Electronics Books

Eric Eaton's "Designing Web Site Interface Elements" is perhaps the most comprehensive book on the design of web site interactive elements (links, buttons, forms, windows, etc.). This relatively narrow focus-most "web books" have to widen "the lens" to fill their pages with enough useful insight-allows for very in-depth treatments of interface design topics. For example, in the section on links, Eric talks in great detail about links styles (text vs. graphical), arrangement, density, grouping, placement, description, color, etc. The sections on button and form element design are similarly comprehensive.

Topics covered:
- links;
- buttons;
- form elements;
- control elements (window controls mostly; important if you're using DHTML or Flash to create your own windows, sliders, etc.);
- metaphors (physical world, paging, tabs, etc.);
- custom and experimental interface elements (again, good resource for those using Flash or DHTML to create their own interface elements).
- a good selection of case studies with discussions of what works and doesn't work, and why.

Overall, this book will make a worthy addition to any web designer's library. Also recommended: Paul Gokin's "Interface Design for Ecommerce Applications" (search for this one on the web), and Bob Baxley's "Making the Web Work."

It has tons of ideas for how to go beyond the same-old same-old in Web
design, Eaton gives scores of examples and techniques for designing
interactive interface elements, but without the pedantic, how-to
language that people like me hate. Before you know it, you've learned more about usability and site design than you would expect. A few too many pages are spent on the basics, from site architecture to how links work; but half the book is relevant to advanced interactive Web design. Not quite as edgy as the stuff he wrote for Webmonkey, it's as humorous as a useful guide can be. A useful tool for a wide range of designers.

It has tons of ideas for how to go beyond the same-old same-old in Web
design, Eaton gives scores of examples and techniques for designing
interactive interface elements, but without the pedantic, how-to
language that people like me hate. Before you know it, you've learned more
about usability and site design than you would expect. A few too many
pages are spent on the basics, from site architecture to how links work;
but half the book is relevant to advanced interactive Web design. Not

quite as edgy as the stuff he wrote for Webmonkey, it's as humorous as a
useful guide can be. A useful tool for a wide range of designers.

Web pages are truly a functional art form. The best are a combination of complex functionality, have a small digital footprint for quick downloading, can easily be deciphered, and are pleasing to the eye. This is a tall order and although design principles have been studied and refined for years, most do not satisfy all of these high requirements. Eaton has written a book that shows you many of the simple features that can make the difference between a site that blocks and a site that rocks.
One very striking feature of the book is the high quality of the pages and the images. The paper is slick, and nearly all pages are in full color. From this, you can see exactly how the pages would appear on the screen. In fact, very few screens would render them in this vivid a form. The advice, sensible, but also artistic in nature, shows you how to appeal to the facets of art appreciation that nearly everyone possesses. As humans, we share a common heritage for forms, some of which attract, others which repel and those which can do both, depending on the context. Eaton understand this very well and does a good job in describing and demonstrating this knowledge. Not all mouse clicks or buttons are created equal, and it is essential that the web interface designers understand the circumstances that make them different.
Packed with essential knowledge, not all of which is obvious, this is a book that should be read by all people who code the parts of a web site that will be seen.

¶
The aim of the DesignWhys series is to focus on the Why of interface design, not the How. A lot of work and creativity went into this book but it fails embarrassingly every time the author ventures into the How.

The author has much to teach and he does it well with vivid illustrations. His contention that Web widgets often imply assumptions and behaviors with surprising implications is something every Web application designer should pick up on and learn from.

Unfortunately, the author veers from his plan to be agnostic on technology and from beginning to end makes implementation recommendations that defy modern practice. It is as if his coding experience ended with Netscape 4 on the Macintosh, a particularly unfortunate combination.

He defines "traditional HTML" in a way that strips it of its current power and dynamism -- and then unfavorably compares it with Flash, naturally enough. Cascading style sheets (CSS) are introduced more as a complication rather than a systematic solution. The first positive mention of CSS is to point out that it can be used to get rid of those horrid link underlines -- a recommendation certain not to please the usability people.

The W3C-deprecated and destructive FONT tag is used throughout the book. On page 124, he warns that a drawback to using JavaScript to change form elements is that it forces an entire page refresh. This was true of Netscape 4 but not of any other browser released since 1997. His references to "Netscape 5," a version never released to the public, indicates that some of the book is refurbished from old material.

