5 comments about PHP Fast & Easy Web Development.

1. This is without a doubt the best book I've ever read for PHP beginners! This books starts you out nice and easy and gets you into writing PHP and using MySQL. The book also teaches you how to create several SIMPLE PHP applications that you can integrate into your SMALL website (or expand to meet your needs). This book is NOT for intermediate/expert PHP programmers expecting to learn how to build large, complex applications! For you, I STRONGLY recommend "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling & Laura Thomson. Yes, this book does have some typos (many technical books do). However, if you have half a brain, you can usually get around such typos and make the code work.



2. This is an extraordinarily helpful and well-written book for the person who wants to move from static web pages to data driven pages. Each step is carefully explained in detail, and each chapter builds a useful category of web page, so that you find yourself moving very quickly into doing useful work. I started out learning PHP with a different book and was bogged down with esoteric details, but when I went back to PHP with this book everything fit and everything worked. For those who do not yet have Apache, PHP and MySql on their machines, the book furnishes a CD with these programs for both Linux and Windows, along with the usual detailed explanation of how to install and configure them. At some point you will probably want to get a more advanced book to do wild and crazy things, but if you are like me, you will still find yourself coming back to this one to be sure you got it right. Great book!



3. This book is the best PHP book I have ever read! If there is any better book for PHP on the market I will be very surprised! This book is great for beginners (ME) and probally even advanced PHP programmers! I just ordered the seconed eddition, and I'm looking foreward to reading it!



4. This was a rather short book. 472 pages but the fonts and diagrams were huge. I read it in three days. What this book covered was the basics of PHP, good for any beginners wanting to learn PHP with no prior programming experience (With the exception of HTML).

   There was no case assigments or anything in this book to test your knoweldge of PHP. There were a few, not many, but a few typo errors in some of the source code in the book, which may confuse a beginner if they are just starting out. This book covered the basics and *only* the basics of PHP web development. However, this book has a very good constructed reference of PHP functions and MySQL.




5. After all these years, I still recommend Meloni to anyone first dipping their toes in the PHP pool. Her instructions were clear and workable and much that I learned from her I still use. She applied everything she taught, and summarized the code at chapter ends so you could see it all together. --Dan 2008

1 comments about Teach Tourself PHP With MYSOL (Teach Yourself).

1. A fantastic little book, written with style and humour, that introduces PHP and mySQL with enough detail to get a good grounding. Recommended.

5 comments about Creating Interactive Web Sites with PHP and Web Services.

1. I am a graphic designer turned web designer with years of experience now coding HTML and CSS directly. Wanting to broaden my overall web site development abilities I started looing at books on basic scripting and database development for creating more efficient and dynamic sites. My interest was not to learn PHP for the sake of knowing another language and becoming a master programmer (as the aim of most other programming books out there seems to be), but to find a book that was geared toward immediately effective and productive learning-while-building with programming and database basics, for someone who hasn't done those things before. This book seemed to have posed the same question as myself, and out of the shelves and shelves of 'standard' programming books this one answered my query.



2. This book has a misleading title. It has a small section talking about web services API by amazon. This book would help a beginner PHP programmer though.



3. Rosebruck gives a book well suited to you if you have already done some PHP, but want to migrate to the more complex challenge of using it to make a website. He shows how this is harder than just writing PHP to make 1 HTML page. Now you have many pages. Probably divided into various thematic groups.
   
   Of those groups, or tasks, he gives examples. Like hooking to a back end database. He chooses MySQL for the latter. Or, how to impose a membership system, with passwords and members-only pages. Plus, how to add a shopping cart and various payment scripts. And he shows quickly how a content management system might be used, so that visitors can read and write content.
   
   However, the book's coverage of Web Services is very rudimentary. In this aspect, the prominent billing in the title is a trifle misleading. If you need a text on it, look somewhere else.



4. This is a wonderful book. The code is easy to understand and is broken down. Eric did a wonderful job with this book. I successfully developed a member management system thanks to this book.. I give it five stars.



