5 comments about Visual Studio 2008 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)).

1. I haven't read the entire book yet, but my initial impressions are that it is an excellent beginning book for Visual Studio 2008. It also touches on some topics not immediately related to Visual Studio, such as modern programming practices, which I found valuable as a junior programmer.
   
   If you are a veteran Visual Studio user, this book is probably too basic for you.
   
   Most of the chapters are overviews, rather than in-depth coverage of any one topic. However, the content is very practical and concise, and contains a lot more useful information per chapter than some more poorly written books would.
   
   From what I can tell, this book is very similar to the previous edition for Visual Studio 2005, with much of the same text. This new version includes mostly the same chapters, with a few new chapters on new features - notably AJAX and LINQ. The new JavaScript debugging does not appear to be covered, which would have been nice.
   
   The new book is missing a few chapters that were in the 2005 edition - one on SQL Server Reporting Services and another one on Using Enterprise Library.
   
   The omission of Reporting Services is unfortunate, since that is a popular alternative to Crystal Reports. (The 2008 edition still has the Crystal Reports chapter that the 2005 book had.) However, if you are going to use Reporting Services you'll probably get a separate book for that anyway. And perhaps the RS chapter was left out of this 2008 book in anticipation of SQL Server 2008 (scheduled for release later in 2008).
   
   All in all, this is an excellent overview and introduction to Visual Studio 2008. If you have a little .NET programming experience and want to learn more about the basics of Visual Studio development, this book is for you.



2. This is exactly what you need to get started with Visual Studio 2008. Whether you are a novice programmer or an experienced developer this book has something for you. It is a very easy read and has a basic step by step approach throughout. For anyone interested in programming with Visual Studio 2008 or if you just want a good reference guide, I would highly recommend this book.



3. This book has been a great reference and learning aid. From start to finish it gives you a great insight of Visual Studio 2008 and the versatility of this program. There are many step by step examples of the many uses of Visual Studio 2008 as well as many tips and web site references. From building application programs (such as smart client and web applications) to accessing data(by using XML or SQL Server) this is a great reference for any programmer. I would strongly suggest that this book become a part of any programmers library.



4. This book is good for a first overview of what and how do to with VS 2008.
   The reader should have minimum programming skils, not a dummie at all.



5. I like the style of many of the "Dummy" books. But the content in this one is likely not a great fit for most people. It tries to be a swiss army knife of anything you could want to do with Visual Studio--desktop application development, smart phone apps, web apps, databases, etc. But, unfortunately, each of those topics really needs a book unto itself to likely accomplish much of anything useful.
   
   This book is arranged into 7 "mini books" (not 6 as the cover artwork here on Amazon shows). And each book covers too little to do much more than get your feet wet on a given topic. Within each "mini book" the attempt to cover so much information with relatively few pages creates problems.
   
   For example, Book 5 is titled Coding. Despite that fact that most people will likely use only C Sharp OR Visual Basic, this section intermixes both languages on nearly every page. So the C# programmer is confused by all the Visual Basic examples and text, and visa versa. It's far from ideal unless you really do want to learn two complex programming languages at once, which seems like a bad idea for a beginning programmer buying an intro "Dummy" book.
   
   I can imagine a few sorts of people for who might want to buy this book. The first is someone who wants an overview of all the capabilities of VS 2008 but doesn't need to actually develop any code. An example might be someone managing a group of developers using VS 2008. Or an experienced developer coming from an entirely different development environment (such as Linux/Eclipse) who only needs to know the ins-and-outs of VS 2008. And, finally, if someone just wants to play around and develop a few "Hello World!" examples in a few of the VS 2008 programming languages, this book will get them there.
   
   If someone wants to do some serious application or web development, they may find a few chapters of this book useful, but will likely still need to buy another book to cover their particular area of interest in more detail. This book will not, for example, teach you object oriented programming or the full syntax of Visual Basic, ASP.NET or C#. It also doesn't cover the .NET framework and libraries in sufficient detail to do much more than play around.
   
   So, in summary, it's an interesting overview, but unless that's all you need, you're probably better off with a book that targets the particular area of Visual Studio development you're most interested in.

5 comments about Creating Web Pages For Dummies, 8th Edition.

