5 comments about Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions.

1. Could a book that would obviously be about grabbing a web surfer's attention for commercial purposes be helpful to someone who wasn't particularly concerned about `conversions'? In this case, absolutely yes. If you can allow your mind to think outside the box just a bit, this book can really provide some helpful advice which can be easily translated to your particular goal.
   
   Mr. Ash assumes you know what you want to do but nevertheless gently nudges you with reminders of the many things which you should be considering. Complex - but necessary - concepts are explained in context and without boring definitions so that you can smile smugly with the sure and steadfast knowledge that you've always understood things like Full Factorial Non-Parametric Testing. After a few pages, you'll be eager to make meaningful changes to your own website!



2. Certain types of advice go without saying; eat your vegetables, listen to your mother, look both ways before crossing the street. In his new book Landing Page Optimization, Tim Ash reminds us of fundamental landing page design concepts that seem simple. But we all (at least occasionally) fall into the trap of forgetting them when designing a page.
   
   Landing Page Optimization starts and ends with a very simple premise: you are not the expert in designing an effective landing page -- your customers are. You may feel that you have pegged the perfect message, the right layout and the simplest form. You reason you derived all of these elements from an exact understanding of who is visiting the website and why. Truth is, you haven't. Your design most likely rests on how you see your product or service, how you structure your company, what your CEO likes, or any number of other things that have little or nothing to do with the customer's needs. Swallow your pride, trust your customers to tell you what they want through their actions, and give it to them.
   
   Tim asserts the basic principle that your page must appeal to the emotional responses of the visitor. Make them feel welcome, safe and connected to your site. Unfortunately, you don't have the time to explain to them why they should trust and commit. Visitors devote only a few seconds to your landing page, and you must make the most of these seconds. Assume no one wants to read your lengthy descriptions. Communicate quickly with images and bulleted lists, with your overall goal of maximizing conversions constantly in mind.
   
   Tim has delivered a must-read book for every level of an organization that wants to make its website and online marketing efforts successful. Far from being a book for any one job title, Landing Page Optimization gives everyone in an organization a solid foundation for how to think about customers, how that relates to design, and how to test sites with maximizing conversions in mind. Each person involved in landing page design must think about how each element on the landing page helps or hinders a visitor's ability to understand immediately who the site owner is, conclude there's a solid benefit for them, and trust the site owner with their information.
   
   In all, Landing Page Optimization provides a valuable look at the factors we should consider when evaluating the effectiveness of any landing page. This excellent read will leave you saying, "I knew that! Why haven't I been doing this all along?!?"



3. Though I had given this book 5 stars, I really mean it - this book is everything you need about the topic.
   But.
   A warning here. Author goes on for a lot of math, theory and things, what can scare you away, in case your mind is prepared to see a lot of pictures & comics style reading like you probably saw in this book:
   
   Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
   
   I would say - if you want easy book to read on a topic - take a Steve's book, but of you are ready to serious brain wash with a topics starting from Myer/Briggs personas (same topic is covered by another great book - Waiting for your cat to bark, from Eisenberg brothers), probability theory, quantitative approaches, and other similar issues - then this book is for you.
   
   Just do not expect the easy go read. This is what I wanted to say



4. This book may be the best thing since sliced bread for you, or can be practically useless. It has an extensive focus on Joe web surfer's persona, on why and how he behaves on the web. It also explains basic concepts such as A-B split testing, ROI, and gives a few examples from author's consulting background. There's a few mathematical formulas, which I am sure are excellent for marketing folks.
   
   But what completely lacks from this book is THE WHAT and THE HOW. The "Uncovering Problems" section is surprisingly small and has no real value. It is explainable - the later part of the book is nothing but a marketing promo of author's consulting business. This costs author 1 star in my review.
   
   The second star I remove because this book is completely useless for small to medium business. If you are a company with under $20 million in revenue - which is where 99% of websites belong - this book is not going to help you much.



5. The book was written by Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com, a web analytics and site optimization service who does landing page optimization among other things for his living.
   
   It is a real-world and practical guide to landing page testing and optimization without any fluff. It is really for the folks who do the testing and the ones who have to sell it to their boss and need to know about the details of the process of landing page testing, what is involved, what are the risks and how it should be approached and why.
   
