5 comments about Color Management in Digital Photography: Ten Easy Steps to True Colors in Photoshop.

1. Written by photographer, software designer and teacher Brad Hinkel, Color Management in Digital Photography: Ten Easy Steps to True Colors in Photoshop is a methodical, full-color guide to making the most of digital color photography using Photoshop software. Numerous computer screenshots illustrate the step-by-step instructions, and the straightforward text is written to be accessible to digital photography novices as well as seasoned digital photographers who are relatively unfamiliar with what Photoshop has to offer. Steps range from the most basic "Select a Color Space" (such as RGB or Adobe RGB) to "Profile Your Monitor" to "Advanced Printing" and "Adjusting Your Color for Printing". Enthusiastically recommended for any Photoshop user interested in improving the quality of their digital color photographs.



2. For years I struggled with how to deal with a simple problem of getting what I see on screen to be the same as what I print a photo lab. Color management shouldn't be such a difficult task though it usually is unless you know some preparation and steps you need to take. Most casual photographers don't give a thought, and photo ops do a pretty decent job producing printed photos that make us happy enough that we don't think color management is an issue. But if you're taking photos that include portraits, sunsets, landscapes or any situation where precise colors matter, you began thinking about color management.
   
   Brad Hinkel does a superb job explaining the reasoning and science behind color spaces and how it applies to digital workflow color management. From the beginning to end this relatively short and concise book takes the reader through 10 important steps of not only understanding but how to accurately reproduce your intended photos in all their vibrant color glory. From choosing a good monitor to converting your colors to the right color space for the intended output, when you read this book you will approach managing your photos with a new expert eye.
   
   Beginners might have a bit tougher time with the learning curve of understanding color management even with this well-written easy-to-read title, but an intermediate to advanced user would find it highly educational and a fast read. This one definitely falls in my highly recommended category.



3. What you see is seldom what you get when you make the arduous journey from digital image file to hard copy. It's a royal pain in the ASCII.
   
   Most of us pass off the color difference between what we see on our monitor and what we get in our prints with a shrug of the shoulders. It's just one of those vagaries of computing, right?
   
   Generally, that's a healthy attitude for the casual computer user/digital photographer. There are enough hassles in life without looking for new ones. On the other hand, if you're trying to make a living in graphic arts/photography, color management looms large in your professional life.
   
   Some days, when I'm working on several computers, each with it's own color quirks, it gets frustrating. The book nicely bridges the color management gap with thorough explanations of color space and how to calibrate and profile your monitor.
   
   Obviously, a good monitor is going to be an important component of the management process. Hinckel covers the related subjects as well as making some specific recommendations. He also looks beyond the monitor and discusses a good work environment.
   
   There are specific software packages like Monaco OPTIC and Monaco EZcolor that are more powerful than the color management programs that come with printers and photo/graphic editing software. There is a good explanation of how these work.
   
   Hinkel explorers numerous printing option, tells how to test your system, and then he moves into Advanced Printing.
   
   This book presents a comprehensive, easy-to-understand overview of color management. Hallelujah. This book may actually inspire all of us color-management-procrastinators to jump in and get this vital area of graphic arts under control.



4. My color experience is from being a long time film photographer. Digital color management principals were new to me before this book. Having completed it, I feel that I understand the fundamentals and have made some excellent color prints using Photoshop CS3 on my Intel MacMini printing to my HP B9180 archival printer. These prints are as good or slightly better than any I've made using traditional chemical color printing processes. If you want to make better prints on any inkjet printer, this is a great handbook!



5. I found this book well written ,easy to read and helpfull in a general way ,the information was organized and presented a logical manner .However the subject matter seems somewhat dated and lacking in the depth that I was looking for

5 comments about Professional WCF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows Communication Foundation (Programmer to Programmer).

1. I've been using this book for several weeks now, to assist me in writing several WCF Services.
   
   This book has served me well. Coming from a standard .Net background, with some basic Web Services behind me, I've now written many services that leverage WCF Security, extensibaility, interoperability.
   