1. This is a great starter book, but once you get your web site designed, then what? I wanted to know more about hosting services and costs, etc. Then found another title on here called "The Complete Web Hosting Kit Pro." This is a complete kit that lets you host your web site on your own PC for free. Comes with everything you need... instructions and software to host your site on your PC at home or at work. I recommend both this book and the web hosting kit.



2. This is a great book for the person just getting started in thinking about putting up a web site.
   
   The basic concept here is to use a fairly minimal amount of HTML, which he teaches you, and then one of the hosting services such as GeoCities, Google or AOL to get your site up and running. All in all, he presents an excellent description of what you need to think about, what technologies you need to understand, and the various tools that are available to assist in the construction of the site.
   
   The intent of this book is to enable to get a site up and running, fairly quickly (He says in a day, I think he is a bit optimistic, plan on a weekend, maybe even a three day weekend.) but only after having thought a lot about the various aspects.
   
   Then in chapter 18 he talks just aenough about things like JavaScript, database connectivity, cascading style sheets and more to let you know that you've barely scratched the surface.
   
   An excellent place to get started.



3. Thanks for the quick responce in the product, received what I needed for less



4. I was hoping for something that would help me get started on building my own site. This book is for someone who just wants any site, and is looking for someone else to do for them.



5. This was my first "for Dummies" book purchase and it will be the last (unfortunately, I also purchased "Web Sites for Dummies" at the same time. A How-To book this not....you get no step-by-step instructions, what you do get is a lot of information that is generally available on the internet with a dose of new-age you can do anything you want if you try.........well, at least the title is right..........only a DUMMY would buy this book.

No comments about Introduction to Language Development.

No comments about Microsoft Office 2007 in Business, Core (In Business).

5 comments about Microsoft® Office Word 2003 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft)).

1. Fast shipping. Book received in same great condition as described on website. All in all, an A+ transaction.



2. This book is for everyone, novice, intermediate and experts (who need a refreshers course). Its plain and to the point. There was one section of it that was not quite right, however, this is no fault of the seller but the writers of the book. Once you over look that it works just as stated in the book. The book got to my freight forwarder quicker than I expected.



3. This book tells you exactly what you need to know for the exam. I was able to concentrate on the proper information without worry. I passed the exam first time :D



4. I've been using Word 2000 for years. I was finally able to get most of thr functions I needed to work, but it was a "try & try again" approach. The on line manual is helpful, IF you know what questions to ask. And most software has features you might not be aware of, and therefore can't use.
   
   The Word 2003 Step by Step manual is wonderful. You can find what you want to do easily in the index, then get step by step instructions on how to do the project. You can just read the index and/or manual, and learn of the many features available that you never knew existed, and so hadn't tried to use.
   
   It's like having an instructor on hand, any time you want one. I expanded my use of Word greatly, just by learning about new features, on learning how to do things I knew existed, but couldn't figure out how to access.
   
   I highly recommend this book.



5. Well laid out manual for learning some of the finer secrets of using Word 2003.

5 comments about Test Driven Development: By Example (Addison-Wesley Signature Series).

1. I really like this book and it helps me a lot when I was developing a prototype of a complex application.
   
   The idea of using tests to force you to think about the APIs is powerfull and the use of Python to implement a xUnit framework is very interesting.
   
   But if you are a experienced developer you will find the first part of the book very boring because Kent uses extremely small steps to develop their example.



2. This is the most inpiring and thought-provocing book on programming that I have read for many years. Very well-written, short, fun. Whatever language you are programming in, you will find it useful.
   Niels Holst, Aarhus University.



3. This book is good, IF you haven't read the Martin Fowlers refactoring the code ( not back to design patterns, but just refactoring ), other than that it has some cool insights ...
   
   
   Ok to buy and keep it for reference sake ...
   
   Helpful for all XPrs out there
   
   Regards,
   Vyas, Anirudh



4. Overall, this was a great read. I love books with tiny chapters, giving you good stopping points where you can meditate on what you just read while you're busy with life's other challenges. Beck goes into TDD as well as design concepts such as you might find in Scott Bain's Emergent Design book. Patterns are also lightly discussed.
   
   
   I also love Kent Beck's casual writing style. For those of us who don't have 16 hours a day to devote to our computer, it's nice to have some humor and casual speaking happening in a book which only a hardcore reader will read -- like myself.
   
   I give the book 4 stars, but there are a few *glaring* question marks.
   
