5 comments about Shaping Web Usability: Interaction Design in Context.

1. Clear and rigorous, Dr. Badre's book is an essential resource for the serious Web practitioner. Going beyond the usual lists of do's and don'ts, he gives the reader a strong grounding in the field of usability and how its principles apply to the Web. Web designers and implementors who read Shaping Web Usability will not only know what to do, but why -- so they can respond successfully to new and complex design challenges.



2. Dr. Badre has written an interesting work which thoughtfully examines two important concepts: genre and cultural context. In addition to plenty of solid HCI theory and empirical data, Dr. Badre provides clear examples of how close attention to the genre of one's site and the cultural context in which it is most likely to be viewed will provide a more useful and pleasurable experience for the user. With these simple and powerful concepts, Dr. Badre provides some excellent guidance to new and experienced website designers.



3. This book is unlike many other web usability books. It goes well beyond the cookie-cutter guidelines for fast web usability, and gets the reader thinking deeply about contexts of web usability. It focuses on the real important issues and concepts. However, it is not an abstract or theoretical book. The author illustrates the concepts and explanations with numerous real examples from the web. This book is a must read for web designers, information architects, and web usability engineers.



4. What use is a Web site if no one uses it? Too many Web design books and development tools provide cut-and-paste solutions to design problems without providing the developer with an understanding of fundamental principles.

   This is where Dr. Badre's book enters the scene - in a big way. "Shaping Web Usability" does just what it promises, providing clear, cogent instruction in designing sites for people in all their needs and diversity. It promotes a robust methodology for Web design that can adapt to user requirements without sacrificing logic or cohesion. Badre's process also helps one communicate methodology and design issues to others. This book gave me the grounding I needed to explain to clients exactly why I had made a particular design decision and how it would benefit the site users.

   If you are concerned about your site being used once it is published (and who isn't?), take a look at this book. It can't make your Web site for you, but it can help you identify and satisfy an online audience better than any other book on the shelves.




5. This is a serious work on Web Usability that attempts to define in detail the user context and to construct a user-centred methodology based on that context.

   There are so many books on web usability these days and most of them are about web pages first and people second. Doctor Badre's approach, though, is firmly grounded on the human side of HCI and some of the material in this book is outstanding.

   The chapter on "Older Adults" is a great example. Badre is fastidious enough to consider the different cognitive needs of people in this group and to consider the implications of those needs for the designer. Elsewhere he considers personality variations, the role of affect (or emotion), and many other individual differences.

   In contrast, however, Badre has a strong leaning toward standards and predictability, which seems to contradict his comments elsewhere. Having identified the myriad reasons the web audience is uniquely diverse he nevertheless finds traditional HCI evaluation techniques attractive, and sometimes fails to bite the bullet.

   For example, Badre insists that "Testing conditions ... should approximate the actual situation in which ...visitors are likely to find themselves." Yet he does not display any distrust of laboratory testing, questionnaires and all the artificialities of user testing that would suggest a more ethnographic approach.

   The material on the test methodology is therefore somewhat weaker, but does not detract in any way from the main part of the book, where Dr Badre's experience in Human Factors allows him to illustrate with considerable skill the way design features can be adjusted to meet the cognitive abilities of real human users. In this arena, Dr. Badre is a leading authority, and it is for this, the main body of the work, that I would strongly recommend this book to web and usability professionals alike.

5 comments about Macromedia ColdFusion MX Development with Dreamweaver MX: Visual QuickPro Guide.

1. This book is a good primer for static HTML designers wishing to make the leap to ColdFusion MX. This is especially true if you're a new or experienced user of Dreamweaver MX.

   While you won't finish the book and become fully versed in CF development, tags and administration, you will be able to work well with CF developers and their CF templates. This will make it easy to plug the design over a the back-end scripting or vice-versa.

   The next step in becoming comfortable CF developer would be the "Developing ColdFusion Applications" books by Ben Forta. If you know HTML, start with this book, then move on to the Forta books for an in-depth look at CF and developing applications.

   Whichever route you choose, don't be discouraged if you struggle with some concepts. Try experimenting and keep developing over time... the only way become proficient in CF. There are a ton of resources, newsgroups and mailing lists for when you get stuck.




