Internet Books

This book covers a broad range of security issues from various respected authors. Its a good reference source for any systems administrator.

I really like this book; it differs from most of the high-tech books in various ways, eg. the content is written almost like fiction, yet it comprises all technical aspects within security, ranging from security issues in networking cables till very OS specific matters. Both the Unix and Windows OS are comprenensively stressed.

If you are interested in security in general, this is really the book
for you. The author has gathered various information from
some of the best indepth security books available and
presented the content in a very delight fashion.

I would not be getting such a great book if not SYBEX, which has lots of advance examples, tips and tricks. Finally and most of all, it's the most valueble book that give you the overview of the advance level. I mostly recommend that you must buy this book, trust me and you won't regret!

I would not be getting such a great book with lots of advance examples, tips, tricks, and most of all it's the most valueble book. I mostly recommend that you buy this book, trust me and you won't regret!

Network Security is fast becoming a technical position that is hard to fill. With all of the things happening in the computer industry, internet and even in the world we need to be able to protect our networks and data from outside intruders, this book is a great start to making your network a more secure place.

Having just taken the Security+ beta and beginning to study for Microsoft's new 70-214 Windows 2000 Security exam, this book has provided an unbelievable amount of information. Over 950 pages packed with tips, tricks, ideas and methods for securing the network, the operating system and even the network infrastructure.

Tackling Windows 2000 and XP professional, Linux, Netware and Samba and then over 160 pages on firewalls including setup and configuration make this as complete a manual as I have come across so far.

Like I said this book works for several security exams and there is even 240 pages for the Cisco CSS1 exam. So if you thinking of working with network security or are currently employed in a position like that, you would be making a great choice with this book.

Priced to fit any budget, this book is a great reference manual to have around. Sybex is a leader in certification and technical manuals.

This is definitely a book for systems administrators. You won't learn the basics about sendmail, or get an introduction. This book is for folks who generally know sendmail, but are having specific issues with it.

The first chapter has a lot of very specific fixes for a bunch of operating system specific issues. After that the solutions become a bit more general.

The two standout chapters are chapter four, on relaying, and chapter six on spam filtering. Both of these have great introductions and in-depth techincal descriptions, with effective graphics, covering the topics.

I recommend this book for systems administrators and for people actively using with sendmail.

The first killer application of the Internet was email. For over twenty years, the most common program used to handle this was sendmail, written by Eric Allman. Over this time, sendmail has become a fully fledged language, with a very inelegant syntax. To learn how this, you need the book "Sendmail" by Costales and Allman.

The basic problem is that twenty years of ever increasing complexity in mail handling has created concomitant complexity in sendmail. For system adminstrators, the sendmail configuration files are probably the most complicated things they have to understand and maintain.

The rub is that most sysadmins have many duties, and little time to thoroughly read the above book. What is needed is a crib sheet, that lets you quickly solve very common sendmail configuration issues. Wherein the need for this book. Hunt takes a pragmatic approach. He tells you enough to handle these common issues. Sometimes, this comes at a slight cost. For example, he never really fully explains the the sendmail class notation. For a rigorous explanation, you still need Allman's book. But as a practical matter, you probably not that curious about the notation anyway. Hunt's approach may solve your problems quicker!

An interesting aspect of this Cookbook is that it shows the recent evolution of sendmail, as seen in the subtitle at the top of the cover, "Spam-Fighting". Sysadmins who dealt with sendmail from 5 years ago or earlier will recall nothing pertaining to antispam techniques.

But just as email was the first killer application, the second killer application was the browser, starting in 1992-3. The third killer application was spam, often viewed via the second application. In the last 5 years, spam has grown amazingly. So much so that it has been debated on the floors of the US Parliament! It has gotten to the point that some alarmists are even claiming that this third killer app might be crippling the first app!

Well, this Cookbook has several sections, including an entire chapter, focussed on various antispam techniques, like procmail parsing, or hooking up to Real Time Block Lists like spamhaus.org. The efficacy of such methods may vary widely, but you do get a choice. Though none of these currently appear to offer a truly effective countermeasure. You are still getting tons of spam, aren't you?

Perhaps some genius in the not too distant future can help us!

Great book, exactly what I needed. I'm pretty good with Sendmail, but there is nothing like just looking up an issue and following through a solution. I would recommend this to anyone who works with Sendmail!

This book has something about sendmail for everyone.
I know sendmail very well, and have used it for years.

