Browsers Books

Is this Kindle edition price accurately listed? $20 seems a lot to ask for an edition that has $0 resale value. Is there something in this Kindle version that outshines the majority of other Kindle books? From the sample, I see a poorly formatted TOC, and no index (or "searchable terms" index alternative). I think the author and/or publisher should reconsider this listing.

This was a groundbreaking work when first written. Zeldman was one of the early advocates for web standards and especially browser standards for CSS, what is now the underpinning of most quality websites. Without his work, and that of a few others (Eric Meyer among them), the web would not look quite as well as it does, and the design code would not be kept as separate from the content.

If you are already using CSS in your web pages, this book will be below your knowledge level and unnecessary to creating sites. If you are new to CSS, it is a kind, gentle, and thoroughly explicating introduction. It is a pleasant and easy read. It doesn't lay out dozens of ways to do things, but it explains a methodology and the raison d'etre. It is a must read introduction if you are contemplating a switch to CSS. Zeldman's website at zeldman.com is also useful support for this undertaking.

This book is a must read for anyone associated with a website. Designer, developer, manager.

I found it a very interesting book to read but it didn't give as much of concrete situation analysis as I expected. It surely convinced me to embrace techniques for the visually impaired and textual devices.

It's a very good book, and one I'd recommend to any developer who is trying to make the switch from tables to CSS-based code and standards, but if you've been using standards in your work for a while this book will only tell you things you already know.

However, Zeldman's tone is always light and engaging, and sometimes it's good to have a little refresher.

5* if you're new to web standards
4* otherwise

Good Content, 3rd Edition lacks Example Source Code on his website (Only 2nd Edition and new ASP.NET 3.5 is available).

If you want to learn ASP.NET 2.0 using this book seriously you probably need to do lots of typing.

Illustrations and pictures are not that straightforward, you need to imagine a lot before getting your hands dirty in VS 2005.

Just as any good large technical book should do, this gives a pretty good reference of all the basic controls and how to perform basic operations. This is also it's only fault, as it spends a lot of time on the simple controls, and not enough time on the more complex concepts.

It's good for reference though, as it does contain a good amount of content to do most anything in ASP. This title is good for the beginner ASP as it covers simple to complex tasks fairly thoroughly. After you've absorbed most of this book, you might find yourself looking for more, and I've mostly found Google useful to add-in the pieces missing from this book. Overall I recommend this for any ASP guru who needs a refresher every now and then.

I am a big fan of Jesse Liberty books and rate him as one of the best and more experienced tech writers around, but this book is definitely not up to his excellent standard. To be more precise, the book starts out very well, with and introduction to the basic control of ASP.NET illustrated by many clear examples, and the only complaint I have about the first part of the book is that I would have loved to see the two chapters that he devote to webapp structure and configuration right at the start of the book. I think it would have given a clear picture of what one is doing with all those pages and controls and why things are the way they are. The second part of the book is where I was expecting to find more complete and advanced examples on how to build and configure a "real - life " web application, but here is where the book fails miserably. The chapters on ADO can be defined as confusing at best, and the remaining chapters are either a sequence of instructions fitter more to a "build a website visually for dummies" title, or missing crucial information. I have been also very annoyed by the organization of the example code. Every, and I say every example is in the format of a single website, and to make things worse these websites are not organized by chapter number but just by name.
It really looks like the kind of book a smart and experienced tech author could write after studying the documentation throughly but having no real experience with the subject in practice. I think I understand why.. even I find myself more interested in the foundations of a technology on language structure and on general CS subjects than in the structure of the Nth API or Framwork, but still I don't go about writing books on them!
So, a somewhat decent book, especially considering the low general quality standard of ASP books, but nothing to be enthusiastic about.

This book is a C# book. The reviews here, along with Amazon's own review, are referring to one of the previous editions where VB.NET code samples were included.

When deciding to buy this book, or not, be wary of the reviews that were posted before the publication date. I can see that this situation has already caused others some grief.

