5 comments about Beginning AppleScript (Programmer to Programmer).

1. Finally a book about AppleScript that's not just for professionals. This book is for all Mac users that want to have some fun and learn how to write AppleScript programs. Kochan uses tons of examples and shows how to do some fun things, like write a guessing game, or write a program that says "Good morning" (or whatever is appropriate for the time of day). His iLife chapter shows how to write iTunes programs, and how to do things like make a photo album or DVD from a folder full of photos. This book rocks!
   
   - A Mac Hobbyist



2. Frankly the pickings for Applescript books is pretty slim. To have a new book on the subject is a welcome surprise. I would have preferred that the book had more exposition in relation to the amount of code, but that's a small gripe with what is otherwise a well written book. The basics are covered from the syntax of the language and the tools, to file management and logging. Then the author discusses scripting the common iLife applications. This is where I appreciated the up-to-date information as the other book on Applescript from O'Reilly is badly in need of an update.
   
   I would have preferred some additional information on Applescript Studio, as this is an exciting new development for Applescript. But that is also a minor grip.
   
   A must buy for those interested in a starting point for scripting their OS X box.



3. It's interesting to see just how powerful AppleScript has become. Initially scripting languages were not well suited for general purpose programming because they lacked too many features and/or were too inefficient. Both of these constraints have gone away. Computers are so powerful, the inefficiency doesn't matter. And the languages have gotten enough features that in many cases AppleScript works just fine as a solution to a general programming problem.
   
   It's about time for this book. Up until now the information about AppleScript has been thin. Now this tutorial has been published to explain the use of the language. I like Mr. Kochan's writing style. He starts off having you write a program. If you type it the way he says, the program has a bug in it. (Kind of like my programs.) That way, about the first thing you see is how AppleScript reports an error. With that out of the way, you can move on to learning the language.
   
   It's quite a comprehensive book, talking about things like classes of variables, there's quite a bit on string manipulation. Of course all the usual things like logic, loops, files and so on. He saves the description of AppleScript Studio until the end of the book, that way you learn more about the language itself and are ready when Studio comes in to help make the task so much easier.



4. I'm a tough grader, and four stars from me is doing very well! The bottom line is that this book is well organised, written clearly, and discusses a moderately difficult subject pleasantly and with competency.
   The book fitted my background. I started programming in 1959, became proficient in FORTRAN by the mid 60's, added BASIC and LOGO when I bought my first computer a decade later, used HyperCard while it was being supported, dabbled in PASCAL, and learned too little C before retiring in 1996. When I bought this book, my last programming was ten years behind me, and modern computer languages weren't in my repertory at all.
   I like a textbook approach -- clear exposition with plenty of examples, followed by problems to solve -- and Kochan provided just that. Often the examples preceded the exposition, and that worked fine, too. I prided myself on solving all the chapter-ending problems without looking at any of the solutions, and the book equipped me to do that, although a few problems in the later chapters took me a long time. Very occasionally I encountered typographical errors, but, almost always, what I had learned from the book allowed me to proceed. The point is not that there were typos here and there -- what technical manual is without them -- but that the book itself kept them from becoming an obstacle.
   From the end of Chapter 4 I was able to begin using what I had learned, actually putting AppleScript to work. That provided motivation to go on and finish the book, which took three months, incidentally.
   The book has an attractive layout and is blessed with an excellent table of contents, a comprehensive index, and a short list of other resources, all features of a well-written text, and all too often omitted.
   Still, four stars, not five. Why? Had I bought the book when it was published in 2005, rather than in January of 2007, I might well have given five stars, but writing about current programming techniques, especially when referring to other programs -- essential in teaching AppleScript -- is aiming at a moving target, and as the author indicated would happen, the target had moved on. An example in Chapter 11 using iDVD that a 2005 reviewer praised doesn't work on the newer version of iDVD on my computer, and the gap was too big for me to bridge. Kochan warned that two web-service examples in Chapter 13 might not remain available, and one of them is gone now. Despite these glitches, both Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 are well worth reading and studying, but each has lost a useful example.
   The book was unable to teach me the crontab feature in Chapter 13. I have not figured out whether a misprint, something outdated, or my own incompetence is responsible.
   The publisher, Wiley, provides an errata list for the textbook on line and provides a place there to post questions; however, the site is also dated and did not help me. Most of the errata listed there came from me.
   A principal purpose of AppleScript is to enable users to make more efficient use of other programs, such as Adobe PhotoShop and Apple iTunes, to name just two. This cannot be done in an elementary textbook, and Kochan illustrates what might be attempted without pretending to teach you to do it. On page 556 he cites "AppleScript, the Definitive Guide," by Matt Neuburg, saying: "This book explains many of the intricacies of the AppleScript language and is the recommended follow-up to the book you hold in your hands." I plan to find out. Neuburg's book, incidentally, wasn't suited to introduce me to AppleScript when I attempted to read it first.
   The bits of outdated material listed above should not discourage you from buying and profiting from "Beginning AppleScript." I do not know a better place to start.