Whenever the author gets into implementation, beware. For instance, his suggestion that a 50-item dropdown be divided into two 25-item dropdowns. There are more elegant and usable ways to handle that situation nowadays.

Following the author too literally would result in sites and Web applications very expensive to develop, even more expensive to maintain, and with a severely restricted usability.

The book ends with illustrations of sites the author considered ennobling. People who make Web interfaces for real people, not for other designers, will find them tediously irritating. The book would have been more valuable if it had covered the widgets of our daily bread a tad more seriously.

When it comes to Web design Why's, do as the author says, not as he does.
¶

It reminds me of the Anthology of English passages that we read in high schools and junior years. A delightful read from the inventor of 555. Very good selection of ideas and circuits to present, in a small paperback that you could carry on Euro Train for a trip spanning a week.

Very clear exposition crammed full of examples, reminiscent of my other favorite electronic design book, "The Art of Electronics", by Horowitz and Hill.

A very thorough survey of the field with lots of ideas. The circuit examples start simple and become more complex in each section, each new circuit slightly higher performance than the last, allowing you to grasp the fundamentals as well as to investigate improvements.

This book is an excellent transition for people who have worked on discrete analog designs who would like to learn more about analog design at the chip level.

Hans has written an analog IC book that is interesting and practical. It reflects his long experience as an IC designer. He covers wide ranging areas of IC design and explains them in a intuitive manner.

The author has a great writing style and has obviously put a lot of thought and work into his explainations.

This book is oriented towards some one that has background knowledge in circuits and wants to get started in designing analog integrated circuits.

Hans Camenzind is the famed designer of one of the most popular ICs known, the '555 timer chip. But that was then, this is now, and finally we're all the beneficiaries of Hans' fine new book. This tome has been freely-available online for a while now, so I've leafed through it and have appreciated what I've seen. Thankfully we can now purchase the printed book and read it at our leisure, in the bathroom (that's meant as a compliment) or out on the deck (try doing either of those with your laptop). My order just went in. :-) Now it can rest in a well-earned spot, my bookcase!

Hans' book has the meat we linear-IC-using Analog designers need to gnaw on: plenty of interesting and inspiring stuff, detailed understanding, good reference material, and as a bonus it's nicely illustrated, too. Recommended.

The author gave some great historiography infromation concerning various religious sects as to how pastoral care emerges from each group. The book was not to finite with detail, but it was precise and breif enough to encompass a broad perspective. The CD that comes along with the book was just as useful to use as the book itself.

The Dictionary is useful for readers across a wide spectrum, not only for pastoral carers. Contains concise and practical information. The theological import of each entry is spelled out. Each entry has a bibliography for further reading or cross reference. I found myself browsing at leisure!

Anyone who has worked in the area where psychology and religion interface will appreciate this solid, thorough and carefully edited work that is without par in the field. Grounded in the actual experience of the "theology of living documents", the articles are as much practical as theoretical and academic. Thoroughly ecumenical, this massive reference work promotes dialogue between faith and theology and clinical theory and practice. If this is the kind of subject that interests you then you need to own this book.

F.X. Charet Phd

This a comprehensive and well-written reference work with more than 1200 articles and 1346 pages. For the parish minister or pastor who needs guidance, this book should definitely be on the shelf as a mandatory reference work. For seminarians, it might be overwhelming, but would be a wonderful book to own. For more experienced religious leaders, pastoral counselors and pastoral psychotherapists, however, there is much here that can be gotten more easily and in more sophisticated form from smaller, more specialized books on theology and especially aspects of psychology/psychiatry. Still, it is an admirable piece of scholarship and one that most caregivers will want and use. (Non-religious mental health workers could also use it for working more effectively with religious populations.)

The Dictionary is useful for readers across a wide spectrum, not only for pastoral carers. Contains concise and practical information. The theological import of each entry is spelled out. Each entry has a bibliography for further reading or cross reference. I found myself browsing at leisure!

I have studied many books on Digital Communications but the style of the authors from Digital Receivers point of view is quite nice. It starts from very basics and builds up things gradually... I would recommend this book to every Communication Engineer who is interested in Estimation and Detection !