   Certain sections, while not as deep as I would like, proved an excellent primer into getting things done. For example, the section on integrating the ASP.Net Membership & Role providers with WCF services allowed the rapid creating of public facing, secure web services.
   
   Scott focused quite a bit on the extensibility of WCF, which is nice. Personally I have more use for the turn-key scenarios, and have gotten much out of that aspect of the book.
   
   I will also say I've found this book to have more depth, in the relevant areas, than many of the web site and blogs I've used as resources.
   
   Overall: Excellent book that hightly relevant to the majority of work I'm doing with WCF.
   
   Chris Mullins, MCSD.Net, MCPD:Enterprise, Microsoft C# MVP
   http://www.coversant.net/blogs/cmullins



2. I'm still shocked how a book can be this bad! I think the only goal in the writer's head was to publish this book as soon as possible to be one of the first books about WCF. The errors in the book are not only typos or overlooked stuff, the writer does not have a good understanding of WCF. In some parts of the book the writer copies some text from previous chapters as it is and forgets to change some of the words to suit the new subject.
   
   I just finished chapter 6 in which I found a shocking fact! The writer tries even to cheat to make the example about Message Contracts work! The source code of the example (provided as a download from Wrox) is different from the source code he shows in the book. This is because the source code shown in the book would not even compile. So what he does in the downloadable source code is that he deletes the lines where the compiler gives errors and then the code does not even call the service! and to make the example look like as if it worked he just sets the string that is expected to be returned from the service on a label ,all that inside the client program! This really pissed me off! A book writer with such ethics?!
   
   So up to chapter 6 I've found tens of errors (including errors about WCF principle) and a fake example! I wonder how much more is ahead!
   
   DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS "THING" (I won't call it a book)



3. Utter waste of money. Waded through all of it. Not well organized. At times incoherent. Often just a listing of classes and methods. Offers few insights. Lots of errors. Author lacks a clear understanding of the WCF or the true significance of some of the classes and methods. Read SAMS Windows Communication Foundation Unleashed, it's much better. MSDN documentation is far better than this book.



4. I am disappointed with the book as well. It has quite a few typos, errors, and many of the examples are just wrong. This book looks like it was rushed out the door with very little proof reading. Some of the chapters look like little more than rewritten MSDN reference material. Don't waste your time; better references exist.



5. Simply put, this book isn't worth your time. Even as an experienced programmer I had trouble keeping up with the out-of-order explanations, typos, terrible examples, and incorrect walk-throughs.

4 comments about P is for Peach: A Georgia Alphabet (Alphabet Series).

1. This is the best book I read about Georgia. It gives me lots of information.



2. This book is a great piece of work. I use it in my classroom as a way to introduce students to places/things of interest in the great state of Georgia. It inspires students to ask questions and to want more information. It also makes a great gift. I gave a copy to my nephew who lives in Indiana so that he will know his second home.



3. This book is amazing! I got to meet the illustrator and he signed a copy for me! I am using this with a 3rd grade class. It's a great way to introduce the state and all it has to offer. The pictures are beautiful, and it's very interesting for children and adults alike! I would highly recommend it!



4. A great way to learn about the history of a state. My wife loves children's books and she feel in love with this one.

5 comments about Crystal Reports: A Beginner's Guide.

1. Crystal Reports: A Beginner's Guide covers everything and more that I wanted to learn about Crystal Reports. The information is easy to digest and there are regular 1-Minute checks along the way. Hands-on experience, in the form of Projects, are dispersed through each chapter (the completed projects can be downloaded from the web). Answers to the Mastery Checks, at the end of every chapter, are given in the Appendix.

   My only complaint about the book is that, I feel, there is not enough hands-on experience because the projects are too simple. There are plenty of projects, but most of them are simply a number of steps and very little critical thinking. After reading Crystal Reports: A Beginner's Guide, my knowledge of Crystal Reports has vastly increased though I still have little experience with actually creating reports.




2. This book needs some serious editing
   Right now I'm on Chapter 4 and so far this book is terrible in regards to the Projects. The project instructions don't correspond with the results intended and shown. For example, the instructions say open the Customer by Country report, but then it says 'your report should look like this' and shows you an entirely different report! And sometimes the report you worked on doesn't even work for the task you're trying to learn. The author must have had his friends write the other customer reviews. Don't buy this book! It's just unfortunate though that there aren't many choices.



