2 comments about The Ultimate HTML Reference.

1. This book has become my go-to reference for anything HTML. Why do I like this book so much? Let me count the ways:
   
   (1) Every HTML tag past and present is covered in this book.
   (2) Each tag description is covered by telling you the proper open and closing tag, and available parameters;
   (3) An example HTML segment is given on how it's used;
   (4) Whether this is still valid HTML or an old, deprecated tag;
   (5) A brief text description on what the tag is used for, and when you should use it;
   (6) Browser support for the tag, with four browsers covered: IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. What version of the browser supports the tag, and its compatibility with past browsers. No other HTML reference that I know has this.
   (7) An index of each tag for quick look up.
   (8) A table of contents in logical segments: HTML Concepts, Structural Elements, Head Elements, List Elements, Text Formatting Elements, Form Elements, Image & Media Elements, Table Elements, Frame & Window Elements, Common Attributes with three appendixes: Deprecated Elements, Proprietary & Nonstandard Elements, and an Alphabetic Element Index.
   
   Now, to the aesthetics. The book is gorgeous. Type is well spaced, large, and laid out beautifully. Each tag is laid out in the same format with shaded areas for quick reference. And the piece-de-resistance, this is a hard-backed book, so when you pull it out of the bookshelf it feels solid and nice in your hand, not like a floppy fish you get with the soft covered tombs.
   
   What this book is not. A text on learning HTML. This is not a step-by-step guide. It is a beautiful dictionary for fast look up of HTML tags when your not sure of allowed options, format, whether it is a supported tag, or what browsers are supported.
   
   Five Stars for exactly what it is, "The Ultimate HTML Reference."



2. §
   
   I strongly agree with the first reviewer that the aesthetics of this book are outstanding. The typography and layout are superb. Astute attention to these simple elements remarkably enhances the usefulness and readability of this book. An important aspect of my own job is transferring the same approach to the visual interfaces of Web applications, so I appreciate the sweat that went into this simplicity.
   
   Since I made my enthusiasm clear, I guess I can belabor my quibbles. I am not sure I would call this an "ultimate" reference because much has been left out. This is not particularly bad since the emphasis of the book is simplicity and usability. Most Web workers will surely want to use this book's approach, with all its fine organization and examples, rather than the W3C specs.
   
   What might you want more of? Well, there is no index for attributes. Each tag, like BUTTON, has plenty of attributes. Knowing what attributes are appropriate and most effective is important. For instance, this book covers the most critical attributes for BUTTON -- but not all of them. It mentions that IE has an incorrect default value for the TYPE attribute. This is very good to know, but even more important to know is that client-side script does not work for Firefox if the TYPE attribute does not have an explicit value of BUTTON.
   
   The world of HTML is fairly simple but can be treacherous. That is exactly why someone moving into this world will find this book a ready aid.
   
   §

5 comments about Adobe InDesign CS2 Classroom in a Book.

1. This book is extremely helpful with the Adobe InDesign program I wish I would have had it a year ago!!



2. I'm only giving it 1 star because CS3 has now been released, so the book is of modest value except for those who wish not to take advantage of the new and improved. Try taking this one to a used book store and you'll see that at "1" it's over-rated.
   
   Aside from that, this is an excellent series of manuals, particular valuable as software publishers no longer include manuals! As they say at O'Reilly: "The book that should have been in the box."



3. I am a convert from PageMaker, so I was already familiar with a lot of the functions in InDesign. However, the book has still been very beneficial. The examples and already finished or almost finished documents that come on the disc are great tools to learn with.
   
   The book is easy to read, despite being written by Adobe. Sometimes the only way to learn is to buy a book written by a third party, but I've found that is not the case here. Adobe did a great job.



4. I was just starting to learn InDesign and had not taken any classes. This book was great. It really helped me through many projects. A definite plus to your library if your are an InDesign user.



5. I bought this book and yes, it is a good book but it is not the reference book that I was looking for. I need to be able to look up how to do a particular application or what a certain button does. I have to figure out which lesson this might be found in and then go through to the lesson. This is time consuming and I do not always find the information I need. I am really looking for a great index with step by step on how to perform certain funtions.

5 comments about EJB 3 in Action.

1. This is THE BOOK for EJB 3.0. Covers everything about EJB 3.0.
   Also outlines migration from EJB 2 and integration with ORM tools.
   It's a highly organized and well written book.