This is an extremely useful book for any Digital Communication System designer or engineers who wish to develop digital transmitters and (especially) receivers for a given system. Covers all aspects, including recent developments and classic algorithms used for synchronization of digital communication systems. Phase synchronization, timing offset estimation, and frequency offset synchronization are treated in detail. A particularly interesting section about effect (degradation) due to non-synchronized receiver is given. I could not quantitative and intuitive treatment of this topic anywhere else. However, this book is recommended only to those who understand the basic communication theory very well.

The purpose of this book, along with its companion (Synchronization in Digital Communications vol.1, published in 1991), is quite ambitious: a comprehensive coverage on the theory of synchronization in digital communications. Compared with its companion, the treatment presented in this book is quite practical and technical, so the audience may be very limited -- only for communication system engineers and students doing researches on sync theory. The valuable part of this book is the treatment on sync problems over the fading channels, which only can be found sporadically in journal or conference papers. The introductory chapter on the necessary background is quite concise but informative. It is highly recommended for people who want to know more details on the design of digital communications.

This book is an excellent learning tool for those who are already familiar with communication theory and are interested in communication over fading channels. This book also contains very recent work that has not been covered anywhere else, for example, relating estimation theory and information theory. This is highly recommended, but only for those with a strong background in communication theory.

Floyd Gardner has written a comprehensive review in the IEEE Communications Magazine, September 1998, Vol.36 No.)on two recent books on the subject. (one being the book discussed here)

Excerpts "These books are massive, authoritative expositions of synchronization;their authors are long-time researchers in the field. Heretofore there has been no book, to my knowledge that provides a comprehensive up-to-date account of sync.of data signals-until now"

"Both books are directed at advanced graduate students, seasoned practicioners, or active researchers"

(About the book' Digital Communication receiver') "(But) this book is without peer for someone who wants to probe into the underlying foundations of data signal reception, or to cope with difficult fading channels" "

I received the book with the book cover upside down and reversed with respect to the book.

Professor's Nancy Lynch's "Distributed Algorithms" is a definite reference for theoretical treatments of many hard problems in distributed computing. It is a textbook, but written in such a clear style that makes it almost a pleasure read. Rarely have I seen something like that! The book has a right proportion of theoretical proofs, practical applications, philosophical appreciation of the problems, research questions, examples and study points.

"Distributed Algorithms" has 3 main parts - synchronous, asynchronous and partially synchronous network algorisms. Each part describes consensus resolution, mutual exclusion, resource allocation, leader election, termination detection and failure detection as main problems in distributed computing theory. Lynch has done a masterful job of leading us from simple to complex, from theoretically solvable to practically intractable problems.

For a practitioner of computer science, who is not necessarily involved in fundamental research, this book gives a clear appreciation of problems of 2PC, resource management, failure profiles in faulty and noisy networks, optimization and fault management in distributed networks. All those things are foundations of databases, network computing and enterprise scalability. It also helped me greatly in estimating the best and worst case boundaries in certain practical distributed system optimization problems.

This book is in the same class as "Discrete mathematics" by Knuth and others. Important topic, extensive coverage, good English, zero vendor's propaganda. Super. An unexpected gift from up above (after struggling with reams of MS's (dis) information .) I am working on something distributed and ran into this book accidentally, while browsing in a bookstore--I'm glad I did. Btw, it's a few bucks cheaper in B&N store (here goes my review .)

At MIT, I took the course 6.852 Distributed Algorithms under Professor Nancy Lynch. It was an excellence course. This books is based on her lecture notes. Before this book, there is really no book that covers these material in rigorious and consistent matter. One usually have to read the actual published academic papers. Because different author may use different notations or models, sometimes it is hard to see the whole picture. This book shows exactly that. The algorithms are presented in a consistent notation, and the models and the assumptions all the explicit, clear and consistent. However, Professor Lynch's lecture style can get really dry and boring, sometimes I can't help felling asleep because the class was so early in the morning. For that, I decided to give it only 4 stars.

Together with Mrs. Lynch's other book "Atomic Transactions", this book has been my "Bible" for years already. And now that I am starting my own company in software development, I think about making this book obligatory reading for my first new employee. Not only because of the nature of its contents, but also because of the way these are presented, and the thought-work behind it. Ideas like the provability of algorithms, seeing the user as an automaton and showing that Lamport time >>really>> works, are rare to be found together in the same textbook. This book puts research back where it belongs: before practice, not over it. Mrs. Lynch has done a great job. It is upon this work of hers, together with "Atomic Transactions", that the IOA specification language is based, created in the LCS of MIT. IOA is now in near-operational working order, and puts into application almost all of the thoughts expressed in this book.