5. AppleScript evolved from an 80's language called Hypertalk. AppleScript has always been the realm of only a few hardcore enthusiasts until Mac OS X came along, which made many computing solutions highly scriptable and boosted the popularity of Applescript. Of all the books I've seen on the language this is the best, especially if you're new to the language.
   
   This book can be a bit of fun too, as it is not simply about business solutions. Instead the author shows you how to use AppleScript to make an iTunes player and create a DVD slideshow. The book teaches the language by a series of short examples, each o which demonstrates a particular programming concept - how to write a loop, how to get a list of files, etc. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises to reinforce what you've just learned with solutions in the back of the book. The following is a chapter-by-chapter run down of the book:
   
   1. Writing Your First AppleScript Program - Covers the basics via a simple program that displays a dialog.
   2. Variables, Classes, and Expressions - The nuts and bolts of writing simple AppleScript expressions.
   3. Making Decisions - Deals with control flow and getting input from the user.
   4. Program Looping - A guessing game program demonstrates the use of the "repeat" statement and its various forms.
   5. Working with Strings - The basics of constructing, deconstructing, and inquiring about strings.
   6. Working with Lists and Records - How to use the two fundamental data structures of AppleScript. Also discusses more complex structures built from these two fundamental data types.
   7. Working with Files - Talks about opening, closing, and modifying files in the AppleScript language.
   8. Handlers - Handlers are what you'd call functions or methods in other languages. You'll learn how to write them, how to pass and return variables, and proper form for handlers.
   9. Error Handling - How to handle errors via event handling. Known as exception handling in other languages.
   10. Working with Applications - Talks about the "tell" statement, which is how AppleScript communicates with application programs. This is a very important chapter, since the primary use of AppleScript is to communicate with other applications.
   11. Scripting iLife Applications - A fun chapter. You write programs that interface with iPhoto, iTunes, and iDVD, three of the applications in the iLife suite.
   12. Script Objects - You learn how to craft data types that are compatible with object-oriented programming concepts.
   13. Loose Ends - Miscellaneous topics covered include web services, the Script Menu, GUI scripting, and recording scripts.
   14. Introducing ApplesScript Studio - Learn to use AppleScript Studio to develop a fancy user interface with AppleScript as the underlying code.
   Appendix A - Exercise Answers
   Appendix B - Language Reference
   Appendix C - Resources
   
   Highly recommended for the beginning AppleScript programmer, but that doesn't mean you'll come away with from this book with just beginner's skills.

No comments about The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource for Professional Workflow Techniques.

5 comments about Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Step By Step (Step By Step (Microsoft)).

1. One star is too high a rating. This book has far too many errors and omissions. You will find yourself having to debug the examples in the book. The published errata is a joke. There are 10 times as many mistakes. Weak.



2. If you are a programmer who is smart enough to be hired by Microsoft -- this is the book for you. For the rest of us mere mortals -- buy something else.



