Reference Software Books

Greetings! Just want to warn about errors I found in this book. Check the Chapter 2 answer to question 1. It's B and C, i.e., Graphics and Hyperlinks. It's correct, but C is not Hyperlinks, it's Channels.

I agree with most of the reviews posted previously. The book is not without its deficiencies, notably repetition, especially towards the end, but it covers most of the basics to get ready for the exam. The test questions on the exam are much more "scenario" oriented, and much longer and more difficult, than the ones in the book. I took NetG on-line courses to prepare, but would not have passed without this book.

I recently took the Frontpage exam and did pretty well. I have this book to thank for that. The book presents a solid foundation for expertise in Frontpage. It does an exhaustive review of all the features of Frontpage with a few tips on optimization.

Unfortunately it only covers about 70% of the exam. For example it does not discuss which features require Frontpage server extensions very well (an important topic) and the Analysis part is essentially useless. The review questions at the end of each chapter and on the cdrom are much too simple to be a gauge for the exam. I mean c'mon do you think Microsoft will ask "What does HTTP stand for"?

This book will NOT prepare the reader for the simulation questions, because there just arent enough diagrams or illustrations that will familiarize you with the Frontpage intereface and dialog boxes (a crucial part of the exam). Coupling with this book with Running Frontpage 98 from microsoft (which had lots of visual aids) and extensive practice with the software did the trick for me.

This review is based on the idea that you are looking to maybe buy this book in order to pass the FP98 MCP exam. Overall, it will help - but I would not recommend it being your only resource. It covers too much detail in some areas (script wizard), and does not cover the nuances of site security and IIS. I just passed exam 70-055:Designing and Implementing Web Sites with Microsoft FrontPage 98 using this book as my one textual reference, so I'd have to say it did help. The book is easy to read and gives a very thorough treatment of FP98. Overall, I would say this book lays a decent groundwork as test preparation and has lots of info, but falls short. The chapter questions have wrong answers in the book and on the CD and authors tend to jump right into to details unexpectedly.

Suggestion - buy Running FP98 and get the Transcender Tests. Then go out and build lots of webs using the material from the tests. Get the experience. It seems to count more than what you can get from any book.

I do not recommend this book for those who are new to the product and have no other related experience. Start with something more simple, like the Step by Step book or something from the Dummies' series. This book does cut to the chase and provides a detailed overview of the various components of the application. It does a much better job than the MOC in preparing one for the exam!

There are a few errors in the book, especially in the sample tests. There were some questions that are just wrong! For the most part, however, this book does cover the real test - much better than the Exam Cram book for this test.

Do not rely upon only one source to prepare for this exam. It is important to have a good understanding of the site and user management features of the FrontPage Explorer. There are almost no questions about the Editor. If you focus too much on using the Editor to create pages you are wasting your time preparing for the exam. Instead, focus on the real-world running of a website using FrontPage. My experience from other certifications (CIW, CIW Site Designer) where real world applications of web technologies are examined was invaluable in preparing for this exam.

I liked this book more than I disliked it. I expect to be teaching the MS 1009 class soon, and I plan to recommend this book to my students.

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.

I'm scared of regular expressions. They vex me constantly at work whether trying to figure out someone else's Apache RewriteRules or Perl or just trying myself to do mildly clever things in vi and sed. They are a headache.

A coworker let me browse his copy of this wonderful little book and I was hooked. I actually tried to buy one that day on the way home, but they were out of stock and so I permitted Amazon to ship me one.

In addition to brief explanations of the different types of regexes in the wild (based on the comprehensive Mastering title, also from ORA), there are detailed quick references to all of the different implementations including several common languages (Perl, PHP, C#, and several others) and software packages (including sed, Apache, vi and many others). All of their various quicks and "features" are explained briefly and there are some examples.

No one hacking around in Unix or doing much programming should be without this book, unless they are already a regex wizard, and I think even they'd find it handy.

Most developers know how to write regular expressions, almost none of them can read them. And if you are saying that you can. Well congratulations to you. You are one of the 0.1% of developers that can or you are one of those who think they can.

The books physical appearance is so compact that it has become a permanent item on my working desk. And is often used.

You know those times when you know what you want to do, but are not sure of the correct form, this is the book to grab. It has been my book to grab as a reference rather than trying to find the right language book. This is not the book to learn the language from, however. You will find your copy will be well worn if you do lots of coding.

From the back cover of the Regular Expression Pocket Reference: "Ideal as a quick reference..." and "... makes an ideal on-the-job companion." All this is true if you are well-versed in regular expressions and use multiple programming languages (and confuse the syntax).

