Internet Books

One thing that I liked about the book was the analysis of specific issues across an entire part of the book. There is a chapter on outsourcing as well. The steps in the book can be carried out in parallel. We have been using the book to lay out our project. The book really gets into business and politics as well as technical issues. The book points out that e-business is a program not a project. Commitment from the bottom of the organization is as important as upper management support. This is an important point that the book makes. Another thing--the book does not assume that you have an ERP. A company used the method that had an ERP and found it very useful, however. The book contains little of the "chain" and business model jargon--thankfully. As an example of common sense, the book suggests that you keep searching for the answer to the question "What is success?" This turns out to be critical in e-business since you gain a better understanding as you work your way through installing e-business. The examples and lessons learned in the book are of real use. They are detailed and specific. We have found that there are also good hints on how to manage vendors and consultants and what the roles of consultants and business departments should be. Overall, an excellent read.

Our firm employed this method to implement business to business e-commerce. It really works. We had tried another approach before which did not work. Some benefits of the method are that it encourages a group approach to implementation. It also provides a way to address political issues which we have many of. I found the book very readable and useful. We are now using the book as the basis for doing intranets within our firm. Chapter 2 presents the idea of a project concept. This is valuable in getting consensus on the scope of the work. Chapter 6 is one of the better ways to understand technology without getting into too much detail. Fitting e-commerce into normal business is important and often not covered in other books. It is covered well in chapter 9. Perhaps, one of the most useful chapters is 12. That is where the implementation strategy is developed. This was a turning point in our effort. You can plan all day, but if you do not have a solid approach for putting e-commerce in, you are going to be in trouble. The book also addresses how to use suppliers in a pilot effort to get other suppliers involved-very useful in political terms. Marketing of e-commerce internally and with suppliers is not given much attention. Here an entire chapter is devoted to it. E-commerce is more complex than most people think. This book provides one of the most useful step by step methods.

I must have purchased 10 different e-commerce books. Typically, they have concepts and buzzwords, but are short on how to implement e-commerce. This is one of the few books that really deal with putting in e-commerce. It gives excellent details about how to implement--from creating a strategy to expanding your site. A best buy.

Rather than portray e-business as a huge effort that will consume everything and will transform the world, this is a solid book on getting down to the nuts and bolts of real world. If most e-business books are geared to business suits and theories, this book is down to working uniforms and getting things done without a lot of people or time. It does not assume that you have some fancy systems or technology or that you are a big company with hundreds of IT people. It can fit start up firms and small firms as well. The book provides a detailed roadmap and tells you how to deal with the pitfalls that you will find along the way. The extensive experience of the authors in doing e-business really shows in this book in the issues, lessons learned, and examples. In using the book we have already used 40 of the guidelines and run across over twenty issues. If you want to do e-business, buy this book. If you want theory and vague concepts go elsewhere.

I just bought the book for my sister who has young kids online, she loved it! What a great purchase. She is now using the Razzul Software and can't say enough great things about it.

What a perfect book for a person with little computers skills like myself to read, so even a I can understand how to make my computer safe for children. I'm not a very computer savvy type guy , but with the easy to follow direction and illustrations anyone can learn to make their computers safe for kids! Perfect book for this subject and great gift for anyone out there that has kids!

I really enjoy watching the author Rob Nickel on Dr. Phil go undercover and help expose this problem. He sure know what he is doing! This man should write a book on his adventures. Well anyways, I recommend this book to anyone with kids. We need more informative books like this. God Bless people like Mister Nickel that help our must vulnerable people in society a innocent child!.

NP

I saw this book on Dr. Phil and got it. What an eye opener not only the show was but this book as well. It is an easy read for anyone, no need to be computer savvy! The software that is included for Windows XP is brilliant - my kids love it. Great Value and Great Read. I recommend highly.

Thanks for helping our kids stay safe from the bad guys. Online predators should not be underestimated. Parents need to get involved.

If you have children who are 10 years and up, then you MUST buy this book. It will allow you to get "up to speed" on what kids do on the internet, and what "predators" do to find kids on the internet.