2. I bought this book last week. I was kind of expecting another "demo jockey" visual quickstart book. Instead of showing you what each menu item does...this book takes you through a more tutorial based learning experience. I have found this book to be extremely helpful. I am not a programmer, and frankly have little desire to be one. This book shows you Dreamweavers object oriented approach to creating coldfusion apps through Dreamweavers codegen functionality. I have been corresponding with the author (Sue Hove) and she has informed me that there are really no changes from DreamweaverMX and Dreamweaver MX 2004's codegen functionality. So this is the book to get even if you are running MX 2004 and coldfusion mx 6.1.



3. I'm new to ColdFusion and am a hard person to teach. I don't do well after just reading a book. I needed a more tutorial or hands-on based book to walk me through and allow me to actually do it. I'm on chapter 6 so far and with the exception of some serious problems with the steps on page 51 (Ben Forta has an errata on his website for this page) its been great. I can usually tell if I am going to get anything out of a book or not after the first few pages or a chapter. Which is why I bought this book about a week after buying ColdFusion MX with Dreamweaver MX by David Green. Not sure why people say in some reviews that there is "too much talk" in these books, I need all the information I can get and this book seems to provide it in a way that even I can understand..and let me tell you thats saying a lot. Hope you have as good of an experience as I have.



4. Dreamweaver and ColdFusion are both terrific Macromedia products, so using Dreamweaver MX to develop ColdFusion applications seems logical to me. However, this is the only book I've seen that actually shows how to do simple projects that work the first time. Most importantly, Sue Hove (like most Visual QuickPro Guides) doesn't leave out steps or fail to explain what's going on with the process. I've written some CF projects from scratch and they work just as well as her examples, but I liked using this book to generate CF code from DWMX that I could use to study and learn. My copy is already dog-eared. I only regret that I have one copy and I'm always leaving it at work when I want it at home, and visa versa.



5. This book was just what I needed....a step by step guide for for becoming more efficient with DW and CF.

5 comments about Beginning JSP 2: From Novice to Professional.

1. "Beginning JSP 2?" Yeah, right. Try: "Beginning JSP 2, HTML, JDBC, Java, JSTL, XML, XSLT, XML DTDs, XML Schemas, Servlets, Filters, with some MVC (Model 2) and Struts thrown in for Good Measure." While my recommended title may be a bit too long to be practical as a book title, it would better capture the materials covered from an introductory level, in "Beginning JSP 2."
   
   In about 360 pages, through 10 chapters, this book covers the technologies listed above, describing what they are, what they do, why folks are using them, how to use them, and how they relate and work with other technologies. Following these action packed chapters, the appendixes serve as great quick references on JSP syntax, implicit JSP objects, and various XML configuration files.
   
   To nitpick a bit: The book could benefit from some more aggressive editing, in parts, where sentence and paragraph wording is occasionally a little clumsy, and a few good-to-understand details were left out.
   
   The description on the back cover of the book says, "All you need... is a basic understanding of HTML and Java." I suggest this be corrected as follows: "All you need to know in order to follow and understand the lessons in 'Beginning JSP 2' is enough HTML to create a 'Hello World!' web page, and enough Java to create a 'Hello World!' application." On second thought, even if you can't do those things, yet, after reading this book, you'll be able to do a whole lot more.



2. I had bought this book to improve my knowledge of JSP - which is rather limited. I had expected, from the text on the back cover, this to be a comprehensive book on how to code JSPs (with lots of examples - which I like). In reality I was rather disappointed.
   The first Chapter went well, how to install Tomcat, and the second wasn't too bad (a review of HTML) but by the third chapter I started to notice a lack of clarity. It wasn't always clear which text I should be typing in and which were simply given as an aside - which for a step-by-step guide is frustrating. The fourth chapter was far worse. This started of by saying that we would be using mySQL, but failed to give any indication of where to get the software from, how to install it or how to start the server (you need to start the server to follow the examples). And then a number of the example instructions, that were given in this chapter, did not work without modification. I was able to work round these problems and make progress. But as this wasn't a core chapter (I read this book to learn how to use JSPs not mySQL) I had expected to go through it quickly.
   Overall the content was very useful and I learnt a lot, but the book would benefit from being edited (again?) and a second edition.



