5 comments about Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition.

1. This is a recommended book to read for people who would like to read about statistics and maths. People with few knowledge about these sciences will find it a bit difficult to read.



2. The theories of NN and PR are quite difficult to understand. But this book makes them much easier. The author can explain the concepts without using too much formula. If other authors could follow his step then the life is much easier!



3. If you want a very good, intermediate introduction to pattern classification this book must be on your bookshelf. It even does a very nice job explaining the EM algorithm in a few pages! Basic calculus is all you need to understand the book. A must read.



4. This is the best book I have found for a general study of the of neural networks. I found this particularly useful when looking at how to write my own NN frameworks. The depth of the mathematics allowed me to easily answer questions like: 'what if I replaced function abc with xyz'. I have found other texts failed to show key mathematical derivations, or to explore the subtleties of what the maths imply.
   
   The book covers a plethora of topics from simple gradient descent through second order techniques and conjugate gradient, through to the use of 'bayesian techniques' (basically confidence intervals on network outputs), monte carlo techniques etc. Similarly error functions, non-linearities (sigmoids, softmax etc.) and data preparation are all treated.
   
   The extensive bibliography also provides excellent references for further study, (a whos who of the field, as well as actual titles). My copy is now dog earred from frequent reading.



5. Mr Bishop's book is very well written and contains a lot of useful information on neural networks. It is outlined well and progresses in a logical form. If, however, you are looking for a book that gives discussions with concrete examples of neural networks applications or set ups, you will be sorely disappointed. The mathematical treatment is universally generalized with very few specific concrete examples shown. Even the exercises will not serve you well. The term 'graded' is used; however, that simply referes to the description of difficulty. There are no answers to these exercises, so unless you have a teacher or are already firmly familiar with the material, you will not know if you have completed them correctly or not. Even worse, the exercises are in general not written to reinforce concepts in the chapter, but in most cases extend the chapter material into new regions.
   
   In summary, this book should only be purchased by someone already familiar with neural networks and their mathematical basis. Anyone else will be wasting their money.

5 comments about Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics.

1. Published in late 2003, this clearly-written book picks up where "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics" leaves off. Perl is very commonly used in the field of bioinformatics, and this book does a good job of surveying the more advanced topics in perl from the bioinformatics point-of-view. For a more thorough treatment of each of these topics though, the student will need to explore more specialized titles.
   
   While Tisdall's first volume teaches the core of procedural programming in Perl, this one takes you into the world of object-oriented (OO) programming. The first two chapters explore namespaces, modules, packages, references and data structures, all of which are prerequisites to OO programming. Common bioinformatics algorithms are introduced such as dynamic programming and approximate string matching.
   
   The next three chapters, 3-5, are the meat of this title. Here objects, methods and classes are introduced. Rather than just throwing out independent examples, these topics are developed by starting and building upon a Gene class, the first of several through which Tisdall guides the reader. Due to the practicality of these examples, they can even be used and improved by the reader for use in their own work.
   
   After this decent treatment of OO programming the book takes a turn into other realms of perl, each of which seems to have been written as a short introduction and for which other O'Reilly titles offer more complete coverage. These topics include the use of Perl to access relational databases, CGI programming and graphics generation using GD. If interested in any of these the reader should check out "Programming the Perl DBI", "CGI Programming with Perl" and "Perl Graphics Programming", respectively.
   
   Tisdall wraps up with a much-needed coverage of Bioperl, a large collection of Perl modules for common bioinformatics operations. I looked forward to this section most of all and was fairly disappointed with its brief, 28-page coverage. The entire chapter can currently be downloaded for free from O'Reilly's website as a PDF, but the Bioperl website has better examples and even a contributed course, though good documentation is still lacking in some areas.
   
   In all, I like this book because it does a good review of introducing object-oriented programming in Perl using relevant bioinformatics examples and introduces the reader to other topics including the DBI, CGI, and GD modules. While I believe this makes the book very useful, the coverage of each of the topics in this book will certainly not give the reader a mastery of any of them. For that, one will need to check out the three previously mentioned titles, along with "Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules." This book does a fine job of introducing these four titles from the bioinformatician's perspective.



