Variants Books

This book doesn't have anything I couldn't find by just looking at samples on Sun's site.

Most of all, it's missing security like XML Signatures, and XML encryption.

This book is great if you know something about XML and Java. For true beginners, well, it's a stretch. It also starts to show its age, and furthermore, its supporting website - both on the author's web server and O'Reilly's own servers, is sketchy. You will rely on both to use the code mentioned in the book.
Otherwise, it is just an unremarkable information piece about Java and XML.

Second editions are always great. However, I find that I dont like all of the API reference in the book. I would rather look at APIs electronically and talk concepts in the book.

The author covers some background, but mainly sticks to the business end of dealing with XML using java. The book is set out so you can read the parts that are relevant to getting a particular piece of technology working quickly.

Before reading this book I had never written an XML parser, but within a couple of days I was able to rework a parser to make it work both faster and with a smaller memory footprint by following the guidelines in this book. The details are not covered in great depth, but enough to get a job done, and make this a portabe reference.

Another book worth owning from the O'Reilly press.

Compared with .NET and XML this book tends to wander and rat hole a little. The book covers the basics. The SAX and DOM approaches. It also covers XSLT and serving XML. It also covers advanced topics like Castor, JDOM, and web services. But most of the subjects are covered at a cursory level and do not serve as a complete introduction.

There is a small reference at the end of the book which is not as easy to read as the APIs described in the Nutshell style.

I gave this book four stars because, while it does lack focus, it is a good introduction to the XML APIs for Java. In the third release they should concentrate a little harder editing in some focus and a better reference section at the end.

I have been working with this book since October. I have had good success until Chapter 8. I have not been able to javac or java the code from the book. In these chaps, you are instructed to javac these programs [does that mean not to java them?] I have e-mailed Mr. Liberty with no repsonse. I have enjoyed working with this book so far [I've also worked with VB 6 Scr].
This is an excellent book to learn beginning Java 2 but some of the instructions in the book could be a little more clear.

I thought the author gave a good foundation to the project that was discussed. The explanation of AWT tools was the best of all the 7-8 books on Java I own.

He did go a little too deep into the analysis process of program development. His chosen project (stock market analysis) was intended to use "one of everything" in the Java language but was too deep a venture for my liking.

Que's web site does not provide source code for the book and so I am stuck with a scratched disk - Ugg!

Good Book - I think what you people don't realize is when the guy uses sloppy grammar...it's better that way...programming doesnt't have to be harsh or brutal, I think Jesse is a great author, even though this isnt this book, I am very new to C++ and with the book 'teach urself c++ in 21 days' I found i could even skip ahead to a certain topic and read through the topics and discussion about it...and GET IT. The reason I think Jesse is a great author is that even though the grammar is a little sloppy, the books are very well organized and thorough (sp?)

I bought this book at a discount book wholeseller that sells off the leftover merchandise from book returns or out-of-business stores. These places usually have books that are a little out of date and aren't of the highest quality.
This book is both.
The book is aimed towards novices that want to learn Java as their first programming language or slightly more experienced programmers that are trying to learn Java. The examples in the book are kind of difficult for someone who has NEVER programmed, but it does go into great detail about the code line-by-line.
The real drawback to this book is the author's poor code wrting technique. His Java coding in no way resembles Sun's documentation, so if you're looking to learn good coding habits, this is NOT the book for you.
In short, the examples are good, but a little meaty for the "Dummies" crowd. This book can broaden your understanding of Java IF you're willing to correct the syntax as you go. A better complete-beginngers-guide would be the Sams TY Java2 in 21 days or the Wrox Beginning Java by Ivor Horton.

This is the first Java book that I've been able to see through. It seems like too many books just throw snippets of code at me, along with the technical jargon, which I soon find boring, (think college textbooks(snore). But this one is lively, the author makes jokes, and he actually shows you how to program an entire application in Java. Try getting that experience anywhere.

Thank you Steven Haines.

i received the book on time. the condition of the book was brand new as stated. thank you for providing such great service!

I bought this book because it was required for a course. Out of all of the exercise books I have used, this is by far the hardest to follow. There are not enough examples to actually teach you the information. There are no answers, so you never know if what you're doing is correct. Overall, the book is vague in its descriptions and has not given me any kind of useful Java skills. I'm sure it would be good for someone who already knows a little about Java or that has a teacher standing right by them to explain everything. Even the exercises were not very clear and hard to understand. I would recommend searching for a different book.

most intro to programming books expect/assume you to know about programming before you can begin. This book actually teaches you the very basic and doesnt assume that you know anything. :-) Its probably the best one for beginners.