3. Dont buy this book. Many omissions and typo errors. You will spend all your time trying to get the examples to work.



4. I have worked through the first six chapters and it just gets worse and worse. The code, both in the text and the CD is laced with errors. There are sudden jumps with no explanation. I do think the choice of topics and the examples are well chosen but the book book is so sloppily edited that it is not worth the time and money. This is more like a rough draft than a final copy. I am an experienced C# programmer and this book has caused a lot of frustration and time waste.
   
   I would be ashamed to have my name on something this shoddy.



5. Easily the worst written book, on any topic, I have ever read. Filled with errors and typos, I could not get a single piece of code to work as written. The author leaves out essential points, and jumps around from point to point like a squirrel on meth. The text is virtually unreadable, and most of the code is useless. The author and publisher should be made to publicly apologize and compensate anyone unfortunate enough to have wasted their time on this book, which they apparently put an insultingly low amount of effort on.
   
   I could say more, but then I would waste even more time on this book, which does not deserve it. Trust me, do not waste a penny, or even more valuable, your time and brain cells on this.

3 comments about Basic Game Design & Creation for Fun & Learning (Game Development Series).Book & CD-ROM..

1. Tired of your kids playing video games? Buy this book.
   Easy to follow, my 10 and 14 year olds are using this book and having a great time. It is has step by step instructions. They are having fun designing and creating their own game.
   No prior experience necessary.
   I hope that more books like this are in the works.



2. This is a welcome addition to the game development bookshelf. It is oriented to having youngsters begin designing games. If you have a young boy or girl, and they are into playing games on a PC, this book is intended to get them into designing their own games.
   
   The book uses, and supplies a copy on the CD-ROM, Game Maker software. This is a 2D game development system that allows for the creation of games without requiring programming. Building a game, hoever, is not unlike programming. You have to define what the characters look like, you have to define what they can do. You are doing a lot of the same logic that programming requires.
   
   Perhaps your little game player can be made into a game maker. And just possibly he or she will learn something about computers while they are developing their own game. Possibly this will give them an introduction into what they want to do later in life, not necessarily design games, but almost any task in the computer industry.
   
   I know of no other books that take this approach, and I like it.



3. I bought this book for my kid to learn GameMaker. A very good book for beginners.

5 comments about Debugging.

1. This Book Demonstrates How you could debug SOMETHING systematically, from most important principle to least important principle.(All 9 As the Book name said.) The Examples covers software, hardware, electrical, mechanical debugging. It is just amusement to read the example. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.



2. This book is absolutely indispensable for anyone working in any job where things occasionally work in an unexpected manner. It's concise, funny, well-written, and full of immensely useful tips on how to go about debugging problems.
   
   One of the great things about this book is that it's generalistic in nature, not specific. Agans's decades of troubleshooting experience has given him great insight on how to go about debugging in all sorts of environments, so he lays out nine rules for approaching any problem:
   
   Understand the System
   Make it Fail
   Quit Thinking and Look
   Divide and Conquer
   Change One Thing at a Time
   Keep an Audit Trail
   Check the Plug
   Get a Fresh View
   If You Didn't Fix It, It Ain't Fixed
   
   [...]
   
   Debugging isn't an art performed only by folks with some odd genetic disposition, it's a critical craft which can and must be learned. I was fortunate to have some good troubleshooters as mentors during my days working radar inflight in the Air Force, but I've fallen out of many of the good practices those folks beat^H^H^H^Hinstilled in me. Agans's book is helping me pull out of the thrash and churn mode of debugging.
   
   This book's only 175 or so pages long and is well-worth adding to your library. Actually, substitute "a critical addition" for "well worth adding". I'm also going to make sure this book gets added to the professional development reading list I'm working on creating.



3. I worked with Dave Agans for over 10 years and I can tell you first hand the man knows what he's talking about. From developing hand-held controllers in the late eighties to single-board OS/2-based videoconferencing products to software collaboration tools, we have debugged problems of every ilk. Whether the problem was an FPGA bug, a faulty component in a board, a race condition in a device driver or a dangling pointer in a DLL, Dave always approached the problem with his same set of debugging rules, and they never let him down. Read this book. It's engaging and fun to read. But more importantly it will make you a better debugger, whether you're debugging hardware, software or your lawnmower.



