2 comments about Introduction to Solid Modeling Using Solidworks.

1. Autocad is the dominant CAD package, in market share and mindshare. But Howard shows that SolidWorks is perfectly capable of doing much the same tasks as Autocad. The modelling is intuitive. And much thought has clearly gone into the deployment of the user interface. The numerous options available to you should not prove overwhelming. Though perhaps that might be the initial impression, as you start the book.
   
   Howard deliberately does not explain all the methods in SolidWorks. To minimise information overload on you. SolidWorks can certainly do far more. But here you can swiftly learn the most common methods and start designing.



2. We are a SolidWorks and Pro/E engineering heavy equipment company located in Ohio. I have a strong Pro/E background with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and I am trying to learn SolidWorks. SolidWorks seems like a great design tool for many applications.
   
   I picked up a used copy of this book, "Introducation to Solid Modeling Using SolidWorks". I was very disappointed in the lack of functional information in the areas of: general features, creating Drawings, implementing Mates and Relations and generating Assemblies. The book is poorly written and I would not recommend it to anyone, at any level looking to learn SolidWorks. In the last review, it was written, "Howard deliberately does not explain all the methods in SolidWorks. To minimize information overload on you." I wish he provided more information and let me be the one to decide on information overload!

1 comments about Design Paradigms: A Sourcebook for Creative Visualization.

1. This book is an exciting exploration of universal principles (paradigms) of form and design. Warren Wake identifies the design fundamentals common to such diverse areas as architecture and insects, industrial design and weather patterns. The book is organized around big questions in design, like how two objects can be joined, and how an object can change size. Within each category or chapter, the author takes us through the many ingenious solutions to these fundamental problems, wherever the solutions may be. One moment we're looking at how an armadillo can roll into a ball, then we're seeing how this can be applied to metal construction to bend and change the form of rigid materials. We see the structure of a Swiss Army Knife and then how the principle can be applied to clothing design. The bottom-line message is that "Design is Everywhere," and this book is as good a guide to this view of the world as you'll find. It should be required reading for persons interested in industrial design or architecture, and should be interesting to anyone interested in how things work.

5 comments about Flash 3D: Animation, Interactivity, and Games.

1. I found this book to be an excellent guide to producing 3d Flash animations. It is easy to follow, well layed-out with clear instructions and examples.
   I use Flash occasionally and sometimes get rusty. This book has helped me immensely when needing to do specific animations. I sometimes struggle with actionscript, so the way the information is presented makes it clear and easy to understand.
   I recommend this book to anyone needing a textbook or a primer to create Flash 3D animations simulations.



2. Flash was never really intended as a 3D application. That hasn't stopped people from trying to use it as one. Flash 3D covers numerous ways to add depth to this otherwise 2D program.
   
   Although this book's subtitle says it covers Animation, Interactivity and Games, the animation section is easily the shortest. Other than some good coverage of using shading to make things look less flat and simulating depth with parallax scrolling, everything else is pretty much programming based. Although a resourceful Flash filmmaker could still make good use of the other tutorials.
   
   The majority of the instruction involves creating mathematical 3D space we can use to move our 2D objects around in. Each example builds on the ones before to eventually create a scene with a movable camera and objects that maintain a believable 3D space.
   
   Flash 3D also covers how to mimic OuicktimeVR files, creating interactive object rotations and panoramas in Flash, as well as building a very rudimentary 3D engine that can draw and manipulate 3D solids.
   
   The final section shows you examples of how to take everything you've learned and put it together into complete projects.
   
   The comprehensive coverage in this book makes it a great asset for anyone looking to add more depth to their Flash projects.



3. Book has been a disappointment and source of frustration. The authors are not good writers and have failed to really provide any depth on the critical principles that would help readers grow as 3d flash designers. For example, here is a statement from the book: "sine we now have multiple objects, the placeObj function needs the addition of calculating the angle myAngle at which each object is on the path (line 31)." HUH? This statement is far too vague to be meaningful. I won't get into the diagram they provide - just skip them when you reach that part in the book, it will do you good.
   