   It is very useful and complimentary to the "Landing Page Handbook" by MarketingSherpa, the $500 "bible" for folks who do serious landing page optimization for their business.
   
   They also overlap in a few areas. This means that it is also a good buy for people who are not doing enough business that involves using landing pages to justify and recoup the $500 investment in the MarketingSherpa book. It's not exactly an alternative, but it is a start that cost a lot less.
   
   If you are doing serious business with landing pages, I recommend getting both books. The return (increase in conversion = increase in business and profits) you will get out from it will pay for the initial investment quickly and then over and over again for the time to come.

5 comments about Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.

1. In depth, easy to read, detailed from a web analytics pro. My only complaint is that he should identify himself as the Evangelist for Google Analytics. He recommends GA because it's free, but he should make it clear that companies that use GA are providing confidential company data to Google that could be used against them in the pricing of keywords.



2. Thank you, Avinash! Avinash has done the impossible: he's made analytics fun, easy-to-understand, and clearly communicated how analytics is even more important than many of us have treated it. Avinash's "Trinity" approach of creating actionable insights & metrics from focusing on the right clickstream data, doing the right kind of customer research, all of which leads to knowing how to produce the right kind of dashboard. If you buy only one book on analytics, this has to be it.



3. Before I begin I must apologize for the length of this review, I suffer from acute conciseness deficiency.
   
   Avinash's greatest strength is his humility, and it comes through in this book and his blog in spades. All too often the broader analytic community (which I include myself in), is so caught up in its metrics, graphs, charts, esoteric calculations and acronyms that we forget that our fundamental purpose is to inform and assist in change. Even if we do not lose sight of that goal, we get so caught up in our analysis that we begin to think we know better than anyone else, including the people buying our products/consuming our content.
   
   With the risk of sounding terse, Avinash cuts through all of that crap to right the ship as it were, and his resulting material can be summarized in 5 points.
   
   
   1. Customers know best - should be self evident but really isn't (get over yourself and start trying to figure out what the customers want because you really don't know).
   
   
   2. Capture data that can assist said customers - in other words, if the data and other pretty charts you are constructing cannot lead to an insight or action that will assist your customers; you're wasting your time. Yes, even that amazingly color coded spreadsheet with pivot tables and charts bursting out of every cell.
   
   
   3. Quantitative data is limited in what it can tell you - another pitfall of the analytic community is that we're so caught up in numbers that we rarely stop to consider the source or validity of our observations, a particularly fatal flaw in an emerging industry with less than ideal methods of capture.
   
   
   4. Context is king - When it comes to data, context is everything and a second piece of data, incorporated with the first, can have powerful effects. As a quick example, page hits, combined with bounce rate (a metric that measures how many people left your page within a predetermined interval), can indicate how many people are truly coming to your website to engage in its content). In other words, if you achieve a 100% increase in hits but 90% of them "bounce", you're not doing as well as if the same site achieved an 80% increase in hits with a 40% bounce rate. A very different conclusion would have been drawn if hits alone were observed in this case.
   
   
   5. Qualitative data is a key piece of the puzzle - as a corollary of #3, a truly effective analysis of a website will utilize qualitative and quantitative data to help inform ones decisions.
   
   
   
   Avinish then does an excellent job of showing how one can go about creating, analyzing and acting out ones web analytics strategy within the framework laid out above. If one has even a cursory understanding of how a website is built and therefore how to input a simple tag into the relevant pages, one can utilize this book to get started analyzing their web traffic in a meaningful way, for free, this instant. In addition, and more importantly, you will have formulated the solid framework and understanding necessary to adapt as the industry changes, something it does at an exciting/terrifying pace. An excellent read.



4. I have read several web analytics books and Avinash's book is definitely the one I would recommend first.
   
   What you can learn from the book:
   - how to think about and how to approach web analytics -- this is where this book excels
   - how to deliver actionable results - the mantra of Avinash
   - how to start with the basic metrics
   
   What not to expect from this book:
   - you will not learn how to use any analytics software
   - you will not learn details about the technical aspects, frequent problems with data and measurement, what to avoid etc.
   