4. Quite liked it. I now have a game plan for approaching bugs in a nonrandom manner (including intermittent bugs):
   
   
   Understand the System
   - Read all related documentation
   - Draw a system diagram and understand how things are connected
   - Know the capabilities of your debugging tools
   
   
   Make It Fail
   - Start from a clean initial state
   - Consider automating lengthy steps
   - Make it fail in situ; don't waste time simulating the environment
   - For intermittent bugs: list possible factors and try varying them one at a time; output a logfile and look for patterns
   
   
   Quit Thinking and Look
   - Watch it fail
   - Use Remote Desktop / VNC
   - Add logging and monitors
   - Don't start thinking until you've limited the number of possible causes
   
   
   Divide and Conquer
   - Binary search
   - Use test data with an easily identifiable pattern
   - Start at the failure point and work backwards
   - If you discover other bugs that may be related, fix them before continuing your search
   
   
   Change One Thing at a Time
   - Don't panic
   - Back out changes that have no effect
   - Compare the logfile with that of a good system
   - Check earlier versions
   
   
   Keep an Audit Trail
   - Keep a detailed written log
   
   
   Check the Plug
   - D'oh!
   - Have the components been properly initialized?
   
   
   Get a Fresh View
   - Try explaining the problem to someone (or something)
   - Ask an expert: co-workers, the vendor, documentation, bug database, the web
   - Report symptoms (including possibly unrelated observations), but not your theories
   
   
   If You Didn't Fix It, It Ain't Fixed
   - Fix the root cause
   - Make the problem happen again by undoing your fix



5. This is an excellent book on debugging. Whether you're debugging mechanical systems, electrical circuits, or software, the methodology presented is extremely practical and systematic. The author presents nine debugging rules that can be applied to any problem. The text is well-written, engaging, and humorous. The author also included a wealth of war stories that are worth the price alone. Highly recommended.

5 comments about Squid: The Definitive Guide.

1. Back in 1998 when I was running my own ISP, Squid was a lifesaver because it allowed me to provide excellent web response to customers over a very modest upstream connection.

   When I moved on to consulting Squid was the answer to a wide variety of client problems from employee Internet access control (Redirectors) to company website performance (Server Accelerator Mode) to plain old web page load times (Proxy Cache).

   Now that I've moved in-house in a large corporation (30,000+ employees) and I've found out what commercial vendors are charging for their solutions to each of these problems, I have gladly used my knowledge of Squid to save us money.

   Of course, that knowledge was not easily won, at least not for me. Because Squid was an open source project there was a lot of information available on the Web, but, of course, because Squid was an open source project, it was hard to find a definitive answer to my particular problem without asking a lot of dumb questions on newsgroups or making a lot of trial and error attempts tweaking compile time options, system changes and configuration file settings.

   I have waited for this book for a long time.

   I was concerned that it might be too detailed to be readable. Thankfully, Duane Wessels, the primary architect of Squid , has laid out this book to provide simple access at the Macro level. The chapter arrangement and organization are very intuitive. And yet the book still contains enough information to satisfy almost every question.

   The one caveat I would make to a reader is to maintain situational awareness while delving into a chapter because, without noticing it, you can suddenly be confronted with pages and pages of configuration file details. There's no avoiding it, when a book says `Definitive Guide' on the cover you expect to have full coverage. It's just that the book is so lucidly written that the transition from high-level discussions to detailed facts might catch you un-aware.

   And, really, it's that kind of feeling that lets you know that you're reading a very valuable text. I spent the first hour after I got this book skimming each chapter, happy at each additional topic I discovered. Then I went back and asked it the two hardest questions I have faced using Squid over the past year, in each case the answer was easily found and fully explained (Mr. Wessels deserves an award for making transparent proxying understandable).

   The wait for this book was well worth it. I highly recommend it to any person working with, or thinking about working with, Squid.