2. I have been working with Enterprise Javabeans for many years. This really is by far the best resource to date on Enterprise Javabeans. One of the many strengths of this book is to show how the Springframework blends into the EJB framework. I have had a lot of success in blending these frameworks. The authors really believe in the EJB framework unlike another major author of EJB books.



3. This is my third book on EJB 3.0 and in my opinion the best one. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to learn Enterprise Java Beans and Java Persistence API.



4. I was not that enthusiastic about EJB at all during the EJB 2 era. Then I knew about the EJB 3 specifications and that made me read this book. I have to admit that after reading the book I became very much interested in EJB 3 mainly because of its removal of legacy EJB2 boilerplate mechanisms and the introduction of "Spring" like features. The book is very cleverly written and easy to read. The authors make every effort to make the readers completely engaged on the topic. Although I don't use EJB3 for my day to day work, this book clearly gave me new perspectives on how Java EE is driven going forward.



5. My company's library basically gives me access to all books I want, so I used to have a big stack of big EJB3 books on my desk. But during 2 months of daily work with EJB3 I often found this book helpful where others weren't and almost never found it the other way 'round. Only exception: Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (5th Edition) That book sometimes just has a broader coverage, delivering details that "EJB3 in Action" doesn't. But still, "EJB3 in Action" remains the best-understandable EJB3 book with (almost) the best coverage of topics. I have now returned all other books than the 2 mentioned here to the library, and I always look in this book first.
   
   While I agree with Rob on the language issue, what counts is the result, and that is usually the best with this book.

No comments about Pro Spring 2.5.

5 comments about C Programming: A Modern Approach, 2nd Edition.

1. This is the second of King's books I have purchased. It is also the second that I am very very pleased with.
   
   This book presents a quick systematic clear way of learning to program in C period. This has to be the easiest programming book I have ever read that goes beyond absolute basics.
   
   Frankly I don't understand the few negative reviews others have given the book. Yes it would have been nice to have answers to the exercises. However this is a programming book, you get the answers yourself by doing the work. Mistakes are readily apparent, simply because it won't work!
   
   In terms of difficulty, the exercises are doable. There have been a few that did stump me.....for a little while. With a bit of rereading and some experimenting, I have managed to answer all that I have attempted.
   
   Do yourself a favor if you are learning C and buy the book either as a stand alone or as a supplement to another book.



2. This is definitely the best book on C that I have ever read. King presents just about everything there is on the language in a clear and easily understandable way. One thing that I loved about this was King's mentioning the %g format specifier, which is something that has been very useful and that I haven't seen mentioned too frequently.



3. in order to really understand what was going on you need to intently read every single word. There are no solutions for the excercises which i thought were too difficult, and many times the means to find the answer could not be found in the chapter.



4. This book was an excellent complement to the professor I had for basic C programming. I'd venture to say that even someone with little to no computer experience could learn from it. One really nice feature is the Q & A section where obvious questions about the material are asked and then answered by the author such as: "Why is the C language so terse?" There is not an excess of information, but it gives a great deal of examples and even source code so you can see how the system compiles it. If I were teaching myself the C language, this would probably be the first book I went to.



5. I ordered K.N. King's ``C Programming: A Modern Approach (Second Edition)'' from Amazon for my recent birthday. Having had more birthdays than I care to admit, this gift to myself is right up there with a Lionel train set I got for my eighth birthday (not from Amazon, of course -- it didn't exist that long ago but passengers trains sure did :)).
   
   In this second edition, I think that KNK is now the logical heir to K&R. That's not meant as blasphemy -- Kernighan and Ritchie's still great volume is around 20 years of age and it's unlikely they'll be getting together for K&R3. The C language has undergone enough changes (with the amendment of 1994) and C99, that a ``Modern Approach'' really is needed.
   
   There's another author familiar to readers of the comp.lang.c newsgroup for his approachable, engaging writing style. That author is a wonderful writer but doesn't let the truth get in the way of good narrative. King, though, is an equally engaging writer but is obviously passionate about correctness and adhering to the C standard. He's also meticulous about portability so that the examples are written in pure C and not some platform-specific variant.
   
   I've the entire book and can find hardly anything even nitpick. Aside from a minor style difference about using parentheses with the ``sizeof'' operator, which King explains his rationale for doing so, that's about it.
   
   His explanation of C99 (and the differences from C90 are clearly indicated) made me aware of some really nice features of the current standard for the language (and makes me wonder why one very notable compiler implementer hasn't yet supported C99).
   