2. This first half of the book focuses entirely on Object-Oriented(OO) Perl. The second half follows up with a general survey of various perl implementations of particular programming issues involving databasing, cgi, graphics, modules, etc, and BioPerl.
   
   This book does a good job of applying Perl in OO for Biology in the first half of the book. In the second half he overviews a few broad topics in bioinformatics; he doesn't go super specific, but its a sufficient overview and for me sparked more interest in understanding how I can use perl to handle my informatics issues.
   
   In the first half, the author does an excellent job on detailing the ins and outs of perl references and how to construct complex data structures. Indeed they are a bit strange looking at first, but the author breaks it down really good so pretty much anyone can understand it.
   
   For me the most intriguing part of the book was in the second half, which included relational databases, graphics, and bioperl. In particular, the chapter that covers Perl DBI and DBD::mysql was really cool. That secion was very helpful for me because I am familiar with php/mysql, but have not ever used Perl to interact with Mysql before.
   
   I especially liked the gif draw aka GD chapter. I had no idea how cool GD is. But moreover how it can be integrated with Perl to generate really cool looking plots. Before this book I always used gnuplot. But Tisdall shows you how to get to work with GD pretty good using basic practical examples.
   
   The chapter on BioPerl was especially helpful as well. In particular, he shows you what he did to install the beast. He shows you how to use the CPAN shell and again its really beneficial to read through. It motivated me to pursue other topics in bioperl and how I can use it to query different ncbi databases for example.
   
   Overall, the text provided a good overview on OO Perl and on various other topics involving Perl for Bioinformatics in general. I am glad I bought it. It was really very practical/useful - I refer to it all the time actually!



3. This is the sequel to his earlier beginner's book on Perl. Now, he goes further into usages of Perl. While experienced programmers will not find these terribly challenging, they are not the intended audience.
   
   Of the topics, the most important is where he shows you how to interface with a SQL database. Given the sheer mass of sequence data generated these days, it is inevitable that efficient database usage be done. So he gives a quick tour of relational database design. With examples of how Perl has modules to submit and query the database. The treatment is somewhat cursory, since he has other, non-database topics to cover.
   
   Of those, he includes CGI programming. This might be questionable. CGI code has proved incredibly hard to scale. Maybe he felt the necessity to include code for handling web servers. Unfortunately, a typical reader won't have enough experience to be aware of CGI's problems. The danger is that she actually starts coding CGI Perl. The true debugging and maintenance costs will not show up till later.



4. This book is a continuation of Tisdall's "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics" and thus illustrates more advanced Perl programming techniques. This book not only talks about Perl programming, but it goes into some detail on the subject of bioinformatics itself. It is assumed that the CS-type reader has a good understanding of biology and the goals of bioinformatic programming. Otherwise, the examples and projects within the book will not make sense. The following is a description of the book's contents:
   
   Part I: OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING IN PERL
   Chapter 1. Modular Programming with Perl - Talks about using modules so that other people can reuse your programs and you can reuse other people's modules in your own programs.
   
   Chapter 2. Data Structures and String Algorithms - Talks about all of the different data structures available through Perl and how to build up special structures in Perl that you might need to describe complex data. Also mentions various string algorithms that are used in analyzing biological data and implements them in Perl.
   
   Chapter 3. Object-Oriented Programming in Perl - Introduces object-orientation in Perl via a module that includes a class that keeps track of genes.
   
   Chapter 4. Sequence Formats and Inheritance - How to convert sequence files into alternate formats such as FASTA and GCG. The object-oriented concept of inheritance is also introduced.
   
   Chapter 5. A Class for Restriction Enzymes - By writing a more complex class, you get a bigger dose of object-orientated programming in biology.
   
   Part II: PERL AND BIOINFORMATICS
   Chapter 6. Perl and Relational Databases - Talks about SQL and the design of relational databases. MySQL is examined specifically.
   