I purchased this for use in a Java class. The instructor swore by this book. In the end, it just wasn't worth the money. All the information I needed were already available online at through Sun and other Java resources.

Most other books on Java are practically carbon copies of each other. They'll take you through the same boring sequence of learning. When you get to objects, you're just overwhelmed with (what seems to be) information of little practical relevance - or at least, no fun. One hardly gets the feel for what the Object Oriented programming hype is all about.
BlueJ gives you an IDE and code. Like most professional programmers, you won't be writing HelloWorld.java. Instead, you'll begin with code that was already writen by others. The book will take you on a tour in which you'll be exploring the behavior of objects. You'll be asked to reimplement classes, and observe the effects your changes have on the program's behavior. The IDE shows you class diagrams, so you can begin to analyze dependencies. Objects in BlueJ are "live", and you inspect their behaviors on the fly. This is unlike most other books, where you are required to use a text editor. This is miles ahead from the other 99% of tutorial books.
BlueJ almost feels like the Java programmer is in a Smalltalk environment. BlueJ gives the beginer a real feel for code reuse, modularity, and objects, and the IDE is an integrated tool in the development process, just like it is for a professional Java programmer. An outstanding book. Having gone through piles of Java tutorial books, this is the one to learn from. This one's truly for learning OOP.

This is an excellent book for someone who already knows how to program but knows little about JAVA. Presents information simply and concisely.

There are more or less some differences among all the programming languages. One might think that being a veteran in one language automatically makes one the master of other languages immediately. Often, it's the minor syntax that are the easiest to get wrong and spent the most time debugging. This book will make sure you really know the nuts and bolts of Java; it doesn't assume some part is not important.

This book is a wonderfully written book on the Java language. On to Java is a great reference book and perfect for just learning the language. The examples are easy to follow, and it does not make assumptions about programming background. Highly recommended if just learning to program or as reference book for those already programming.

If your are an old C/C++ hand or if you learned Java a long time ago and did not use it for years, this is the perfect Java introduction for you. It contains high density contents organized in lists of items. No fluff just pure knowledge. Right now this is the first book I use to look up the simple Java concepts. I do not have to wade through long texts or examples to find or not to find something.

If you prefer an easier paved or more pedagogical introduction you are probably better of with the books from Cornell, Eckel, van den Linden, which I use if I do not find what I look for in the Winston book.

If you know have a good working knowledge of Java be warned. The content of this book is the basic and only the basic stuff. You might be bored by this book.

If you have a grasp of the basics of the Java language, you should also learn a little about how to properly use Java and pick up a book like Joshua Bloch "Effective Java".

Basically, what all those 5-star reviewers say is true, but they either didn't really work through the book or they are leaving out some critical information. I found errors in this book and when I tried to report them, the website listed on the back was no longer active and there was no response to emails. Months after reporting the problems, their site still said there were no known errors.

Upon reaching the halfway point in the book, I found the project would not run as given in the text. I went to their website (which, like I said, appeared to be abandoned) and found some different code for the chapter I was on, but that wouldn't even compile! Luckily, I also had Geary's Graphic Java book and was able to get past the error using his approach. I felt that errors like this, along with the complete lack of support, were quite unacceptable from a second edition. Now they have a follow-up edition which appears to be simply rewritten for Java 2. The website referenced no longer exists and you now get redirected to Winston's book site, which does not even pretend to support this book! The last update to the known bugs was in 1997!!! I've sent him at least two emails on his errors since then!

I also found the segment numbering scheme to be distracting and strange. The "segments" are 1 or 2 paragraph subsections; they are numbered sequentially throughout the book. The author will say "please refer to segment number 238..." and I see this more like a GOTO in programming and therefore a cop-out by authors that didn't want to bother with numbering sections in the normal manner. This is just a personal peeve and I would only take off one star at most for it.

This book tries to be all things, but not Object-Oriented Design in Java. Even some of the examples requires you to download a library from a third party company. Save your money. I recommend you buy "applying UML and Patterns" that will lead you into "Design Patterns" by the gang of 4. P.S. I felt that two starts is being kind.

I'm just a guy who has been professionally programming in Lotus Notes for several years and wanted to make the switch to java and incorporate it Notes projects and stand-alone Java apps. I'm learning it on my own - I recommend finding a mentor because I KNOW that learning would be SO much faster that way - and went through several books and classes without really understanding some java basics.

After all the books I have tried to read I finally found one that is right up my alley! It's called OBJECT ORIENTED DESIGN IN JAVA by Mitchell Waite and Robert LaFore. It's several years old and some of the syntax might be deprecated but it does an EXCELLENT job of explaining the ways , and more importantly, the WHY's of designing a program a certain way. By doing so, they explaing the ins and outs of Java!