   Check out Avinash's blog to get a picture of what you can get from the book.



5. If you find yourself stumped with how to improve your website, or don't know where to begin with looking at web statistics, this book has everything. It begins with going through the foundation of what web analysis really is and definitions and explanations of different metrics and how they can be useful. He then goes into detail with different metrics such as bounce rate, segmentation, and some things you probably never considered. It steps you through knowing what analytics tool to use and how to implement it. It has wonderful examples and sample reports that you can tailor to your own company.
   
   This book is very actionable. I can only speak from a beginner's perspective, but this book is easy to follow and has golden nuggets that even experienced web statisticians can take another look at. The highest recommendation possible from me. I will be waiting for another of Avinash's books.

5 comments about Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition).

1. Hi, the other reviewers are right on with the positive feedback they give. My 2 cents and the reason I gave this 3 stars instead of 5 is simply that there is no published information on mistakes in this book, which is very frustrating. I am a beginner Cocoa programmer, but a very experienced C and Java programmer. When I run into things that don't work as described in the book I need to find out from a book FAQ, errata, or contact with the author whether it is his mistake or mine. This is just basic table stakes of publishing a tech book after 2000, and it is surprising that it is not possible with this book. So - beware, as with any tech book there are mistakes but you have to find and deal with them on your own. That said, I don't think there are many. Author - if you read this, please at least put up a simple page where readers can give feedback or you can post corrections, check page 72 for example.
   
   Errata site found with the help below, bumping my rating up if Amazon will let me.



2. I tried learning Cocoa on my own using online resources, but it wasn't until I followed the tutorials in this book that I felt that I really learned Cocoa. The explanations are to the point, examples are clear. The only negative thing I can say about the 2nd edition of the book is that it was written before XCode 3.0, so some of the steps are different from XCode 2.0.
   
   If you're using XCode 2.0, get this edition, otherwise wait till 3rd edition comes out.



3. The author employs an good teaching technique that leads step by step to understanding the workings of Cocoa and XCode. I am familiar with the Object Oriented Programming concept and that helped to understand the material covered. The hands-on exercises cover all the basics and are short and relatively easy. I also like the "tone" employed by the author. It's friendly, supportive and plain English.
   There is some miss-match between the current version of Cocoa (2.0)/XCode (3.0) and the book, especially where it concerns Interface Builder and the illustrations. But it was fairly easy to figure out. Except for some chapters, like Creating Interface Builder palettes.
   Overall I highly recommend this book, while I also hope that the author posts some addendum on the internet that shows the book's examples using the current version of the software.



4. I'm new to Cocoa/Objective-C but have a fairly extensive background in software development in a variety of different languages. What I needed to get me started was something that gave a broad overview of the Cocoa Framework and some simple examples of how the Interface Builder and code fit together. This book did a great job of doing this. Unlike "Learning Cocoa with Objective-C" (a book I really struggled with) this book isn't really tutorial based and doesn't try and take you through how to build some big whiz-bang application. It's the sort of book that helps get you started developing your own application and whenever you have a question like "I wonder how to setup a NSTableView delegate" there's a very good chance that there'll be an example of doing just that in the book. After a few days with this book I was confident enough to start my own development, and haven't looked back since.



5. This book is too high-level and not descriptive enough. Could be a good intro but doesn't really help to do some real-world tasks.

5 comments about Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications.

1. Have you ever wondered how:
   * Google comes up with its search results
   * Amazon recommends you books/movies/music
   * spam filters decide good from bad
   
   Well, Toby Segaran not only explains these topics and more in Collective Intelligence, but he does so in a way accessible to software developers that haven't worked on machine-learning problems before. He even provides working Python code for all the algorithms.
   
   Collective Intelligence is a great read. I could not wait to get home and get back to it -- and when I went in to work the next morning, I usually had a new idea or two of how to improve our software. I also have been implementing the most important examples in Groovy to make sure I get them.
   
   Collective Intelligence is accessible to all practicing software engineers, but if you are a Senior Software Engineer or "better," this is a must-read. Proper application of the algorithms in this book are a great way to simplify your system and avoid getting nickel-and-dimed to death with new ways to prioritize/categorize/slice-and-dice your data.