   Chapter 7. Perl and the Web - You learn about web programming in Perl by seeing how to put a laboratory on the Web via Perl and CGI.
   
   Chapter 8. Perl and Graphics - Graphics programming in Perl is demonstrated when you learn to write a program that displays changing data to the Web. The graphical Perl module PD is discussed and demonstrated in a program.
   
   Chapter 9. Introduction to Bioperl - Introduces the reader to Bioperl, which is a group of open source Perl modules used for bioinformatics programming. They provide many basic facilities so you don't have to worry about them.
   
   Part III: Appendixes
   Appendix A. Perl Summary
   Appendix B. Installing Perl
   
   I really thought this was a 5-star book. However, it is not obvious from the title that this is really volume two of a two volume set of books on Perl programming for the biologist, so I can see where the lower ratings might have come from.



5. This book is definitely written for the biologist that knows some perl and not the experienced perl programmer. To the biologists who have some experience, this book will open up many new possibilities, but to a person with a few years of perl experience, many sections are skimpy and wasteful on topics better covered by other Perl books.
   
   For example, for anyone with truely massive datasets, it might have been worth the mention of the performance cost/benefits of using BerkleyDBs and hash joins (180-3500 times). With improvements of 2-3 orders of magnitude for large sets, it would have been worth a complementary example in chapter 6 so that readers can weigh the alternatives for certain situations.
   
   The book, however, is well worth the price just for chapters 4, 5 and 9.
   
   4) Sequence Formats and Inheritance
   5) A Class for Restriction Enzymes
   9) Introduction to Bioperl

1 comments about Guide to Parallel Operating Systems with Microsoft Windows XP and Linux.

1. The exercises are bland, and definitely doesn't even begin to properly cover linux. almost treats linux as a step child. give it a cookie just because its here and i dont want to hear its supporters cry. it also seems to treat the distribution fedora as the alpha and omega of linux. it does vaguely mention there are others, but just barely and easy to miss.
   
   the good points are, its almost idiot proof. i say almost, because, well, most people still couldn't get the ideas given in this book. the subjects are decently explained, and all exercises are incrementally stepped through. how tough is it to follow this?
   
   type dir /s into command prompt to see a listing of the files in your current directory. some how, people manage to mangle that. its literally like, step one leads directly to step two, just type what you see on page, its done. maybe that was the problem it babied them too much, lord help us if we are required to think for ourselves.
   
   Thank goodness my teacher Mr. BOz was there to clear the fuzzy parts of it, and actually understand the in depth workings (mostly in the linux areas). *shameless plug to praise him*
   
   This book is probably better for one grade under. like the class where the teacher slowly says "This is a computer!" *hears ooos and ahhs from crowd* "press this button to turn it on!* *even more ooos and ahhs*.
   
   Still, this is a good book to have for reference, just don't expect to be enthralled to learn.

2 comments about Beginning Game Programming with Flash.

1. This book offers a wonderful approach. It does a great job of explaining how ActionScript (yes, ActionScript 3.0) works.
   
   HOWEVER ...
   
   This book also sports some critical typographical errors. And those typographical errors sometimes occur in tutorials' Flash ActionScript code (yes, the very code that folks buy the book to learn).
   
   Simply put, if you follow the instructions carefully, some of the tutorials will not work. (At least they didn't for me!)
   
   Here's an example:
   
   One of the book's tutorials (p. 32) tells readers to create something and name it "mc_ball1."
   
   After that, the tutorial does not mention "mc_ball1" again. Instead, the tutorial tells readers to type code for something named "mc_ball" (note the missing "1").
   
   Okay, a missing "1" might seem like a little thing. But, if a programmer follows the book's written instructions, her project will not work. The code is designed to make to "mc_ball" do something. But there is no "mc_ball." There is an "mc_ball1" -- and it never receives any instructions from the code.
   
   This book's title states that it is for beginners. Beginners probably do not have the skill to troubleshoot typographical nuances in ActionScript.
   