3. I did not read this book through because not even the 1st sample code works (due to configuration). Sent questions to two of the aythors the email addresses given in the book are not even valid !!! I went to sun website and the anwser was straight forward. If a book for novice can not explain better than Sun's official documents, why bother write the book?
   
   Waste of time and Money! Keep away from these authors who failed to display professionalism!



4. First of all:
   I did like this book. It gave me an easyly accessible introduction to all this business around using Tomcat. The author took quite some trouble to explain every related technology (HTML, CSS, SQL, OO, Java ...) in some detail. Sometimes you want to read through it to get reminded, sometimes you want to skim over it and sometimes even to skip it. But it is good that it is there. I do not know if you can actually grasp those related technologies, if you never saw them before. For me the rehash was helpful on all the cases I needed them.
   
   The core topics of the book: JSP itself with its expression language und standard tag libraries were very well explained and easy to grasp also for a first timer like me. I now do have a good feeling for its core topics and their whereabouts. I only got lost (a little) in the last chapter about Struts. There is seemingly so much overlap to other technologies (EL, JSTL, home grown Beans) that I did not succeed to get a clear picture of when to use what.



5. The directory structure described in 1st chapter doesn't fit Tomcat's directory structure. The text description is correct, but the screen shot is wrong. Also in 1st chapter, the JAR files that should be included in PATH variable also have the wrong name. This is very low-level mistakes.
   
   The 2nd chapter reviews HTML. Well, it is rather confusing than helpful. Then in Chapter 4 the author talks about database and tries to explain Normalization. I'd rather the author skips on this topic because he/she seems just lack of ability to explain things in the clear way.
   
   I bought this book to learn JSP, not to compose an errata for the author. I believe most readers don't like to do that either. If you would like avoid unnecessary headache, look else where.

5 comments about PFC Programmer's Reference Manual.

1. The "PFC Programmer's Reference Manual" is basically a hard copy of the online help that comes with PFC. If that's what you're looking for this book is good, otherwise, you can get the same information from online help.

   This book also has some publishing errors - on page 83 it references Appendix M - the book has no appendix M!




2. ... and many functions are obsolete. If you want to learn about PFC, read the Online Books.



3. This reference book restates most of the reference material available in the PFC online books. The reason for this (as stated in the book) is that back in PB 5 days, the online books were only available if the CD was in your drive. As of PB 6, the books can be installed on a hard drive. The PFC 6 features are only glanced at. The focus is on PFC 5 features. So if you're using PB 5/PFC 5, this book is great. Otherwise, it's not useful at all. I returned this book.



4. This is the worst book I have ever read. I put my nose through the thick book and learn nothing. Later I read a thin book from Powersoft PFC training. I learn a lot from each page of it.

   The author of this book does not know how to write book.




5. Mr. Brooks is possibly the worst author I have ever read. The help files really were more helpful than this book was. He ought to go move to the Hedonism resort he reviewed a book on because the programing world could not possibly miss him if his wok is on the level of his writing.

No comments about Software Deployment, Updating, and Patching (Information Security).

5 comments about The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary (O'Reilly Linux).

1. This book is a great and very interesting read. While you can get the collection of essays online, for free. I prefer the book, easier on my eyes. ESR (author) tries to keep it straight foreward, however at times he drifts into a technical world, which somewhat flew over my head. If you are interested in the Open Source community, namely what makes it work, and what problems it has in store, this is a great book.
   He Gives personal experience which I really value, and he doesn't try and hide the short comings of Open Source Development.



2. I like this book for many reasons. First of all, it uses lots of specific examples to prove a point. Two, the author was right at the front lines during the formative days of Linux and open source and he does not hide his biases. Three, he is a very insightful guy and he sure as heck knows how to turn a phrase.
   
   That said, the book is not that far removed from a polemic. He has drawn his conclusions and moved on from contemplation to conviction. So if there is any point along the way you disagree, what follows is going to give you frustration.
   
   I'd suggest reading this in conjunction with The Success of Open Source, which despite its title, is far more balanced and has the best history of the open source movement I have ever read. I've given that book 5 stars. The two balance each other out quite nicely.



3. The title says it all,
   however, the caveat is that if the "instigator" of the particular form of software does not have the "cache" or "credentials" in the open source community then the chances of a REALLY BIG item being developed is rather small. BUT, if the "item" can catch on, then it can be done better and faster than a "paid for development".