[...]This edition has no VB.NET code and assumes knowledge of C#. All the examples are in that language.

I bought it because of positive reviews and publishers description that stated the book had all examples in both languages,[...].

It may be a fine book for those who know C#

Yes. His ideas work. And he explains his ideas well, using sufficient images to get his points across. You're not going to get rich off AdSense in just 30 days, but if you implement his ideas and suggestions, you will start to make money from your website and blog without having to do much more than provide interesting content.

Go out and buy this book, now!

This is an excellent book for the people who are new to Adsense and online marketing.

I have to defend this book. It wasn't written for advanced AdSense users, so it cannot be judged as if it were. I'm an AdSense user, and this is the book I recommend to my non-technical friends and family members who don't understand how I make money from running ads on my Web site. It's perfect for them to learn how to do it too. How else are newbies going to get started if there is no book for them?

Everything Eric writes is knowledgeable, down-to-earth, helpful, and honest. Remember that he had an editor for this book too, so it was probably changed a lot from his usual style. His new book, Uncommon AdSense, probably better reflects his writing style since it didn't have a big publisher. I like his companion blog for this book too. It reflects himself as an honest, smart guy whom you can trust to teach you about AdSense.

The book was a good introduction to creating a web site or blog and monetizing it through adsense...if you're unfamiliar with these things. It would be a good book for me to send to my mom to introduce her to websites/blogs and a way for her to make a few dollars that way.

However, if you're familiar with these things already, then this is probably not the book for you. There are some instructions on how to navigate the adsense site and place ads on your site, etc., but none of the stuff mentioned is rocket science for internet savvy people.

Buy it if you're unfamiliar with this kinda' stuff, but otherwise, look elsewhere for meatier stuff.

If you're just starting out and "html", "site", "adsense", "ftp", "domain" and "host" sounds like greek to you, this is the perfect book to get you started on your path to prosperity ...

If you however already own a site, and you're already a member of adsense, go check out Erics blog instead. This book will offer you nothing. I kid you not. Absolutely nothing.

I'll pass it on to my girlfriend who's curious and wants to start as well, she'll probably make good use of it.

If you're not a newbie, get Joel Comm's "The Adsense Code" instead. A lot more meaty.

I bought this book shortly before starting my new job as the webmaster for a division of the federal governement. It was invaluable to me in planning our current internet redesign project and helping to explain information architecture to non-web designers/developers. I highly recommend reading this book from cover to cover.

In "Part I - Intro to IA," obviously the basics are covered, like what exactly is IA? What does an Information Architect do? After reading this title, I would define an Information Architect as a glorified content manager. Someone that occupies the realm between UI designer and DB engineer.

Google is pretty good at finding information for us on the vast Internet, but there is a long way to go. I believe these authors make a valid point that IA will become increasingly relevant. In fact, I wouldn't doubt that in the future you will actually be able to obtain a BS in IA. Nonetheless, IA is around us everyday when we use technology no matter what we want call it.

The elements that make up IA are covered in "Part II - Basic Principles of IA." The basis of IA is the interaction or retrieval of information in terms of organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, search systems, thesauri, controlled vocabularies, and metadata. What this basically means is, how do we categorize our data so that it makes sense, is easy to navigate and search, and is relevant or adaptable according to our users' vocabularies.

"Part III - Process and Methodology" helps one plan a path to your IA goals. For instance, developing a research management team to discuss such goals, your target audiences, functionality/deficiencies of your current IA system, and integrating other software, such as your customer management system (CMS).

My favorite topic here is the detailed discussion of "building vocabularies." This is something everybody needs to constantly perfect. An example of this is, two people can search for the same thing using two different criteria. How can can we build a vocabulary system that recognizes that?