2. Squid: The Definitive Guide by Duane Wessels is a great book for someone with aspirations of setting up and getting the most out of Squid. It is lengthy at just over 400 pages, but that is to be expected and desired in O'Reilly's "The Definitive Guide" series. One point worth mentioning is that Duane Wessels (the author, for those with short synaptic cycles) is the one who started Squid and still works on it today. Each chapter builds nicely on subsequent chapters, so there isn't any skipping around. If you're just looking to set it and forget it, this book is probably not for you. Otherwise, read on.

   The first three chapters are pretty basic: history of Squid, downloading then installing. For those with no concern of going through downloading and installing, there is a nice section describing each configure switch and, while weighing in at a healthy 48 options, it may be helpful to have this as a reference.

   Chapter Four, Configuration Guide For the Eager, is an often desired, but often left out chapter in technical books. By just reading chapters one through four, it is possible to have a fully functional setup of Squid, albeit not very secure or ready for the pounding of the masses. You will, however, begin to understand how Squid operates. This chapter discusses the most often used settings, such as: minimum/maximum size of cached objects, log files and ACLs to restrict addresses, etc.

   Chapter Five, Running Squid, covers what you expect. It includes such topics as, boot scripts, chrooting and rotating log files. Again, basic stuff, but necessary for the sake of completeness.

   Chapter Six, All About Access Controls, covers one of Squid's major powers and attractions, access controls. ACLs give the administrator extremely fine-grained tuning. Some of the choice highlights for limiting access to addresses/domains include, but not limited to: filter by subnet, MAC, IP address or administrator assigned group. Furthermore, regular expressions can be used to filter URLs or URIs. A most likely seldom used, but very cool, feature is the ability to filter by BGP AS (Border Gateway Protocol Autonomous System) numbers. HTTP request methods such as POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. can also be filtered. Filtering by time or restricting access by user name is also supported. Each topic is assiduously explained and leaves little to be desired.

   Chapters Seven and Eight cover disk caching with chapter Seven being basic material and then Eight covering more advanced topics. Discussions on object pruning, size limits, cache replacement policies and many other cache optimizations are covered in these chapters and are necessary to thoroughly understand if you are situated in a relatively large environment or just want to squeeze every bit of performance from your Squid.

   Chapter Nine, Interception Caching, covers transparent proxying. This chapter discusses the benefits (no need to configure clients) and drawbacks (cannot do user authentication) of implementing such a system. It then goes on to discuss how to configure Alteon/Nortel, Foundry, Extreme Networks, Arrowpoint, iptables, pf and ipfw to perform the routing to the Squid box.

   Chapter ten, Talking to other Squids

   Scalability is another favorable attribute of Squid. Running in parallel with previous chapters, this chapter details the advantages (load balancing and increasing your cache hits) and the disadvantages (security problems with having to trust neighboring Squids) of a caching hierarchy. In addition, it explains how to configure connect timeouts and other tweaks to keep Squids aware of when their siblings are down.

   Chapter eleven, Redirectors, covers another great attribute of Squid. Redirectors can be used, among other possibilities, to remove advertisements in web pages or rewrite client requests based on their given URL or URI. This chapter details how they work, from a protocol level, and provides example configuration settings such as sending only specific users through the redirector or conversely, letting specific users bypass the redirector altogether.

   Squid can be configured to use various user authentication methods to allow or deny access. Chapter Twelve, Authentication Helpers, covers these options. Squid can talk HTTP Basic, HTTP Digest and NTLM. Each type is well explained in how it works and detailed in how to setup.

   Chapter Thirteen and Fourteen fully explain logging and monitoring. The logging chapter explains the type of information each log file catches, a full description of each error or information type (which is a great reference that I made full use of) and configuration directives that change what is logged or how it is logged. Monitoring Squid covers the Squid Cache Manger (A web front-end to many great statistics), a brief mention of using Squid-RRD and using SNMP. Such monitoring statistics include, file descriptor allocation, byte hit ratios, cache hits and cache misses and a wealth of other useful information.