   In short, get this book. The Q&A sections at the end of each chapter are very well done. The exercises and programming projects help to amplify the material presented. And King's examples will teach you more about barcodes and ISBN numbers than you ever thought possible.
   
   If you can appreciate the work of a fine craftsman in film such as Martin Scorsese, you'll find that King is of that caliber in the realm of lucidly dealing with this technical subject.

5 comments about Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (Pragmatic Programmers).

1. First, let me say that I have read many books off the Pragmatic Bookshelf. Many of the best books I read during 2006 were published by these guys. With that said, this is by far the worst book I have read in recent memory. It is very simplistic and not very engaging at all. It's like a Fischer Price introduction to management. I did read most of it, but only because I was trapped on an airplane to Norway. Incidently, I left the book on the plane. It wasn't worth the shelf space in my library.



2. Having gone through a recent re-org that calls itself "new" 6 months after the fact, a 2-hour reading of this book was able to bullet point a good many ways the new management chain is screwing up. Nothing in this book is actually "secret" (it's all pragmatic) and very little happens "behind closed doors" (by the time you're there, something's gone wrong), but it's a good primer to read for a new manager or a good primer to pummel a pointy-haired boss with when they're doing nothing right. The fictionalized case study running through the book didn't appeal to me, but the drawn out points and sidebars were well (that is "concisely") written.



3. This is an excellent work that guided me though my first formal management experience. The book weaves its lessons into a story which helped you to understand how to apply what you learned. Like many important books, it explains some simple rules that can be difficult to execute in practice. The downside of reading this book is that you may realized that you're not being managed well (or have not been in the past) and you can no longer live in blissful ignorance. All technical managers at all levels should have read a copy of this book. The section on having one on ones by itself is worth the price.



4. I am very skeptical of most business improvement books and one size fits all methodologies, but I can tell you that this book absolutely shines as a glint of hope in the sea of business improvement noise. As opposed to trying to force a given technique that will apply to everyone in every business, this book provides some very "real" examples that exist in the software development world and some very simple concepts and techniques that can be used. This book is not written like an academic book of problems and solutions, but more of a story based book on a "real world" scenario, which truly solidifies the pragmatic name of the publisher. This pragmatic approach makes the book very easy to read, understand, and ultimately use. I think if you use at least one or two of the techniques presented in this book such as One-on-Ones and Big Visual Charts (BVCs) that the book will have more than paid for itself in terms of the time you will have spent reading it and of course the money!



5. Practical approach to management. This book shows the application of good management practices using real-world scenarios. It is easy to read and written in such a way that you can instantly start applying its concepts in your environment.

5 comments about Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference (Dynamic Html).

1. I bought this book , and i wait it about 1 month for arrive to me , but i am not lucky , the book contains more than 1300 pages , but i didn't find any thing benefit for me .
   I advise any one in beginner Level to keep away from this book .you must save your money .



2. The finest review of this book I can give is simply this: I bought the first edition in 1999, the second edition in 2003, the third edition in 2007, and as long as Danny Goodman and O'Reilly keep up the good work, I'll buy the fourth edition in 2011. There is no more indispensible book available for the Web GUI professional.
   
   One caveat: This book is not for beginners. If you don't already know how to build a modern DHTML/CSS/JS/Ajax interface, this book will likely be a waste of money. Moreover, if you're looking for how-tos and recipes, look elsewhere. This is a comprehensive encyclopedia of the DHTML universe, nothing more and nothing less.



3. The ONLY DHTML reference you need. This book has everything covered from Javascript, HTML, CSS, DOM, Ajax, Web 2.0. This is the only book that I always have by my side while developing.



4. I used to have the previous edition. I could quickly find objects and properties in the books index and just go to what I wanted. This new edition doesn't even have the event handling properties such as onmouseover and such. Its also missing some minor properties for css or html. I know the big ones, its the minor ones that i need help on. Its great that it takes into account safari, mozilla and opera compatibility, but they really did a crappy job on the index. Apparently they wanted to safe paper and removed some things from it. so, now I use the old edition and new edition. A big inconvenience.



5. A generally good reference book, but lacks a thorough index, and the page headings lack detail. Plan on spending lots of time flipping through the "input" and "document" pages looking for the page you want.
   
   The book notes browser compatibility for each item, but its hard to not feel drowned in the clutter of useless "IE n/a NN n/a Moz n/a Saf n/a Op 9 DOM n/a" entries.
   
