5 comments about The Web Developer's Guide To Amazon E-Commerce Service: Developing Web Applications Using Amazon Web Services And PHP.

1. I just got done reading and hacking the book and have found many new ways in which to interface with amazon.com web services. The book delivers on its title and does so to a broad audience in a clean style. You will need to understand XML technologies at a beginner's level and be proficient in PHP in order to fully utilize this book. Novices can also learn from this book.
   Thanks Jason Levitt



2. I am relative novice when it comes to using web services but I have some experience with PHP. I found the examples in this book very useful for illustrating how to get up and running quickly while giving a good foundation for more experimentation. The Author does not give away all of the answers to building a complete Amazon app which I found to be be nice because it made me think of other more imaginative ways to use them.



3. The info doesn't do a very good job explaining bits of the code. They just give you a few pages of code at a time and then shows you what the end result looks like. I would have preferred it covering less topics and explaining them better. This book is good if you already have a high traffic site and want to add another feature. Amazon web services may not be the best place if you are wanting to make some income from selling their stuff. The book says it is better if you have something to sell through amazon web services. I also couldn't get one example to work so I emailed the author but didn't get any reply.



4. Some of the reviewers seem to be wishing for a "..for Dummies" book. This aint it. What this book is is an excellent overview of the entire Amazon e-commerce platform from the perspective of a web developer. It is written by a web developer for web developers, full stop. And as far as that statement is true, this is an excellent (and inexpensive 8-) resource.
   
   That said, there is most certainly an opportunity for some author out there to write a down and dirty guide to Amazon e-commerce for folks with mom'n'pop websites. Indeed, how about a down'n'dirty guide to amazon/ebay/google/yahoo services..as well as RSS..you name it? A gaping hole in the market IMHO.
   
   Well, I digress: the current book is excellent and heartily recommended to developers and tech-savvy website managers who don't mind skipping some gory details to read a very good overview of what Amazon has on offer.



5. I think this book is great, first time I have seen it advertized I thought: "I have to get this". Have not finished reading it yet, I am about one third through, but I think one of the big flaws (if not indeed the author meant it that way) is that it dives into XML / WSDL / SOAP too soon or too sudden... at least for me. By the time I have started understanting how everything is organized in the scheme of things, it was all about that, and I personally don't have experience --- a lot with these things.
   
   Another thing I don't particularly enjoy is the presentation is intertwined -- PHP 4 and PHP 5. At times this is confusing and if you just browse trough trying to find something randomly, you always have to read back a little bit to find out whether it's about PHP 4 or 5.
   
   Otherwise, I am pretty happy with it and can't wait to actually start implementing some things I heave learned in this book in my own applications.

5 comments about PHP in Action: Objects, Design, Agility.

1. By far my favorite PHP book and the one that I recommend to everyone who asks me about improving their PHP knowledge.
   
   The book not only covers what you should do, but it goes into explaining why and how in an easy to understand manner. Highly recommend to anyone who understands how to script PHP but now wants to learn how to become a PHP programmer.



2. This is definitely the best book I've read in the programming world. There are some very good PHP books, but this is so far the best. Why? I have a MS in English Lit and some of the books I have read have left me furious over the poor quality of the editing and general sloppyness. Not so here! Amusing at times but not self-involved. Appropriate for an adult. A clear intent to educate that succeeds!
   Good job.
   PS - Almost done and no typos!



3. The problem with PHP experts is that they're just beginning to catch up with experts in other OO languages. The author purports to compare and contrast Java and PHP in early chapters, but fails to point out a significant difference, although he uses such examples over and over: that object constructors that take no arguments may omit the (empty) parentheses in PHP, but not in Java. The author's explanations of certain design patterns are sorely lacking; for instance regarding the Strategy pattern, he uses the ambiguous term "pluggable" over and over but never once the term "algorithm", yet substituting algorithms is precisely what the Strategy pattern is designed for. There is some very good material on MVC -- he even has the courage to contradict Martin Fowler -- but mixed with suggestions that are myopic, such as the author's continued insistence that using PHP's various ob* (output buffer) functions are practically the only way to compartmentalize web page components should you choose to role your own framework, while ignoring the notion of layout definitions (a la Java's Struts/Tiles), which I am using successfully on a current project. So, while this is a much better thought out book than most on PHP, this needs a highly critical reading, something which most PHP programmers are probably not inclined to.