5. I'm using this book for a class. Most of the students have had bad experiences with PHP before this -- I'm one of them. The back of this book states it is rated for an Intermediate/Advanced user level. The rating is totally accurate. Unless you have a basic but decent PHP background you will be lost. The author uses special characters, terms, etc. that are not previously defined, and assumes a basic understanding of programming. If you do not have a basic understanding of programming and an elementary knowledge of PHP, find another book. This one does not give enough background in PHP to get a novice up to speed.

No comments about PHP and MySQL Manual: Simple, yet Powerful Web Programming (Springer Professional Computing).

1 comments about Comprehensive PHP PEAR::DB.

1. If you need to get going with PEAR::DB quickly this is a great way to do it. It's a short book, but gets right to the point. You are expected to know PHP and how to program. So there is no hand holding. The structure is: you are given a code snippet on how to do it and a brief explanation. It just gets right down to brass tacks explaining PEAR::DB. The explanation (which includes basic install instructions) extends for the first 29 pages. After that its just function explanations.
   
   The caveat to all this is that it is a great concise book if you need to learn PEAR::DB quickly, ie it is going to be used on the project I am working on right now which is due yesterday. If however, you have plenty of time and just want to learn PEAR::DB the cost is probably too high and you are better off learning from tutorials and other info on the web.

4 comments about PHP Graphics Handbook.

1. Learning a subject by deciphering grammatical mistakes and typographical errors, and debugging code is hard enough. Going to the publisher's website and discovering that there are no submissions for errata, and that the source code download is broken spills what motivation may be left to read the rest of the book right out of the sails.

   After scanning the book's index and table of contents, I had high hopes for the knowledge that I'd gain by spending the 40 bucks or so for the book, but am now searching for the receipt because I don't have time to be an unpaid QC person for Wrox. The publisher should be embarrassed to pass off a book that was obviously not prepared for final print when the deadline came rolling around.




2. As indicated by the title, this book was disappointing, and frustrating. For starters, like the previous reviewer stated, it contained several typos and other errors. It also contained extensive sections on only marginally related information, third-party, non-PHP software, and creating MySQL databases, issues which belong in appendices.

   This information actually ends up occupying a large portion of the book. This however, was not the real source of my frustrations and disappointment. The layout of the book is disconcertingly difficult to understand - the physical dimensions of the book are smaller than most other programming books, and though code is highlighted with a gray background, it is broken into little chunks by short explanations of what was being done. Large spaces are also taken for screen shots, which considering the size of the book, often took up at least a good 1/3 of the page. Also, the book's organization was decidedly counter-intuitive. Combined, these factors gave me an abysmal reading experience. Finally, the author's profiles were inappropriately placed before the table of contents, in addition to being merely frivolous commentaries that gave me little confidence in their qualifications for writing this book.

   Though I did glean some interesting techniques from the book (not all of them graphics related), in the future, will likely consult the online documentation of the GD imaging functions instead, and recommend the same for other programmers as well.

   I also found that some of the topics were too basic; considering the topic of the book, the audience could have been assumed to know much of these topics - and they could have been placed in appendices or sidebars, instead.

   I wish I could get a refund, or sell the book in good conscience ... as it is, this book is not recommended, and I must wait until O'Reilly comes out with a 'PHP Graphics in a Nutshell' or something similar, because I am unlikely to buy a book from Wrox ever again.




3. I am disturbed by the other reviews as the credentials of the reviewers are not revealed. As a graduate student and researcher I like to explore the facts before forming my opinion and judgement. I am new to PHP programming and have learned a great deal about it. Am I an expert? No, but I am a sensible reader.

   For starters, one must understand that PHP is a programming language and that there is no application that does PHP assembly without having to write the code. Front Page does this for HTML, but there is nothing available for PHP in this sense.

   PHP is very powerful, yet is weak in graphics capability. In fact, all graphics capability in PHP is only available through third-party libraries. It is not possible to go in great depth of each third-party library without writing a gigantic book. Nor can the authors know each and every library in and out.

