation that is available to a programmer in a language from that paradigm.

And then it's always illustrative to know about the differences in many common languages, to see where different decisions have been made and what are the consequences. To know that certain legacy languages (e.g. C, Fortran) have features that were not designed because they were the "best" option (for some definition of best), but because the design was constrained by what technology was currently available.

This knowledge is not only required of compiler writers. It should be required of every good programmer. Compiler writers, of course, must know this, and probably in more detail. But Scott's book is a good resource about programming languages, in a level of detail that I believe adequate for all programmers.

There are two main kinds of books on programming languages: they are "survey" and "implementation".

Survey books show how things work in a lot of languages, comparing them along the way. Often the comparison gets down to small details that can affect the meaning, or semantics, of similar programs written in these languages. These books contain one individual chapter for every major topic, and inside such a chapter all languages are compared in relation to the topic. For example, one such chapter covers "subroutines" and then compare a host of different languages on how they implement subroutines.

Implementation books are different: they show how to implement many language features, usually by presenting code for interpreters and compilers. The reader doesn't learn that Ada permits nested subroutines, but instead how nested subroutines really work and how to implement them in a language, for example. A very good book of this kind is "Essentials of Programming Languages" by Friedman, Wand & Haynes.

I normally prefer the implementation books. I'm not really interested if Standard Pascal permits functions to be passed as parameters or not; if I do need to write a Standard Pascal compiler I'll look for a reference manual. I much prefer to know how to implement functions as parameters, and be done with it. Comparing minutiae about extant programming languages can sometimes be very enlightening, and sometimes be mostly dull.

Scott's book, however, really shines because it mixes feature descriptions and implementation details in the presentation. It does the usual routine of comparing a lot of different languages, most of the time the more popular ones like C++ and Java, but it then shows how the implementations differ because of differences in features. The book strikes a good balance between "language design" and "implementation" approaches, although it is clearly slanted towards design, and so more of a traditional "survey" book.

It wins over other survey books by including implementation information about almost every topic, and by the clear writing and style. Also, most survey books concentrate on mainstream imperative languages (nowadays C++, Java, C#) and leave other paradigms to chapters at the end. Scott's book is a bit better in this respect: the presentation often includes Common Lisp, Scheme and Standard ML in the comparisons. There are separate chapters about functional and logic programming too, but considerations about functional programming are spread in the whole book. This is important because paradigms change, and a good programmer must be able to adapt.

It's a good reference for language implementors and good education for most programmers. I look forward to the next editions.

While this book covers all the significant technology in the area, it is a much better read for all those things you wondered about in Sci Fi Could they really do that? Also the policy issues are critical to our privacy rights and conversly national security.

Anyone who uses a mobile phone, relies upon oversees Internet connectivity, or worries about personal security should get acquainted with this book. Mr. Vacca has once again produced a very accessible yet easily readable tome on the dangers and promise of satellite encryption. Pick it up and you'll learn about or government policies regarding satellite communications management and security. By the time you put it down, you'll understand everything from pagers to the electronic battlefield. It's a must-read!

Great book - detailed and technical, but still a good read

As always, John Vacca provides an incredible level of detail in a readable manner. The Internet implications are particularly applicable to almost any reader. In our case, where the line-of-sight constraints of radio transmission in our wireless WANs are forcing us to look at satellite options, this book is an invaluable resource. And the tales told herein about encryption break-ins and techniques make fascinating reading in their own right.

Technical from orbit to chip, and immensely readable as well!

I think that the tittle of this book is a bit misleading. If one reads through all the enthusiastic reviews of the book one can actually get a clear picture of what it is about. It is a general overview of politics of encryption with some technical information included in between. I cannot understand the reason for more than one hundred pages of information about different types of military equipment. Yes, this book is interesting but it is not about cryptography and encryption. These subjects are only a small part of the book. I returned Satellite Encryption after very thorough consideration.