   The good part of this book is once you get past bad explanations and language, its a decent introduction into flash 3d. Lots of code in the book can be reused in other projects but if you attempt to build or expand on these projects, it would be better if the authors had spent more time discussing the more general principles of 3d in flash. Good luck.
   
   UPDATE - after finishing the section on "Viewer Rotation about the Y-Axis," I regret giving this book a rating of 2 stars -- it is at best 1.5 stars.\
   
   The section introduces new concepts which it skips over in a rush to code. The code is reusable in other projects but leaves readers with very little understanding of the mechanics involved. Without a sound understanding of the mechanics and concepts, most readers will only be able to perform the code as a routine, i.e. copy it on the next project and hope little customization is necessary. It is a real shame because this book is thorough in introducing fundamentals of 3d space in flash.



4. Easy, concrete and full of very appealing examples. I read this book day by day without interruption, trying all the exaples in it. Sometime i found Actionscript a little bit redundant, but i suppose only to underline all the passages in the examples.It's not requyred a huge ability in math formulas or a great skill with flash. The only skill required is the individual imagination.



5. One of the first things I realized when the book arrived where all the colored images... and that's great because many of the explanations would be hard to understand without colors.
   I think the biggest advantage of the book may be for some the biggest disadvantage - it's very well explained, sometimes to well, and very extensive. The chapters are build like tutorials with step-by-step instructions complete with review after every chapter in 'what did we learn today'- manner. The language of the book mirrors both author's profession - they lecture in universities. So often I felt a little like sitting in a classroom reading this book.
   Nevertheless it's a great book. More for beginners than for pro's, obviously. One thing gets clear fast while reading though: There is not much 3D in flash :)
   But what there is, you'll find here.

1 comments about Complex Analysis with MATHEMATICA®.

1. What a wonderful and delightful book. The author has taken a well-worn topic and infused it with insight and energy. Best of all, the author communicates simply and clearly. He has brought graduate complex analysis to the masses; I wish that I had a book like this as an undergraduate. It is also a great read: the kind of pick you could pick up and go cover to cover with. However, you'll probably want to be at your keyboard trying out his many examples. The unique thing about this tome is that it is well-written, it is mathematically ambitious and it is an invaluable reference for how to use Mathematica. Also, as we have come to expect from Cambridge, this book has excellent production quality.

5 comments about Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development (Programmer to Programmer).

1. This book is riddled with errors, from nonsense layouts to coding mistakes. The interface (a hotel booking system) is very rudimentary and does not work as advertised.

   The book does introduce readers to Dreamweaver's server behavior interface and does a good job walking readers through a local install of Apache, MySQL, PHP, and a few other tools.

   A good idea, poorly executed.




2. While the content of the book is potentially good, anybody who needs a little handholding might get lost quickly as the author does not give much background information and skips many steps that are second nature to proficient developers. This is where the beginner puts this book away and the intermediate user struggles with finding more information on how-to-do a particular thing. (This starts with the setup of a Apache / MySQL / PHP server and ripples thru the whole book.)

   In addition to the content, the book is slightly disorganized and not the easiest reading material. Not so much because of difficulty but because of writing style.




3. I've found this book very useful for a PHP beginner as me. I could make the whole website working with Dreamweaver MX 2004, PHP5 and MySQL 4x on my local machine and test it on a webserver using PHP4x and MySQL 3x.
   
   Hints to work with this book:
   
   ON YOUR LOCAL MACHINE:
   1. Do not create password for MySQL
   2. When creating Database Connection in Dreamweaver, type in the username as root, but do not type the password.
   3. For Admin page, if you get an error, use the error handler shown on page 300, 301 to handle it.
   
   ON A WEBSERVER:
   Go through pages and specify host, MySQL username and password (don't miss page 254).
   
   I have enjoyed the book very much.
   
   Minh Lam



4. If you already know PHP then this book will be too easy for you. If you know Dreamweaver and want to get into PHP, this book isn't large and can help you a lot.



5. You could write a book just describing the errata and missing instructions for this one. Don't waste your money!

1 comments about Infinite Game Universe, Volume 2: Level Design, Terrain, and Sound (Advances in Computer Graphics and Game Development Series).