3. It is a beginners book as the title says, but there is a pittfal, the author should consider for future books.
   Not every chapter has a step-by-step tutrial. The user have to download the samples and use them to be able to follow the author, which defeats the purpose of learning by doing.
   Chapters 4 & 5 make are mutually exlusive, since chp 5 requires reports from chp 4, that was not a step-by-step tutorial.
   Either make it a step-by-step or don't. Just be consistent.



4. I'm afraid I have to agree with the review from "A reader from Cupertino, CA" - I, too, am on Chapter 4 and am frustrated beyond belief because my reports look very little like the examples in the book so far. In the case of the second tutorial in chapter 4, again the other reviewer is correct - it's not even the same report!

   I bought "A Beginner's Guide to JavaScript" by the same company and was thrilled with it. It was clear, concise and had a "mini-project" at the end of each chapter for the reader to complete to ensure mastery of the concept being taught. I was expecting the same thing with this book, and am sorely disappointed. The explaination of each topic is general at best, incorrect at worst, the tutorials are simplistic and don't include half the information being covered in each chapter, if indeed a tutorial exists at all.

   I need to get up to speed on Crystal Reports in a fairly short period of time, and be able to generate some fairly sophisticated reports. This book is becoming a hindrance to that goal.




5. I am coming from a VBA background learning about this new software. This book is a great resource tool for making such a transition. Mr. McAmis stepped me through the learning process in a clear and concise manner. The information was learned in progressive manner, in that, the further through the book I read, the more complex issues were handled. At the end each chapter the author challenged me with key questions to help me remember the most important issues.

4 comments about Designing Geodatabases: Case Studies in GIS Data Modeling.

1. The subject is considerably more specialised that designing a relational data base. The book is part of ESRI's ongoing way to publicise geodatabases, and hence ultimately drive demand for their products. So keep in mind that what is really being sold here is not the book but mindshare. Yours.
   
   The text has extensive explanations as to what you might need in a geodatabase, as well as what is technically feasible to put in it. It also suggests that you consider what you want your users to be able to do. And use this in no small way to drive the design requirements. Software developers will recognise this as the gathering of scenarios from stakeholders. So you probably should canvas your potential users, if this is at all possible.



2. This book provides a good introduction of steps and principles in designing geodatabases and the importance of information products and identifying thematic layers. The book presents 7 complex models: streams and river networks, census units and boundaries, addresses and locations, parcels and cadastre, surveying federal lands, using raster data, cartography and the base map. For each model they present the features, feature data sets, relationships, and topology rules. Readers working in these 7 areas will probably gain most from the book.
   
   I would have also liked simpler examples and more design principles on grouping features into feature data sets. One of the strengths of this book is in stressing the value of topology rules, and feature data sets are needed for topology rules. With a database background, I would have liked fuller exploration of database relationships and normality contrasted with GIS relationship classes, relates, and joins, since data is often "flattened" when put into GIS. Readers of this should probably start with Modeling Our World: The Esri Guide to Geodatabase design by Michael Zeiler.



3. la forma de desarrollo de cada tema esta muy bien explicado, mas alla de como armar una base de datos el libro proporciona un conocimineto claro para entender de los elementos en una base de datos y su relaciones. Da un esquema amplio que puede ser replicado para otros topicos donde sea necesario implementar sistemas parecidos.



4. All chapters are clearly developed, explained, organized and illustrated.
   
   It is worth reading either as a first try into GIS database design or as an authoritative source for on-going model design appraisal.
   
   It only lacks a chapter devoted to network modeling such as those employed by electric, water or gas utilities. The water hydro model does address 'networks' but it is of a very different sort and is not apt for utility modeling.

5 comments about Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0.

1. I am new to EJB. And I have to tell you after reading this book I don't think I will need other references. I think this a great book for beginners and could be good reference for those who familiar with previous versions of EJB. I wish examples were more detailed.