Well, I can't say much that the other reviewers haven't already said. This is a terrific text that very clearly explains how things work in computers, right down to the finest level. Hyde writes in a casual, conversation-like tone (sometimes bordering on poor grammar) that makes this text a lot more stomachable than I would have thought. Typos are minimal (I recall maybe 4 or 5).

Now that I've been through the book (after maybe 2 weeks, at an easy pace), I can't say that I'm going to go write assembly programs. I can say that I know a great deal more about how computers work, and how I can write code that works more harmoniously with computers. My background is mechanical engineering with a ridiculous dose of electrical engineering, so a lot of the concepts presented were review for me (digital circuitry, binary math, etc)...but it is always good to hear the same material again in a different way. As I said before, the casual tone makes the material easy to follow, as well as Hyde's very clear explanations. However, as a mechanical engineer my programming background was just "writing code," i.e. how to get various programs to run correctly. I read the chapter in the text on memory twice- I found that chapter alone to make the book well worth the money to me, as I am currently writing codes that demand every inch of speed and memory that the computer can offer.

So overall, its a good book, worth the money, and worth taking the time to read.

This is a great way to understand data flow at the machine level.

I especially like the part on memory and IO.

Author has explained low-level concepts lucidly. It is easy on eyes. Basic concepts become very clear. It is one of those 'can't keep down without reading few chapters at a stretch' kind of technical book. Very few books have this edge. Just don't feel like stopping reading it.

Beginners must read this book before attempting to read more in-depth low-level technical books. This book is a must for people who are exposed to high-level languages but have not studied Computer Science.

This is a great book but I have to disagree with the overall viewpoint. I've been doing embedded programming for a while and if that's all I'd ever done I would totally agree that understanding low level concepts helps write better code. However, I also write a lot of code in C#. People who normally use high level languages such as C#, VB.Net, or JAVA are probably not going to benefit much from this book. These languages are so far abstracted from the hardware level that the concepts are hard to apply anywhere. On the other hand, if you still use malloc on a daily basis, you need to read the book :) Anyway, the book is easy to read and I never caught any errors. If you want to learn about computers at a low level, then this is a great book to start with!

If you're like most IT people out in the workforce today, you've got pressures from all sides - deadlines, keeping current with changes in platforms, hardware, software tools, etc. Gah! It never ends!

So, you pick up these "Write Great Code" books, thinking that you'll be a better programmer.

And it's interesting in a way that you remember when you were just getting into the IT field as a student and later as an employee and maybe now as a consultant or contractor.

But, then you realize that this is like thinking about how your car's components are working while you're driving madly to work on some beltway. Only your skills as a driver can keep you from getting hit by a big semi, not the working knowledge of your V8 engine. Guys who work on their cars on the weekend, know more about them than you do, but hey, it gets you to work and back.

And so, you sigh and put the book down and concentrate on your SQL, or your VB or whatever else keeps you employed.

Why?

Because your users and your manager don't care about what goes on at the machine level. They want the deliverables NOW. The efficiency of your code is of no importance to them, though it is to you.

However, with enough discipline and some thought to what you're doing, you CAN make this book work for you, and get an edge over someone else's sloppy code and maybe even save yourself some programming time.

Because this book is for the guys who are the computer counterparts of the greasy-looking guys on the street who could tell you what's wrong with your car, even if you can't.

I won't do a lengthy review... just read the other 5-star reviews and you'll get the drift. This book is so easy to understand you can learn without a PC in front of you (if you're a VB6 developer looking to understand .Net). The explanation of what ADO.NET is all about is worth purchase price alone. No chapter is super comprehensive, but it's a great text to get you rolling in VB.Net right quick. As an MCSD and MCDBA certified developer, I wouldn't write such a great review on just any book. Buy it.

There is so much that is lacking in this book. First, it is not user friendly. It is difficult to follow. Second, it simply does not cover enough information that one needs in order to truly be able to use .Net technology.