I like the use of the same examples across programming languages (where applicable).

The recipes in the cookbook section are great, although I would have liked to see additional recipes (like stripping HTML tags, matching credit card numbers etc...). Of course the examples are endless and over time one builds his/her own recipe collection. At least this is a good place to start.

Pocket references are not meant to teach you anything from the beginning, but to be everyday references in known and new environments. In other words, if you don't know regular expressions, then go to "Mastering Regular Expressions". If you're still here, then you'll get a cheat sheet on steroids for languages ranging from bug-prone JavaScript to the King and Queen of robustness, Perl and Python. Although everything claims to be PCRE these days, particular examples in every language available is a plus for anyone. A must for any type of user input validation.

I bought this book in hopes that the author would clearly explain building the halloween shop sample application from the ground up, but after chapter 1, the author totally loses you as far as next steps are concerned.
The first chapter has actual "excercises" which get you started in building the sample application. After that, most chapters don't contain these exercises, therefore you have to build the rest of the application based on the screen shots/code snippet's in the chapter.

Before purchasing this book, you should know that the author expects you to have been exposed to the skills taught in Murach's Beginning Visual Basic.Net.

Having said that, this book is written in an easy-to-follow format that led me step-by-step toward the skills needed to become the most knowledgeable ASP.Net developer on my team. It hits every subject I've been exposed to at work, making it an excellent reference as well. This book also helped me to strengthen my object-oriented development knowledge.

One of the biggest advantages of this book over others is that it taught me how to develop using Microsoft Visual Studio ("VS"). Unfortunately, learning ASP.Net using Notepad instead of VS is like learning to drive using a go-cart instead of a car. Almost all employers expect their .Net developers to know their way around VS. With this book, you're covered.

Simply said: One of the best books I have ever bought!

I needed to dive into ASP.NET pretty fast because I had a project running to its deadline. I was a programmer who knew Visual Basic and Delphi pretty well. I did know the theory of ASP.NET but had no practical experience. This book teached me in a record time how to build and get my first web application up and running.

The best starter's book you can imagine. The second book I bought on the subject was ASP.NET Unleashed, which is a marvellous book if you have some ASP.NET experience.

For a beginner Murach's book is simply a dream, and although I have written a couple of web applications now, I still use it as a quick reference. WORTH EVERY PENNY IN GOLD.

I recently got hold of a copy of this book (full title: "Murach's ASP.Net Web Programming with VB.Net") and it is terrific. In particular, it includes the best walkthrough and problem solver of using IIS I've yet seen - and I know from the Forums that this very early step causes a lot of people a heap of problems. (Me included at one time! )

The book uses a technique of having the main narrative on the left hand page, backed up by important summaries and/or diagrams on the right hand page. This can be quite useful for reinforcing those particularly tricky areas and is handy for flipping back to when you need to recheck something. Overall, I think it works great.

I have never been so irritated and frustrated by a book in terms of its presentation and format. If any newcomer is able to follow along with the tutorial application and actually build it, I'd be very, very surprised.

I just do not see the point of having the book's text on even pages and a bulleted review of that same text (along with code) on odd pages. There's no mention of how to code the HTML portions, you have to already know how by looking at some screen shots. There's just no follow-through from chapter to chapter as the author grows the application.

I'm still searching for a book on ASP.NET that walks the reader through the construction of an actual, useful application from A to Z.

This is an old book but it is still relevant to anyone who is designing for print. The book has every color combination of the four-color press process, in steps of 5% (i.e. 15% magenta, 75% cyan, 10% black and 25% yellow) in a grid format. You'll be able to accurately pick any color you are looking for.

It doesn't have different paper stock, so that is the only part missing, but it uses the most common bright white coated paper.

A cheap alternative to a Pantone Color book.

20-odd years in the design industry and I have no idea why I haven't had a book like this yet. I've been mentally mixing colors for a long time now, and yet it's a fantastic thing to be able to see what that subtle difference is between 25c+100y and 30c+100y looks like in print. OK, it only approximates based on one press and coated paper, but at the end of the day, it's better than your monitor. So get the book and dispense with a good bit of guesswork. It takes a minute to get used to how to find exactly what you're looking for, but it's there!

I owned a previous version of this book at my last job and plan to purchase this for my own use. As others have said, it contains an amazing number of combinations not available in most books. It takes a little bit of flipping through the book to understand how it is laid out, but the concept is very difficult anyway to put down on paper. I think that this book has accomplished making it as simple as it can get while still being very comprehensive.