   First, there is no introductory chapter on using JUnit or any other *Unit.
   Kent wouldn't have even had to write such a chapter himself - maybe one of the tech reviewers! You have to give the reader something to go on, even if you just merely assume the reader will use JUnit in a CLI dev environment. Or discuss all the assert calls. I dunno. Weird. But not a huge deal, and I knew how it worked already, anyway.
   
   Second, and this is a biggie, why on Earth Kent would choose as an example writing xUnit for the second section is so beyond me I have no words. He hints later that he likes to write a *Unit library for each new language he learns, as an exercise. But, good lord, it's so hard to wrap your brain around incestuous "writing yourself" concept -- couldn't he just written something else? We're trying to learn TDD here. Geez. I mostly skimmed the whole section as it was too hard to follow.
   
   Third, in that same section, Kent decides he will move away from Java, a language most of us already know and, if not, looks like a whole host of other languages so it's easy to follow and fairly verbose. Right, he decides to use -- ready? -- PYTHON! A language very few people know and has some strange idioms. This would be akin to writing the chapter using arcane Ruby or Perl structures. The whole second section has you trying to catch up on the language and the recursive xUnit example so much that it completely distracts from the TDD lessons.
   
   OK, here's a fourth. Two very good examples for TDD are practically side notes. I used his late-book example of a Triangle class to do TDD for real for the first time and it was an excellent example! I did it all and only when I completed it did I read his tests. It was great, and I look forward to trying out the Fibonacci Sequence which is an *appendix*.
   
   Why not put these in the book and explain them?
   
   But it's still a good read. Try to avoid buying it for $40 - $50 though. I read it in 2 days without much effort, so not sure it's worth the price. But it's still very good despite all this.



5. The book's scope is well-defined and its methodology (including a running "task list" that is updated at the end of each chapter with strikeouts and new items) is innovative. But it falls sadly short in execution.
   
   The text is overloaded with cutesy digressions that only serve to obscure the topic at hand and irritate the reader. No "Head First" title, this. To read this book is to wish over and over that its author had had the humility to submit it to another editor's series rather than launching it under his own.
   
   Still, there is no other book quite like it on this subject, and I can certainly recommend it for extended bookstore browsing. You may find you are less sensitive than me to Beck's assaults on clarity, in which case by all means go forth and buy.

3 comments about Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us (Expert's Voice in Web Development).

1. Prototype and script.aculo.us are influential and widely adopted. It's not surprising that book publishers are rushing to cover them. What is surprising is that most of the titles currently available are of such poor quality. This is the good one.
   
   Practical Prototype and script.aculous is well-organized, easy-to-read, covers the feature set well and includes a wealth of non-fluffy background material that beginners and journeymen alike will appreciate. The book easily paid for itself in time savings. Use it with the API reference at prototypejs.org/api and you'll be all set.



2. Andrew does an excellent job introducing developers at all levels to the power of these great frameworks, providing an easy way for those new to JavaScript to get started as well as the important information required by the experienced. Add in a dash of Andrew's dry humor and direct experience building Prototype as a part of the core team and you've got a hell of a great resource for Web developers.



3. It's the best book in the field yet, though it would be best if it has come out earlier, the samples are easy to understand, and to incorporate in any other snippet. Great!

5 comments about Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional.

1. This book is incomplete! Subjects to quickly covered and many errors between printed copy and downloaded lessons.
   
   Chapter 16 was hurried and confusing and again incomplete.
   
   After saying this I did learn the gist of CSS so not a total loss!
   
   Author knew his stuff - he just seemed to hurry through this book and did not do the job I felt he knew how to do.



2. If you are just starting out and are looking for direction in web design, buy this book. Even if you already have your feet wet in Web design this book may help you out. Simon Collison did a great job writting on the topic of CSS stylesheets and web design. Its not a lecture book, its a hands on instruction manual that progressively gets you used to working with CSS. It shows you the do's and the donts and Simon is very motivated to keep your attention.
   
   I went through this book a chapter at a time. I kept record of each chapter and worked through all the examples. I learned how to properly format my XHTML and CSS. Did i mention i don't have any real experience in web design. As a beginner it is very difficult to find a book that will give you examples and teach you how to do things. You usually either get a book thats nothing but a lecture on the topic with a miss leading title that says for beginners, or you get a 800 page manual thats more or less like a dictionary, last you may get a quick project that leaves you with no knowledge of the subject but you sure can make a great steriotipical format of a web page.
   