   And, unfortunately, there are several of these types of errors in this book.
   
   So, I'm afraid that the current edition may be of limited value to most beginning Flash programmers. The next -- carefully edited -- version of this book might be great for beginners.
   
   In the meantime, I'm afraid that this version might frustrate them.



2. This book is an incredible guide to learning ActionScript 3.0! So far I have only noted one MINOR typo in the code. The rest of the code appears to work flawlessly.
   
   AS3 is a great new flavor of ActionScript but it can be tricky for those who are new to Flash or just new to 3.0. The projects are a lot of fun! By the time I made it through the book, I understood all the basic piece required to make my own Flash Game.
   
   I think that this book would be a useful reference for anyone who wants to learn more about using Adobe Flash such as beginning Web designers and animators because it teaches you, in very easy terms, how to control your Flash creations!
   
   To recap: This book is an excellent source for beginners because it leaves you feeling confident and ready to expand your skills.

5 comments about Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, Vol. 1: The Essentials (3rd Edition, Version 6.5).

1. I had to cancel my order of this book three weeks into waiting, because for some unknown reason after the estimated 3-5 week shipping time, there was yet another delay. So I had to buy this book at twice the cost at my corrupt/evil University store.
   
   The book itself is pretty good. I have only examined it a few times. However, some of the explanations can be confusing, it seems you have to read the entire thing to be sure to understand it, you cant pick and choose which things you want to learn from it.



2. If you are new to After Effects and Motion Graphics, or want to learn from Chris and Trish about the new features in Adobe's CS3 release, I recommend the Brand New:
   
   After Effects Apprentice (DV Expert Series) (DV Expert Series) (Paperback)
   by Chris & Trish Meyer
   
   which is the only one of their books to cover After Effects 7, I'm pretty sure. Their next books will cover the new CS3 release.
   
   Normally they write the new version's manual (yes, you can consider their books to be the missing user manual for Adobe After Effects) when the 'X.5' version comes out. There was no 7,5 version of after effects, so except for After Effects Apprentice, there is no manual for AAE 7.
   
   Plus the book covers the new release of After Effects, the CS3 release.
   
   AND this is a GREAT introduction to motion graphics in general, and to working with files in After Effects:
   
   [...]
   and when you finish that, you will certainly want:
   
   Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, Vol. 1: Advanced Techniques (4th edition, not yet published) by Trish and Chris Meyer
   
   and
   
   Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, Vol. 2: The Essentials (4th edition, not yet published) by Trish and Chris Meyer
   
   which should both be available very soon. I don't actually recommend getting the 6.5 version unless you are not going to upgrade to AAE 7 or AAE CS3. With the ton of new features (like Photoshop can handle video now!) in Adobe CS3, I DO recommend getting the CS3 version of every Adobe product that you use, and if you use more than just a few, you should get the whole suite, it will be cheaper.



3. This book was very helpful in teaching me how to use and understand After Effects. I'd recommend this book to any beginner wanting to learn AE. It is easy to follow and comes with a great CD (very beneficial).



4. Though this book series was written for After effects 6.5, I used it as a supplement to CS3. I am very glad that I did, the authors answered the question - Why do you use an effect or tool? The other "teach" books demonstrated what After Effects can do, but not how other than enter the number required in the exercise. A must read for anyone new to After Effects. I hope I can find such in depth books on the other Adobe Suite software. Kudos to the authors - thanks, thanks, thanks.



5. This book is quite helpful. It covers the basics in manipulating images in After Effects and serves as a great teacher of the software.
   
   I highly recommend it.

5 comments about Schaum's Outline of Mathematica.

1. This is an excellent introductory book on Mathematica. If you need to learn some basic features of this language, it is the best tool.
   
   The author did not spend too much time on theory. The rules and syntax are explained very clearly with illustrative examples. Of course, the theory may first sound very dry and dull, but once you follow the examples, you will see that things will settle in your mind easily. Clear, concise and effective discussion of the topics makes your job easy and enjoyable.
   