1. Ok, this book is a little outdated but I just plowed through this and thought I should do a review while my recollection is fresh.
   
   It gets old real fast to read "But now is not the time or place to cover that topic in any detail" on nearly every other page.
   
   Guy, if you're going to do a third book, please actually make some non-trivial working examples. That's what we're looking for.
   
   I mean, how about create a super-simple Starflight type game with random planets, solar systems, naming scheme? Nothing fancy. I hope your third book in the series will have some, any, meat.
   
   This is such an interesting topic I hope it gets a proper treatment someday.
   
   Asides: Why use the messy realloc/malloc in your examples when stl methods would be so much cleaner?
   
   Why have hard-coded constant numbers littered everywhere, and then spend 5 lines of comments explaining "a real app would never do this". Wouldn't it be easier to just add a #define?
   
   Example bins from the CD do not run on Vista64. Perhaps need to include some support libraries?
   
   Was unable to find an errata section for this book with google, but I know there should be one as I found series errors on the first few pages...

No comments about Philippines in Pictures (Visual Geography. Second Series).

5 comments about Programming Flash Communication Server.

1. If you're a developer looking into real-time server communication using Adobe Flash, this book is a must-have. It guides you thru various levels of application development in an easy to understand format, and provides well documented pieces of code to assist you in the learning process of putting together your project:
   
   Topics covered include:
   
   - learning about components and how to use them
   - establishing and managing client connections
   - publishing live and recorded streams
   - local communication with clients
   - remote communication with outside applications
   
   The book also shows how to build and integrate your own custom components, and how to scale your application using the components that you've created. Other highlights include information on how to use shared objects and server management API, as well as ways to improve both design and performance.



2. Excellent book, stuffed of examples very well explained, easy to read and to understand, essential for who desires initiate or even though to profound itself studies on FlashCom.
   Obligator reference in projects involving FlashCom, either for fast consultations and advanced tasks.
   Excellent approach of subjects as Design patterns and security, yonder a perfect demonstration about audio, video and much more.



3. This book is all about the design of applications using Macromedia's Flash Communication Server MX. FCS MX enables the building of media-rich web applications by taking care of the basic tasks required in the networking of the applications. Thus, you can focus on the application itself rather than worrying about low-level communication details.
   
   Since this book is concerned with situations where multiple Flash applications will be executing on the same server simultaneously, there is going to be considerable effort involved in coordinating events, which is addressed by this book. You should already have FCS installed and running on your server and you should also have Flash MX available on the client. The following is description of the book by chapter:
   
   Chapter 1, Introducing the Flash Communication Server - Acts as an introduction to FCS and an overview of the whole book.
   
   Chapter 2, Communication Components - How the FlashCom communication components encapsulate commonly needed features such as chat, video recording and playback, bandwidth control,and user configuration. These components implement many basic building blocks for your application.
   
   Chapter 3, Managing Connections - This chapter covers connections in more depth past the SimpleConnect component, including how to write custom code to handle various changes in the connection status as well as different errors.
   
   Chapter 4, Applications, Instances, and Server-Side ActionScript - This chapter describes how to write Server-Side ActionScript and work with the objects that control application instances and the Flash movies that connect to them.
   
   Chapter 5, Managing Streams - Offers a somewhat oversimplified but complete example that shows the basic steps in publishing one live stream and subscribing to a second.
   
   Chapter 6, Camera and Microphone - This chapter explains how to use both the Microphone and Camera classes to record live streams. These classes are at the heart of most communication applications involving multimedia.
   
   Chapter 7, Media Preparation and Delivery - This chapter covers many details for compressing and streaming audio and video.
   
   Chapter 8, Shared Objects - This chapter starts an entirely new subject - shared objects, which provide a mechanism for the transmission of data between client and server.
   
   Chapter 9, Remote Methods - This chapter also shows how to broadcast method calls to every movie and application instance connected to a shared object or stream, or send them to and from individual movies using RMI.
   
   Chapter 10, Server Management API - Discusses the Server Management API and its applications, including monitoring a FlashCom Server, gathering statistics on application instances, and managing the log streams.
   
