5 comments about Designing Forms for Microsoft Office InfoPath and Forms Services 2007 (Microsoft .NET Development Series).

1. Most of the InfoPath books out there do not address Forms Services like this book does. Even if you have never worked with InfoPath or Forms Services before in your life, this 1223 page book takes you from the very basic topics to the very advanced. What makes this book The Best is that it actually addresses most of the problems InfoPath developers face when developing and deploying forms, specially in a web/intranet environment. For anyone and everyone who is or wants to work with InfoPath 2007, I can't think of a better reference than "Designing Forms for Microsoft Office InfoPath and Forms Services 2007".



2. I've never written a review before, but I feel compelled. I'm in chapter 3. Don't be in a hurry; you might miss something very important buried in a page of text with little visual cues to lead you to it. Maybe the editors think if it looks more imposing and scholarly they can charge more for the book.



3. As many of the previous reviews before mine can attest, this is a great book and one of many other definitive Infopath reference-literature for someone needing to work with Infopath on an ongoing professional environment.
   
   What differentiates this book from others is its narrative.
   
   I have been reading IT technical books for 24 years now and very rarely I find a book so easy to follow.
   
   I didn't need that extra cafeine-hit to keep me awake after 20 minutes reading this book. I did need a PC beside me to practice what I was reading from time to time, and only because I like to bring thoughts come into life. However the book does enough on its own to keep you going without any yawns.



4. 21 chapters 1158 pages, explains the blueprint planning process required for building forms. (This design process is outstanding and teaches at a very user friendly, yet indepth level. The first 12 Chapters teaches just how InfoPath recieves, maintains, process XML Code from nodes /leaf nodes to XML files. Explains the Layout, adding controls, Data Source and Data source binding, Creating multi Views for printing and viewing information and lastly methods of deployment including security.
   InfoPath can now be tweaked for almost any "form" requirements you can think up and without the use of any code writing.
   But for you XML code wizards, Chapter 15,16 goes indepth on Event Bubbling, adding Password code, and many other XML code writing subjects including the use of Visual Studio. I myself found it to be useful knowledge, even if I never alter a line of code, though mostlikely I will.
   I would have to say this book covers every aspect of Form Design including E-Mail deployment, web deployment and lastly local server deployment.
   If you plan to build a InfoPath form, this book is a must have reference.
   Get out your highlighter though! (Better yet, make it two or three).
   Good work by both, Scott and Hagen, including the entire InfoPath team.
   Bill>"M"



5. we have several InfoPath developers books at my office and this is the only one people use. I don't think it's perfect, but it is by far the best you're going to find out there, so I'll give it five stars until something better comes along.

5 comments about Java In A Nutshell, 5th Edition.

1. The book is by far the most comprehensive, plain english manual for java that exists. Great book, but anyone who see's it laughs at the title. I think it must be an intentional joke. With 1225 pages and weighing in at a hefty 1.5kg (3.3lb) it's by no means a nutshell. It's more like a bombshell. If it were ever to be divided into 3 books, I would buy it again, just so that using it wouldn't be so cumbersome.



2. This is a great book for those Java programmers who want a rapid reference. The only drawback of this book is its weigth: the large part of the book is made of a Java reference (very similar to the official JavaDoc) that in my opinion is not so helpful, as if I need the documentation for a specific class I can browse the official documentation online.
   Anyway, the first part of the book is well written and gives many examples that can help both new and experienced programmers to understand the main features of Java 5.



3. I very much like this as a reference, but at this point I feel like most of the back 2/3 of the book is unnecessary bulk. The front portion, however, is excellent.



4. I used to like this Nutshell book, but it seems to have grown a little too big for its bridges. Maybe it's not O'Reily's fault. Maybe it has more to do with Java growing so much. But earlier versions were quick and to the point. This is now overly verbose.
   
   This is no longer a sleek Nutshell. Its a back-breaking bomb shelter with 10ft thick walls.



5. I am a programmer, and in a programming language book, I expect to find syntactical diagrams of the language. Anyone can read those, we should not have to glean the diagram from the wordy explanation. It's fine to have all the verbiage, but head each section with the syntax diagram.
   Also, this book goes into lengthy explanations of what object oriented programming is NOT, as on page 104. This is a very bad practice in teaching. Only teach what is correct, not what some novice might ignorantly think. I have gotten better fundamentals in Java free on the w3c site.

5 comments about Learning the bash Shell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)).

1. More than you ever wanted to learn about the bash shell. Good reference for sysadmins.



2. I have owned this book for awhile, and over the years it has been my only reference to the bash shell I have felt a need for.
   
   The only down points I have seen in this book is that some of the info seems to be seperated out a bit, making some info hard to find at times (although if you have a hard time using an index, well, bash may be a bit advanced for you), but everything is covered well, and the appendixes are fairly good.