4. This book is geared toward the intermediate PHP developer who wants to bring in aspects of OOP, Testing and Refactoring to help improve the quality of the code they write. It is split into four parts; Basic Tools and Concepts, Testing and Refactoring, Building the Web Interface, and Databases and Infrastructure.
   
   In addition to PHP, I have decent amount of experience with Java and Java web frameworks such as Struts. So as I worked through this book much of the content was familiar to me but from a Java perspective. It was enlightening to see the authors express these same concepts from a PHP perspective. The fact that many times (not always), the implementation in PHP is more concise and elegant that the Java alternative really shows of the power of a dynamically typed language such as PHP. Also the fact that PHP was bred from the beginning to be a web development language gives it a definate advantage in the web arena.
   The authors are honest though, they haven't simply painted implementing OO, TDD, and Refactoring as completelty painless. For instance in the testing portion they've devoted quite a bit of time to showing the difficulties of testing (especially in a Web environment). Such as the need for mock objects and the difficulty in keeping mocks "real enough" so they fail and pass as the real object would. This full disclosure is key for readers to estimate if the extra effort of a concept is worth the benefits for their particual situation.
   
   Overall this is great book for the intended audience. It is not "black and white" about the solutions it proposes. Reasonable alternatives are given and the pros and cons of each are expressed. For those with extensive OO experience, some portions of the book may seem trivial but overall it is still worth a "quick scan" to see the specifics of PHP implementations of general OO concepts.
   PHP in Action: Objects, Design, Agility



5. Very good book for intermediate or advanced php developer, I'm very happy with the book.
   Ruslan

5 comments about Object-Oriented PHP: Concepts, Techniques, and Code.

1. From the perspective of a an experienced procedural PHP programmer learning OO, having read both this book and "PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice" by Matt Zandstra, I would definately recommend the latter to this book.
   
   Just because Zandstra's book doesn't have a cartoon on the front, doesn't make it less accessible. In fact I found it both more advanced and easier to understand at the same time. I imagine Lavin writing this book one chapter at a time, writing each successive chapter based on what he forgot in the previous. Zandstra's order of explanation on the other hand I found invaluable and thoughtful. When you're trying to make sense of a system by reading about it in a linear (book) explanation, the order in which the information is introduced and its context is very important.
   
   Zandstra's book is also more thorough, and seems to approach implementation from an enterprise (read proper) perspective.
   
   Lavin spends a lot of time on an example of using OO to build a system to display images in a directory. In hindsight, it turns out the design of his code is flawed in some places. Introduction material is no place to be teaching bad habits of any kind.
   
   This book is $10 cheaper than Objects, Patterns, and Practice, but I think if you're serious about learning OO in PHP the extra $10 is worth it for a higher quality book.



2. Thanks to this book now I understand the php code written on OOP style.
   After reading this book I was able to develop a very large open source project written entirely in OOP style with php5 and it was not very difficult either.



3. Peter Lavin provides us with sound, easy to understand concepts, techniques, and examples in Object-Oriented PHP. This book woke me up to the universe of OOPhp where many other PHP5 books had put me to sleep or utterly confused. If you want to get a grasp on how to implement Object-Oriented programming in your PHP code, I can highly recommend this book. It will get you moving along.
   
   I have used php since v.3 first came out. PHP's initial poor implementation of OOP completely turned me off. I found that I just did not want to do any OOP in PHP, not if that is what OOP is in PHP. Although PHP5 introduced good OOP capabilities I was so entrenched in procedural coding, and have a fairly large library of functions for a framework that I developed for my client websites that I pretty much ignored the OOP capabilities of PHP5 except in some minor cases. And all the books I got on PHP5 just left me scratching my head as to why would I want to go through all the hassle of converting the code to OOP.
   
   With an Amazon gift certificate, I picked up this book, my curiosity peeked again regarding OOP in PHP due to taking a Java class on-line. I read it cover to cover and put it down saying, good book, OOP in PHP might be worth it. Without even thinking about it, I suddenly found myself converting my framework to OOP code and loving it. Peter Lavin flipped the ol' light bulb switch to on and I got it.
   
   Object-Oriented PHP by Peter Lavin did three things, no make that four to get me to want to switch to OOPhp.
   
   1. It explained PHP's OOP concepts simply and clearly. I didn't put the book down thinking it is still all a mystery to me. For example, it didn't throw Design Patterns at me early like most of the other books so by the time I got to his brief explanation of Patterns I was ready for them. Ironically, he only discusses the Singleton Pattern and then very briefly.
   