Buy this. Discover what you have been missing on this exceptionally complicated subject.
Learn how to match the use of color(s) to your project.
Take your usage of color to a level well beyond your experience with the easy to understand non-techno language.
Excellent investment.

Well, I've been using CorelDraw for a short time, and this book helped me a lot about printing preview colors.

these are always good reference materials to have on hand, have used this many times to recall something i rarely use or never tried.

I would recommend this book for current Flash Developers and anyone new to the field. This however is not a good 'quickstart' book. Being a veteran Flash Developer/Programmer myself, I still managed to find enough fresh information in this book to make it worth the purchase. This book leaves no stone unturned in explaining all the nuances of Flash that other books avoid. After you are already programming in Flash, I would recommend this to take the last step to becoming a complete master of the program. Although some parts seem to ramble on theory for awhile, all concepts are things that should be taken into consideration.

Book is full of good information, deep analysis of problems.
But the VERY BAD INDEXING and organization of "how to get the information" is making it a chore to use it. It's ok the fact that much of the material is on the CD, but giving a clean way of reaching it would be a NECESSARY help. Too many words, too little code and examples and too basic FLA files obliged me to seek more advanced help in other books.
Still good as a reference though (if you can find what you need ...)

I consider myself an extreme newbie when it comes to Flash, so after reading most of the reviews for "The Flash MX Bible" I decided to shell out the cash. God what a mistake that was.
The only pro the book has, is it's size. Yes is does contain a lot of information, but the manner it presents it, is the biggest problem. It's boring, dry, unimaginative stuff. Not something you'd expect when dealing with a program that has a firm foundation in art, and creativity.
The thing reads similar to my Lightwave 6.5/7.0 college text book only with a worse format.
So if you're an intermediate, or professional flash user this is might be what you're looking for, but if you're an amatuer or total beginner don't touch this book unless you want bore yourself away from Flash MX before you even get your feet wet.

... There's also lots of useless filler material about non-flash related programs and topics. The examples are geared towards drawing and animation rather than creating an actual web document.

I bought the "After Effects Bible" and loved it but this book is a roundabout, unfocused exercise in frustration. If you are very familiar with Flash already, maybe you can get something out of this. If you want to learn from the ground up, buy something else...

Contents are satisfactory, though, you can download a free package from the ETS site. It's free!! ETS should have made a clear notice!!

Is this only with me? I plugged the power-prep CD in Windows-2000 and what was waiting for me when I opened the setup.exe was unbelivable! The System font became so big and ugly, it even changed my desktop view! I wonder if the actual GRE Environment is similar to this and ETS wants us to practice it with real screens ! It is so horrible to work with. Does anyone know of a solution?
Definetly u shouldn't but it anywhere when u can download free of cost from ETS web site.

-Sushma

Powerprep gives you the actual flavor of what is to come on the real GRE CAT. it will give you a fairly approximate idea of how your scores will be. Most importantly it helps you get aquainted with the computer tutorials, how the screen looks, how to enter answers etc. It is important to get familiarized with all that before you go for the real test as you could concentrate on the content of the CAT rather than get confused with the mechanics of giving the exam. You can take each test approximately thrice as it is adaptive and each time you would get a fair portion of new questions.

Be sure to take these tests in the week just before you actual CAT. that would help maximise your scores. Best of luck!

I agree with the other reviewers who said that this software is absolutely essential to preparing for the GRE's. The practice tests and math tutorial are particularly helpful. You can re-take the practice tests and get mostly new questions, which helps too. I used several books and two different kinds of software and took two months to prepare. This software and the Barrons's GRE prep books were the best resources I found. On my first math pretest, I got 20 out of 28 math problems wrong. On the real GRE, I scored in the 600's in math. One caveat: I thought the real GRE was harder than even the Powerprep software practice tests. I know they are real GRE questions, but I was still a bit surprised by the difficulty of the real GRE. Also, it's worth the time to download the Powerprep software from the ETS web site. Don't wait for the ETS to send it to you when you register.

...P>I just installed the software and it's very rudimentary and poorly designed. The worst thing is, when I run Powerprep it alters my PC's monitor resolution to be very low-rez, so the text within the program is very difficult to read...

But the Powerprep software is highly recommended for anyone planning to take the GRE.

THE BIBLE - this is how I call this book. I read this particular edition for the first time in February 2005. Several months later once again, and it's always at my desk. Enormous amount of priceless information. I don't think there has ever been any other publication that managed to cover so much in just 1,000 pages.

And the book is not just "developer's guide" - the book is "The DB2 professional's guide".