Many research tools are discussed. My favorite technique, and it's so simple, is card sorting. Get some blank cards (20-25) and write on them the headings from categories, subcategories, and content within your site. Ask a user to sort this stack of cards into piles that make sense to him and have him label those cards using post-it notes. Make sure to tell them to think-out-loud and be sure to take notes. This will give you an idea of how one would "travel" through your site, what is relevant, and what should not be on your homepage, etc.

The authors take the reader through the process of the IA development cycle, from concept, to getting managers to buy-in, to the implementation and administration of the system; very thorough.

The hands-on aspects of IA are explained in "Part IV - IA in Practice." One thing I found insightful was how one could pursue an official education in the area of IA, albeit there is no such degree. To gain a competitive advantage, the authors suggest obtaining a degree in Library and Information Science (LIS) or Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

At the end of chapter 15, there is a list of position titles making up an ideal IA team.
This list may prove helpful for potential readers to get a better understanding of what IA is comprised of.

1) Strategy Architect - responsible for overall design goals and integration

2) Thesaurus Designer - develops classification schemes, controlled vocabularies, and thesauri

3) Controlled Vocabulary Manager - manages the evolution of controlled vocabularies and coordinates the indexing specialists team

4) Indexing Specialist - tags content and services with controlled vocabulary metadata

5) Interaction Designer - creates navigation schemes and page layouts with a focus on user interaction

6) IA Software Analyst - links the IA and IT teams, focusing on ways to leverage software to create, manage, and drive the user experience

7) IA Usability Engineer - focuses on intersection of usability and IA by conducting studies that isolate IA elements, such as category labels or metadata.

8) Cartographer - converts patterns in content, structure, and usage into maps, guides, indexes, and other useful navigational tools.

9) Search Analyst - leads the design, improvement, and ongoing analysis of search system.


"PART V - IA in the Organization" was a little dry for my tastes and irrelevant to me. May be very helpful for someone in a large bureaucratic organization that wants to implement their IA concepts.

The moral of the story is that "site builders" must employ multiple info retrieval methods and tightly integrate them. Everyone searches, browses, scans, and finds info differently; accommodate them.

This book is very comprehensive and even deals with the politics of IA. To me, the book gets a little long at times, but if your life evolves around information somehow, this is an essential read.

The topic of the Polar Bear is very defined and focused, and the book reflects this. It's a bit dry - reads much like stereo instructions - but for someone who is dedicated to exploring content and information architecture in depth, there's simply no better reference.

I wouldn't call this a good primer, but I'd definitely recommend it for more advanced reading, and definitely as a reference book.

This is a perfectly good resource, if you're looking for the theoretical underpinnings of how IA should work. I was, however, looking for more specifically technical information, along the lines of algorithms and integration techniques. For this I ended up going with Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications, which is more geared in that direction. Again, if IA is your whole intention, then this is a great resource, but if you're looking for technical detail, look elsewhere.

As project manager, I was in a bind when our contract information architect failed to understand the complexities of our matrixed business model and client base. Rosenfeld's book helped me design a IA for our 700 page HTML site that has since been described as simple, intuitive, a no-brainer. What great compliments!

The book describes basic theories of IA in general (i.e. book indexes and tables of contents, libraries, etc.) and the pros and cons of different organization, labeling, and navigation systems. Then Rosenfeld advises on presenting IA to management, etc., managing expectations (yours and others), and gives detailed examples of IA strategies online.

This was my first "for Dummies" book purchase and it will be the last (unfortunately, I also purchased "Web Sites for Dummies" at the same time. A How-To book this not....you get no step-by-step instructions, what you do get is a lot of information that is generally available on the internet with a dose of new-age you can do anything you want if you try.........well, at least the title is right..........only a DUMMY would buy this book.

Thanks for the quick responce in the product, received what I needed for less

This is a great book for the person just getting started in thinking about putting up a web site.

The basic concept here is to use a fairly minimal amount of HTML, which he teaches you, and then one of the hosting services such as GeoCities, Google or AOL to get your site up and running. All in all, he presents an excellent description of what you need to think about, what technologies you need to understand, and the various tools that are available to assist in the construction of the site.