I work in the computer industry, and until I read this book I thought I knew most of what goes on "in the wired world". WRONG!! Rob (through his book) introduced me to the world that our kids enter online, and I cannot thank him enough for that!

If you have children under the the age of 10, then the book will prepare you and give you 3 free months of Razzul. Once you try Razzul you will want to keep it! Kids are safe online with it, and they are thrilled with what they can do. They live in their own SAFE little world.

Read Rob's Book! Share some of it with your kids. I know I learned a lot! Congrats Rob, and Thank you sharing your knowledge and experiences.

This is a proper "In Action" book. I do strongly recommend it. If you plan to buy only one reference in the subject, look no further this is it! Down Brown is a Struts PMC member and an authoritative voice, among others he is the author of the Struts 2 REST plugin which is a superb addition to the framework from version 2.1.2

The book is very well written and easy to follow. I personally found the explanations very concise and appreciated the most their unique and clear way of breaking down and explaining all code snippets. This is really a great reference.

The first two chapters are a very good introduction to the framework. I am a pure version 2 user and had to learn most of these concepts from online documentation and from the Struts mailing lists.

Among all the topics covered I enjoyed and appreciated the most the coverage of:
- Interceptors
- OGNL and Type Conversion
- Validation! before this book, you could only find the relevant coverage of this topic scattered online in e.g. WebWork articles outdated
..for Struts 2. The authors did an excellent job explaining validation in chapter 10
- Really unique was the coverage of:
..... Unit testing actions
..... Tiles plugin
..... execAndWait interceptor "processing your request, please wait .."
..... UI component templates
..... Writing Struts 2 plugins

On the big plus side, the authors did a superb job keeping the book agnostic to minor versions of Struts 2 i.e. there were several differences from 2.0.x to 2.1.x and I was very happy to see that the examples and explanations were not outdated for the later.

On the down side and as a trade off I can only complain that the book left the Ajax topics out; maybe also because there have been many changes on this topic from minor versions of Struts 2 e.g. the ajax theme of Struts 2.0.x was converted to the dojo plugin in version 2.1.x. In any case, I somehow find the Ajax topic in Struts 2 to be one of the best documented online.

I believe that the Practical Apache Struts 2 Web 2.0 Projects (Practical Projects) book from Ian Roughley is a very good complement to this one. If you want to find coverage on topics like Security and Ajax in Struts 2 you will want that one too. The only issue there is that the coverage of the ajax theme is partially outdated for the newest version 2.1.2 of the framework

Struts 2 In Action is the best resource (hard or soft copy) for Struts 2 available. I took a look at this book as someone with quite a bit of experience using Struts and Struts 2. I really thought I had a good understanding of the core framework before, but many of the topics that lack online documentation were covered in more depth than I had seen in the past. As an example, many others have shied away from covering OGNL because it is a language all by itself. In this book you will find what I consider to be the most thorough explanation of how OGNL fits into Struts 2 and how to use it yourself. I was tempted to give the book 4 stars because there are a few things that I thought could have gotten more coverage, like Spring/Hibernate integration and AJAX, but I realized that it really would be impossible to cover everything in one volume. Struts 2 is a large and comprehensive framework and with anything of that scale, a good understanding of the fundamentals is the best way to start. This book delivers.

If you are wondering what is covered, you will find comprehensive coverage of the following -
- writing actions
- action workflow basics
- type conversion
- OGNL
- form tags
- non-form tags
- results
- intro to Spring/Hibernate integration
- validation
- i18n
- struts 2 plugins
- migration from struts 1

I had to learn Struts2 quickly since I recently changed jobs and my new team has several web application projects built using Struts2.

Overall, I thought the book was done very well if you are looking for a good introduction to Struts2. The first 8 chapters are very good.

The main negative is the source code for the book's examples. The authors provide one very large war file with all the source code embedded into the war file along with an overall web application divided into sub-applications for each chapter.

This packaging of the source code into the war file made it difficult for me to create individual projects in my development IDE that demonstrated just the material in a specific chapter. I had to spend quite a bit of time breaking down the source code into individual web projects and then figuring out on my own what jars needed to go into each project, what the struts.xml file needed to have, and what ever else was necessary to separate out just that chapter's sub-application so I could run that example and play with it.