3. shipping fast!! =D nice comunication and information :D
   sorry for later review:)
   -]Raul[-



4. I first bought this book over 12 years ago, and I still use it as the standard by which other books are measured. It must be one of my top 5 favorite computer books, ever.
   
   The author clearly understands the material, and makes it approachable, direct, and easy to learn without being too light or condescending. I wish the same could be said of Java books.
   
   "Learning the bash Shell" is the right size and right price, too. Perfect in every way.
   
   O'Reilly kind of took a turn for the worse in the late '90s / early 2000s, but this was originally published back when they were good the first time. (They've since recovered, IMO)
   
   If you have need to learn the bash shell, you can't go wrong with this one.



5. This book provided a solid resource to start writing shell scripts in bash. It is well written, and also provides understanding into some bash features that go beyond just a reference book.

5 comments about Dreamweaver CS3 Bible.

1. I ordered this book for it's coverage of the new Spry Ajax features of Dreamweaver CS3. Having used the three previous versions of DW for nearly 10 years, I was not looking for an introduction to DW, but more for an encyclopedic reference to look up and deal with specific situations and coverage of new features. So far I have found the Bible to be very good for these purposes. Subjects are easy to find using the table of contents and index and, once found, topic coverage is clear and full of usage/code examples.
   
   As I said, I am far from being a DW newbie who needs introduction to the basics of the software so I have not spent much time in the introductory chapters of the book. I have, however, loaned the book to a co-worker who is new to the product. She indicated that the Bible author's writing style and liberal use of figures and examples made the content easy to understand and she feels that her DW expertise has been pumped up dramatically by her exposure to this book.
   
   This is a good, well-organized resource both for the experienced developer and the web development novice.



2. I started CS3 using the all-in-one CS3 book for Dummies. It was a very good overview of the entire suite that helped get me going, but it wasn't long before I needed more detail. That's where this Bible comes in. I haven't read it cover-to-cover yet, but the individual sections provide the additional detail to take the frustration out of new tasks. I find this much more useful than the on-line Adobe articles. It would be nicer if the illustrations were in color, but that would also make the book much more expensive, so it's not a bad tradeoff.



3. This book, while daunting in size, is very accessible and contains everything you need to know about Dreamweaver CS3. I'm a designer, comfortable coding CSS/HTML but pretty green when it comes to things like XML and Spry. Other Dreamweaver books I looked at didn't have anything I didn't already know...so I knew they were lacking in a big way. This book takes you through every nook and cranny and when compared to others its astounding how glaring their shortcomings are and much more is in here. While you probably won't lay in bed reading this giant book it is by far the best and only book to consider for Dreamweaver. For me its serving as a springboard to learn other technologies/languages, so I'd have to say you'll learn a lot even beyond Dreamweaver. Covers the subject matter thoroughly and teaches you so much more...they didn't have to bother writing any other Dreamweaver books. This is the one.



4. Just speaking from one who does not build websites for a living. I purchased Dreamweaver to build our own company websites. We have used primarily Frontpage in the past for our basic websites, despite it's obvious limitations. So obviously there is a steep learning curve towards learning Dreamweaver. We are fairly competent with computers, but the biggest problem we have with this book is that it is so wordy. This book is over one thousand pages long, and the first one hundred pages do little more than describe Dreamweaver's features and attributes, without getting into any of the meat of how to actually run the software. Time is a limited commodity for us, and we don't need to wade through a thousand page book to find our answers.
   I would agree that this is an excellent reference book, and I would recomend purchasing it to improve your web design capabilities, once you're already familiar with Dreamweaver. But I would prefer to see the big picture first. That is, I would rather learn the basics first, on how to run Dreamweaver, then learn about all of it's intricacies later.
   So I would recomend this book as the second Dreamweaver book to read, if you are new to Dreamweaver. The first one should be more basic and more to the point.



5. Aside from the obvious, that it has nothing whatsoever to do with THE Bible, it's quite dry and un-informing. I'm unable to get much from the book; other than "history of the web" type stuff. Buy at your own risk.

5 comments about Microsoft® Mobile Development Handbook.

1. Every now and then you run across a programming book that is exceptional; one that is far richer and more useful than the multitude of other resources out there. I recently had this experience while researching Microsoft .NET Compact Framework. While Microsoft has a wealth of documentation on .NET Compact Framework it's sometimes difficult to figure out what documentation is up to date and where to find coverage on a particular subject.
   
   Having many questions left unanswered by Microsoft's Web site, I finally turned to this edition of the "Microsoft Mobile Development Handbook" (Microsoft Press 2007) by Andy Wigley, Daniel Moth, and Peter Foot.
   