The intent of this book is to enable to get a site up and running, fairly quickly (He says in a day, I think he is a bit optimistic, plan on a weekend, maybe even a three day weekend.) but only after having thought a lot about the various aspects.

Then in chapter 18 he talks just aenough about things like JavaScript, database connectivity, cascading style sheets and more to let you know that you've barely scratched the surface.

An excellent place to get started.

I was hoping for something that would help me get started on building my own site. This book is for someone who just wants any site, and is looking for someone else to do for them.

This is a great starter book, but once you get your web site designed, then what? I wanted to know more about hosting services and costs, etc. Then found another title on here called "The Complete Web Hosting Kit Pro." This is a complete kit that lets you host your web site on your own PC for free. Comes with everything you need... instructions and software to host your site on your PC at home or at work. I recommend both this book and the web hosting kit.

This book is great. I am starting off with AS 3.0 and its a great reference. I feel though sometimes it gets too complicated. Also it does not have many pictures, but the good thing is that the code is color coded. According to my professor who is very into finding books, its the best one out there for AS. I haven;t had a ton of time to look through the book yet, but so far what I see is helpful, just a really boring read.

I'm starting from scratch to learn Flash AS 3 and this book seems to be a very good starting point. I haven't read it through yet, but it's yet been very understandable and there's not too much technical jargon (I have 5+ years of PHP-coding to start with).

I have worked with Action Script in the past on many projects but I never took advantage of the real programming capabilities that Action Script 3 has to offers, so I wanted to find a book to help me take the next step and this is the one. I got this book and I was immediately hooked because it was written in a way that makes you feel comfortable and relaxed instead of intimidated.

This book offers simple easy to understand tutorials accompanied with the basic start files already designed so that you can focus on the programming.

If your looking for a great book for beginning or intermediate Action Script 3 porgramming then this is the one for you.

EXCELLENT BOOK.

If your new to actionscript 3 or just new to actionscript period , this book will help you catch up with it. You will feel confident as you go through the book and practice examples.

What I really liked is that while the book is showing you how to code with actionscript 3, the examples will even apply to actionscript 2 or 1 ( with different coding of course, but the principle idea is great)

I would really recommend you pick up this book.

First off: if you havent written any code, ever, im pretty sure this book isnt for you.

If, however, youve written some AS2, or even AS3, and thrown up your hands in frustration, you've found the right title.
Before I read Learning AS3, I had read more complex books like Essential AS3 and AS3 Bible, and written some AS3 and some AS3/MXML and a bunch of procedural AS2 and AS1; not a novice. But the hard edges of the new version of the language were still unclear to me, as I'd read tons of theory and had less than enough practice.
This book is the one that combined these two areas oh so well. It takes the theoretical aspects of AS3 and applies them as no book I've read before does. And the authors explanation of what they are doing and WHY is way better than any flash book I've read since Foundation Flash 5 (published around 2000); There may be typos and code mistakes as mentioned in other reviews, but honestly that wasn't my takeaway from the book. Rather here's a book that gives you a much better understanding of the whys; a book that will help you build what you want to build as opposed to doing mindless tutorials; a really excellent book at getting you over the hump of AS3. Spend the money and read the book. Its the one i recommend to anyone at any level who asks; its that good.

I am sorry. In my opinion this book is a waste of paper. I have
tried to find some answers to simple questions
about ASP in this book. Things concerning little
things one might forget and you want to look up.
After a few times using the book in this way it's clear this book tells us little useful things. Even free (digital/psd) manuals on ASP are a lot more useful. After
buying this book from amazon it went quite quickly to a dump shop, sorry...

This book is very helpful if you want to learn advanced ASP programming techniques. After I bought a basic ASP programming book with discount through couponsky.com, I also bought this book. I found this book teach reader a lot of ASP programming tricks. It is very useful if you want to learn some advanced ASP techniques. I recommend this book to people who already has some basic ASP knowledge.