   This book was a good introduction to graphing with PHP and gave a good exposure to what is available and selected a few solutions to show what is possible to achieve. The examples are good and show possibilities well. Most of the code makes sense and is clear to read. However, I do find an occasional typo that can stall a routine in a heartbeat.

   For the only book available on PHP graphics, it is certainly a good exposure and overview, though it is not a detailed and in-depth presentation for the experienced programmer. The manuals for some of these libraries are detailed and very good, in my opinion (I read a few of them).

   In short, this book is not for the experienced PHP programmer who is looking for graphing capabilities with in-depth examples and analysis. This book is definitely for the beginning PHP programmer or others who are looking to expand their understanding of graphing in PHP using third-party libraries (the only way to do graphics in PHP).

   Be careful when you read the code examples so that you do not fall victim to the ocassional typo. Also be warned that in order for the code to work right, all other installation and configuration requirements for the server, library paths, GD library and PHP should be flawlessly functioning.




4. This book covers image manipulation using PHP pretty well. It will take a method such as resizing, explain the functions required, give you some example code how to scale, and the explain the code. It covers just about everything that you would ever want to do, including using ImageMagick (which many servers do have!).
   
   The book does, however, have some dead spots. Twards the end it starts talking about different kinds of graphs. It will give you huge chunks of code and not explain it very well; and it doesn't come with a CD so you would have to re-type it.
   
   This book has got many jobs though. Employers that don't know that PHP can do these things to images are shocked that I know how to do it. And odds are good that none of the other people applying will have something like that. Putting some sample functions on you portfolio will certainly impress them!
   
   In conclusion, I would buy this book again as long as it was under $20. Anything more and I would just find some documentation online. But knowing how to manipulate pictures with PHP is one of the things I am most proud of on my portfolio.

1 comments about Essential PHP fast: Building Dynamic Web Sites with MySQL (Essential Series).

1. I learnt all the concepts of PHP in just 8 days from this book and then made a very complicated Online car booking system. I strongly recommend that if you want to learn PHP, you need only one book "Essential PHP fast by Dr.Simon Stobart".

5 comments about Create Dynamic Web Pages Using PHP and MySQL (Practical Solutions Series).

1. I am learning quite a lot about using PHP and MySQL to create webpages, as the title promises, but the challenge is fighting my way through the lackadasical copyediting. When a six-line script has two typoes in it, as does one on page 29, it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence as to the rest of the scripts. Hopefully the second edition will be copyedited a little more closely.



2. Overall I found this book to be very frustrating. I have some programming and web experience, but not a lot. This is my first effort at creating a web page from scratch rather than updating an old one. I will start by being positive. What I do like is how the author explains the scripts used in the exercies. He starts at the beginning of the script and says what is happening as the script progresses. Now for the negative. This book is poorly written. Typos abound, including in the scripts. It is very frustrating to spend time trying to figure out why a script won't run when you've typed everything in as you are told. It is also not written very professionally. The language tries to come off as a layman, however the bad grammar and incorrect punctuation makes it come off as ignorant.



3. VERY frustrating.. (I had written a long review but when I went to submit I accidentally hit the BACK button on my mouse. ugh) So.. I am just going to say that this book would be best if you paid about 4 dollars for it. BUT you would HAVE to have a proven php manual that covered PHP 4.1(and up) to really learn php. This book is so awfully edited. I went through about 5 hours of searching google to reference his code. I am a complete PHP newbie. He has a few lines of code that are completely broke... silly syntax errors (# instead of = , !! instead of ++). But for the newbies, this can be way too frustrating when you find that the author (your teacher) is to blame. I am now about half way through this book and have found its one enormous fault. It's written for PHP 4.0. There are some major security issues with the way he approaches html form variables. He uses the "old way". So if you have PHP 4.1 or greater installed then some of the code he lists will NOT work, by default. This sent me on a wild goose chase for several hours. You will have to change default settings that can lead to the vulnerability of your scripts. I finally went to the php manual (php.net) and found the compatibility problems with his examples and my php install (4.2.3). If you really want this book to be effective you are going to have to use old PHP techniques that are proven insecure in this day and age. I assumed with a 2002 publishing date that the book was up to snuff. Despite these major frustrations and snafus, I have been able to learn php. David explains his code very well. He assumes you don't know what is going on. I would say that anyone can learn some php from this book but don't make it your primary source. I think one would be better off learning from a book that focuses on formal/clean coding and 100% working examples. Also beware; his writing is full of typos as well. I am no linguist but seeing the silly errors he makes in his diction leaves me to wonder how serious he is about actually teaching and not rushing it out for the publisher. It reads as if he wrote it and never read back over the pages. So, I will be on the lookout for something better.