2. For a J2EE developer, this book spends too much on high-level introduction of EJB 3.0 spec and forgot to dive in the practical details of where, when and how to use them in a real-world ejb scenarios. I am also bit disappointed about this book as it does'nt add much value while comparing to Sun Java EE5 blueprints. This book also poorly explains the Java persistence API which one of the key ingredients of ejb3.



3. Finally. A solid, practical review of EJB -- if you had given up on enterprise bean architecture because of past limitations, most stacks have much better implementations today. This book is a really solid reference and reminded me why I wanted to build in EJB in the first place.



4. This was our course book and It helped me well more than a just a course book to prepare for my Distributed computing exams. Touches all the basic with good examples. The best thing I like is summary of chapters at the end gives a good touch of the lesson overall.



5. Ed Roman's Matering Enterprise JavaBeans books are excellent. Just be careful when you plan to purchase a book with a similar name....

3 comments about Beginning DotNetNuke 4.0 Website Creation in VB 2005 with Visual Web Developer 2005 Express: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: from Novice to Professional).

1. It's not for the complete novice and it won't teach you how to code. But it will get you up and going with VWD and DNN. Well written with good screenshots. He also takes you through the process of creating modules. It's a good primer and was what I was looking for.



2. This is a very good introduction to DotNetNuke. It will help you install DNN on you own machine and guide you through building a simple website.
   
   If you know a little about programming in VB and know something about HTML and CSS, this book will show you how to write your own DNN modules and create your own DNN skins and containers. You won't learn how to write complex modules or elaborate skins but you'll learn the basics.
   
   If you already know how to install DNN and how to create DNN modules and skins, this book is not for you.
   
   If you know nothing about programming in VB and know nothing about HTML, then you should probably learn about them before you tackle this book.



3. This book will take you from absolutely no knowledge of DotnetNuke and get you well on your way. Simple to follow. Like any good intro book it will help you to understand how DNN works and gives you enough information to know where to go to learn more. For example after you are shown what a skin is and how to use it you are then shown how to make one of your own. You should then understand where you want to go from there. My experience level is 1.5 years as an ASP.net, VB and C# Developer with SQL server 2005. I have no previous knowledge of DNN. It will be very helpful if you know a bit about Visual Web developer, Light Coding, CSS, XML and some graphics program knowledge such as Fireworks or Photoshop. However, this book will get even the non programmer where he needs to be to use DNN. In short - if you are new, Start here.

5 comments about Java Examples in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition.

1. Just type these in and learn, learn, learn. Good examples across the board.



2. While writing this I can already imagine the shock and dismay of the Fan crowd with my review. I don't have much time so let me get to the point.
   The 1 star I've given it (bcs I had to, preferable I'd rate it 0 stars) mostly pertains to the GUI section of the book. Instead of providing the reader with abundant and clear examples, this author wants to impress the Java geeks by writing an 'smart' generic class that shows all the different aspects of the java GUI elements. Aside from just lame, this is also done most likely because of laziness. I can imagine it's not very exciting to write up the core program structure for every GUI example. But that's just the way a decent author would go about. No need to waste pages by explicitly mentioning everything more then once. Such things can be saved for the example source right ? But mr Flanagan does not share that view. He sits back with his (admittedly entertaining) 'showcomponent' program that loads in all the gui program code (classes) and displays the material. So, again, his 'Java examples' are merely small files with therein declared a certain class without any(!) surrounding program code. (basically similar to what you'd see in the Swing lang spec). All these compiled examples need to be read in (from the command line no less, by his showcomponent class which then actually does all the work of creating the frame, displaying it etc etc etc.
   
   And then cometh the reader, . . . . The moment you have to incorporate some of these lay-out en control components in you're own program this entire structure is obviously useless. Hence you have to struggle to get every component to work after all. The exact thing one is trying to avoid by buying a book. (No, you can't just copy & paste several separate sources together :) ). Basically you end up doing all the work yourself in the end anyway. Henceforth this book, particularly the part of GUI's , dialog's and event handling is of little practical use. I guess it would qualify as some sort of java coffee table book. Interesting functions, a clever introspective class here and there, things you can sit back and debate about with you're friends.
   Not with you're collegue(s) when you fighting the deadlines.
   While I'm not very proficient in Java, I've coded in c/c++ for far too long. Hence I don't need trivial lectures on what a ip port is. I just need to see some _completed_ (as in finished) programs, to get up and running with particular Java idiosyncrasies & components. If you are in a hurry, and simply have to get something up and running, keep running. Away from this piece of trash.
   Go with "Core Java" or some of the Swing books. it'll get you there much much faster.
   