A must-read for any software engineer who takes him-/herself seriously.

I had to write a term paper about the Internet and privacy issues. I was initially overwhelmed by the amount of information on this topic and didn't know where to start. This book helped focus me and identify major issues whereas I got lost in similar volumes. Some of the info is more technical than I needed, but I'm sure it is useful to other readers with a different perspective. If you are trying to understand what the privacy debate is about, I recommend this book.

I have waded through several volumes on privacy issues, but most of them are too academic or legal in their focus. I needed a book that clearly explained my rights and responsibilities vis-a-vis my customers' privacy. I am a small business entrepreneur of a successful dot.com, and I need to understand the issues affecting me and my customers. I found this book extremely helpful. Whereas it only touches on several topics of interest to me, the scope is comprehensive enough to get me started. I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling to understand the thorny problem of privacy in the electronic age.

This book lays out privacy issues for businesses and employees alike in a clear and concise manner without getting bogged down in legal or technial jargon. As the head of a company with an expanding e-customer base, I have been looking for a book that explains the larger issues facing my organization. With the knowledge I've gained, I can now go off and investigate those aspects of the privacy issue of tantamount importance to me. Many thanks to the authors for this roadmap.

Outstanding coverage of E-privacy from the political end as well as the technical end. With the renewed emphasis on personal liberties and personal privacy, this friendly and easy-to-read guide will help everyone who runs an E-business to mind their customers privacy or risk it all in the justice courts of in the courts of consumer preferences. Do yourself a favor and buy this book NOW!

I'm an information technology manager for a large municipality. This book helped us get a handle on the issues involved when migrating city applications to the web. One of our main concerns was protecting citizen privacy and I thought the book provided a great overview of the issues involved. The book is clearly written and it is particularly good at shifting gears from what starts out as an overview of the issues to specific concerns that we were having. For example, we were able to use the sample privacy policy provided as a jumping off point for what has evolved into our city's web privacy policy. I strongly recommend this book.

The book provides good overview on the ebXML architecture, and gives lots of business case examples. I highly recommend this book for business manager looking into implementing ebXML and web services in their company.

I was looking for an executive level summary on B2B services, and this book help me to understand the issues without overwhelming me with the technology.

The book provides good overview on the ebXML architecture, and gives lots of business case examples. I highly recommend this book for business manager looking into implementing ebXML and web services in their company.

My company is just starting to look at ebXML for handling b2b transactions. I'm familiar with XML but really needed a quick primer to get me up-to-speed on the essentials of ebXML. This book is very clearly written to guys like me--it covers the basics very clearly, with good examples. Now I am ready to get my company rolling with ebXML.

This book really helped me build on what I already knew in order to get a handle on ebXML. The author does a great job of showing how ebXML builds on XML standards, and also how ebXML relates to Web Services, which I'm just starting to get a handle on. It provides good technical detail on the ebXML architecture, and gives lots of business case examples and reasonable guidelines for developing a strategy for staging implementation of ebXML. Coverage of security and the other major specs is very complete and readable--I highly recommend this book!

This excellent circuits textbook is still available as follows:

Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals,
Oxford University Press, ISBN Number: 0195136136

In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

This excellent circuits textbook is still available as follows:

Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals,
Oxford University Press, ISBN Number: 0195136136

In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

This excellent circuits textbook is still available at: Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals, Oxford University Press. In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

This excellent circuits textbook is still available as follows:

Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals,
Oxford University Press, ISBN Number: 0195136136

In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

This excellent circuits textbook is still available as follows:

Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals,
Oxford University Press, ISBN Number: 0195136136

In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

I've read this book at least four times now. And bought copies for everyone in the family. And recommended it to everyone I know. If it's not already apparent, I really like this book! Even my 'I hate to read' brother finished it in two days.

Electronic Echoes of the Mind is fast, funny and very well written. You can't help but laugh out loud while reading it. It is very fast paced, full of action, humor and fajitas. The author has created a believable world with characters that truly live. I'm a big science fiction/fantasy nerd, but a lot of my family is not, and they still really enjoyed the book. It is worth reading whether you like the sci-fi genre or not.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes good books. When will the second book come out?