   The book clearly avoids the common door stopper and quick start book. Its not to lengthy and it does a great job implimenting theory behind the code. Simon shows you formats to properly use when developing CSS style sheets, so that your pages look clean and are easily accessible when it comes to trouble shooting or making changes.
   
   
   Simon Collison also keeps a light base of humor throughout to keep you interested but it isn't overdone to where it just gets in the way of your reading. The book is finished with a Case Study where Simon has you make a page using all the techniques you have learned previously throughout the book. My only con is that there are a few things at the end in the case study that Simon has you do that arn't previosly covered. You may not even notice. (But if you are making a page alligned in the center don't forget to have your containing div's left and right margin be set to auto.)
   But, you have to consider the length of the book and the fact that its intended for beginners, you can't include everything or you start to get to lengthy, which i wouldn't have necesarily minded. I'm sure they probably left some stuff out also because, ...they want you to buy the next book in line.
   
   So in conclusion I recomend this book. Even if you don't want to learn the art of CSS and are a dairy cow farmer that dosn't speek english, i still recomend this book!



3. I bought this book a year ago to get me started in writing CSS web pages. This was just the book I needed to get me started. It is reasonable simple to following along with and experiment with the examples. The outcome of my trek through this book is my personal home page (http://www.intergate.com/~waltwilliams/) which is now so much more presentable and professional looking. I have actually had people ask who I hired to create it. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to learn CSS.



4. What a great book. I just could not put this down and read the whole book in 1 day. As a asp.net coder, Css is the last thing I needed to learn to make great looking websites.
   Simon explans things clear and complete. I was always a but lost with id and class and what one I should be useing. The way it was expland left me with no questions. I fell CSS is something that you look up when you need to get a result. This book is well layed out to find things fast.
   The only thing I fault is that it would be great if the samples were in colour. A must have for beginners to pro.



5. I read this book from cover to cover. It is excellent, and I successfully used it to convert my cash4books website from table-based disorganization to use CSS and web standards.
   
   However, I think what was missing was a discussion on Quirks mode. Go to wikipedia and search for "Quirks mode" if you do not know what that is. In fact, if you use the code examples Collison provides, a few of them do not work right, due to Quirks mode issues. Specifically, once you get to the layout chapters, things don't work quite right in the latest versions of BOTH IE and Firefox.
   
   But, as I said, other than that bit of quirkiness, the book is great.

5 comments about Digital Design: Principles and Practices Package (4th Edition).

1. This book was the reason i enjoyed my undergrad logic design class (which used another [bad] textbook): this is a strong book with strong explanations, thinking reasonings, nice examples, thorough VHDL and Verilog sections, lots of 'real-world' information. The author is precise, logical, goes deep but very straightforward, and funny (!). Where our textbook had gabs, where my professor's lectures were vague, where all other explanations seemed cheesy to me - Wakerly just filled me up.



2. First and foremost, this book is definitely not a good introductory course book. It is a reference book because of how it covers the conceptual material.
   
   This book provides an extreme amount of detail in the many aspects of the field. If you have basic knowledge of circuitry, you should be fine in understanding this book. If you do not have any experience at all, however, this book will be difficult to manage.
   
   On the positive side, as a reference, this book is superior. The book starts with introductory concepts such as working with number systems and how to perform arithmetic (simple and complex) in binary. I was confused by the placement of Chapter 3. Immediately following number systems, the author jumps to electrical behavior and layout of transistors to comprise CMOS logic. While a necessary topic, I felt that it could have been delayed to a future chapter.
   
   Afterward, standard topics are covered amidst advanced topics. I felt it would have been easier for the reader to master the simple, ideal designs before having to worry about timing characteristics and other non-ideal concepts.
   
   The book discusses simple logic gates all the way through sequential logic design, which is a nice touch. It is good to have all of the material in this book in one place and definitely recommend the book to anyone in logic design. While not the most advanced book, its wide array of topics and coverage will help to fill in the gaps that other books create.



3. The book came to me severly damaged before it was even packaged. The first 313 pages were severly gouged out of the bottom pages about 1/4" deep x 1/2" x 1/2" (inches), close to the spine. I did not have time to return it because my course started Jan. 10, 2006 and the Delivery estimate was: January 6, 2006 - January 10, 2006.
   