   The best way to learn and explore various features is to try to modify the parameters in the examples. Make use of your own creativity to discover new features. In many examples, the same outcome can be obtained by several different ways.
   
   This book, in general, covers the fundamentals of the language, but it is sufficient to use differentiation, integration, 2D and 3D graphics, differential equations, linear algebra, etc. Mathematica, certainly, is quite a sophisticated language, there are many more intricate features.
   
   For more advanced features, please try "Mastering Mathematica" by John W. Gray.



2. This is typical of the Schaum's outline series: a decent, no-frills introduction to Mathematica at a reasonable price. When you look at the other books on the subject, they cost 8 to 10 times as much. Get this one, work hard and save some long bucks. The others may be pretty but are they really worth it?



3. I have another Shaum's Outlines book. I was expecting to get jump started in Mathematica but I found the book overtaxing and tedious. I found a better (free) website to help me.



4. although there remains useful information in this work, it is largely outdated, and offers techniques and methods incompatible with more recent incarnations of mathematica.
   
   it can still offer effective instruction if you are willing to tread the interminable help pages in mathematica for the appropriate syntax and parameters, but to a new user even that is a forbidding task. strongly recommend you look elsewhere, until the current edition is updated.



5. I could write a lot about this guide if I knew more about mathematics. First of all, if you want to make the most of this guide you should be fluent with calculus. Next, note that it is, IMHO written in a somewhat scatterbrained fashion. While there is a TOC and the book follows that format, the contents seem to be a stream-of-consciousness format. Finally, it is 2 versions out of date! A lot of commands that are graphics don't work properly and many new commands are not included. Still, Mathematica is pretty backwards compatible so you'll learn a lot. The worst thing is that (a) NO VERSION 6 docs exist or will be printed by Wolfram; (b) NO VERSION 6 docs exist by anyone else. This is one of the few books that cover math material lower than calculus! On top of that, it isn't in the cost stratosphere! For that reason, its one of the few reasonable options.

5 comments about Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Administrator's Companion: Administrator's Companion (Administrators Companion).

1. As you probably realize there is not a large selection of books that cover SMS 2003. This book is probably an acceptable book for an SMS 2003 beginner or an admin who doesn't typically use all of SMS's functionality. The primary benefit this book provides is that it helps you to more clearly understand the poorly written documentation that Microsoft provides with SMS. It shows the reader in a logical well-ordered way how to setup SMS from the 1st SMS server through configuration of each of the major components of SMS as well as adding additional servers and sites into SMS. It also provides step by steps for each activity and simplified examples of how to use the major components and perform common SMS tasks. While step by steps are provided the authors could really haved used more and different types of examples in many cases.
   
   The areas where this book could use significant improvement are in "real world" troubleshooting, design, and ongoing maintenance activities. It could also use more detailed information on configuring SQL for SMS usage as well important activities such as creating and setting container permissions in Adsiedit or ADUC. It also needs to be updated to include SP2 and the available feature packs that are out for SMS.
   
   Over all this book is probably a tad overpriced for the information it provides since most, if not all, of the book information is in the SMS docs. I think this book should be no more than $40 but since there are so few other books I guess they can get away with the $60 price.



2. I am new to SMS and I must say that I now love it because of its power. This book made it easier for me to understand the ins and outs of the product. It will help you out a lot to know your windows environment well enough as well as your AD, after a couple of service packs SMS gets into deep waters. I would like to see the future editions of the book include chapters regarding free add ons such as the OSD Pack and ITMU, it would make it even better at least for admins looking for implementing it into a windows shop.



3. This book is wriiten with the expectation that you have working experience with SMS.



4. This book has helped me a lot with this horrible product from Microsoft. Needless to say, I've sold the book and I no longer bother with junky SMS. Still, a good book.



5. If you are new to SMS and you want to start working with this technology then this is not the right book. NOT because it is to complicated - more because it is way to detailed. But the book is great as a reference. I think it is even a must for a SMS admin. The topics are explained very clear and so far I found all the information I was looking for.
   