   Chapter Fifteen, Server Accelerator Mode, explains Server Accelerator Mode, which is also known as Surrogate Mode. It is a neat trick where Squid stills runs as a proxy, however, the Squid server is proxying the world (or a select few) to your server. One obvious advantage includes performance (or Slashdot hardening if you will). There are several config directives explained here as well as some gotchas.

   Chapter Sixteen, Debugging, is the is one of the few chapters that I did not need to reference. Although, if you need to, there is some good information provided.

   Appendix A comes with a config file reference that actually provides more information then the comments in the configuration file (Holy moley!...they better trademark that idea before other authors catch on!).

   Appendix B briefly covers memory caching and optimization.

   Appendix C shows how to use delay pools to limit user bandwidth.

   Appendix D details file system performance benchmarks to show you filesystem and operating system differences.

   Appendix E discusses running Squid on Windows using Cygwin.

   Appendix F covers auto configuration of Squid clients to avoid needing to physically visit the many machines you administer.

   In conclusion:

   Pros: This is "The Book" for Squid. No skipping from chapter to chapter, the author was also the designer and still one of the maintainers, fuller descriptions of the configuration file directives that the configuration file comments. It is a great reference.

   Cons: Really the only thing that I didn't like was that he only discussed HTTP proxying. There is a brief mention of FTP and SMTP, but only a couple of sentences. To be fair, in the preface he did mention that he would would of liked to written on these topics but didn't have time.




3. For the new comer I recommend to buy this book if your finding an alternative for Microsoft box like ISA or MSProxy 2.0.
   
   Squid is robost and a very stable Proxy Server, you can use it even in Entreprise consumption..trust me I use it since 2001.
   
   If your looking for technical books or documents about Squid, this is the one your looking for...



4. This guide will pay for itself many times over. If you are considering a caching server for home, office or business you need this book.
   
   My previous experience with proxies was MS proxy server 2.0 and I was a little apprehensive of this project; not to worry. Forty six pages into the book, squid was running; total time invested including installation of the program was about 2 hrs.
   
   Another two hours of reading and precious few changes to config files and my log files are rotating, all ports I need exposed are open and the rest are hidden. I have already been able to tune squid to accelerate delivery of content using *only* this book as a guide. I haven't even had to look at the online documentation for squid (the first time I ever recall that happening).
   
   Not only is my internet connection now available to all users, but also every one is browsing faster than they were before on single dedicated dial ups.
   
   I can't say enough good things about the book or the program. In 14 years of networking I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. This is one of those rare guides whose author is extremely knowlegable and the material presentation is flawless. I have a large computer science library and in my experience, it doesn't get any better than this.
   
   Bravo Mr. Wessels!



5. then get this one. I learned enough about the reasons for using it and also how to configure it to authenticate against an LDAP server.
   
   Well worth getting and keeping on your shelf.

5 comments about The Modern RPG IV Language.

1. If you have been writing RPG for years or are now finding that you need to learn it for a new job this book will be your best friend.



2. I just started working in RPG again after not having practized RPG so much for about 7 years and decided to buy this book to refresh me.
   
   The book is of a great help and covers all the things I wanted in it and adding to that is very well organized and it's easy to find what you are looking for.



3. This book is very easy to read as the layout is very structured. It is a good reference book for RPG programmers.



4. Wow.
   
   I am new to the AS/400 and RPG (I've been a programmer since the 70's). After using several other books to try and learn RPG IV, I found this one. What a treasure.
   
   It is well written, well organized and tells you what you need to know when you need to know it! It is a good reference book for a beginner and the examples are understandable.
   
   If you are starting in RPG and need a pathway to RPG ILE this is the book.



5. Great book ! Anyone looking for a concise, yet complete and even fun (if you like RPG IV) reference to the language, that is not boring or dense at all, this book is the right choice for you.

5 comments about Building Cocoa Applications : A Step by Step Guide.