   2. It provided useful examples of the concepts he presents. I wanted to understand the concepts of PHP and his examples helped me do that. I do wish that he would have provided more extensive code examples (or less truncated) but his explanations of the code examples were sufficient that maybe he really didn't need more.
   
   3. This book is not long. Some may actually feel robbed by its brevity but I found the concise explanation of the concepts with good examples refreshing and understandable. It kept me moving along and not bogged down so that I could finish the book. Again, I sort of wished for more complete code examples but that may have ruined the pacing of the book - maybe a follow-up "Recipe book" from the author to round it out?
   
   4. Finally, and I suppose this will sound silly, but the author gave me permission to use procedural code. This was so unlike many OOP advocates that it really stuck out although it was only one line in this fine book. More importantly, after giving me permission to use procedural code, he showed me why I would rather use OOP techniques instead. And bam! Here I am, converting thousands of lines of procedural code over to OOP.
   
   Thanks Peter Lavin



4. I'll agree with others and say that Mike Zandstra's book covers this topic better. The author goes through one example throughout the book (using classes to manipulate a file directory) without fulling explaining how some of the topics work. For example, the author gives a code example, say in english what it's doing to the files, but doesn't explain how.
   
   On the flip side, it is a good book for explaining what OOP is and why it's such and advance for PHP. I just wouldn't use this book to learn it.



5. I am an experienced sequential PHP programmer and wanted to make the jump to Object Oriented PHP.
   
   I have already learned OO concepts and programming through various classes. This book has a lot of good information that was exactly what I needed.
   
   The reading can be a bit awkward at times, and requires reading ahead to understand back(?). In other words things are used before their explained, and sometimes their used to explain other things, so you must eventually double back.
   
   PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER - 2 thumbs up.
   
   All in all if you are a PHP programmer wanting to upgrade, its worth the price.

1 comments about Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management.

1. Marc starts off by explaining how to install and configure phpMyAdmin on Windows and Linux. Given a working LAMP or WAMP platform, any reader with basic PHP skills should be able to get phpMyAdmin up and running really quickly.
   
   After a first overview over the user interface, the author explains how to create databases and tables, and how to enter data. A quick overview over phpMyAdmin's querying capabilities concludes the "First steps" chapter. Next, the author dives into changing data. I was surprised to learn that phpMyAdmin has a multi-row editing feature.
   
   The "Changing Table Structures" chapter deals with how to edit table definitions and the various column types like TEXT, BLOB ENUM, and DATE. This chapter also deals with index management, and explaining queries.
   
   Chapter 7, "Exporting Structure and Data", deals with exporting databases. Though I personally have never seen the value of exporting a database to anything else than SQL, I was rather surprised to learn that phpMyAdmin supports exporting to PDF, Word, Excep, Open Office, Latex, XML, or YAML format.
   
   Consequently, the next chapter deals with importing structure and data. Due to various server limits like timeout, or limitations of the file upload size, this is not always as easy as it might seem. The author explains the problems and shows ways to circumvent restrictions, which I think is very important, as I see quite a few users in the field struggling with importing large database dump files.
   
   Chapter 9 deals with searching the database, without having to write SQL statements. I was not aware, for example, of the possiblity to search all database tables for strings or even regular expressions. The next chapter covers table and database operations, including table maintenance, renaming tables, moving and copying tables, appending data to a table, and even copying a whole database, which can be an interesting alternative to creating a backup before upgrading it. The database backup feature is complemented by the possibility to rename a database, thus allowing you to create a backup and potentially restore it without having do download and upload SQL dumps.
   
   Chapter 11 introduces the relational system. Since MyISAM tables do not support key relationships, phpMyAdmin can optionally administer information about table relations. The author explains how to set up phpMyAdmin to do this, and continues by introducing the Designer, which is an ajaxy tool to work with table relationships, foreign keys, and check the referential integrity of a database.
   
   Of course, a chapter on how to write SQL statements with phpMyAdmin can not be left out from a book like this. The author explains how phpMyAdmin helps the user to write SQL statements, and shows how an external SQL validator can be used, to make sure that the statements conform to the SQL standard. He then dives into creating multi-table queries, which is where more complex criteria and joins come into play.
   
   Next, the author explains bookmarks, a way of storing statements for later reuse, just like browser bookmarks. In that chapter, I was surprised to learn that phpMyAdmin even allows changing the default initial query that is executed when the table is browsed.
   