   Edit: Took the flames out of the review. I was rather disappointed with this title at first. (now it's just collecting dust, but at least it doesn't aggravate me either).
   If you're a programmer, (like me) you can read the spec by yourself. It's the little things on the outside of the program (event & message que's ,window trickery etc.) that differ from platform to platform. Those are the exact things the author glosses over with this text.



3. This book should not be expected to substitute as a tutorial for people looking to learn the Java language. Instead, it is a book full of short programs that each illustrate specific concepts in the Java language. If you are needing a tutorial on the Java language in general, I suggest "Head First Java", which is also published by O'Reilly and Associates. You can either read the appropriate chapters of this book in parallel with that one, or look through this book after you finish the Head First Java book. If you already know Java, keeping an updated edition of this book around as a reference is a great idea.
   The first four chapters of this book cover the basics of Java, objects, classes, interfaces, input/output, and threads. Thus these chapters remain largely unchanged from the previous edition. Chapter 5, on networking, has been updated to reflect the changes in the language since the last edition, and contains examples of a simple network client, an HTTP client, and a POP client in addition to the programs of the previous edition. Chapter six is a new chapter on The new I/O (NIO) APIs introduced in version 1.4. These provide new features and improved performance in the areas of buffer management, scalable network and file I/O, character-set support, and regular-expression matching. The NIO APIs supplement the I/O facilities in the java.io package, and this chapter does a good job of demonstrating the APIs in action. The next chapter that has had a major overhaul is the chapter on printing. Printing in JDK1.4 was updated considerably and allows you to list specific printers with specific capabilities, query printer status, spool text or image files directly to a printer, and convert image files to Postscript files. There are examples of all of these upgrades in this chapter. The chapter on data transfer has largely been rewritten to reflect that Swing has added support for data transfer between applications. When adding data transfer support to Swing, the goal was to make it easy for developers using Swing components to add clipboard transfer as well as drag and drop to an application. The examples in this chapter demonstrate these concepts very well. There is a completely new chapter on the Java Sound API reflecting the capabilities of that API. In addition to simply playing sounds and sequences, the chapter demonstrates synthesizing MIDI and also real-time MIDI. Finally, the last part of the book on the Enterprise API's has been completely rewritten to reflect all of the changes that have taken place in those API's since the last edition due to the popularity of the Java language in enterprise applications.
   Currently, this book is two years old, which is getting a bit long in the tooth for a computer book. This is especially true if you consider the fact that JDK 1.5 has been released since this book was published with its own set of upgrades and nuances, and that JDK 1.6 is scheduled for release in the fall of 2006. I don't know if a fourth edition is planned for the immediate future, so if you can get the 3rd edition used for a low price it might still be worth the investment. If you are a Java novice, it is definitely worth your time and money.



4. Great overall summary of Java with examples. Replaces short surveys, tutorials and cookbooks of Java.



5. This book rocks. I started learning Java about 2 months ago with the Head First Java book, which is AMAZINGLY helpful (even if you know absolutely nothing beforehand). Once I got through that all that I began writing small apps on my own, but found in many cases that the API (Javadoc) was hard to understand because my limited Java knowledge leaves me with no context in many cases. I would think, "ok, it says this class can do this using these methods, and that's what I want, but how exactly do I put this into practice." Java Examples in a Nutshell fills this need perfectly with excellent examples(!), explanations, and clarifications. There's only so much that it can cover, but what it does cover, it covers really well.
   
   I might also add that I bought this book after *returning* Java In A Nutshell because for me it really just seemed like a $50 printout of the API you can read for free at [....].
   