   If you are new to SMS and you want to start working with it I recommend use the SMS 2003 CBT Nugget and work additional with this book to get deeper into specific topics.
   
   But again - as a reference for you daily work this book is great.

5 comments about ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in Action: Building Dynamic Web Portals (In Action).

1. An all in one great introduction to web parts and even to some advanced techniques.
   
   Web parts are a strong web UI element and this book has done a great job of talking about ALL the things that are necessary for proper web parts development.



2. A must buy book if your working with webparts. Darren (The author) is also extremely helpful if you post web part related questions on his forum. The book is clear, concise and well organised. You will not be disapointed!
   
   Ps. I have bought many many tech reference books from Amazon over the years. This is the first time I have ever posted a review. This book has been an invaluable reference for a large project I am currently working on.
   
   Paul Hale (Domainscanners)



3. This a very thorough and complete guide to ASP 2.0 Web Parts. After reading this book, I gained more knowledge than reading countless internet articles, numerous blogs and a few cumbersome books on subject. This book is a MUST Buy for anyone who needs to understand and/ or implement ASP 2.0 Web Parts. One added new value is the concepts outlined
   in his book also work on ASP 3.5.



4. When I began to work on a web portal using .NET 2.0 in mid-2006, I found out about this book and anxiously awaited it's publishing. I wasn't disappointed. The material covered in this book goes into such great detail and is so full of great ideas that I recommended the re-writing of our portal using Darren's book as a basis of our new design. This was money well spent.



5. When I first started looking at Web Parts I couldn't quite grasp how they were different from other web technology. Darren was able to clearly describe how individual parts are created, and how to integrate them into a cohesive whole and helped me enormously in building modern websites.

4 comments about Pulling Strings with Puppet: Configuration Management Made Easy.

1. Puppet is an amazing configuration management tool. I'm a huge proponent and encourage every system administrator to give it a good, hard look. And this book is a great way to get started. It covers everything you'll need to know to get started and take you all the way through to having a nice Puppet infrastructure up and running.



2. Mr. Turnbull has done an excellent job introducing Puppet beginning and advanced concepts. As an experienced UNIX professional and Puppet user, I learned new things from his examples regarding modules and creating custom facts & providers which I intend to experiment with shortly.



3. Pulling Strings with Puppet is my third book from James Turnbull, and much like the others, this delivered.
   
   Writing a book on puppet at this stage is certainly a challenge. Puppet is growing and changing much faster than even the online documentation can keep up with. The author decided to worry about concepts and include future directions where possible. It was a good decision. The book gives a give overview of the puppet configuration tool and a few in-depth reviews of some concepts. I learned a number of things to improve my setup, even though I had been using puppet for over 6 months.
   
   Best practices and use cases are the areas I was most interested in. There are several small use-cases which build a nice foundation for using puppet including, using a version control system, using mongrel as the web server, writing your own modules, and external node storage. I would have liked to have then seen a wrap-up use case incorporating all of these ideas into an enterprise-type deployment, but it may have meant a lot of repeated material.
   
   If you're looking into puppet, I would recommend this book. It's rather inexpensive and gives a rookie a decent handle on where and how to start. The book also does a good job at providing links and direction toward the puppet community, which is needed, due to the speed at which puppet is currently changing.



4. This book is definitely a vital reference for anyone who's working with puppet; I picked it up after becoming frustrated with the current state of available information on puppet, and it turned my perspective around completely.
   
   I'm not sure that I would have managed to learn everything I needed to about puppet using only the docs on the website; often I got the familiar feeling when reading through the wiki that some crucial bit of information was being assumed, but this book always backed up its information with examples that I could use to grasp the idea being presented.
   
   On thing to note about the book -- It's really not structured to be a quick-start guide, but rather each chapter lays a foundation of knowledge that the next chapter builds upon. As such, I'd recommend setting aside a couple of afternoons to read through the book, ideally before you even begin to set up your puppet environment.