2. This book introduces you to a lot of useful math for web 2.0 or social based applications and brings it all the way down to code you can write and run in Python. I learned about some great python libraries out there like beautiful soup and others which are useful in more ways than just the collective intelligence aspect utilized in the book. There were even a few more elegant ways of doing something in Python that I learned through reading the code in this book. Just about every application I use could make use of the math and algorithms in this book to make using it a bit more pleasant experience. If you're a python programmer you must have this on your bookshelf, if you are a programmer that wants people to like your application you should have this book in a tattered state on your bookshelf.



3. Love the book, great topical review of methods with working examples. Every chapter makes you think of a dozen things you could do next.
   My only reason for 4 instead of 5 stars is that the code examples are all python-based and leverage python specific features. The book title should be "Programming Collective Intelligence...with Python" although it does present a fun challenge to convert the examples to a different language (like Ruby!).



4. I use python as my primary programming language, when I ordered this book I was concerned it would be more about website design then AI algorithms (collective intelligence encompasses a subset of soft AI algorithms that draw upon information from various sources readily avaliable on the Internet, large document collections, etc.) I found the text to be readable with broad application in other areas including document classification systems for analyzing large amount of documents in the context of e-discovery. I would recommend this book to anyone using any-type of clustering process for review and analyzing documents and data. Taxonomic, clustering, neural networks, etc. are sold generally to the public as magic while in fact the concepts are readily accessible in this book.



5. As a long time O'Reilly reader & fan, I have to say this is the best O'Reilly book I've
   read in the past several years, and is now among my favorite programming books in general. This is really an applied Artificial Intelligence book in disguise, as it covers most of the core topics found amongst the top AI textbooks. I've recently read a few of the standard AI books, such as Norvig, Duda & Hart; which are thorough, but in a bad way, because they miss the forest for the trees. Your average working software developer is not going to be able to use these textbooks to create any code without investing a lot of time, or stopping long the way to get a Phd.
   
   And this is precisely where this books shines, unlike similar books out there--Toby Segaran has managed to explain the core AI algorithms in plain language, with very readable code examples that implement a fully working example to get you started. Reading this book made me realize most of the AI that I've studied is not hard in itself, but rather the standard way AI algorithms are presented in textbooks is just terrible and obfuscated.
   
   For example, Toby describes a fully working backpropagation neural network, with code(!) in about 9 pages. I've never seen a NN presentation better than this. There were several chapters where I couldn't help laughing at how conceptually easy a given algorithm ends up being if only you stop and explain it as simply as possible, and throw out most of the mathematical notation. That sounds obvious, but for some reason few authors think brevity helps get the point across, especially when dealing with a mathematical topic. So kudos to Toby for this, which is a major accomplishment in itself, as it's going to really help the book appeal to a much wider audience.
   
   I also though it was a great idea to connect every topic in the book to large data sets which anyone can get off the web. This lead me to think of many other kinds of datasets to try this code on, so it's not the kind of book that you read and put away;
   but rather you keep tweaking the example code(available on the book's website), adding to it and experimenting.
   
   In all, a great book, highly recommended!

5 comments about Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction.

1. I started by reading the first edition of this book. I got the second edition when I was almost finished with the first edition of this book.
   
   After getting the new version of the book I decided to continue reading the old one because I found that there are quite a few differences between the old and the new edition.
   
   This is perhaps one of the best books that I have ever read on programming in my life. The author Steve McConnell has put together a book that is independent of what ever programming language that is used. In the authors words. He wanted to write a good book on software construction because he had looked around and had not found any good books out there on the subject. I would have to agree with him there are not a lot of books on good programming technic. There are hundreds of books on this programming language or that programming language.
   
   Code complete is so good that I feel every programmer should read it. It would be best if in the first year of college every single student read the book. I just don't know how it could fit into a regular curriculum. Even if it does not fit that well into a regular curriculum what is taught in this book is probably more important then what most people learn at school.
   
   I like the book and would advise it to anyone that programs.
   
   I am looking forward to the new edition because the old book didn't have much advice about object oriented programming. Mostly because it was a new way of programming when the book was first written and he didn't want to commit much information to it when object oriented programming was so new. He does talk a little about things that are outdated but the book is still one of the best.
   