   What I want to say is that, from my own experience, if you are pretty new to Java, and you are clicking well with it, and want a boost to propel you forward even faster, this is an excellent book to buy.

5 comments about How Computer Programming Works (Technology in Action Series).

1. Not when the illustrations are as poorly drawn and pointless as these. eg people staring at computers, sweeping arrows with colored blends, or pointing hands (proving, yes they are hard to draw!). I can however follow the reasoning.
   
   This is yet another programmer who has trouble explaining the jargon but has noticed books that do a good job of being user friendly, have pictures. I found this book to be just like those inane PowerPoint presentations that middle executives think expresses the right side of their brain. A right side that seems to be made of cheap PC clip art.
   
   It doesn't help every time the book gets to a core idea, that it glosses over it as if it is obvious, without explaining the detail. Nor that on top of the meaningless graphics, the book is full of DTP blunders that obviously nobody has checked. Such as text set in fonts with mismatching encodings, resulting in strange accented characters being substituted for whatever the author intended.
   
   Why do programmers have such difficulty producing clear, sequential, logical and carefully crafted expression, that has been checked for errors?
   
   I thought that was their job.



2. The other reviewers here that reference their 13 year olds enjoying this book are absolutely right. This book is for 13 year olds. As a 25 year old trying to wrap his mind around programming, it leaves much to be desired.
   
   If all you want is a gloss-over for someone who has no intention to continue in the field of programming, but just wants a non-programmers understanding of programming, this book is for you. If you want something you can take with you on a journey into real programming, you will have to really dig deep to distill the few morsels of theory offered here. In fact I had to reread most paragraphs dozens of times in order to find the underlying concept he was trying to teach; to find something that would still be useful to me after finishing the book.
   
   Bottomline: A waste of time if you are out of high school and attempting to truly learn something about programming. Take a few minutes to skim thru the pictures at your local bookstore, then go buy a real programming book.



3. I bought this book based on the reviews. It was for my 11-year old son who is a whiz working with computers and wants to learn more so he can eventually start programming. I have been writing software for 20 years and find it difficult to make my knowledge and understanding relevant to someone so young. I don't want to dash his enthusiasm with too much technical jargon, yet he should learn enough to get curious and start tinkering with confidence.
   
   This book was not relevant for him. He's a pretty smart kid for 11, but the references in this book are for adults. It will bore a kid under 18.
   
   On the other hand, this book will probably be pretty good for an adult wanting to learn how computers work.
   
   I don't want to blame the writer since he never said this book was written for kids, but it's tough to rate it higher since the book now sits on the shelf.
   
   By the way, if you've gotten this far in this review, then you might know or have a youngster (isn't that an old-foggey word?) who wants to know more about computers. When kids have fun learning, they stay interested. With this in mind, a fun book to learn about computers is, surprisingly, "Head First HTML" by Elizabeth and Eric Freeman. By taking a fun approach to learning how to make web pages kids are introduced to programming.
   
   It's also an enjoyable book for adults.



4. I bought this book and felt disappointed.
   
   I think it's a wrong decision of me not carefully looking into the index portion to check my expectation. It is also a result from Amazon side, only a portion of chapter one, not revealing enough examples for readers to judge.
   
   It's a general introduction of some basic "ideas" about programming. It focuses on one idea per chapter. The illustrations are indeed very good to demonstrate those ideas. The whole book is like a delighted lemon juice, with very thin content.
   
   But, I feel the whole book best serves the teens as an introduction book about programming. If an amateur has a clear intention to head into the world of computer software, this is not a good entry book. He'd better consider other books and don't waste time on this one. This is just suitable for those whose time is free and ease.
   
   By the way, I feel not worthy to return this book because of the shipping fee. So, I decided to keep it for my son to minimize the waste.



5. "How Computer Programming Works" offers a useful compilation of major Computer Science topics. The artwork, spread liberally though this book, is generally quite useful and offers some unique insights into certain topics, but is at times overdone.
   
   Daniel Appleman has done a good job of condensing many of the major topical areas and themes in the field of Computer Science in fewer than 250 pages.
   