   In a nutshell the book is one of the best programming books I've read in a long time. In fact, I give it my highest recommendation. .NET Compact Framework is a nice piece of work and this book will help you appreciate all of its capabilities and how all the parts fit together.
   
   If you are thinking of developing mobile applications and are considering .NET Compact Framework, I recommend you buy a copy of this book.



2. This book is for new and existing mobile application developers who already have some experience developing applications using the .NET Framework, either desktop or compact version. If you are new to .NET, first read "Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step By Step" by John Sharp or "Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Step By Step" by Michael Halvorson. Those books can teach you the programming basics, and you will then be prepared to use this book to learn mobile application development. This book can help you develop mobile applications using .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and will introduce you to some of the new features that are in .NET Compact Framework version 3.5, which will be released with the next release of Visual Studio, currently code-named "Orcas."
   
   Along the way, the book highlights features that are new to .NET Compact Framework 2.0 so that the developer who has experience building applications using the version 1.0 product can identify new features that are helpful. However, the main purpose of this book is to give you the essential information you need to design and build applications that work on a constrained device such as a Pocket PC or Smartphone, or on embedded hardware. It instructs you as to how to build and debug applications, how to design GUIs that work on small devices, and how to deploy applications. It also delves into problems that are unique to mobile device applications, such as how to design and build applications that work well with unreliable, slow network connections, which is the usual state of affairs with phone-enabled mobile devices. This book is a handbook for the mobile developer that explains how to tackle the common problems that mobile application developers encounter. The book is divided into three parts:
   
   Part 1, Mobile Application Development Essentials, contains six chapters that everyone should read because they take you through topics that all mobile application developers must understand.
   
   Chapter 1, ".NET Compact Framework--a Platform on the Move," is an introduction to the .NET Compact Framework and explains the tools you need to build applications for smart devices.
   
   Chapter 2, "Building a Microsoft Windows Forms GUI," explains how to build effective Windows Forms applications on personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Smartphones.
   
   Chapter 3, "Using SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition and Other Data Stores," looks at data persistence on devices in SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition databases and how you can build a graphical user interface that binds to data.
   
   Chapter 4, "Catching Errors, Testing, and Debugging," shows you how to test and debug your applications on real devices and emulators, and how to trap and handle errors at run time.
   
   Chapter 5, "Understanding and Optimizing .NET Compact Framework Performance," is about creating applications that perform well, something that requires a little more care to achieve on a smart device with limited RAM and storage than it does in a desktop application.
   
   Chapter 6, "Completing the Application: Packaging and Deployment," looks at packaging and deployment and how Visual Studio 2005 makes it easy to build installation packages so that you can install your application on your target devices.
   
   Part 2, Solutions for Challenges in Mobile Application Development, contains 10 chapters that examine areas that present particular challenges to applications running on a smart device.
   
   Chapter 10, "Security Programming for Mobile Applications," is about security programming, an essential topic for any software developer, but of particular interest to mobile application developers who are responsible for keeping valuable data secure on a mobile device that can be lost or stolen, and must send data over public communications networks such as the Internet.
   
   Chapter 11, "Threading," looks at how to do multithreaded programming in the .NET Compact Framework.
   
   Chapter 12, "Graphics Programming" shows how to present UI that looks more polished and professional than one that is built using only the standard Microsoft Windows Forms controls from the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Toolbox.
   
   Chapter 13, "Direct3D Mobile", discusses how 3-D graphics can be implemented on a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered device using Direct3D. It starts simply with 2D graphics and then gradually moves into 3D graphics.
   
   Chapter 14, "Interoperating with the Platform," explains how to call native APIs that are available in the underlying Windows CE operating system to perform tasks that are not possible using the .NET Compact Framework APIs alone.
   
   Chapter 15, "Building Custom Controls", looks at developing custom Windows Forms controls that you can use in .NET Compact Framework applications.
   
   Chapter 16, "Internationalization", explains how to create applications that are easily localizable to different cultures and languages.
   
   Chapter 17, "Developing with Windows Mobile", looks at the Windows Mobile 5.0 managed APIs, a set of APIs that are unique to mobile devices and that expose system information and allow programmatic access to data stores such as Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile contacts, calendars, and tasks lists.
   
   Part 3, New Developments, consists of a single chapter that provides an early look at the next version of Visual Studio and the next version of the .NET Compact Framework, version 3.5. The latest version adds new features for querying data collections, messaging, testing, and many other innovations and enhancements.



3. It is like my bitacora or bible when i am offline. I guess it has a little of everything you need to know in very compact book (i thought a 600 book will be wider but the size is great)



4. Got 2 copies for my moble development team. The book is simply invaluable. Either you read cover to cover, or select any chapter of special interest the result is in depth information and guidance. Very often our two copies are not enough for everyone in the team.



5. Definitely a good book: I found it very complete and easy to read. Useful and interesting, straightaway.