Cover to cover this book sails through the hype dispensing nuggets not to be forgotten!!! .Net and C#-aholics had breathed so much hot air, I was having trouble find a place to start. Once received I put everything else aside. I used to use arrays, types, RDS, and ADO to get the plumbing done but now its OOP, and serialization from now on!!! I got so many good pearls from this book its ridiculous.

I have been programming in VB since 1992 and decided to move to VB.NET when it was released but found the learning curve was immense - until I bought the book of VB.NET. This book is my Bible, it sits besides my computer all the time. Without delving into the VB language, it simplifies the transition to VB.NET for the experienced VB Programmer. It's not for VB learners nor does Matthew propose that it is. If you know VB this is the book to ease the quantam leap from VB to VB.NET - explained in logical steps with excellent examples. I have had to EMail Matthew with a few queries and the response is always prompt and helpful.

There are certainly other books you need in your arsenal - such as Francesco Balena's Microsoft Reference - but this one is a must.

This book has a very good intention and concept - to introduce VB6 developers to VB .Net. In general it is a very good book. Not very deep, but good enough to start working with VB .Net and bee reasonably productive. So, if not for sloppy writing, I would probably give that book all 5 stars.
What do I mean by sloppy? For once, author uses terms object and class interchangeably throughout the book. Sometimes it is contextually understandable what he means, but often it might be very confusing, especially for people relatively new to OO. Then there are errors and typos in code examples. Some of them are also very confusing. For example: on page 80 author introduces the new VB concept - delegates. For VB6 folks this is something fundamentally new and strange.
In code example author defines delegate type and calls it ProcessFunction. Then he defines variable of this type and calls it ProcessDelegate. After that on the same page he shows how to use delegates and assigns value to ProcessFunction and retrieves value from ProcessFunction.
From the context one should understand that in the last two cases the variable ProcessDelegate should be used instead, and that this is just a typo. Yet, given that VB .Net now supports shared properties and methods, when Class (Type) name can be used where one expects to see Object (Variable), this types of mistakes are very confusing and annoying.
I would not go here into more examples of books imperfections. There are some more. Not terribly many, but enough to frustrate.
Would I recommend this book? Yes, if you have patience and some other VB .Net book to resolve inevitable confusions.
This could become a great book in its next edition if author takes time to make it a bit more accurate and precise.

If you're a moderately skilled programmer, a self-learner, and you want to get beyond just "getting started" deploying and using Sql Server 2000 Reporting Services, this is the book for you.

I especially found the chapters on customized set up extremely helpful. The installation wizard doesn't offer a whole lot of options, and most of teh time you don't know fully how you want to configure it until you've tried it out. You'll get some good starters on rconfiguring your installation here.

You'll get enough basics to be ready to dive in, and then some tricks well enough beyond that to give you well on your way to devleoping customized solutions.

For a total beginner (which I definately was) this is a FANTASTIC introduction to Reporting Services. Three months after starting my first job as a programmer straight out of University, and now I'm the main person in the firm with Reporting Services knowledge - and it's all thanks to this book.

The writing style is actually excellent for beginners, as I was terrified by the prospect of reading such a mammoth. But these guys make it fun and interesting to read (right down to the jokes and sidenotes) and really do touch on everything you need in a useful manner without boring you.

And excellent resource that now never leaves my desk. I can only hope these guys do a SQL Sever 2005 one. I cannot recommend this book enough for those starting on Reporting Services. It really is the book to read.

And if you are looking for a book on SQL Reportin 2005 - I would still recommend this book to give you the basics and introduction which is unbeatable thus far.

I really the beginning part on the setup and installation of the reporting services themselves. At my firm we needed to set up a seperate server for this purpose and the IT group was swamped with another project and this helped a great deal. I still am workign on development but the book has been very usefula and easy to understand.

This book has been written from a VB programmers point of view. If you want to just start creating reports or if you're not a VB programmer (ie DBA etc) you may find this hard work.As another reviewer mentioned, you may find the authors' jokes and writing style to be a hit and miss affair.