Where this really became a problem was in chapters 9 and 10. Chapter 9 is a very advanced introduction to integrating Spring and Hibernate/JPA into Struts2. I never could get this chapter's example to work correctly.

However, chapter 10 on the validation framework then uses the same code as chapter 9, so you really cannot separate out the code for either chapter 9 and 10.

The validation framework is likely something even beginning Struts2 developers will want to use, while Spring/JPA/Hibernate is for more advanced developers and should have been well after the chapter on how to use the validation framework.

Also, the authors really don't give you a good understanding of what Struts2 jars you need to have to build a basic Struts2 application. There is some information about this in chapter 13 (setting up your IDE) but this information should really be at the beginning of the book. Also I don't think the list the authors provide is accurate since my basic HelloWorld (get the user to enter a name, call an Action class, and then display Hello userName in new jsp) worked with far fewer jars. Note there is apparently a new example war that just is a basic Hello World so there may be some information in that war file. That war was not on the manning web site when I purchased the book.

This book is good but be prepared to struggle working with the code examples if you want to work on the examples in your own development environment.

I recommend the authors create separate complete war files for each chapter's example to make it easier for users to just get that chapter's example code into their development IDE.

Lastly, the book does get 4 stars because the author's explanations of the basics of Struts2 (chapters 1-8) is very easy to follow for experienced Java developers. I'm now ready to tackle the Struts2 applications in my new job.

I took a chance and pre-ordered this book because I have recently started a Struts2 project and wanted to learn more about the framework. The book did not disappoint.

The authors explained the concepts behind the framework clearly and used examples that were immediately useful. The book is a little too short and in many cases a few more details would have been appreciated but it seemed to be a deliberate decision to leave out some of the less common use cases to avoid cluttering up the book. Thus, this book is ideal if you are new to Struts 2 but have some prior experience with Java web development.

I like the fact that an entire chapter was dedicated to integrating Spring and Hibernate into the framework. It brings all the bits and pieces from the online documentation together in a cohesive and comprehensive package.

Chapters were also dedicated to validation, internationalization, best practices and migration from Struts classic. The authors spent several chapters on how the Value Stack and the ActionContext worked and how OGNL fits into this framework.

All in all there is enough information in this book to start and to produce a complete Struts 2 application.

Never have I read a better book on the topic. J.C. covers it exactly how it was. Today is so different - spam mail and myspace and RSS feeds, etc...

This book gets my nostalgic every time I pick it up and read it. Yes, that first review was me, "PunkaPixie" almost 10 years ago. I just had to write another review (don't know if its allowed), but THIS BOOK DESERVES TO HAVE ANOTHER FIVE STAR REVIEW!!!!! Why oh why is it being shunned to the bargain bin!?!?! LONG LIVE THIS BOOK! And bless the heart of Ms. J.C. Herz who one day, long ago, back when I wrote this review, had written me an e-mail which is buried somewhere in a text file. Wherever she may be, I wish her well!

Long live the days of IRC and usenet... oh how I miss it so.

I am staring at my copy of this book right now actually. Still proudly displayed in my bookcase. This book has always and will always be close to my heart. At 25 years of age now, I will never forget the good old days when the internet was a wee baby - long before it was tainted with the things that "could be".

This is a great book for anyone curious to know what life was like before the "mass influx" of people on the 'Net. And an even better companion for those who long to remember.

This book should be supplied to all users of the web. It gives one of the best views of an addicts use to the medium. From the first tentative steps, all the way through to over load! The author MUST be praised for her writing, and content.

A DEFINATE MUST!

I read this book 2 years ago, when I borrowed it from the library. Since I have borrowed many, many times. It never gets boring. It provides a look on the net when the most commercial stuff was mlm scams and chainletters. *sigh* The good ol' days...

Oh my gosh, when i found this book in the "new book" section over 2 years ago at my library I thought it was cool fer the cover.