But even I and sendmail gurus I work with learned a lot.

this is a great book.

Working with sendmail can be very challenging at times; while the documentation for it is very complete, finding real-life use-cases can be tough and messing up a configuration is very easy. Fortunately the sendmail authors and community adopted the m4 language to help make building and managing sendmail configurations less painful (I remember having bad dreams about sendmail configuration language when I started learning it). Even with m4, understanding what goes where when and why in a sendmail configuration file can be a real challenge.

O'Reilly helped we mere mortals out tremendously with the publication of "Sendmail: The Definitive Guide," a book that helped demystify and clarify many of sendmail's inner-workings and configuration options. Even with this book, it was still hard to answer real-life use case questions, like how to enable SMTP AUTH for sendmail, how do I use LDAP with sendmail, how do I use sendmail to accept email for multiple domains in a virtual hosting environment, how do I use blackhole list services?

Enter "Sendmail Cookbook." This clear, easy to read, well-indexed book contains a wealth of useful recipies that make previously difficult to figure out tasks quite easy. The book is organized in typical Cookbook fashion; each chapter or section stands on it's own, and if it does require knowledge of other sendmail configuration topics, the section includes cross-references to other relevant recipies and references to appropriate sections in the "Sendmail: The Definitive Guide" book, which is a nice additional feature.

This cookbook starts with recipies that step the reader through building and installing sendmail, with sections on configuring the build so that sendmail compiles with SSL/STARTTLS support, LDAP support, and SASL support. Chapters that follow deal with everything from enabling and configuring SMTP AUTH, to securing sendmail itself, to controlling spam. Recipies use m4 whenever possible and only dip into the sendmail configuration language when necessary, another feature I found very impressive.

I own quite a few O'Reilly books; this is one of a small number that I enjoy just picking up and flipping to a random page and reading; I always find something that I either didn't know or had forgotten. I wish I had this book seven years ago when I was struggling to learn the basics of sendmail configuration and administration; I might have more hair left if I had! I highly recommend this book to anyone who works with sendmail, be that daily administration or occassional troubleshooting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now in an expanded and updated second edition, Signals And Systems With MATLAB Applications by electrical engineer and educator Steven T. Karris is an invaluable textbook and resource especially written and organized for students of electrical engineering. An easy-to-learn-from text, with practical MATLAB applications to use and drive the theory home, Signals And Systems authoritatively covers a wide selection of mathematical and engineering topics in seasoned and technical detail, including delta functions, the laplace transformation, fourier series, analog and digital filters, and much more. Signals And Systems is a confidently recommended advanced instructional resource especially for dedicated students or veteran electrical engineers looking to brush up their basic skills.

I found this text to be very interesting. It contains material that I have not seen in a single book. All theorems and definitions are well and simply expressed and illustrated with practical examples. I've found few but insignificant references to equations and figures, and I've informed the author. It is an ideal text to learn both the material and MATLAB. Appendix A
is a very good introduction to MATLAB and it helped me very much.
M. Phillips

Awesome textbook.
wish I found it early enough to not by the course's texbook.
Unlike many others that I have been forced into purchasing for classes, this books explains everything down to a T, along with graphical representations on every page!
Another great thing I really appreciate is the fact that the text/math is spread out nicley, making it easy to highlight and take you own notes (which I do all the time, and find it very helpful when reviewing). The fashion in which the material is presented is free of leaps and bounds which I have found is not the case at all for many other signals books. I was quite happy to find that in this case I paid less for a better book. I have since ordered the electronic devices book as well from the same author/publishing-company. Thanks Steve!
-pat

Easy to read. Good balance of just enough theory and an ample amount of examples and problems to test one's knowledge. Can be used as either a main textbook or as a supplement for self-study. Perfect for those looking to use MATLAB as an integrated study tool.

The author's discussion of the material is excellent. He presents good examples and tries to integrate proofs or theorems into what he has told you.

Unlike many engineering books, he actually puts solutions in the back of the text.

This is a refreshing change from publishers who tend to keep this information "restricted".

When you are working with a higher level subject such as Signals and Systems, you want to build practice with problems.

Another point I especially enjoyed was the clear discusion of state space analysis in both the laplace and the Z domains.

This is a terrific book on what it takes to make web applications really work (both for users and for the businesses that create them). Managers of web design projects should read this book for its eminently practical advice on documentation, workflow, and pitfalls to avoid. Highly recommended.