Nevertheless, there is some depth on Reporting Services not to be found elsewhere that is quite handy.

Now that all the friends and family have promoted the book...

In order to understand something new, we all must relate that which we're learning to that which we already know.
Pete and Bill have a difficult time transitioning from campy comedians to thoughtful educators. To this extent, their writing style lacks any useful analogies whatsoever which might bridge the gap between the known and the unknown.

The book is full of droll and distracting fantasy references which are completely irrelevant to the subject matter, and are prone to taking the unsuspecting reader off task.

The potential purchaser should also be forewarned that the authors tend towards another immature trait of attempting to impress the reader with their linguistic abilities. Yet, to be effective at teaching they should have remembered to never use a complicated word where a simple one will do.

Many examples are rambling and inconcise, where step-by-step quickly degrades into an ambiguous and vague path.

Not every developer can obtain DOMAIN Authority in order to issue SSL certificates and it's too bad that the authors don't allow for this type of scenario, especially when a reporting system is on a VPN.

All of the content is there, but it's up to the reader to filter and translate most of it from the pitfalls aforementioned into something more to the center of the bell curve.

I bought this book based on the raving reviews I read on Amazon from other users, but when I received it I found some MAJOR issues. This book is a true and utter disappointment for any intermediate or low-intermediate designer.

The Good
- This book is very comprehensive and good for TRUE BEGINNERS as it covers the basics of html, xhtml, php, javascript, and image editing.
- The only mildly useful bits for the hobbyist web designer are the PHP and Javascript chapters... but you can find the same, or better information on the basics of these two technologies posted for free on the net. You don't need to pay 40.00+ bucks for this info.

The Bad
- This book is extremely, extremely outdated. Most of the design tips date back to the time when IE 5.5 and 6 were the cutting edge, and the examples are aimed at IE and Netscape Navigator users! Hence, the tips & techniques are virtually useless now that IE 7 is standard, IE 8 on the horizon, and FFox 3 about to be released.
- This book is filled with statements such as "PNG-8 and PNG-24 formats have only recently received FULL support from the most used-browsers, Netscape Navigator 6 and Internet Explorer 5"(pg 290). THAT's how old this book's tips are.

DO Buy This Book...
- If you have NEVER built a web page before
- If you want the basics to build a personal web page, a hobby web page, a static site with less than 10 pages and no functionality other than a mailto form.
- If you don't mind building your site for primarily for IE users.
- If you don't mind your web page looking like the Geocities Sites of back in 1999.

DO NOT Buy This Book.
- If you know how to style a paragraph using CSS.
- If you have ever used an editor like Dreamweaver, or Adobe Golive, or even FrontPage.
- If you want a site with any sort of interactive functionality like wikis, blogs, discussion boards, etc.
- If you are aware that the world has moved on from Netscape Navigator 6.

In summary, I found this book to be a giant pile of rubbish. In the future, I would strongly recommend NEVER buying a Web Design book that has been published more than 1 or max 2 years before your actual date. Its 2008, DON'T buy anything written prior to 2006 in order to learn basic web design. You'll end up wasting your time, as I did.

This book is outstanding. It covers everything you need to know about web design. It was highly detailed, explaining everything you need to know. And it's well written.

Inside the chapters are small sections that they refer to as Tips, such as Explaining the Uses of a Table as a layout tool. With the tips, it makes it a lot easier to go back and look over something you forgot or don't understand.

Overall, exellent book, and I highly recommend it as a resource

A friend of mine recommended this book to me. I read it in about a week. It was very simple and understandable. Plus I learned some very intresting things I never knew about CSS.

The best coverage of PHP that I have found. Excellent discussion of tweaking server, appl, and session variables. Security discussion was very easy to apply.

I found this book to be excellent. It is very rare today to find a computer science book that is thorough, logical and well organized, yet brief and to the point. This can be said for all of the chapters in this book. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about web programming.