4. VERY frustrating.. (I had written a long review but when I went to submit I accidentally hit the BACK button on my mouse. ugh) So.. I am just going to say that this book would be best if you paid about 4 dollars for it. BUT you would HAVE to have a proven php manual that covered PHP 4.1(and up) to really learn php. This book is so awfully edited. I went through about 5 hours of searching google to reference his code. I am a complete PHP newbie. He has a few lines of code that are completely broke... silly syntax errors (# instead of = , !! instead of ++). But for the newbies, this can be way too frustrating when you find that the author (your teacher) is to blame. I am now about half way through this book and have found its one enormous fault. It's written for PHP 4.0. There are some major security issues with the way he approaches html form variables. He uses the "old way". So if you have PHP 4.1 or greater installed then some of the code he lists will NOT work, by default. This sent me on a wild goose chase for several hours. You will have to change default settings that can lead to the vulnerability of your scripts. I finally went to the php manual (php.net) and found the compatibility problems with his examples and my php install (4.2.3). If you really want this book to be effective you are going to have to use old PHP techniques that are proven insecure in this day and age. I assumed with a 2002 publishing date that the book was up to snuff. Despite these major frustrations and snafus, I have been able to learn php. David explains his code very well. He assumes you don't know what is going on. I would say that anyone can learn some php from this book but don't make it your primary source. I think one would be better off learning from a book that focuses on formal/clean coding and 100% working examples. Also beware; his writing is full of typos as well. I am no linguist but seeing the silly errors he makes in his diction leaves me to wonder how serious he is about actually teaching and not rushing it out for the publisher. It reads as if he wrote it and never read back over the pages. So, I will be on the lookout for something better.



5. I have to agree with everyone else here when they say that this book is absolutley packed with grammatical and coding errors. I already have a basic knowledge of PHP and a strong grounding in other languages so at first it was easy for me to see the errors and correct them, but now that I'm getting into the more complicated apsects such as file handling, I'm getting super-frustrated trying to figure out why things don't work. It has more errors than a Friends of Ed book. I'm going back to the store and picking up the O'Reilly book. They've never let me down.

1 comments about PHP Programming with PEAR.

1. The Chapter 2 Summary says: "the examples given cover only a small part of the functionality available within these very fully featured packages." That about sums this up ...
   
   The cursory overviews may inspire an approach, but this books barely begins to address its subject matter. Example code is not, yet, up on the website. This has the look of being slapped together by four author specialists (a la Wrox gang-writing?) albeit with less depth ... hardly the "PHP Programming with PEAR" reference for which so many of us were waiting ...

3 comments about Wireless Web Development with PHP and WAP.

1. This book is a great deal, not only do you learn about wireless web development, you also get to learn PHP which for those who don't know is an excelent open source language for developing rich web sites. It also touches on the basics of using MySQL for the backend. Full of excelent examples that get expanded as you go.



2. Not much meat, I think this book was a general waste of time and money



3. This was a great book. I started off knowing nothing of PHP, WML, and mySQL and ended up on the path to enlightenment. It gave a great how to tie everything together approach. I didn't learn all my PHP from it, but it gave me the basics and the tools to move on into the more advanced stuff.