   For anyone with more than a peripheral knowledge of Computer Science and computing in general, but with a lack of formal Computer Science education or training, this is a book worth reading. It can serve as a launching point for more in-depth and detailed coverage of the topics addressed in the book.
   
   I recommend this book...especially to the reader segment mentioned above.

5 comments about An Introduction to Design Patterns in C++ with Qt 4 (Bruce Perens' Open Source Series).

1. I am extremely impressed by this book - not only does it provide excellent information on design patterns, and using Qt 4, but its written so that those new to C++ and Qt can understand and progress throughout. This book is heft, but extremely informative, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in C++ development!



2. If Qt is what you are interested in, go to trolltechs website or another online resource and don't waste you money on this book. The book is not very well laid out, the exercises are ambiguous and you have to work on the example code to get them to work. Although a lot of material is covered, the coverage of certain topics is barely adequate, although they do supply information on where you can get additional information.



3. The book is an easy read and has good examples, but unless you already know how to use Xcode or have KDE on your Mac this book is not for you, because you will find that the build instructions found in the book do not work in Mac OS X. Has anyone tested them on Unix or with KDE? I can only assume that they work there.
   
   Qt4 is not compatible with Xcode. (It is not possible to display Qt4 Objects like QString in the Xcode debugger. This used to work with Qt3, but was lost in Qt4.) While this is not the book's fault, it makes it very difficult to step through the examples or debug your own coding efforts in the exercises.
   
   I like the way the book introduces topics a chapter or two before going into detail. Also, the book makes an effort to reinforce what was learned in previous sections and chapters, making it a very good learning tool for anyone new to the topic.



4. This is a very good good which teaches you C++, Qt and design patterns.
   
   I am surprised by the commentaries saying this is not an introductory book. Quite the opposite: this is the perfect book if you do not know any one of Qt, C++ or design patterns but you want to use them together.
   
   Some may say the book worries too much about syntax. Wrong. The authors want to make sure you understand C++ perfectly well because subtle differences (such as the 'static in declaration' vs 'static in definition', introduced in chapter 2) may have devastating effects in your software. The same goes for Qt macros: the book explains them because when you know and understand them, you will write better code; the book by Blanchette and Summerfield barely names them.
   
   As the title says, this book is only an introduction. There are three natural companions you should get if you want to delve deeper in the wonderful world of Qt and design patterns:
   * A Complete Guide to Programming in C++ by Prinz and Prinz
   * C++ GUI programming with Qt by Blanchette and Summerfield
   * Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Gamma et al.



5. I don't major in CS but I have to use C++ and QT for my PhD research. Although I had pretty good general understanding of IT and some experience in web programming, I struggled to teach myself C++ from scratch. I tried a few popular books, but none of them worked very well. As someone said, "the trouble with C++ is there's an awful lot to remember". Those big thick books are often quite easy to follow from page to page, but very quickly all the details become overwhelming. C++ is a powerful and flexible language that incorporates different paradigms so there're always many different ways of doing things but quite often (particularly for beginners) we only need to know the best practices. As Bjarne suggests: "A focus on details can be very distracting and lead to poor use of the language. You wouldn't try to learn a foreign language from a dictionary and grammar, would you?" (http://www.research.att.com/~bs/learn.html). Ironically, most of the big books I read did exactly the same for me. They all tend to provide too many details upfront. You could end up reading 500 pages but still don't have a clue what's the correct way of programming in C++. Plus you'll probably forget what read before...
   
   
   
   I felt a great relief when I came across this book. I would say the authors have done a marvellous job. From the very beginning they teach you how to program in the C++ way, more precisely in the Qt way. The book suggests Qt coding style is not "pure" C++ but that's a different story. By throwing away all the irrelevant bits, they give you a good idea of the whole picture so that you'll be on the right track very quickly. Then you can let you knowledge grow by accumulating more technical details - it's just a matter of time and practice. Of course, a big thick book is still needed as reference. If you don't know anything about programming, I would suggest you read the first few chapters of one of the primers, then switched to this book. I feel it still requires some basic programming background.
   
   
   
   I would definitely give it a five star and recommend to anyone learning Qt