Then I read it.. oh my GOSH never ever have I ever read a book I agreed with SOOOO MUCH. The whole time I was reading about the little net adventures of J.C. Herz, I was smiling because I too have done it.. the usenet postings, the late night IRC excursions as well as the inevitable dip into MUD.

This book is great for anyone of the "olden" days of the online world. And for those vets.. feast yur eyes on the MindVox section.

I think that this book creates a new specialization in the science of metadata and controlled vocabularies: tagging. The book is very well wrote and contains very well illustrations and diagrams. But the most important of all is that this book explains and illustrates the emerging of a new information science discipline: tagging, or, as the author says "people-powered metadata".

Participating in a community, sharing our interests, and contributing to the collective good are all fundamentally human motivations, Smith says, and social tagging systems tap into these.

If you use the Web a lot, the stream of information you navigate sometimes seems like a tsunami. Besides emails and RSS feeds, your digital stream can include social networking sites, photos from your friends, links from Del.icio.us, and Twitter tweets.

Tagging these online resources can help you make sense of your stream. If you use tags now, this book will show you ways to juice your game, and will likely point you to new resources. If you don't use tags, this book explains how tagging can help, and how to get started.

And if you're a web architect, Gene Smith walks you through the things you should consider when designing tagging system.

I appreciated how well thought out this book was in its presentation. It's a very useful book with real world examples. However, it is more than that because it also outlines useful principles to think about, consider and make choice about when considering how to use Tagging.

This was a really good book. It wasn't what I expected it to be. But it was a worthwhile read. I picked it up because I do a fair amount of work writing book reviews and making guides and booklists on Amazon. And Amazon now lets guys like me create tags for the books I review and include in guides and lists. I kind of expected this book would have talked a little bit about the Amazon system of tagging. Nope. But that's OK. It's still a good book. It includes seven chapters and three appendices:

1. What is tagging?
2. The value of tagging
3. Tagging system architecture
4. Tags, metadata, and classical systems
5. Navigation and visualization
6. Interfaces
7. Technical design
A. Case study: social bookmarking
B. Case study: media sharing
C. Case study: personal information management

Tagging is a form of information that is really starting to take root in our computer systems and online systems. I first experienced it back in 1998 when I purchased a copy of Lotus Organizer to use as my Personal Information Manager (PIM) when practicing law. The program allowed me to cross-reference the many lists I had created in its database. I thought it was really cool back then.

I was just getting into creating Web sites in 1998, too. And I found the tagging features in Lotus Organizer enabled me to do with the data in my database what I was doing with my Web pages in my Web sites. Basically tagging is another name for hyperlinking. Nothing more and nothing less. A tag will take you to a new idea, concept, data item, data page, or database. It's a springboard that will take you to information.

This book points out that tagging is a new form of information management as it relates to personal organization, information architecture, and online communities. I suppose my Lotus Organizer program is an example of the first, and Amazon's system is an example of the last. So is it really all that new?

All in all, this book explains the value of tagging. It's a guide to what, how and why to tag. Each chapter ended in a list of bullet points called a Summary. I liked this feature very much since it helped me skim through the book quickly. 5 stars!

Every new endeavor starts somewhere and this book is a great place to start thinking about your organization's first online educational offerings. Author Robin Neidorf combines the basics of good teaching and instructional design with the realities of the online medium. She explores the different types of adult learners (perpetual learner vs. outcome oriented learners) and how to address them. She explores the factors that lead to e-learning success: collaborative community, availability of material that appeals to six different learning types, the ability of the instructor to connect with the students individually, the need for feedback, and more.

If you're going down this path for the first time, this book provides an excellent framework for approaching your project. The author also provides valuable references to online resources.

Highly recommended.

Teach Beyond Your Reach is a terrific resource for everyone who has to deliver knowledge from a distance. True, professional teachers and trainers who need to move their courses online will benefit from Neidorf's systematic approach to developing online instruction as well as her highly engaging and supportive writing style. However, others who find themselves in an unfamiliar teaching role -- for example, non-profits creating courses for their members or librarians delivering online information skills training -- will also appreciate the author's discussion of adult learning styles, her coverage of various distance teaching tools and activities, and her jargon-free presentation. This excellent resource is an easy-to-use, informative, and actionable guide of great value for anyone contemplating teaching at a distance, especially online. I have used it several times for course preparation, and always benefited from Neidorf's practical recommendations.