   What I really wish I had was a "DHTML Best Practices" book where the primary useful, portable, and recommended tags/classes/events/whatever were highlighted and the deprecated/incompatible stuff was just summarized in a secondary section.

5 comments about Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services.

1. This is the fifth book that I have purchased from Wiley Publishing (WROX), and I must say that I have been very pleased so far by the overall quality of the publications until now. I read through the other four and still use each one of them as a relevant reference source.
   
   I am half way thru this book and the experience has not been pleasant to say the least. The inconsistencies between the text, figure's and examples are to numerous to be overlooked. And, to be honest, this is one of the most confusing approaches that I have come across in quite some time. He is obvious very knowledge about SSRS, but during many of his explanations he orphans the examples or doesn't tie what he is explaining back to the example. This makes it very difficult to reproduce in the actual development environment. You're just left confused!
   
   I am a twelve year veteran of Crystal Reports, Application Development and Database Design and I find this book very difficult to follow. So unfortunately, I would not recommend this particular book to others ... I am just surprisingly disappointed.



2. This will probably be an ok reference for some things in ssrs, but otherwise it has been a real pain to get through. There seems to be a huge amount of repetitive informatin in the first three chapters before we actually get to start writing reports.
   
   Unfortunately, once writing reports, it seems like the authors have ADD. They start talking about a walk through exercise but never actually have the walk through. They do have a couple of exercises where they show you how to go step by step, but these are not explained well.
   
   I think the writing, other than being repetative, is sometimes unecessarily chatty, but at other times way to terse for beginners.
   
   I have managed to glean some value from the book, but it's been tough. I would definitely recommend if you haven't touched SSRS yet to go through the tutorials on MSDN first. They do a better job of introducing you to basics, giving you plain instructions, and not overloading you with commentary that isn't all helpful in just getting you up to speed on how to create reports. Luckily I did this before I bought the book. I think if I was completely new to reporting and SSRS, I would have thrown this book down in disgust after the first 100 pages or so...



3. This book is about average. With that I am not implying that it is a bad book but rather that you could find the same information on the Internet just by googling a little bit. I guess I was expecting to find something really clever in it, something that it would make it more useful that simple internet articles. Again, not a bad book but also not one that will make the difference.



4. Almost impossible to do the walkthroughs as the writers can't decide if they are giving you instructions or just offering some general concepts. Chapters 1-3 are a waste of time. Go straight to chapter 4 to get started.
   
   The format is too conversational and often fluffed-out with irrelevant details.
   
   Overall, another disappointing Wrox text that has too many authors and no editor.



5. The reason for being so confusing is this book was written by so many authors, thereby the ideas presented are not coherent. This is not a learner's book, and if you're looking for one I suggest you buy Brian Larson's instead - great book, easy to follow and the author will patiently answer your inquiries regarding some minor problems.
   
   I bought this book yesterday hoping I could supplement the things I've already learned previously regarding RS, but no, I'll return this book today and ask for a refund.

5 comments about The Painter X Wow! Book.

1. If you are serious about learning Painter X, yes the book is really worth what it costs. It expands and explains in much more detail , everything that is in the product manual, and I haven't even looked at the CD that comes with the WoW Book. Do It if you can.



2. This is not a book for a person with no experience with the Painter software. While I believe there is useful information contained in it, it is not organized in a manner for a newbie to easily garner the workings of the software. The book is overloaded with pictures and screen shots accompanied by extremely small type which, while interesting, both detract from the content and do little to create a learning experience. I will probably come back to it after finding a more useful book and gaining more experience.



3. I was forced to read and use this book for a class in Corel Painter X. I also owned the first Painter Wow book. This one is a great improvement over that, however it still misses the mark on what is needed. Painter has improved greatly also, and has become more complex, if not enigmatic program. Painter was designed for a special group of people, (artists, yes we're special,) who generally like to just pick up a tool and start making art with it. While this book has great full color illustrations of what is possible, thus the "WOW," i feel it has too many exercises, trying to emulate someone else's example, and not enough organized detailing of the tools.
   
   What an artist needs with Painter is an accurate reference manual, where one can easily look-up a brush or other tool, find out all its standard variants, what they do and don't do, and what you may do to adjust it. The author attempts to do this, but you have to follow too many cross references, and too much detail is left out.
   
   This book is however the best you can get and she does do a great job of explaining the principles behind the different aspects of this program. Painter is so complex it is not easy for any person to fully know, but this is why a complete and usable guide is needed.