Scott Mitchell is an excellent author. I love his articeles on 4GuysFromRolla.com. I am freelance internet consultant and have used most of the examples in this book in one form or another.

Highly recommended for up and coming "Advanced" ASP developers.

I have around 20 titles in my personal library which focus directly or indirectly on ASP. This is simply the best. It isn't an introduction to the language -- there are several good ones for that -- it is more about using sound program design methodology to accomplish some of the more complex tasks facing ASP programmers, such as content management systems, reusable forms, and eCommerce.

If you have any programming experience in other languages and are moving to ASP, get this book. If you are just learning what an Active Server Page is, then it is not for you, but if you plan to do anything more than fairly simple pages in ASP, get it, even if you don't think you're ready for advanced stuff.

Scott gives good examples, clear explanations, and lays out methodology that will help you no matter what your level of experience. It's one of the best bargains out there in technical books.

This VERY young author has done something seasoned technical writers twice his age have not often done: written an extremely useful, information and well thought out book, with plenty of implementable examples, and all in a book of less than 350 pages. It so often seems that these kinds of books suffer from "mission creep", and hence bloat into the 1500-page monsters we so often see. Because he was able to keep the scope of his task clearly in mind, he also provides a thorough "Further Reading" section at the end of each chapter, where he provides links to a number of on-line articles. (Yes, you could find these yourself, but how great that a professional in the field has taken the time to find them seek them out for you -- and I was glad all that extra stuff wasn't in the book itself.)

The one complaint I have is that the source code for this book, which you can download from the O'Reilly site, is a chaotic, inextricable mess of files with arbitrary names that are impossible to link to any specific examples in the book (I wouldn't mind that the file names are arbitrary, if he told you in the book which file a given example was associated with -- but no luck there). Really inexcusable.

This book was well written for its time but Google no longer uses the formulas found in this book. Any book written before August 2005 should be considered out of date at this point. At that time Google introduced the concept of 'Quality Score' and that changed things quite a bit. Google also recently (December, 2007) changed the way it analyzes the associaton of keywords, ads, CPR, and site content. So the basic concepts of this book are fine but the specifics have moved on. I wish I had read the review from October, 2005 entitled "Nice but...it's obsolete".

When I got Anthony Borelli's book, Affiliate Millions, I knew right away that I wanted to try my hand at placing ads on Google to generate traffic for websites and earn big commissions through their affiliate programs.

You can get started using Affiliate Millions alone. Since the topic was so new to me, I decided on further study before jumping in. After Affiliate Millions, I read "Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords."

Winning Results with Google AdWords covers a lot of the same ground as "Ultimate Guide." The difference is that "Winning Results" has the weight and authority of a textbook. It covers such esoteric topics as keyword arbitrage, bidding wars, and dayparting. The book is comprehensive. It's an admirable achievement. Mr. Goodman is an eloquent writer.

Mr. Goodman has his own consulting firm. The audience for the book appears to be e-commerce professionals. It is not a get-rich-quick program. I really think Mr. Goodman has forgotten more than other "experts" will ever know about paid placement, search marketing, or whatever you want to call it.

Mr. Goodman is a real grouch when it comes to affiliate marketing (the subject of Mr. Borelli's book "Affiliate Millions"). Goodman writes:

"At the small end of the small-business spectrum is the affiliate marketer. This is someone who joins a parent company's affiliate program, receives custom linking codes that are used to credit them with sales, and then goes out and finds customers for the parent company. I've no doubt that for a clever minority, the math can work--attract targeted clicks by placing AdWords ads and hope enough of them convert to a sale to make you a profit. Just don't ask me for tips. If I could tell you how to turn a passive profit in your home in your spare time, then why wouldn't I set up all those affiliate codes and keywords myself, shut down my computer, and take a nap?"