Java, It's ALL about objects! And this book will teach you objects! The basic syntax to Java is easy to learn, but Objects and Object design is the key to java! This book explains object design, ploymorphism, encapsulation and inhertiance perfectly!
After this book THEN you can go back to the other books like Deitel "How To Program in Java".
Once you master Objects...Java is CAKE! In my college course the definition of an object is "an instance of a class" Wow..that tells me alot.
The most difficult part of Java is learning Objects.
Read this book...learn objects...then the rest of java is easy!
Very very very very good book on objects!

This book has some good things to say, and it does a fair job explaining some basic designs, but the whole book is based on applets. Every example, every line of code refers to applets. If you're not insterested in applets, or are not interested in applying the applet-based examples to actual real-world code, don't buy this book. If you're into applets and want to know more about basic design patterns this book is for you.

If you aren't a beginner at OOD you might find this a little light reading. For me it's been a perfect and thorough introduction to the vast topic. My programming history has been mostly procedural (Foxpro, C) and an ugly mix of pseudo objects and procedural (Visual Foxpro, C++).

It's one thing to learn the Java syntax and there are several books that can help you get up to speed with that, from Horton to Horstmann, etc. It's quite another to learn how to put it all together in a rational efficient way and actually build an application according to OO principles. In the first four chapters this book has already had me scrambling to redesign my current project accordingly. At first that seemed intimidating, but the immediate payoff has been code that makes a lot more "sense", even to me, the original programmer.

One thing is annoying, and that is the obligatory chapter on Java syntax, basic data types, control structures, etc. Why bother? There is no point in reading this book until you've at least finished, say, Ivor Horton's Beginning Java. They could have left it out.

Also, the version of Java they talk about is 1.1 so it's a little out of date. However, I haven't come across anything specific yet that is impacted by this.

Overall, 4 stars.

This is an excellent book for either a developer or a systems administrator. I teach Websphere Application Server classes and the book has been invaluable in providing details to students who want more inside information about J2EE. The only complaint that I have, and it is a minor one, is that some of the authors insist upon using the phrase "JSP pages" over and over. JSP means Java Server Pages, so the extra 'pages' is unneeded.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone teaching classes that include J2EE or for anyone attempting to achieve J2EE certification, or just trying to learn J2EE design.

This book would have been the prime book for J2EE developers a couple of years ago but its past that now. Yet there are some valuable tips .. buy it if you have the spare change.

I fail to see who the target audience for this book is. If you already know alot about J2EE, you will probably find the book to vague to be very interesting. If you know nothing about J2EE you will probably find the book to vague to be enlightening.
If you are new to J2EE and you only want a high level overview, then you might find this somewhat helpful in understanding the big picture. But realize that it will not give many details and it may raise more questions than it answers. But, maybe that is a good place to start.
If you know a lot about J2EE and just want something to tie the ideas together, you might find this helpful in seeing the big picture. You will probably already know a large percentage of what the book discusses, but it will definitely add a few pearls of wisdom to your knowledge.

The material in this book is dated (2000). The writing style is highly superficial with little depth not already available for free via java.sun.com. The content is too wordy, not enough pictures/diagrams. The code examples are superficial.

There are much better books out there, if you need a book. Check out Core J2EE Patterns, online J2EE tutorial, Java Enterprise in a nutshell.

I have been using Servlet/JSP/EJB for quite a while. However, until after reading this book, I start to fully understand the big picture of the J2EE platfrom.

I wish I could have read it long time ago, before I started dig into all the details of Servlet/JSP/EJB! While, after understanding all these building blocks, come back and read this big picture blueprint is still a very nice treatment.

High recommended for serious server side Java designers / Architects !

Looking forward to the upcoming 2nd edition of the book.

I bought this book after reading a lot of positive reviews... and i'm a little disappointed.

Minuses of this books are:
- language - it's very poor - i guess the author is not a native speaker; the content of the book may be very unclear for people who don't speak english in everyday life (as i do),
- unclear explanations - a lot of easy things are explained in an obscure way. In addition some parts of the book just seem to be incomplete - sometimes you just want to grasp something and you can't because there is lack of information - you turn the page in hope you'll find what you think should be there and... there's entirely new subject there,
- some examples are not printed in the book so if you want to read them you have to turn on you computer - i don't like it.

Pluses:
- nice layout - chapters are arranged in a logical and intuitive way, the most simple and general ones at the beginning, the most exceptional at the end. I suppose it will be fast and easy to find something if there is a need to recall it,
- a lot of simple examples - even if you are not able to understand the explanations of some subjects you can easily grasp them by reading the examples.