1. Let me start off by saying that chapter 1 is completely useless. I bought this book to learn about programming - not to learn tips and tricks for the OS! Chapter 1 has lessons on things like emptying the trash, getting file information, etc.! If I'm buying a book on programming, shouldn't it be assumed that I already know how TO MOVE AND COPY A FILE WITHIN THE OS??!!! Sorry, but it is useless in this book and SHOULD NOT be in there! A serious waste of space by the publishers.

   That said, the rest of the book is pretty good, but I wish it were more comprehensive (Hmmm, maybe skipping the chapter on how to rename folders and adding some extra programming information would have been good...) and like another reviewer, I wish the code examples were explained better.

   I would recommend this book as ancillary to more comprehensive programming manuals.




2. I tried using Aaron Hillegass' book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, but this book was much easier to follow for me. I don't mean to rag on Hillegass' book - it's still well written - just a not quite as easy for me. This book takes the time to *explain* the concepts before diving into a program. However, if you're looking for a reference book, this isn't it. This book will teach you how to use Cocoa by taking you through the construction of three fairly fancy applications - a calculator, and two word processing oriented programs.



3. This book has potential, but in general I am pretty dissatisfied.

   Good things:

   (1) It is pretty well thought-out.

   (2) The progression through 4 projects is good.

   (3) There is working code for the examples available online.

   Bad things:
   (1) The book is riddled with errors. If you include the unofficial errata from OReilly's Website, the book becomes about 200% more usable.

   (2) Why has this book not been reprinted? At LEAST OReilly should have released an official errata for this book at this point!!!

   (3) This book does NOT cover 10.3 and the XCode software (still uses project builder). In most cases this is ok and you can figure much of it out. However, there are times that the differences are too significant to overcome without a lot of effort.
   --
   I have been very happy with O'Reilly books in the past, but this one is substandard.
   I would recommend trying a different book unless this one is overhauled.




4. Not recommended, although some people like it a lot.  More errors in the text than others, making you go to the web for errata pages. Relies too much on just presenting source code for the reader to type in, without adequate explanation of what the code does and why it's structured the way it is. Less of a gentle introduction than Hillegass's book "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X", less comprehensive than Anguish's book "Cocoa Programming".



5. This book is upperquartile (as books of this type go). It has many good points. But it has one fatal drawback: there is a much better book available. Hillegass (1) is a professional trainer with oodles of classroom experience and that shines through in his book - he trained many of the Apple coders who now work on Cocoa, (2) has been involved with Cocoa from its inception. As icing on the cake, the 3rd ed of his book is up-to-date (2008), whereas this is not.
   
   I ploughed through Garfinkel and Mahoney first (on the strength of the O'Reilly reputation and good experiences with other O'Reilly books). I still did not understand Cocoa particularly well. Then I ploughed through several hundred pages of the Applie Guides. Finally, I bought Hillegass. I wish I had found it first. The Apple guides, or some of them, are quite good, but you need a good grounding first.

5 comments about Microsoft Reporting Services in Action (In Action series).

1. The content reveals a lot of details of RS. However, I had a hard time to make the samples running.



2. Being a Microsoft trainer, and needing to get up to speed in a hurry, I found this book - luckily. This book was able to give me the answers to the "how do I do..." questions I had, and then enabled me to explain these concepts to my students.
   
   Teo's style is easy to read, and he makes it easy to see how you can apply his examples to your reporting needs.
   
   If you need to get up to speed on Reporting Services in a hurry, and need a book you can refer to in the future, this is the one.



3. I found this book to have lots of information, but if you learn best by hands on examples, this is not the book for you. The author shows you a report already done and gives a quick explanation of how he got there. It is not a step-by-step type of book. As a lot of the examples shown do not have a how-to to go with it, I found this book not a good place to start. There are others that are more hands-on and step-by-step which are easier to learn from.
   
   Having said that, if you've had some Reporting Services experience and are just looking to brush up on techniques and/or learn additional techniques, then this book will probably save you the tediousness of having to go through a step-by-step example that you have already done in the past.



4. The project: create a secure, distributed, Internet-facing, interactive ASP.Net reporting application for a Very Large Customer. The schedule: short. The budget: low. Amazingly, we got it done, and I credit Teo and this book with helping us meet our requirements.
   