   I will wait a while before I read the second edition but I expect to be as satisfied with it as I was this one.
   
   Great book that should be in every programmers library.



2. it's a book that all programmers must to read. it explain a lot of interesting things about how to made good software!



3. I'm currently studying computer science and have been reading this in my spare time. Skip your lectures. Just read this book! If you want to construct software in a timely, efficient, and complete manner--this is the definitive book to read. Not dry at all, Steve McConnell covers topics for all experience levels. Even if you're an experienced programmer, you will learn something from this great piece of literature.
   
   I've only gone through the first few chapters thus far. So pending finishing my reading, I'll update this review. Unfortunately this might never happen as I find myself re-reading portions of the book to pick up new ideas and details for software construction!



4. If you're an experienced software developer or a newbee in the world of commercial computer programming this book will give a good kick in the right direction. Steve McConnel will keep you hooked by mixing the right guiding concepts with real-life knowledge and examples.



5. This was a great book both for me and my team. I've been in the software industry for many years. I started building a team of developers and needed an easy way to bring novice and experienced programmers together on a similar set of standards. This book provided us with the perfect framework from which to start our team. We've developed several major projects using the principles in this book and have experienced a great deal of success.
   
   One warning, the book gets a bit tedious after the first half. If you're looking to improve your C programming skills, it gets really detailed into pointers and other fun, or not, stuff. Also, the examples are in VB.NET...but you still get the point.

5 comments about Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual.

1. It is discouraging to work with the book. To much small talk and very little hands on. You have to go trough four pages of autor's ideas and tips before you find what you are looking for or what you have to do. The book could be four times smaller and then would have been one of the best.



2. This book is a lifesaver! I still had many questions about Dreamweaver after taking a six-week online class, but no one to ask. Dreamwear CS3 the missing manual answered all of them and more. It has made my job easier, and completing task faster.



3. I like this book and the tutorials, and I'm glad I bought it, BUT it gets annoying after a while with how verbose it is. For instance, the author even says at one point in the first chapter,
   
   '"Enough already! I want to build a web page," you're probably saying.'
   
   Yes, you're right! That IS what I was saying!
   
   He then takes p.44-64, (20 pages!) to walk you through importing a graphic, copying a text file, adding a background, and centering the page in the browser. When you list on a piece of paper the steps that you just did and repeat it, it can be carried out within maybe 90 seconds.
   
   I started to think that this book is like friends you may have that are really nice, they're smart, and you like them, but they just can't give you the short version of a story! I find myself jotting in the margin the one thing from the whole page to remember.
   
   This is a book for absolute beginners, not only to Dreamweaver but to web pages in general. If you've been writing web pages in a text editor and just want to see how Dreamweaver can make everything easier, this book makes you want to pull your hair out! For instance, three leading paragraphs in Chapter 2 on adding text to your pages that can be summed up as, "Text is still the most important thing on the web". WE ALL KNOW THAT! Don't make me read a whole page for that!!
   
   I buy a new computer book about once a week, and this book does what so many are guilty of - sidebars to the point of distraction. There is a sidebar topic, hint, etc. on virtually every page of this book, which, along with the wordiness, adds to the "Let's get this done!" frustration you start to feel.
   
   If you're already familiar with html and web pages and aren't real patient with people that take forever to tell you something, get a different book.
   
   As another reviewer said, this book could be 1/4 its size and would be SO MUCH better!



4. I painful dug thru many of the "well respected" writing out there and none of them measure up to the clean and clearly well thought out to Dreamweaver CS3 The Missing manual by David McFarland .
   
   I recently moved from Front Page over to Dreamweaver CS3 and was looking for the one book to use and have found it after a long and sometimes a painful search.
   
   I had originally purchased Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Classroom in a Book based on the excellent verion of Photoshop by the same group. Yet the version that David wrote is far cleaner and it what I alway recommend to friends an colleges about " the right stuff" You just earned 5 stars from me, and I told hand those out very often...
   Keep up the awesome work David !