Training is part of my business, and Teach Beyond Your Reach has been both educational and energizing for me. It is the perfect companion to have at your side when you are making the leap from in-person to distance teaching. The book coaches teachers and trainers on the fundamental concepts and processes behind effective distance instruction, on making a connection when you are not there in the classroom. It is for teachers, not necessarily for techies. Chapter 1 surveys the range of tools and technologies involved, but the focus is on the teaching/learning aspects--adapting core learner-centric teaching skills to the new environment. Aside from the "distance" aspect, the book is useful for tips about communicating with learners no matter what the communication medium. College teachers, professional trainers, and organizations offering continuing education to their constituents could all benefit from this book.

Instructors interested in better meeting student needs through different teaching approaches will welcome TEACH BEYOND YOUR REACH: AN INSTRUCTOR'S GUIDE TO DEVELOPING AND RUNNING SUCCESSFUL DISTANCE LEARNING CLASSES, WORKSHOPS, TRAINING SESSIONS AND MORE. Distance learning is one of the fastest-growing learning options in the country, allowing individuals to earn degrees, certifications and gain skills without entering a classroom. TEACH BEYOND YOUR REACH covers the basics of a successful distance learning approach and shares practices and examples from successful teachers. A fine pick for any teacher entering the cyberworld.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I HATE reading tech manuals or training manuals that are full of text and very few screen shots. I'm the type that if you just lay out the basics for me, then I can figure it all out from there. This book was EXCELLENT for just that and I'd recommend it to anyone starting out new. I read the book through in one day. By the end of the week-end I had created and uploaded the basic format for my web site. The visuals and step-by-step instructions make it very easy to get started. It is very basic, so if you are already fairly familiar with Dreamweaver this book would not benefit you.

The concept behind "Teach Yourself Visually..." is to illustrate rather than write out the lessons. Since most people learn visually the concept seems interesting. The best desription I can think of is a classroom in a book. If you were taking a class to teach you Dreamweaver 3 your instructor would more than likely show you screenshots to walk you through the lesson. That is what this book does, walk you through the lesson visually.

Unfortunately, the visual concept seems to be light on explanations, especially when there are exceptions. Also, in a classroom setting you have the luxury to ask an instructor any questions, you can't with this book.

This is a great book for the absolute Dreamweaver beginner. I would recommend you use this book in conjunction with the "Dreamweaver 3 Bible". This will get you up and running, while the DW3 Bible will help answer more complex questions.

This book is extraordinarily effective. Without those long-winded discussions (and incessant distractions) that plagued most computer learning books, this one made learning Dreamweaver extremely easy. I've basically learned it in a 2 hour sitting (i do have a little bit of Basic HTML background though). Each lesson is visually very pleasing and very VERY easy to follow. If you would like to learn Dreamweaver by yourself, you should definitely check out this book first. Good Luck!

This is, in my opinion, the best introductory book for Dreamweaver 3 on the market! If you know nothing about the program, you will definitely have working knowledge after going through this book. It makes it so easy!! This book along with the Dreamweaver 3 Bible is all you need to master this program. If you already know it, just get Dreamweaver 3 Bible. If you don't know Dreamweaver at all, GET THIS BOOK!!

I was really impressed with the lay-out and full page color pictures as the main learning element for dreamweaver. This breaks down step by step all the things neccessary to begin building your very own webpage, and is perfect for novices.
Although I found this book perfect for someone only starting out using dreamweaver, if you want a more complete, detailed description of html, or other elements inside dreamweaver, don't choose this book. But if you are just starting out, this is a perfect way to learn. Using full page color pictures rather than confusing computer talk is a lot faster. I recommend this book in conjunction with another detailed book once you become an advanced user.

Excellent book for Beginners. I was a Frontpage user until I bought this book. This book gives good details and picture's on how to use Dreamweaver 4.0. Highly Recommend it !!!!!!