4. This book is a great source of information of how to use the program creatively and in many different approaches. There are a lot of examples from different Artists showing how they use Painter to create their work. And in the beginning of the book there is enough information to cover the basics.



5. The content of this book is superb. Unfortunately, accessing the content when you have a question, is a problem. I've only had the book a couple days, and I've only gone to the index three times, but for two of those three times, I was directed to the wrong page. I have been able to flip around in the book, looking for sections that are likely to contain the answer, but it is frustrating to pay almost 40 dollars for a book with a poorly assembled index.
   
   I would still recommend this book, despite this flaw. It's organization makes it relatively easy to hunt for the info you need via the table of contents, and admittedly, it isn't aimed at complete novices to Painter, nor is it intended to replace the Painter help menu. My questions were fairly simple, like I didn't understand why the blender brush wouldn't work on a layer. (Check the "pick up underlying color" box on the layers pallete for it to work). I suspect that this book is aimed at someone who would already know or be able to easily guess this.

5 comments about HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide (6th Edition).

1. I wanted a complete reference & guide to html/xhtml and that's what I got. I didn't want to be ignorant about any features. I didn't want to be left in the dark about anything. This book has all the info I wanted, and much more. In fact in a way it has too much info. It has info about tags, attributes, and other features that are obsolete, deprecated, or not supported by any browsers. You can skip over those rather than slogging your way through every word in the book. Maybe it's just me, but one downside to this book for me is that the writing style tends to be convoluted, verbose, and somewhat boring. I had some difficulty staying focused and concentrating on this book. But since it fulfilled the reason I got this book, I still give it 5 stars. So if you're looking for a complete book, don't worry, it's complete.



2. I have the 3rd edition and use it most everyday in my job. I figured it would be a bit outdated so I bought this latest version. The new version is essentially the exact same as the old version and I feel like I wasted my money. It's also missing the handy quick reference the older version had. However, if you don't have an earlier version, I would definitely recommend it. It's indispensable.



3. Don't make the mistake of thinking this book will teach you how to code web pages using HTML and CSS. This is a reference manual that exhaustively discusses the mechanics of coding web pages, but it doesn't walk you through the process step by step. For that, I recommend O'Reilly's "Head First: HTML with CSS & XHTML." The benefit of this book is that it covers every aspect of HTML and CSS, including some which the W3 consortium has approved but no browser yet supports. It's best as a reference book for those already familiar with web page coding. It's full of surprises and "I didn't know I could do that!" moments, given its comprehensiveness.



4. AMAZON, SHAME ON YOU!!!!! You should state what edition and the date copyrighted in the book information and indicate whether there are newer editions.
   
   Watch out. Though Amazon has it covered by the "look inside", the book entitled only HTML is the 3rd edition of a book that is in it's sixth Edition. Amazon has combined all the reviews for all the editions. This should not be done!!!!!!! I have always felt comfortable buying from Amazon, no longer. I did have a seller (ordered through Amazon)send me this edition for the full price of the 6th. He got the sixth to me, but it took my time to get it corrected. The 3rd edition is probably not even worth the $10 for the used edition, but is certainly not worth the $20 for the new. Don't be fooled! I can't believe Amazon is stooping to this sort of a con. The most serious problem is that much of what you learn in this edition is being put out to pasture in the next 5 years.
   
   
   There is a World Wide Consortium that is trying to standardize language and browswers. HTML is being replace in the interim with XHTML and eventually XML. A new, more powerful, formating language, CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is replacing any formating in HTML.
   
   Many of the reviews you see are for the 6th edition. It does have errors (it doesn't stick to the more stringent XHTML as it should, and the redundancy is annoying. Castro's is annoying in that she sectionalizes the code and it's not clear at first what she's doing. I haven't yet seen the others that are offered.



5. I am new to HTML/XHTML and wanted a definitive reference book that told me about EVERY HTML tag - and exactly what were and weren't the correct ways to use them. After buying and reading about 5 other similar books, I finally got to this one and it is exactly right. All the other books cover useful snippets here and there, but they aren't exhaustive.
   
   Note that this book isn't good for learning the basics. Rather, it is useful reference once you know the basics and need a source that tells you authoritatively that this such and such tag (e.g., 'p') does or doesn't support such and such attribute (e.g., 'padding') - fyi, it doesn't, except thru the 'style' attribute.
   
   If that's what you need, then this is what you should buy.