   Following a short chapter on how to create database documentation in tabular or PDF format, mime-based transformations are explained. Mime-based transformations allow you, for example, to configure phpMyAdmin to display thumbnails of images stored in the database, format dates, create links, or display strings in hex format, which can be useful to debug issues with different or wrong character encodings. These transformations were, admittedly, completely new for me, and I think they may in fact be one of the most powerful features phpMyAdmin has.
   
   Towards the end of the book, the author covers an important topic, namely character sets and collations. He explains the differences between MySQL versions before and after 4.1, and then continues with a short introduction of new features in MySQL 5, like views, stored procedures, triggers, information_schema as the standards-compatible way to access meta data, and profiling.
   
   This chapter is followed by "MySQL Server Administration", which comprises of user and privilege management, retrieving database information, and checking the server status. The book is concluded with a Troubleshooting chapter that gives hints on how to solve common errors.
   
   I like the book for its straight and logical structure. The author's explanations are short and to the point, so the user is provided with the right amount of information to get going with phpMyAdmin. I would strongly suggest to have a basic level understanding of database theory (tables, relations, keys), as the author does not give any theoretical background, but just shows how to make use of the features in phpMyAdmin.
   
   For $34.99, you get 300+ pages packed with information about all aspects of phpMyAdmin. I must say that the book's layout is not one of the most beautiful ones I have ever seen, and some screen shots could be of better quality, but this does not really affect the reading experience too much. I can definitely recommend this book, and according to the phpMyAdmin website, it is also available in various translations like Czech, German, Italian, and Spanish.

5 comments about PHP in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)).

1. Doesn't waste my time with how to run an editor and doesn't assume I know too much, either. The examples are concise.
   
   This book works well as a handbook and as a text. Highly recommended!



2. A decent broad coverage of many PHP basics but I didn't really learn much more than I had found on my own by randomly poking around in the online PHP manual every time I needed a function to get a job done. I was hoping that reading a book like this from cover to cover would expose some parts of PHP I missed or teach some techniques and best practice that I didn't figure out myself. Unfortunately it did not.
   
   For someone who known no PHP at all (and no C) I would give that a 4 star rating. But every PHP programmer has access to great free online PHP manual so I think this book has less value. And anyone who knows C can start programming PHP right away without reading much of anything. I assume the average programmer knows some C or Java and can read the online PHP manual. For those people, this book is no better than 3.



3. I bought this book after studying PHP with the author's online tutorials. They covered quite a bit of what was in the book but I enjoyed the online version so much, I decided to thank him for putting a free online version out on the net by buying his book. In addition, I like to have the hard copy for a reference. Excellently written and one of the clearest and easiest programming books I've every read. It is also one of the few programming books I have read without any programming errors in it.



4. I am pretty familiar with PHP and worked with it some time ago, but I needed a book to quickly refresh my knowledge of it for a project, and this book did a pretty good job of that. It gets to the point on the right topics (including chapters on OOP, Cookies and Sessions, and Databases) and has a short, useful function reference instead of listing every function under the sun.
   
   Nonetheless, there are many errors both in the code and in the writing. If you don't have a solid foundation in PHP and programming, these errors can really throw you off. Sometimes I would get confused as I tried to figure out why a line of code does what the author says it does only to realize it was an error that made it into print. If the editing had been better and caught these errors, the book would have received a four-star rating from me.
   
   Bottom line, if you know PHP and need a good reference book or a book to quickly review concepts and functions, this book is for you. Don't buy this book if you are new to PHP.



5. The O'Reilly "in a Nuthsell" series is the best reference to standard libraries and language features available. PHP in a Nutshell sullies the name, however, with what amounts to an introductory survey in the course and little, if any, analysis of standard libraries. Certain tips, such as those on flash and pdf handling are interesting, but irrelevant to most programmers. This goes doubly for the discussion of PHP's 2D drawing API; it seems as though the authors decided they would provide a schizophrenic volume which is on the one hand a beginner's tutorial and on the other hand a survey of the more esoteric, unused portions of the language.

3 comments about Beginning PHP and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition (Beginning: From Novice to Professional).

1. Buyer beware! There is no help for this book. Downloads (code) does not work. Email messages to authors help links are not answered.
   
   I have read and used many books about PHP and MYSQL, this one is impossible to get through the 3d Chapter successfully.



2. This is an excellent book. It has enhanced my PHP, MySQL, object oriented programming and e-commerce skills. It is challenging, (because of the wealth of knowledge), but well worth the effort. And when I had a problem, author Cristian Darle responded accurately and courteously to my email. Very highly recommended.