   The Microsoft Reporting Services 1.0 documentation is not very useful to the newcomer, and with 7 months' experience now, I can also say it's not very useful to the rising journeyman. The product is quirky, with surprising gaps and baroque security features. Without expert guidance from someone who has worked with the RS dev team I don't see how anybody would get much done with Reporting Services 1.0.
   
   Teo Lachev worked intensively with the Microsoft dev team and the book shows it. Perhaps one of the reasons other reviews here gripe about the examples is that the most useful examples are the non-trivial ones in the second half of the book. Report authoring is the easy part! Delivering your reports to your users in the ways they demand is the hard part, and in my opinion this is where Teo's book shines.
   
   It is no exaggeration to state that without Teo's book, and in particular his discussion of custom security extensions for Reporting Services, we would have failed to deliver the goods. But we succeeded... thanks Teo.



5. Very good book, lots of useful info that goes beyond the normal documentation.

4 comments about Web Design: The L Line, The Express Line to Learning (The L Line: The Express Line To Learning).

1. I have more books than I need on Dreamweaver, CSS, PHP, and web design. And very few have been read thoroughly. But I intend to study this book from cover to cover. Here is what I like about this book:
   
   1. The first couple chapters have helped me figure out what to put on the web site. It accomplishes this with a systematic approach that stresses what the visitor wants to see. (This is the kind of information I was searching for because I am weak in this area.)
   
   2. The remaining chapters cover material with which I have experience, which makes it easy to absorb. But I can compare my previous understanding and decide if I need adjust my thinking. You don't need to spend much time with this book before gaining a deep respect for this author's practical knowledge and common sense approach.
   
   3. I like her enumerated steps throughout her book. It's not wishy-washy. I thinks this comes from teaching the subject to classes.
   
   4. I like the abundant number of references to useful web sites. Even though the book is about 500 pages, it cannot go deeply into every topic, but the author points you in right direction with references and advice.
   
   This is book packed with a lot of good information and advice without getting into too much detail. I have plenty of other books that get into the nitty gritty.



2. This is a very good and well organized book on end-to-end web development. Although it is 500 pages, you can use it as a reference and skip around as well.
   
   One of the major strengths as another reviewer points out is the presentation of the design phase i.e. who is the audience and how to appeal to them. This material is often lacking from other books.
   
   While you may need other books to supplement this reference with respect to advanced coding, this will be all most people will need. Sue Jenkins is also the author of The Dreamweaver All-in-One Reference for Dummies, which is also an excellent, thorough presentation of what you need to know in plain and easy to understand language.



3. I teach "Internet Marketing" at New York University. I always recommend that anyone active or interested in e-commerce should at least learn the ins and outs of web design. Even if you don't want to be a web designer, you should at least have a basic understanding of how websites are built. This book serves two great purposes:
   
   1. If you want to actively pursue web design, this book will serve as a great reference and introduction.
   2. If you just need to understand how websites are built, this book will serve as a great way to introduce you to web design so you can talk intelligently about HTML and web design.



4. Jenkins' book is part of what appears to be a new series from Wiley, with the theme of the L line express. This book offers a quick boot up into making your own website. The examples focus on a small commercial website. Well, at least initially, it's going to be a small website.
   
   There is a balanced discussion between the design of a single web page and the overall layout of the entire website. For the former, graphics plays a big part, as you might expect. Two important packages, Illustrator and Photoshop, are considered, in which you can make the graphics. Both have more than adequate capabilities to do so. The text also teaches the basics about the different, common graphics formats - gif, jpeg and png. It suggests that you experiment with viewing the same underlying image, rendered in those formats and viewed in different browsers. These days, there should only be minor nuances. But if you are selling products where an accurate rendition matters, then it's a good step, to choose the best format.
   
   Then the book also goes into how best to design the whole website. Vital to avoid confusing the visitor. The skills here are different from the visual layout aspects of single pages. If your background is in visual design, this part of the book can be especially useful. It teaches different and complementary skills that you should master.