These visual books are awesome for beginners. If you have never touched a program before and need to learn from scratch then these are the books you need. These books spoon feed the information to you using visual graphics of each window and option you would see on the screen.

If you have used a specific program before and are looking to increase your knowledge you will find this book more like A,B,C's. So unless your brand new, novices and experts will find these books a waste of time. They do not go into specific advance features but do teach new comers how to become novice users.

...

This is an amazing book. A professor suggested that I check it out, and I'm glad I did. I became a Dreamweaver expert without having to attend a class or ask a lot of questions, because everything you could possibly want to know is right in front of you! When I bought the book, I had a good grasp on how to use Microsoft FrontPage but wanted to learn a more sophisticated program. The book details everything I needed to know in order to build a professional site in Dreamweaver and provides picture tutorials for every step. It is the equivalent of taking a Dreamweaver class and watching the instructor go through all the different steps using a projected computer screen, but this is even better because you can go back and re-read things if they don't make sense at first (although that rarely happens). This whole series of books is worth checking out if you need an introduction on how to use a new program.

Excellent presentation from begining HTML through basic graphics and CGI scripts. I use this as a basic reference book in maintaining my website. I found the section on "Creating a Guest Book" and "Web-Based Conferencing System" especially useful in developing a chat capability on the site. The chapter on "Creating, Using and Understanding Images" gave me basic information on speeding up my Website

Laura Lemay, in here educational masterpiece "Teach Yourself Web Publishing With HTML In 14 days", grabs the internet babes and transforms them into HTML scholars! The pages turn themselves as you develope a skill that will take you further than than any other. If you know nothing about HTML, or you have a working knowledge of it already "Web Publishing With HTML" is the book for you

This book will start you off in the right direction for learning and creating HTML documents. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in HTML. The author Laura Lemay does a great job at explaining HTML in simple and easy to understand examples.

This book provided me with a great start for writting HTML documents. After completing this "quick read," you'll find yourself referring back to it often for a quick reference. I would highly recommend this, or any of the other Laura Lemay books.

This is an excellent guide for anybody who wants to learn HTML. Lemay does a wonderful job of thouroughly explaining every tag in HTML 3.2. The book does really live up to it's name, within a week I was comfortably writing web pages with links, images, tables, and frames. I highly reccomend this book.

The title of this book says it all--you CAN teach yourself HTML in a week using Ms. Lemay's step-by-step process. She begins with basics that any computer-literate user can apply, and she progresses through everything an HTML novice needs to know to construct a well-thought-out web site! My first pass through her tutorial took me a little less than a week, and now I keep this book beside me while putting my sites together. I was a COMPLETE HTML NEWBIE when I picked up this book...one month later I'm designing web pages as a sideline! That alone should make you read this book!

This book is divided into days, each day incorporating two chapters. Day one explains what a web page is, how to access it, the different types of layout for your web pages, and gives you information about the different types of browsers. By the end of day one you should have an idea of what you want on your web page and how you want it organized. Day two explains some of the basic HTML tags and also explains the anchor tag for creating links. Day three teaches you about lists, other formatting tags such as bold type and explains about HTML editors. Day four teaches you about Netscape and Internet explorer extensions and how to create tables. Day five teaches you about using images, sound and video in your web documents. Day six explains the Do's and Don'ts when creating web documents and gives you some examples of what type of information you may want to include on your web pages. Day seven helps explain how to find a web server and what it does, how to test your pages and advertise your site. You will also learn about what cgi scripts are and when to use them. This book also includes a bonus day. On the bonus day you will learn about forms and image maps along with what is to come in HTML 3.0. This book is a good starting place for someone who wants to learn to write web pages quickly and with good style and all the extras.

This book is very well planned out and is well illustrated, insightful and good for beginners to intermediate HTMLers. Laura Lemay helps you learn, discover and explore HTML. Anyone at all can learn HTML with this book. It covers HTML 3.0, HTML 2.0, Netscape and CGI in a single bound. Terfific book Laura, it helped me immensely.