   Chapter 11, Flash Remoting - Demonstrates how Flash Remoting can be used to add data connectivity to FlashCom applications. Flash Remoting can access web services, server-side scripts, CGI applications, XML files, or the local filesystem with the help of an application server such as ColdFusion.
   
   Chapter 12, ColdFusion MX and FlashCom - Teaches some specifics involved in using Flash Remoting with ColdFusion MX and FlashCom. There are some practical working examples shown that demonstrate how you can leverage the benefits of Flash Remoting in conjunction with FlashCom.
   
   Chapter 13, Building Communication Components - This is the first step in building complete applications, and is demonstrated through an extensive example.
   
   Chapter 14, Understanding the Macromedia Component Framework - How to modify an existing component and how to create a new one. Also discusses server-side framework code and its core features and data structures.
   
   Chapter 15, Application Design Patterns and Best Practices - Describes some of the best practices available to application developers. This chapter provides some useful design options, patterns, and best practices that will help you build better applications.
   
   Chapter 16, Building Scalable Applications - Deals with building multi-instance and multiserver applications that don't bog down as the number of client connections increases.
   
   Chapter 17, Network Performance, Latency, Concurrency - Traditional network design issues affect FCS also.
   
   Chapter 18, Securing Applications - Specifically this chapter examines the three A's of security - Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting.



4. Although I'm using Flash Media Server 2, this book is still highly relevant as not much has changed. The core objects and language is the same so I would not hesitate to recommend it for anyone looking to use FMS.



5. If you want to understand programming the Flash Communication Server and it's capabilities this is a good place to start.

5 comments about ActionScript Cookbook.

1. Get this book. That's really all that needs to be said. I'm a java guy learning flash, and what works best for me is a collection of practical (and useable in the real world) applications. That's exactly what this book is. And it's not the same thing you read in almost every programming book: 'this is a loop, this is a variable, this is a method...'. Useless stuff you have to wade thru to get to the meat. (...). I'm on MX 2004, and the book is for MX. (...) I can't wait for the next addition!!!



2. I hate to write a bad review. I really do. But here's the deal: if you're just starting out with ActionScript, and you type in some of the examples in the book (several, actually) they will not work.
   
   This is frustrating beyond belief.
   
   I'm using FMX 2004 Pro, and every other example of code that I've tried to use just flat out will not work.
   
   Sorry.



3. this is a great book but it will not work with macromedia mx 2004 unless you set the export setting to flash player 6.
   
   I got this notice from the author himself.
   
   mx 2004 cookbook should be comming out in september 2005
   
   ~mark



4. This book is one of the few Action Script books that specifically covers Flash Communication Server. Using this book I was able to build a chat server as well as a flash movie that could connect to it and have many clients interact with each other.
   
   Good Book!



5. The Actionscript Cookbook is an extremely useful resource for aspiring and veteran designers. I've been designing/developing since Flash 4 and I still found this book very insightful and full of great hints and explanations.
   
   A decent book for beginners but better for intermediate to advanced developers and designers. I'd recommend Colin Mook's Actionscript for Flash MX (also by O'Reily) which explores more fundamental concepts in Actionscripting 1 which are still pertinent in many cases to AS2.
   
   I appreciated the code examples, although admittedly I think I did remember finding a few errors, however the errors were on the nitpicking typo level and I usually found after getting annoyed thatI hadn't written the code correctly.
   
   Their example on Storing Persistent Shared Local Objects (flash cookies) was particularly useful.
   
   Well organized and clear (and no, I'm not affliated with O'Reilly, lol)

4 comments about Flash 8: The Missing Manual.

1. As per usual, the Missing Manual line hits another solid ball with Flash 8: The Missing Manual, but this time it's not out of the park. Packing 14 chapters and nearly 450 pages with solid material and great writing like you would expect from this line, I cannot do anything but give five stars for the writing and instruction. Unfortunately, when one opens the book and finds that there isn't even a SINGLE color page in the entire text, this is big mistake. If this was a book that covered something like Word or Excel (except for any graphs that might be used) this might not be such a bad thing, but for something like Flash where the entire premise is flashy graphics, smooth animations and crisp, clean vector graphics, to not have any color at all is a mistake. If you want to use Flash you cannot go wrong with this book, but this major decision faux paux I consider a huge fumble and it's the only thing stopping me from giving my usual Missing Manual 5 star rating. Hopefully this can be improved in the 2nd edition or with Flash 9.
   