5. I am a novice at web design - and with the help of this manual and of course Dreamweaver - I have set up two business web sites. I am pretty good generally with computers - though I think Dreamweaver and web design is still fairly complicated, but this book is able walk someone like me through the process and help me understand how to get things accomplished. There are several sections I won't have to use - but everything I have used is well written and thought out. I'd recommend this book.

5 comments about Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition (Windows.Net).

1. Andrew Troelsen has done a remarkable job. The book
   does a great job of explaining C#. Every time I had a question about a specific topic he would answer it with in a few pages. This is not a reference book. It is a book that through thoughtful text and coresponding examples leads you through C#. It is an intense book and every word and example needs to be examined so don't expect an easy trip. Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition (Pro Series)



2. It's a great book for an experienced programmer who already knows Object Oriented Design and Programming, because many important concept (like inheritance and polymorphism) are explained very briefly.
   But if you come from Java, C++ or any other C++-derived language, you'll feel familiar with the concepts explained and begin developing in C# quickly.
   The development tools explained are principally Visual Studio 2008, but also some other IDE and compiler are explained.
   Maybe a little disappointing the examples, and some suggestion of exercises at the end of each chapter would be very usefoul.
   Anyhow, 4 stars.



3. This is a book that I'd expect from Apress pro series. As a java developer, I've had no prior experience with .net. This book has walked me through and tought me the .net concepts and the c# language in no time. Very straightforward, no blabla, and thorough. Also with 1300+ pages and being hard-cover, it is a bargain. Highly recommended.



4. Ho trovato un'ottima guida in questo libro. Gli argomenti trattati sono spiegati in maniera eccellente: breve introduzione, esempio banale e poi una trattazione approfondita dell'argomento. Un breve sommario conclude ogni capitolo e permette di fare un ripasso di quello che si e' letto all'occorrenza.
   
   E' un libro che consiglio sia a chi inizia per la prima volta a programmare in c#.net (seppure sono necessarie delle basi di programmazione oop) e naturalmente ai piu' esperti, pubblico a cui sembra essere destinato.
   
   Devo dire che ho trovato in questo libro un fedele compagno di lavoro, visto che e' corredato anche di un ottimo indice analitico e, per chi lo acquista subito, dell'intero pdf full searchable.
   
   Mi assumo la responsabilita' di consigliarlo a tutti :).



5. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about learning C# and is coming from an older .NET platform or from previous C/C++ experience. The book is extremely thick, yes, but wastes little space. The examples are detailed in explaining the topic at hand but do not carry extraneous details that could distract from the current topic.
   
   I would also recommend this book to anyone who might not have constant access to a computer to test out the topics. I find this book to be one of the few programming books that I can sit down with in front of the fire and read without having to get up every five minutes to see how an example really works. This book manages to fully explain the topics in such a way that the explaination is complete; a visit to the computer to try and understand the text is rarely needed.

4 comments about Professional C# 2008 (Wrox Professional Guides).

1. 'Professional C# 2008' is one of those ginormous books that I usually (usually) complain is too big, too bloated, too MUCH but sometimes the exception is the rule and that is the case here. With 1750+ pages of material spread over 48 chapters and 3 appendixes, if you are looking for brevity and/or a simple learning book this is probably not for you. If you are looking for a complete solution on learning C# from top to bottom, keep reading because you are in the right place.
   
   Although it's lengthy, I feel a chapter listing is beneficial to detail out all the details of this book:
   
   01. .NET Architecture
   02. C# Basics
   03. Objects and Types
   04. Inheritance
   05. Arrays
   06. Operators and Casts
   07. Delegates and Events
   08. Strings and Regular Expressions
   09. Generics
   10. Collections
   11. Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
   12. Memory Management and Pointers
   13. Reflection
   14. Errors and Exceptions
   15. Visual Studio 2008
   16. Deployment
   17. Assemblies
   18. Tracing and Events
   19. Threading and Synchronization
   20. Security
   21. Localization
   22. Transactions
   23. Windows Services
   24. Interoperability
   25. Manipulating Files and the Registry
   26. Data Access
   27. LINQ to SQL
   28. Manipulating XML
   29. LINQ to XML
   30. .NET Programming with SQL Server
   31. Windows Forms
   32. Data Binding
   33. Graphics with GDI+
   34. Windows Presentation Foundation
   35. Advanced WPF
   36. Add-Ins
   37. ASP.NET Pages
   38. ASP.NET Development
   39. ASP.NET AJAX
   40. Visual Studio Tools for Office
   41. Accessing the Internet
   42. Windows Communication Foundation
   43. Windows Workflow Foundation
   44. Enterprise Services
   45. Message Queuing
   46. Directory Services
   47. Peer-to-Peer Networking
   48. Syndication
   