If you're new to building web applications and want a balanced perspective on the engineering challenges involved -- from understanding user needs to data modelling to scaling gracefully -- this book is a great place to start. It's mostly language-agnostic, so it'll be a good starting point for a few years but won't update you on the latest technology. Nevertheless, I know very few web developers who wouldn't learn something important from a careful reading of this book.

Where this book really shines is as a bridge from the world of college Computer Science to the world of actually building applications people use. This transition encompasses understanding your users, making flexibile designs, considering security, aesthetics, and a host of other issues one does not actually learn in a normal college CS curriculum. Thanks to its project focus, this book (and the course curriculum it implies) seeds an awareness of these many issues that can later be developed through experience. Other "software engineering" books over-emphasize theories, but this one will actually press you to get stuff built.

It's not easy to build a really good online community website. There are a lot of things to think about, and many of them have little or nothing to do with technical programming skills.

Buy this book, read it, step through it, and learn from some of the best teachers on the subject. And then when you've learned what they have to say here, take your new-found skills and build your own online community site. Using the methods in this book, your web sites can be more useful, successful, and profitable.

To Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, I learn of this new chapter in Mr. Greenspun's (et al) effort to encourage the Web to be all it can be. This volume is plainly a text book, designed as a practicum, and with its completion my understanding of how to achieve what's possible now and conjure the future of the Web will be greatly furthered. I'm finding it inspirational in the process of designing; expand your dream's horizons!

This book is helpful for programmers as well as people who work more generally with technology. I'm using very specific, technical information from the "Adding Mobile Users to Your Community" chapter for a web application I'm building, while using concepts from the chapter on discussion forums for a research project on how discussion tools are used at my university. If you build web applications, or work with people who do, I highly recommend this book.

This is a great book cover to cover. For the admin who has never participated in an Active Directory roll out this book is a must have. The chapters quickly familiarize you the most powerful aspects of Active Directory without much repetitiveness. This is an excellent book for those wanting an overview or for a beginner with Active Directory. Well worth the purchase price.

Hudson and Fullerton definately come through in their presentation of Active Directory! Their clear and concise approach, drawing from their experience in training and consulting shines through! I am in the process of upgrading the network where I now work from Windows NT and this book is an invaluable resource!

The authors have done a very good jobs of explaining several complex matters. More importantly, the authors have clearly shown that they have trenmendous amount of real-world experiece. It's good to know that we still have some authors like that instead of too many professional writers, who have no real world experience and who just paraphase what M$ says about their product on the online help.

Thanks.

Tam T. Nguyen, MCSE

Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory provides the network administrator with complete, authoritative, "user friendly", in-depth coverage of the newest directory service from Microsoft. Sean Fullerton and James Hudson use their extensive previous training and administration experiences to expertly explain how to design, implement, and troubleshoot using the new directory service "Active Directory". Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory is very highly recommended for users ranging from Beginner to Advanced levels of experience. 554pp.

This book is very helpful if you are planning a Windows 2000 Active Directory design or already have one and need to get the most out of your AD. The authors have organized the book very well making it easy to find the information you need. The book is very useful as a quick reference. Additionally, material is presented in a logical order making it easily readable cover-to-cover if you need a comprehesive understanding of AD.

The authors stress the importance of a solid DNS design and drive home the point just how critical DNS is for good AD operation. There is a good description of forests, trees, and domains as well as much helpful information on planning sites and site replication. The book also goes into detail on printers and scripting.

I found the book very useful for setting up and administering different features of Windows 2000 such as group policy. There are good chapters on Group Policy Architecture and Managing Group Policy.

As an MCSE+Internet certified analyst assigned to the AD design team for a Fortune 500 company, I highly recommend this book. It makes a good operational reference for your bookshelf. Although not geared specifically for Windows 2000 certification tests, it is worth reading if you are preparing for the exams.

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

Well worth getting and keeping on your shelf.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter ten, Talking to other Squids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Appendix B briefly covers memory caching and optimization.

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

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

Appendix E discusses running Squid on Windows using Cygwin.

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

In conclusion:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have waited for this book for a long time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bravo Mr. Wessels!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Standard length of each help file

- The need for popups

- Using the imperative form as opposed to gerunds

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

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

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

I stumbled upon this book at a CompUSA and have found it to be one of the the best basic but thorough overviews of OS X 10.2.x. I needed a book to give my users new to OS X. I wanted something to help them get used to the new inteface and features but I didn't want them overwhelmed by too much detail. This book fit perfectly. It uses text and illustrations very well and describes things clearly. Everyone who has used this book has gotten up to speed quickly and with little help from me. That's success!