In general - this book can help you learn Struts but you have to read it very patiently and carefully. Don't buy this book if you think you have a better choice.

The book is good but I wish the author took time to go through the details, there are so many gaps that I needed to look elswhere to understand. It sees the author was in a hurry and that's not good - I found the examples had many errors, for instance, I could not get the struts to display, the author never took time to explained them properly. Too expensive for a tiny content.

I found this book very clear and concise. I used it as a reference in my work and it has been of a great help to me.
I highly recommend it!!

In my opinion, there aren't many great books out there on learning struts, that will also get you into some of the real life details and reality of struts programming. I went back in forth between this book and Ted Husted's Struts In Action (which is better but a few years older so not quite as up to date). Between the 2 of these books I've been able to get a fairly good understanding of struts and tiles.

I bought this book based on the very positive reviews on this forum and I was not disappointed. I read the entire book from cover to cover and tested the sample code that can be downloaded from the publisher's website. With the exception of a single chapter (13), I was able to run all applications successfully with Tomcat. Note that there are a few errors in the code (not syntax but logical, so you don't see the desired result on the web page once you hit submit on the initial page) but these can easily be fixed. This book has a load of valuable information on Struts. While you do need patience to read it, it does not get boring at any point. Well deserved kudos to the author for doing an excellent job explaining Struts. Highly recommended to any one wanting to learn from Struts. If you have no experience with J2EE but you have experience with Java, do not start with this book as it might get too hard at times. Instead start with some thing more basic such as Head First Servlet and JSP and then move on to this book. If you already know JSPs and Servlets, then this book will teach you pretty much everything you need to know about Struts.

I agree with most reviews for DHTML Utopia; the book is middle level, leaving beginners in the dust but pros wanting more. It is, however, well written and contains very good code and coding standards. If you are not completely new to JavaScript and DOM scripting, but would like to learn more and make sure your code is up to today's standards, then this book is for you. If you are very familiar with web scripting and/or have been writing your own unobtrusive client side code then go with a more detailed book.

This book has a lot of great stuff but you have to have the patience to sit down and read it line by line. Can't scan through the book and hope to learn something. Even need to type in the script and try it yourself. Some of the most important ideas the author just covered in two sentences. It does teach a lot of useful stuff but it is absolutely not a beginner's book. Save me from my job interview.

This is without doubt the worst book on DHTML/Javascript that I've ever read. The author tries to be cute, funny and authorative but ends up just plain painful. The examples are over-long and artificial, and would be difficult to incorporate into a real world application. The author peppers the book with snazzy shots like "It's the modern way!" but rarely explains the benefits of the methodology he's pushing, and glosses over any shortcomings.
For instance, in discussing regular expressions he provides a simple expression for a telephone number, then points out that it's seriously flawed. But it's "suitable for our discussion" so onward we press, and a correct solution is never provided. Bad luck if you were after such a beast. (Footnotes abound - often just URLs to now broken links - so you have to wonder why he couldn't have provided the solution at the bottom of the page.) The part on Ajax is a joke - he just plugs in an out-of-date version of the Sarissa library and never scratches below the surface.
Beware.

As a developer with no prior JavaScript experience, I've been very disappointed with this book. In the Introduction section, the author says "Some experience with JavaScript might also be useful, but it is by no means critical" (Page VIII) which isn't true.

Throughout the book, the author will keep assuming (implicitly) that you already have a good programming background (he uses a more complex logic in his code),and will leave many things unexplained or explained too late. This alone will easily guarantee frustration. NO BOOK EVER frustrated me that much.

Another issue is that the book uses some very complicated examples with complex logic. Unlike other decent coding books, instead of starting with simple functional examples and developing them\it as you read a chapter, the author uses one big example and "tries" to explain it part by part throughout the chapter. This might force you to "memorize" the script(s) since they contain too much code to understand (which is not the point). To make sure if the examples of the book suit you or not, download the free sample chapters from Sitepoint.com and check the "table highlight" example at the end of chapter 3. That's how most of the examples will be presented. (with more code of course)

Now don't get me wrong, the topics covered in this book are great, but it seems that the only people who will really appreciate it are those who already have a good background in JavaScript (logic,functions,methods...etc) NOT beginners like myself. So if you're trying to learn JavaScript\DOM, then go find a better book (such as "DOM scripting").

(this was originally published on www.last-child.com)

This is a difficult book to read for non-javascript programmers. If you are more comfortable with HTML and CSS, I'd recommend reading Jeremy Keith's DOM Scripting first. Keith explains the theories behind this book.