   Subject matter is extremely thorough, and the writing is right to the point. Full of usable examples and traditional (good) Wrox design, you will be able to use chapters piece mail to get the information you are looking for or read the book from beginning to end if you want the whole experience.
   
   I feel that this book is best for marginal/new C# developers who aren't intimidated by a tome of this size. There is lots of great information within and you certainly learn what makes C# such a fantastic language to use in today's world.
   
   ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED



2. If you are looking for a brief introduction to C# this is not your book. But if you are seriously interested in improving your skills in any area, this is definitely the book to have on your shelf.
   Great job.



3. If you are looking for one book which covers the ENTIRE applications of C# Language, then this is the only book you need to buy. Covers every different type of application that can be developed with C#. good examples all the way. As the title says, it is real PROFESSIONAL Book. 5 stars for sure. Worth every cent.



4. Although I am an advance C# programmer. I found this book excellent in the way it presents staff. It is well written and organized.

5 comments about Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter).

1. This book is a must. If you are a Power Point serious user, and recognize that you (and the people in the auditorium) are tired with the "standard" way you do your presentations, you must buy and read this beautiful book. You will read it in hours - it is marvelous. I strongly recommend this one.



2. I can't add a great deal to the praise already stated for this great little book. It is a quick, easy read, but you have to read it -carefully-. This is about changing how you think about a presentation, not a checklist or a template for giving presentations.
   
   At work, I cringe through many, many "Death b Powerpoint" presentations, and I get compliments from colleagues on mine. They grasp that there is something different about how I present, but they don't understand the philosophy enough to duplicate it. Get this book and all will be clear.
   
   If you present highly technical information, you will have to modify some of the ideas in the book, because it is essential to make some of the slide more substantial, for instance with graphs prepared from a good graphing program (Something like Igor, NOT Excel). However, this is a minor modification, and the backbone of your presentation can follow the philosophy so clearly expressed in this book.
   
   Very highly recommended.



3. This book will revolutionize the way you present. It includes invaluable tips on how to plan your presentation, simplify your ideas, tell interesting stories, and put together a presentation that will hook your audience. A must read!



4. This book will change the way you use PowerPoint. It is a must for developing a great presentation. Excellent examples, great writing, and easy to employ ideas. It has opened my eyes and I will forever be changed in my use of PowerPoint slides. My presentations will be just plain better for the audience.



5. Most books on using presentation software seem to start with the assumption that the software makes sense and that organizing content is the secret to a good presentation. Here, Garr Reynolds strips away those assumptions and asks you to think of presentations as they truly are--visual stories. They're more like movies than books and Garr opens up the possibilities through a radically different approach to designing slides.
   
   The book offers many beautiful examples and an engaging and reflective style that inspires you to create truly impactful presentations. These principles are particularly important for government communicators.

5 comments about Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer).

1. Scott, Bill and Devin do a phenomenal job of covering evrything in 3.5. This massive book can be read cover-to-cover over a couple of weeks or sit on your desk as a reference. The info from these three is rooted in real-world experience. They cover the technical details as well as the how and why of decisions around developing Rich Internet Applications.



2. Bill, Scott and Devin are long-time ASP.NET experts, and the authors of several best selling ASP.NET and .NET books.
   
   This latest book is outstanding and provides an excellent end to end resource for almost all things ASP.NET related (UI, AJAX, Data Access, Security, State Management, Deployment, etc).
   
   The book is very well organized, with a nice balance of text, code samples, and screen-shots. All code samples are provided in both C# and VB - making it applicable to developers of all language backgrounds.
   