Well, he did mention a clever minority. I guess that's enough to keep hope alive for the thousands who are following Anthony Borelli, Perry Marshall, "Google Cash," Wealthy Affiliate, and myriad other advisors.

I don't think Mr. Goodman's words should be a wet blanking for aspiring affiliate millionaires, but it doesn't hurt to have a sober assessment of what they are up against. For those who elect to press on, this book is indispensable.

Is it nap time yet?

On my way to becoming a Google Ad Specialist I have done Google's courses online and off but found that Winning Results with Google AdWords by Andrew Goodman has added a tremendous amount of context to my education. I am actually on my third time through the book in order to let the subtleties Andrew describes with respect to keyword development and optimization techniques in particular sink in.

I had been running an adword campaign for 3 months with limited success. I immediately used every tactic I could from this book and increase the quantity of terms I used, the quality of terms I used, my ad text, my landing pages, my offer.... and my Results. I almost instantly increased my Profits 10x over what I was making before this book. At the same time I dropped my cost per click from .59 to .14.

I am not a web guru. I'm not a marketing guru. I'm not a sales guru. I just read the book and did what he said to do. The real key for me was in finding seldom considered keywords that cost tons less than the obvious keywords, and still bring in the traffic. I learned it from this book.

(This update is a year after reading the book: I'm now a Google Professional and help others transform their Google Adwords programs. This book plus lots of real-world experience made that happen.)

Maybe the reason people are still giving this book 5-star reviews is that it's crammed full of incredibly useful information. The 0.5% CTR limit is NOT the most important thing about Adwords, no matter what one of the other reviewers (Andreas Ramos) says. And although the limit is gone, keeping your CTR high is still critical to effective results.

It's the nature of computer books to become outdated more rapidly than most other non-fiction categories. Writing about Google is particularly tough, as they are such a rapidly moving target. However, I'd say that 95% of the advice in this book still holds. Two years after publication, that's pretty good.

Uniquely among the books in this area, Goodman writes in depth from many points of view: both the micro nuts-and-bolts stuff and the macro big-picture stuff. If you want to learn as much as you can about Adwords, get Goodman (and then Perry Marshall's book). I'm looking forward to the 2nd edition.

Among this book, Joel Comm's Adsense Code book, and Perry Marshall's Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords, for my money the clearly superior title is Marshall's. This book is fine. But it pales in comparison to Marshall's Ultimate Guide in terms of breath of topics and depth of explanation.

I was already doing my own Google advertising when I got this book thinking that I will learn a quite a bit of new things from this book. Not so. If you took the time to read Google's own information and FAQ, you would have understood 90% or more of the stuff. I found the screen shots in the book particularly annoying, the prints are so small and are printed in very light colored ink that they are unreadable. You can't read this book without being in front of your computer to follow along each screen to make sense.

Like most of the O'Reilly books, this is very well written and a really good resource for tips and hints. It is not as good for a beginner, but is good for people that need a good resource to go to the next level.

It is estimated that Google ads reach 80% of all Internet users. No other advertising system or promotional scheme (including spam campaigns) can boast such coverage. Cashing in on Google ads either as an advertiser through AdWords or by getting paid by the click for hosting Google ads through Adsense is a pretty quick and simple process.

Google Advertising Tools is meant for the beginner advertiser or new website owner who would like to make a little extra money through hosting Google ads. This book takes the reader through the whats, the whys, the hows, and the wheres of these options. Much of the more complicated parts of these processes are even detailed step by step complete with illustrations of what the reader will see at the website. I do suggest this book to those new to Google ads. However, I also think that those already participating in these programs with find a few helpful hints and tips, particularly in the optimizing sections.

This book was OK, I mean it has some good information but you can find most of it online so it is more of a resource book instead of a book having especially valuable information.

Im glad I bought it cause I now have a resource book on the shelf and dont have to search online and I often have limited time.

If you have the time to research online then do that, otherwise by this book.

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.