That said, I did learn enough from DHTML Utopia to not look like a complete idiot during my job interview with Yahoo. This book is filled with project examples for you to follow along with. I will say that I tried several of the examples and had mixed results. I visited the book's web site to get updated code.

If you've already worked with Javascript, this is a great book to have on the shelf. If you are a rookie, start with Jeremy Keith and follow up with DHTML Utopia.

I thought to learn JSP just by reading this book. I read several review comments on this book and other books. Fairly thougt to buy this one on hope of better explanation.
Though I am new to JSP, but working on programming for 13 years.
1. I did not get a streamline explanation to start the first program. Someplaces exaplanation is too much, I was lost.
2. Explanation on Tomcat installation won't be helpful because of older versions.

Those have already known JSP TAG, Bean etc. it may be helpful for them. But purely it is not for beginners.

I have never read such an excellent book before. No wonder the JavaRanch community rates this book 10 horseshoes!

Wrox Press continues their time-honored tradional of piling as many authors into one 1200 page volume that they can in the hopes that they will end up with a definitive treatment of the subject. The authors range from seasoned professionals with real-world experience to people with nothing but a year or two of college computer science courses behind them. I must confess that I am not sure what I was expecting in these chapters but since JSP Tag Libraries seemed to be one of the more challenging and interesting areas of JSPs I was hoping for some more meaningful, 'meaty' content.

The assembly of these 18 (yes, 18!) authors wind up generating a book that essentially could have been put together with more precision and continuity if it had 15 fewer authors. It very much comes off as a rushed effort, without any tightness whatsoever. The writing style of this second edition can only be described as amateurish. This, fortunately, can be a little easier to swallow if you accept the spirit of the book (in Wrox's words 'Programmer to Programmer'). Take the text as quickly put-together material from programmers that have been through it (even if it was brief or only in school) and you should be fine.

Many unnecessary forward references exist throughout the text and, because of the unusually large number of authors, there is a large amount of repetition in the body of most chapters. The book's page count could also have been greatly reduced had the authors not consistently given condensed introduction to material that ends up being the subject matter for entire chapters later in the book. For example, two early chapters describe the basics of Tag Libraries, only to have them surface as the primary topic of chapters 8 - 11.

The code included throughout the book is variable in quality, as you might expect. The book doesn't pretend to be an academic tome of best practices or a showcase for some top-flight, brilliant programming but you end up thinking that many of the examples could have been made much more effective with more thought put into them. As with many other programming books out there, this one is definitely not without its errors. You'd hope, however, that with the 21 technical reviewers and 3 editors that worked on this book that it would have fared better than most.

In summary, if you take the text for what it is and skip over the segments of fluff and numerous poor code examples I think that most professional programmers new to this technology will find enough material to make the hefty price tag almost worth it (especially if you share it with others on your team!).

This book is awesome. The one thing I truly love about this book is the layout. I had zero experience in JAVA/J2EE and after the first chapter it all made sense. I Actually make time to read this book.

The one thing this book does that no other I have read is tech the low level nuts and bolts along with top level syntax and make it make sense. For instance, the chapter on Servlets rocks. It teaches Servlets on both "Here are Servlets" and "How to use them".

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn JSP/Servlet environment. It is a great book to learn the big picture and be able to use all know features in the technology.

Explains one aproach then rejects it in favor of another then yet another. By the end you discover that you should have bought a book on Jakarta Struts if you want to develop real JSP sites because someone has already done lots of work for you.

This book fell into my hands. I started to read it a little and could not really stop until I finished reading it. It is a beautiful second read on Java. Full of gems not easily accessible from the pure syntax. Yes I know it is quite dated but still not out of date. I would hope that the authors will make a second shot for Java 1.5.

Documents useful techniques and best practices. Any serious Java programmer has to read this book atleast once.

I bought this book because I notice there are some tricks that are mentioned in this book are the same as I was told by some experienced software engineers. I feel I even learned more from this book than the dev conference. The examples are very simple and esay to understand. If you have the basic knowledge of Java, this book will bring your Java programming skill to higher level.

They really should release a 2nd edition with new techniques, and remove the old, disproven stuff (double-checked locking works???). We're on the brink of Java 1.5, this book is pure 1.1.

Spend your money on Effective Java by Joshua Bloch. Same style of book, much higher timeliness.

Something that inanely irritates me about Craig Larman's books is why he uses "idiom" when he means "axiom". Craig read a dictionary! "idiom" has specifically linguistic meaning, whereas "axiom" means means an approach or principle.