   **** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED



2. The book dissapoint me at the begining because i consider the contents to be too soft, like totally for beginners, I thought "oh no, I just bought another "flash for dummies" sort of book, where you get told how to use tool by tool, but not how to put everything together, the keys of how to actually create a professional flash website. But I totally start to enjoy the book from episode 10 where the author explains how to control your animation with actionscript. It happen to be very clear and useful to me.So, yes, i would definetly recommend this book to everyone who wants to start to get into flash. Not for Medium-Expert users anyway.
   
   However, the quality of the illustrations that are used as examples are of really poor quality. So if you are looking fordward see pretty graphics not purchase this book. And it's in black and white too.



3. Are you a Webmaster who has given up in frustration because of distracting and annoying elements on your sites? If you are, then this book is for you! Author Emily A VanderVeer, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that explains all of the tools and shows you step-by-step how to create animations from scratch; as well as, why you want to do each step--in English, not programmer-ese.
   
   VanderVeer, begins by guiding you through the creation of your very first Flash animation, from the first glimmer of an idea to drawing images, animating those images, and testing your work. Then, the author shows you how to manipulate your drawings by rotating, skewing, stacking, and aligning them; add color and special effects, and multimedia files such as audio and video chips; slash file size by turning bits and pieces of your drawings into special elements called symbols; and, create composite drawings using layers. Next, she shows you how to add ActionScript actions to frames to create automatic effects and to buttons to create audience-controlled effects. Finally, she focuses on testing, debugging, and optimizing your animation.
   
   This most excellent book will show you tips and shortcuts for making Flash easier to work with; as well as, making your animations as audience-friendly as possible. More importantly, this book is designed for readers of every skill level except the super-advanced-programmer.



4. This is my first Missing Manual book that I've read through. I'm sure that humor is something difficult to perform in a step by step text. Still, as the text droned on and on with too limited a vocabulary, I found myself fighting harder to make it through this book.
   
   The lady author did make a joke here and there, in fact I think about every 70 pages there was a joke or two until later in the book. Somewhere in the 300s, the lady changed her vocabulary from simple explanations to simple explanations with some American slang in between. The sentence with 'muff' was my personal favorite in the book. That sentence flowed so natural, I felt as if she was talking to me in a conversation. After that, it went somewhat downhill with slang she didn't seem well adapted to, and later getting better toward the end of the book. Other than lack of vocabulary, she took nearly a hundred solid pages and used 'she' instead of 'he' in her sentences. English wise, she 'muffed' up. A better choice would have been 'individual' or 'person' or if she so desired 'dude' or 'dudette'. In that case, the slang would have been obvious, and loose rules would be applied.
   
   As far as teaching, the book does provide the necessary information to use Flash to produce an animation, basic web page, or an animated GIF. There are a few notable shortcuts given, such as #Static, which were worth the last hundred pages you made it through to read them. Actionscript is very lightly covered. It seemed that she was tired of this book somewhere in the middle of the 300s, which is understandable, as I was tired of the book at least thirty pages before it was obvious the author was. Covering Publishing, Publishing Profiles, and Exporting was well done excluding her PICT explanation where she didn't explain dpi(dots per inch) or postscript, which was definitely not any of the prior options of gif, jpg, or png which she compared the export PICT option menu to.
   
   The book also makes many references to programming, but seems bound by the presentation and audience of the book to achieve that depth. This book would have been better if the times when the author found herself bored, she consulted a thesaurus to vary the vocabulary.
   
   Even though I've spoken of some annoyances, the missing manual book does it's job. Flash 8 basics to intermediate usage was taught. The step by step instructions were simple and easy to understand. There is enough explaining to understand and learn what is going on. While the book does fail to achieve and maintain an 'interesting' status, the book succeeds in it's objective to be a simply understandable guide to Flash 8.