   I am very disappointed with this product and purchase.



4. I bought this book for my Intro to Digital Circuits course. So, far, I have found this book highly useful. Its contents are easy to understand and it has a lot of examples to explain any particular content in detail. This book is self-explanatory. Even if I miss my class one day, I don't have much trouble catching up as long as I have this book.



5. Very detailed and well written descriptions. The book is funny and an enjoyable read. The book is also easy to use as a reference as the major topics of each paragraph are listed in the margins.

5 comments about Beginning XNA 2.0 Game Programming: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in Game Programming).

1. This is a great book to help you get started with XNA. I like the fact that it's straight and to the point with no fluff. Covers 2D and 3D game programming including skeletal animation. All sample code compiles and runs as advertised and is explained in detail. I had a bad experience with another XNA book so I'm glad I found this one.



2. This book doesn't beat around the bush, which can be a good thing for an already experienced developer. However if you aren't experienced it could easily leave you lost. If you are a "novice" like the book claims to cater too you'll probably never get to them without further reading from other materials.
   
   The QC for this book was very poorly done. There are tons of errors in the spelling and in the code. They completely forgot to explain certain things and then expect you to have figured them out on your own later.
   
   The book covers a decent amount of useful information, but it seems like they just pushed it out a bit too soon. If they had gone through the tutorials and tried them out and made sure all the steps were covered, it would have been a lot nicer to learn with. Instead the tutorials left me lost most of the time. I spent hours trying to figure out what steps they forgot to include.
   
   I think this book could be quite a useful tool if you are already well versed in the .net C# environment. However I would recommend a different approach if you have little C# experience.



3. It's a good book, however it has many pages of code. In despite of that I recommend the buy.



4. First off this book is not for a beginning programmer. You must have at least some knowledge of object oriented programming before using this book. A basic knowledge of C, C++, or C# would also help a lot. Along with that, a slightly more-than-basic knowledge of the .NET framework is necessary.
   
   If you have all those, this is a great book. The explanations of XNA code and corresponding programs is easy to follow. If you read the code and try to understand it without blindly copying it, you will learn a lot from this book.
   
   There are some errors throughout the book, but most of them are minor; if you have a programming background, you can get through most of them with little trouble.
   
   Overall, this book is for someone who is a beginner at XNA, not at programming all together.



5. I found this book on the web and still decided to buy it. The book is the easiest time I think I have ever had learning XNA, however, like all programming books it seems that only experienced coders who correct errors as they read are the ones in charge of editing and quality control.
   
   For example, on page 46 it tells you to include a line of code that doesn't seem to make sense (private SpriteBatch spriteBatch = null;) in the Game1 code. This of course is redundant and cause the game not to compile. And.... naturally, the downloaded source code runs fine. Why? Because this line of code is not in the project. I imagine the XNA guru they had reviewing this book (how come they don't hand the book to a total newbie and say 'here, follow this book exactly and tell us when the code examples dont work') fixed the errors he seen on the fly without thinking ..oh, a total newbie won't know this is an obvious mistake..
   
   But I can honestly say I have NEVER read a 'teach yourself' programming book with flawless code examples. And of course the downloaded source always works and you just have to compare your file with thier file and see what is different. The only positive note I can say about the poor state of quality control with newbie programming books in general is that in a way it teaches you to troubleshoot code. But, for someone who is completely new and doesn't pick up on these things it is very frustrating. I'm lucky now in that I have learned enough that I can fix these errors, but a few years ago I would have just tossed this book out of frustration when I do exactly as instructed and it still doesnt work.
   
   To the people who write these books I have a suggestion....
   
   If the person in charge of quality control has ever written a single line of code they are not qualified to review a book targeting newbies. Give the book to your spouse, neighbor, 12 year old, etc. who will quickly hand it back to you 5 times every chapter and say 'hey, I did what it said and got a bunch of errors', or 'hey, it assumes here on page whatever I know where to type this'.
   
   Now, all that being said, this is a darn good book. The authors make XNA and XBOX programming about as simple as possible... the examples are explained very well and easy to follow. If you have gone through another C# teach yourself newbie book you should minimal trouble getting a game up and running in just an hour or so!