   The book does a good job of covering new .NET 3.5 material - with good content on LINQ, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to SQL, as well as the new ASP.NET 3.5 data controls - including the ListView control. It has chapters on ASP.NET AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. It also has some great IIS7 material.
   
   One of the things that is particularly useful is that the samples and chapters are written with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008. The book does a great job of explaining both the core ASP.NET programming concepts, as well as showing off how to use the tools to easily take advantage of them.
   
   All in all a great book and a fantastic addition to any ASP.NET developer's library.



3. If there's one book to own on ASP.NET 3.5 this is it! Unlike some other books that have simply added a couple of additional chapters at the end and a new cover, in Professional ASP.Net 3.5 sections that matter have been accurately updated to reflect the new changes and new chapters have been added where appropriate.
   
   This book is very well written, and is full of code examples. At 1674 pages it's a monster, but it's all solid content.



4. I've got the ASP.NET 2.0 version of this book (both the original and special edition versions) and all of the strengths still hold: It still walks you through all of the common (and some of the uncommon) usage for ASP.NET and provides great examples and code snippets to illustrate points. I'm not an ASP.NET newbie and I still find myself referring to the book from time to time - even in the age of Google - to find a nice, easy-to-understand example of this or that.
   
   That said, not much has changed from ASP.NET 2.0 to ASP.NET 3.5, so the important bits are the differences between this book and the previous version. So what is different?
   
   ADDED:
   * Lots about LINQ. Anywhere they discuss data - from databinding to working with XML - they've added info on how LINQ works into the picture. Thre is even a new chapter on "Querying with LINQ."
   * A chapter on IIS7 with a high-level intro to what it means for ASP.NET.
   * A chapter on basic HTML and CSS usage.
   * ASP.NET AJAX has been made a first class citizen with chapters on both the ASP.NET AJAX framework as well as the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. (It was an appendix in the ASP.NET 2.0 book.)
   * A section on WCF services has been added to the "Building and Consuming Services" chapter.
   * An ASP.NET-oriented subset of the indispensable Scott Hanselman Ultimate Tools List has been added as an appendix with screen shots and larger discussion of each tool.
   * An appendix has been added on basic Silverlight.
   
   REMOVED:
   * The introduction to Visual Studio. You won't get an overview of the IDE in the new book.
   * Basic .NET concept review like the chapter on "Collections and Lists" have been removed.
   * The chapter on developing for mobile devices using the contents of the System.Web.Mobile assembly.
   * The appendix on VB 8.0 and C# 2.0 language enhancements (generics, partial classes, etc.).
   
   COMBINED:
   * The ASP.NET 2.0 book separated out the discussions of "ASP.NET Web Server Controls" and "ASP.NET 2.0 Web Server Controls." This is now one chapter that doesn't differentiate by version.
   
   For the chapters that the two versions of the book have in common, really the only differences I could find were that the first few "intro" paragraphs for the chapter and the screenshots have been updated. A few sentences here and there have been updated to remove version-specific wording, but the copy is basically the same. I did a page-for-page comparison of one of chapters and almost everywhere it was exactly the same as the previous version, verbatim.
   
   That commonality is not a bad thing. It means the new version still has the great content found in the previous version, so if you didn't get the ASP.NET 2.0 book, the 3.5 book will cover you. If you did get the ASP.NET 2.0 book, Wrox also has a Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Upgrade book that just contains the new stuff so you don't have to re-purchase content you already have.
   
   Again, the typesetting irked me. The font really needs to be a point or two larger. Also, in the Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition, they used a light gray background to highlight code snippets so it was easy to make the distinction between prose and code. They lost that light gray background in the 3.5 book so the prose and the snippets run together a bit. (They use the light gray now as a "highlighter" for particular lines of code.) Of course, at 1600-odd pages, they might have to start shipping this bad boy on microfiche.
   
   In all, still highly recommended.



5. Being a Microsoft fanatic I always want to stay on top of things with Microsoft Technologies.I have been reading a couple of books on ASP.NET 3.5. I bought this book from Amazon. And having seen this book physically and went over the contents of the book and read couple of chapters of my interest, I can definitely say that, this is the ONLY book that any ASP.NET developer would want to have on his desk. Complete. Comprehensive. Cost effective. Definite BUY.