3. Even though it can be argued that this book's title should actually be interpreted as "Beginning E-Commerce (using PHP and MySQL)", I still think that the word "beginning" should not be printed on the cover of this book.
   
   The book deals with topics that fall into the intermediate developer's skill set, like OOP, templating with Smarty, PDO for DB access, Ajax and even REST/SOAP in the final chapter. YOU HAVE to have prior knowledge of those technologies before attempting to successfully complete this book, as the authors spend very little time introducing them.
   
   Along with "Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP" this book is one of the few full length practical tutorial books available on PHP. So, if you're an intermediate developer looking to sharpen your skills by taking on a larger project, then this is a book you definitely want to buy.
   
   I also want to point out that despite being from the same country as the authors, I've never heard of them before seeing their book on Amazon.

2 comments about CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development.

1. My favorite book on PHP/MySQL is still PHP and MySQL Web Development (3rd Edition) (Developer's Library). It's PHP 101 and MySQL 101 all wrapped up in a fantastic, comprehensive book with tons of code samples.
   
   CodeIgniter is a perfect compliment, perhaps a PHP 201 guide. It takes all of the rigorous PHP hard-coding and supplies a framework to develop code faster and with the best practices of a MVC system. Aside from being well-written with tons of real-world examples, one of the things I like best about this book is that it explains what it's not. CodeIgniter is a home-grown open-source framework. As such, it has some admitted limitations. The book is refreshing and honest.
   
   The book is a perfect way of learning advanced development techniques, not just using CodeIgniter though. I'd highly recommend the book. The book states "Improve your PHP coding productivity with the free compact open-source MVC CodeIgniter framework!". This is both honest and accurate!



2. When I first discovered CodeIgniter, I was overcome with glee after following the video tutorials. It all worked. There was no need to rely on any command-line interaction to "automagically" build my application for me. There was no dependence on PEAR or any other outside resources. There was just CodeIgniter. And it worked.
   
   As soon as I got a grasp on what it was doing and why, I dove into the excellent User Guide and began to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. This felt like home. The user guide is written in such a non-intimidating manner that it invites even the most timid of PHP developers. To this day, I still refer to the user guide when I forget specific syntax or function names and it's a guick in-and-out routine. Nothing at all complex about it.
   
   Not too long ago I came across a book by Packt Publishing called 'CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development'. At first, I thought to myself, "Why?". The combination of the user guide, the forum and CodeIgniter's well structured code is surely enough for anybody to learn, right? What could this book have that any potential developer could not obtain through these natural resources?
   
   Throughout the fifteen chapters in the book, the author walks you through building a functional application from start to finish (well, at least as finished as any web application truly is). At first I thought the choice of the application to build was rather odd, but as I continued reading the book, I realized it was a good example because of the wide array of helpers, libraries and other standard CodeIgniter components and logic the application uses. Specifically, the example application provides a way to monitor several different aspects of remote websites by performing tests and generating reports. The author does a great job of walking the reader through the process step by step while explaining why and how the various CodeIgniter components are being used.
   
   However, I did find the odd spelling error here and there and I don't necessarily agree with outputting HTML from a model, but overall this book is a great addition to the natural resources that the user guide and forum provide. This book will be of no help to the (albeit few) people that immediately jump into the forums asking "how do I..." without taking a little time to read through the user guide and searching pre-existent forum threads to find a solution for their problem, but for those who truly want to learn more about the framework and want to have a good book on hand, then this book certainly does the trick.

No comments about Head First PHP & MySQL.

5 comments about Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP.

1. I certainly agree with those who said this book is way too sparse, weighing in at 176 non-packed pages. For the same audience this book is intended for I would instead recommend "Professional Joomla" by Dan Rahmel. It covers the same material plus a great deal more and it costs less money. It even gives more explanation and examples of building components, modules, and plugins, things "Learning Joomla" is supposed to focus on.



2. Since you can probably count the books written for Joomla on both hands, this book is the best one because its the ONLY ONE dealing on Beginners extension development, (ergo the high price and few pages). That being said, it is a good book to have in your library if you are planning on becomming a joomla developer. For those of us who are reverse engineering hackers (learn from seeing examples), this book is a must.