I really enjoyed this book because it made me laugh. The character, Jake Turner, has a great sense of humor(kind of like my dad's), and the supporting characters are pretty darn amusing. This book has the right mix of adventure, humor, technical stuff, and fajitas.

Echoes is a fun little space opera with a likeable main character and quirky supporting cast. Hard core sci-fi readers might notice a few spots that run counter to logic, such as driving a hovercraft on Mars with no real description of how it would vary from driving one on Earth given the difference in gravity (Mars gravity is .38 of 1 G). Also, the characters use early 21st century idioms, but that doesn't bother me. I like reading stories that don't go out of their way to ruin regular English in an effort to create patterns that we can't really guess at.

For a first book, this was very good. I look forward to Mr. Kimberlin's sophmore effort.

Years earlier, Jake Turner took the blame for a major spaceship crackup and has been fighting to get his job as pilot back ever sense. Now that he has a second-rate job piloting a third-rate freighter, he doesn't want to lose it--especially when his friend Bob comes to him with another of his odd requests (they generally seem to involve holo-pornography) and some crazy religious nuts start referring to him as the bearer.

Jake tries to keep his nose clear and stay out of trouble, but Bob and the religious nuts know which buttons to push--involving his guilt over his dead ex-girlfriend. And Jake finds himself plunged into the battle between an evil conglomerate, multiple space systems, and an alliance of small traders. Then there's his artificial intelligence--which seems to be getting more intelligent by the moment.

Author Wade A. Kimberlin creates an exciting update to the old-fashioned space opera, and there's a lot to like here. The religious nuts are attempting to transplant their memories into electronics, the evil space corporation is trying to take over the solar system, and Jake can't even trust the people who are supposed to be his friends. There's an intriguing four-way love triangle involving Jake, his dead (but not absent) girlfriend, his AI, and the sexy pilot of another merchant ship, high-speed chases, and space battles.

Anyone looking for some slash-bam fun summer reading will want to add ELECTRONIC ECHOES to their list. I'm happy to recommend this one.

I was a bit skeptical about this book when I first heard the premise. I had no reason to doubt the author as I have never read anything of his (this is his first published work) but the story seemed strange. If that is your first thought upon reading the description then this book is for you. Not only was I surprised that the book was good, I was pleased to realize that it has become one of my favorites. I recommend this book to any sci-fi fan. The story is written in first-person from the view point of the main protagonist, Jake Turner, a rough-around-the-edges, down-on-his-luck, witty space pilot who evolves into a rough-around-the-edges, "up"-on-his-luck, witty space pilot. A must, and short, read.

I've owned both editions of this wonderful little book. This little gem is for the person who doesn't have time to slog through all sorts of prescriptive grammars. It's handy, well organized, and easy to use. I own a lot of grammars, being both an author and an English teacher, and this is the one I turn to first.

Author of:
Nasty

"Nate Jepson (a.k.a. "Nasty") is a solid entry into the P.I. hall of fame." - Publisher's Weekly

A good friend who must really love me gave me this book when I headed to grad school. It answered all of my APA citation questions and many of the little grammatical quandries one encounters at 3 a.m.
I only wish I had the budget to buy this book for all of my high school students. Every young writer should have a guide like this to tidy up their work. Alas, at about $50 a pop, with a school of 350 students, this book is out of our range. If you can pick one up used or can afford a new copy you won't be sorry.

As one of Andrea's former students, I've had to read this book and use it extensively. Not only did it get me through her class, but every class I had after that (and I've had a large number of English and History classes). If you're looking for a book to help you with MLA style, Professor Lunsford covers everything you can possibly hope to draw info from, including lectures, interviews, and even MUDs online.

This book is an ideal tool for anyone who has to write for school, work, or as a hobby. The easy access tabs and extensive menus help you find what you are looking for quickly and the spiral binding lets you lay the book open while you type. The coverage of the writing process and argumentative writing really set this book apart. Anybody can write up grammar rules or documentation standards, but Lunsford's coverage of writing at the start of the book is wonderful. Buy this book and don't sell it back to the bookstore, this is a keeper. Also, for the teacher that wants one for every student, try "Easywriter" which is the smaller version of this text that only costs about fifteen bucks.

The Everyday Writer is a wonderful asset to any college English student. It contains all the essentials for writing term papers. I suggest that everyone who needs help in English should pick up this book.