5 comments about Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce: Deploying Windows Forms Applications with ClickOnce (Microsoft .NET Development Series).

1. I gave this book 5 stars because it is very thorough. It covers everything there is to know about ClickOnce deployment. The author didn't miss any topic and covers the topics very thoroughly.
   
   It wasn't what I had hoped for because I already own 'Deploying NET Applications Learning MSBuild and ClickOnce'. I was hoping for more detail on securing the files downloaded to the Client, and some better advice one securing running ClickOnce with parameters. The was no new info.
   
   Both books offered the same information, and depth on the topics. So if you own 'Deploying NET Applications Learning MSBuild and ClickOnce' I would not buy this book.
   
   
   If you don't own a book on ClickOnce, and you want to learn all the details about it, this is an excellent book.



2. This book is a 5-stars book carrying completed information about ClickOnce from the beginning to the finish deployment of your project.
   It is practical, compact, easy-to-read, and up-to-date. You will enjoy reading it and finish it in few days.
   
   For .NET developer, it is a must-have book, and worth for your money. Interestingly, it shows how-to-use "ClickOnce" for both Windows and Web applications. This completed information is hardly found in other books.
   
   I am a .NET developer who has experienced for several projects. I recommend this book with Deploying .NET Applications from APress. If you can afford two books, get them both. If you can get only one of them, get this one because in my opinion, it carried deeper, wider, updated information.
   
   Enjoy ClickOnce!!!



3. One of the reasons I chose to review Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce: Deploying Windows Forms Applications with ClickOnce by Brian Noyes is that I had never heard of the ClickOnce technology. After going through this book, I'm now aware of what ClickOnce is and what it does. Noyes does a good job in covering a piece of software that can greatly simplify the life of a .NET developer...
   
   Contents: Introduction to ClickOnce; Initial Deployment with ClickOnce; Automatic Application Updates; On-Demand Updates; Application and Data File Management; ClickOnce Security; Prerequisite Deployment with the Bootstrapper; Advanced ClickOnce Topics; ClickOnce Deployment of WPF Applications; Index
   
   The "thick client" application is starting to make a resurgence on the desktop, but with it comes the problem of keeping the application up-to-date on possibly thousands of computers. ClickOnce is Microsoft's answer to that. As part of Visual Studio, ClickOnce packages an application for download and installation from the network. Then as new versions of the software become available, the application will check the home directory to see if there's an update. If so, the user has a choice (unless the developer mandates the update) to install the updates or wait until later. Bottom line is that you get the increased functionality and features of a non-browser-based application without the deployment nightmares of large software suites (like Office). Noyes starts off with an explanation of how ClickOnce works and what problems it solves, and then he dives into all the details of the software; how it works and how it can be configured to meet your particular requirements. Because the book is more tool-focused than language-focused, it really doesn't matter whether you're using Visual Basic or C#. Either type of application can use the ClickOnce technology. I was impressed at the integration with Visual Studio, and he definitely sold me on the necessity of utilizing software such as this. This was also good background material for me, as the software platform I work on will be going to this type of deployment scenario soon. I'll have a much better idea of how it all should function after reading this book...



4. I just finished Noyes' book on Microsoft's .NET ClickOnce API and found it to be helpful in understanding most aspects of ClickOnce. It provides illustrations of the user's experience when installing an application through the API, and the book is helpful by providing information for making proactive choices when designing the architecture of your application (such as the security consequences of utilizing 3rd party controls).



5. Of course, at the end of the day, its also really the only book out there on ClickOnce. Its a very good summary of the somewhat convoluted info available on MSDN and other Microsoft sites - it definitely made some things much clearer. It is somewhat lacking in how you would actually use ClickOnce in the real world, unless you are developing internal apps and have a fair degree of control over your servers and your users.
   
   If you are doing anything with ClickOnce, you should definitely buy this book. Just keep in mind that you'll probably need to do some digging on your own afterwards, but this book should make that easier/possible.