This may be considered the Bible of DB2 books but it is lacking a whole Testament! If, like me, you are looking for info on dynamic and extended dynamic SQL to avoid having to read IBM manuals, you've come to the wrong place as this book says words to the effect of "If you want info on dynamic SQL, read the IBM manual" and leaves it at that. You would do better to hunt around the IBM online library and grab the manuals from there - they are actually pretty good, too.

I updated my library with the new edition of this Book. As in the older versions, it will be a valuable resource used daily. Thanks!

A concise & up to date guide on all things relating to DB2 by one of the top authers. Highly recommended.

I use it frequently when I want more details, use it in addition to redbooks and manuals

Of all the books I bought to learn VB NET, this is the one I find myself turning to repeatedly for information on object oriented programming. The author' treatment of inheritance and delegates/events are models of clarity. I also found his treatment of mutithreading to be clearer and far easier to understand than the new Wrox book which was supossedly devoted to threading. If you want a book on the VB NET language you can't do any better than this one!

This is a pretty-good book if you base it on the Beta. The chapters on OOP (Chapters 4 - Classes and Objects and 5 - Inheritance and Interfaces) are very long. Chapter 4, 5 and 6 (Event Handling and Delegates)form the heart of this book, but I would have broken them down into smaller chapters. The information in those chapters provide a good introduction to OOP. At times, I felt the authors were hard to follow and found myself re-reading several pages especially in Chapters 4 and 5. Overall this book probably is about 3 1/2 stars. I am hoping that in the next release of this book that the authors would follow their own advice and break the chapters down into smaller parts. ...

The book is primarily designed for experienced Visual Basic developers making the transition to VB.NET. However, it can also be appreciated by other experienced programmers regardless of their programming background.

The book begins with an introduction to the differences between VB.NET and VB. The next chapter introduces you to the new Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment (IDE). You will get a tour of the main windows, and learn how to compile and debug your VB.NET applications. Chapter three teaches the VB.NET syntax. You will learn the VB.NET expressions, operators, and program control flow. The next couple of chapters form the core of the book. These chapters cover object oriented programming and inheritance. VB.NET is the first truly object oriented programming version of VB, and a solid understanding of these new features is essential in taking full advantage of VB.NET's new powers.

The next few chapters go on the cover important topics such as, event handling, error handling, building user interfaces, input/output streams, and multithreading. The final two chapters give a brief introduction to database access with VB.NET using ADO.NET, and a brief overview of ASP.NET.

The book provides clear and complete coverage of all topics. It includes many real world code examples which help the reader to better understand all the concepts presented.

I bought this book and several others to prepare myself for the transition from VB6 to VB.NET. I wish they would have covered the disconnected datasets, ADO.NET and ASP.NET in more detail. I would have given it 5 stars if it had.

Other than that, I feel that it is an excellent resource to prepare a programmer from any background for VS.NET. It does a good job of covering the OOP, Inheritance, Overloading, and multithreading subjects in a concise manner.

The book also has a web site for errata and source code. Gary Cornell is a good author and it shows in this book he co-authored.

I have a few Wrox Publishing Books, but my library is starting to collect more an more APRESS books because their style and format is what I expect from a book.

Wrox does publish some good books also:
I would also recommend .NET Enterprise Development in VB.NET from Design to Deployment, ISBN 1861006179, (Wrox Publishers)

This book simply doesn't have enough information to be named "a guide for EXPERIENCED programmer". It is rather a quick overall introductions. So don't get this book if you need to get some serious work done.

I took an afternoon and went through this book from cover to cover - admittedly not all topics drew my careful attention. Too many operational details are missing: hit this key, then go to x and enter ..... etc. In sum, although my system is up and running (and was before I bought the book), I am missing instruction on many basic operations.
Try somewhere else.

This is a great book for people who do not understand vista and it's complicated GUI. This was great i got it for my grandparents and now they are asking me about things i have no idea about, and I'm a CIS major. Great book really suggest it

Good for people who are intimidated by Vista or have fallen for all the negative publicity. Gives good explanation of major functions, but does not go into as much detail as I would have liked. For instance, there is no explanation of how to partition a hard drive. Nice humor used through the book.

Windows Vista For Dummies
I have read alot of these books and find this one actually more complicated than the rest. Vista is fairly new anyway!. I bought the TEACH YOURSELF VISUALLY / MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA after this book and found it to be a much better learning tool than this one. I prefer visuals anyway and will probably not buy anymore dummy books without visuals. I think most of them are text anyway, so unless they change some of the future content to visual, they can keep the rest. I wish I had saved my money on this one.

Hats off to the persons who write this book - you are all wonderful - Vista was a mystery to me - not any more - I now understand Vista! Thank You