I bought my 'new', used ibook on ebay and so have no manual. The guy was nice enough to send it with Jaguar installed though, so I popped over to amazon, and bought this little guide. I am up and running, with an updated ISP, browser (safari, free at apple), and cooking along with icons making sense and configurations configured, ALL because of this little book! Now I know I have to get one of those big heavy books for the Big Stuff, but I am good to go in the meantime.

I am a recent convert from the 'PC' world to the MAC world. I was looking for a book to get me into the MAC quickly and easily. I am very computer literate on the 'PC' but needed the translation into the Apple world. A friend of mine has praised Greg Simsic's books on Photoshop, so I knew this would probably be a good book to consider. I have been very happy with it. It is concise and clear and seems to point out all the things I need to know to become comfortable with the MAC. It is slim enough I can keep it in the bag with my G4 laptop-always ready for quick reference. There is a very thorough index and table of contents to get you to what you need to know. And the information is clear and to the point. It seems to cover all of the basic information for me to get around the OSX system and its applications. I cannot believe the reasonable price on this book. I don't think I have ever bought a computer book [this price]. What a bargain this book is ...

I've been using Mac computers for more than a decade, but I have to confess my first bootup of OSX was a jarring experience. Where'd my control panels go? What's the dock? Where are my files? For the first time ever, I decided to go out and buy a guidebook to a Macintosh product.

Which brought me to this guide to OS X Jaguar conducted by friendly natives Greg Simsic and Katy Bodenmiller. The entire Simsic/Bodenmiller series is a tonic for anyone who resents the condescension of that "For Dummies" series and its ilk; rather than treating its reader like a slow third-grader, Simsic and Bodenmiller get down to business without all the superciliousness that keeps all self-respecting Mac users far away from those little black and yellow Cliff-Note's-like books. At last, a software guide I don't have to be embarrassed to read in public.

With its learned, front-porch and down-home idiom, Start! takes the reader from startup to moviemaking with savvy tips for everything in between. The layout of the book is as clean, logical, and as easy to navigate as OSX itself. Perhaps the greatest achievement of this book is that Simsic and Bodenmiller are able to address two very different audiences-the die-hard Mac devotee just making the switch from OS9, as well as the newly PC-cured-without wasting the time of either. If Jaguar makes you pine for nine, get this book. You'll never look back.

Greg Simsic and Katy Bodenmiller have written the PERFECT beginner's guide to Mac OSX. I teach OSX classes to new Macintosh users (univ. faculty) and I've gone thru lots of OSX books and materials. This is by far the best I've seen. Simple, straightforward, immediately to-the-point. It's written with a clarity and understanding of new users that is hard to find in many of the intro-level books. Greg's books have always been among my favorites, and this ranks with the best.

I've seen a lot of Internet books come and go. This is one of the few that sits on my bookshelf and that I pull down frequently. Author Peter Clemente has his pulse on what's going on out there and shares it in a very accessible, one-to-one tone, unlike many of these books that are just brimming over with geek speak. --Larry Chase, publisher, Web Digest For Marketers

This book distinctively captures the evolution of the Internet in statistics and an easy, fun to read narrative. I believe it is an indispensable treasure trove for marketers, entrepreneurs and students -- anyone interested in cutting through the hype to understand the realities of who uses the Internet today, what they do online, and how the Internet is likely to evolve in the near future. I've found no other book like it, especially the way it uses survey statistics and analysis to support its conclusions. It's really a neat, unique book.

As a small start-up company in the rapidly changing world of new media we're always looking for reliable Internet information to support our business objectives. "State of the Net" has not only helped justify our existence to our investors, but also helped us identify a new target online audience. We've invested thousands of dollars in industry reports in the past and ended up with very little substantive information. In "State of the Net", Mr. Clemente provides a gold mine of useful and reliable information. Any Internet start-up would be crazy to pass up this gem. Steven Canale

As an internet marketer this book is priceless. You can actually trust what it says rather than having to rely upon the usual hot air and wild speculation.

I thought this book offered an extremely clear and coherent explanation of who's using the Internet and why. I've been waiting for a book like State of the Net to come along for a while. It's a great read!