3. As the publish date shows, this book was brought to market quite a while before J!1.5 was code complete. I don't know if it's that or if the developer was too used to 1.0 development (there is a dramatic difference) but either way, this book co-mingled 1.0 and 1.5 development practices too much, and just basically glanced over the entire MVC architecture that was built into the 1.5 release of J! I'm a little disappointed as I was expecting more, being a fan of Leblanc, his knowledge and helpfulness in Joomla related things.
   
   For your money, you are much better off purchasing 'Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development' by James Kennard. It has helped me immensly in understanding the new J! framework and APIs.



4. I think this book is an excellent start to learning about J!1.5 extensions development. It has real examples that are easy to follow and adapt to suit a variety of purposes.
   Please note that the book is much thinner than you would think - about 170 pages cover to cover - so initally I was somewhat disappointed, but the book covers the topics you need to get started and I can still heartily recommend it!



5. At first sight this book looks great. It is concise and gives a good introduction from the start to build Joomla extensions. It does not waste pages explaining how to program in SQL and PHP. You are supposed to have mastered that. The book has a major weak point. For the main part it just shows lots of code, but does not explain anything about the API classes and how they relate. After reading the book and trying to create your own extension, it feels like you have not understood anything really.
   
   A second drawback is that the author seems not to bother about testing the sample code. It contains several very obvious bugs, eg using a functou JOutputFilter instead of JFilterOutput. This is annoying.
   
   Summarized, the book may give you a small start but is insufficient for seriuous development. The sad thing is that the official Joomla documentation is in a very alpha stage of development.

5 comments about Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8.

1. This is a good book. It teaches many useful techniques and how lots of "how to" ideas. However, the faux site that is created isn't goal oriented which left me feeling like the book was just a collection of random things to do. It seemed disorganized at times when you would or wouldn't create another page from scratch vs. revamping one you had already made. It was not always clear why you would be better to take one approach vs. the other. Setting up the localhost environment was somewhat confusing, though not too bad.
   
   I will definitely use it frequently. Good information, good book, good deal.



2. This man makes a promise of a written format that can be followed. The writtng is NOT CLEAR and leaves much to the readers imagination of to what exactly the format should be. There is no CD so that you can see how the step by step process works. He names his files but does not show the real differences between how he is set up and how you can set up to fit your needs. I waisted my money. He claims in the book there is support which at best is terrible.
   
   The worst book I have ever bought on coding. If I were you try another writter.



3. This is a very good book for learning PHP, and surprisingly, most of the examples work right out of the book as he's written them, which seems rare for a programming book these days. The projects that he has you complete are highly relevant to what you'd actually be doing with PHP, and that makes it even better.
   
   The only trouble I had with this book was that he sure packed a lot of information into each chapter, and he didn't use the sidebars as much as I would have hoped. It's easy enough to follow along with the examples the first time, but if you want to go back again and figure out how he programmed a small detail, you'll never find it unless you reread the whole chapter again. All it would have taken was a few little bullets here and there in the margins to point out some of the off-topic stuff that was going on in the examples, and the book would be much more functional as a reference. As it stands, I probably will have to get a whole new book for that purpose.
   
   Also, the support on this book is phenomenal. I missed a small detail in Chapter 6 that caused my script to fail, and when I posted on the book's message board, I had a reply from the author in less than a day. That's a really cool added bonus.



4. I am a frontpage user that has set up static pages in a web site. I needed to move from static pages to dynamic pages using a database. I couldn't use PHP with FrontPage so I switched to Dreamweaver and needed a book that covered both dynamic pages and Dreamwaver. This book walked me through setting up the environment to have Dreamweaver work with Apache, PHP, MySQL and phpMyAdmin. I am completely non-technical so these areas were beyond my comfort zone but the book walked me through it very successfully. It then took me through CSS styles, setting up an online feedback form, setting up my first database and tying it into Dreamweaver. It also showed how to insert, delete and maintain records in order to keep the database up to date. This was an excellent book for a non-techie as it didn't take any knowledge for granted.



5. This book is written very clearly and is really easy to follow. I've learned a lot of other really useful stuff than just the PHP content, things that I now realise I should have been taught by the official Dreamweaver 8 book, but weren't. The PHP content for which I bought this book is fantastic - much better than another generic PHP/MySQL I have read, as this is tailored to the Dreamweaver 8 environment which takes a lot of the guessing out of the equation. This book is written by and for people who use Dreamweaver 8 in a practical situation. I'm still less than half way through my book and already feel like I've learned much more than I expected. Highly recommended. I'll be checking out Mr Powers' other books when I finish this one. Thanks David Powers, you're a genius!