4. I felt the book had some good points and then other times I was struggling to get myself to pick it back up. Overall worth the read but not in my top 5 list by any means.



5. The Cathedral and the Bazaar is a collection of essays originally meant for programmers and technical managers, written by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail.
   
   I you like a deeper work on Linux development, I can recommend the book "Rebel Code" by Glyn Moody.
   
   fetchmail, is an open-source software utility to retrieve e-mail from a remote mail server. It was developed by Eric S. Raymond from the popclient program, written by Carl Harris. Its chief significance is perhaps that its author, Eric S. Raymond, used it as a model to discuss his theories of open source software development in this book. Some programmers, including Dan Bernstein, getmail creator Charles Cazabon and FreeBSD developer Terry Lambert, have criticized fetchmail's design], its number of security holes, and that it was prematurely put into "maintenance mode". In 2004, a new team of maintainers took over fetchmail development, and laid out development plans that in some cases broke with design decisions that Eric Raymond had made in earlier versions.
   
   The essays in the book describe open-source software, the process of systematically harnessing open develplment and decentralized peer review to lower costs and improve software quality. contrasts two different free software development models:
   
   - The Cathedral model, in which source code is available with each software release, but code developed between releases is restricted to an exclusive group of software developers. GNU Emacs and GCC are presented as examples.
   
   - The Bazaar model, in which the code is developed over the Internet in view of the public. Raymond credits Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project, as the inventor of this process. Raymond also provides anecdotal accounts of his own implementation of this model for the fetchmail project.
   
   The essay's central thesis is Raymond's proposition that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (which he terms Linus' law): the more widely available the source code is for public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation, the more rapidly all forms of bugs will be discovered. In contrast, Raymond claims that an inordinate amount of time and energy must be spent hunting for bugs in the Cathedral model, since the working version of the code is available only to a few developers.
   
   When O'Reilly Media published the book in 1999, it achieved another distinction by being the first complete and commercially distributed book published under the Open Publication License.

2 comments about Master VISUALLY Office 2003.

1. I've bought other instructional computing books, but I highly recommend the Visual line. Who wants to wade through a lot of text when learning to create formulas in Excel, or creating a query in Access? This book shows me step-by-step exactly how to do a task. Well worth the money!



2. this is another great Visual Book!, did lack a bit with the in depth Excel functins and fomula's but is one I have recommended to others , as i have done with all the Visual books!

5 comments about Information Visualization: Perception for Design (Morgan Kaufmann Interactive Technologies Series).

1. Ware's book provides a technically accurate and well-written overview of the gamut of issues pertaining to information visualization -- from basic visual anatomy and physiology to techniques for creating effective displays from multidimensional data.

   Yes, it's "introductory" in nature, but it's the most comprehensive introduction I've seen to this complex and emerging field. It would make an excellent reference or textbook.

   The 5-star content gets 4 stars because of the book's numerous editorial flaws. For example, several illustrations in the text reference color plate images that simply don't exist. And at least a half-dozen works cited in the text don't appear on the reference list. All-in-all, a rather slipshod editing job.




2. This is the best single volume book on the subject of information visualisation that I've read. Sure, there are other very nice books on diagrams, maps, data analysis, modelling and scientific visualisation. However, none of them have the scope of this book.

   And therein lies the problem. For a single volume book Ware's effort tries to cover too much and some of the chapters are quite weak (chapter 0 and 10). Also, the fact that it was written by a psychologist shows in a good and bad way: human visual cognition is correctly the foundation upon which to build visualisation. Unfortunately the examples and the ideas for implementation are often lacking or poor in quality.

   The first edition also has typesetting errors, so be sure to get the second edition.

   All in all, it's still a book worth getting if you're in any serious way connected with the practise of visualisation. However, don't expect it to be the bible of the field, as such a thing does not exist (yet).




3. WOW. This guy did his homework! Ware covers the basics and more advanced topics. I felt he goes beyond most books on this subject by giving his suggestions and not just stating facts.



4. The book gives sme guidleines (supported by research) but it won't be suitable for practioners but as a text book of no very good use for an information visualization course. It was tedious to have it as our text book I don't know if this is what I think or is it the actual case.



5. This is a basic introduction to InfoVis, covering topics from human perception to improving the decision-making processes with visualizations. It is worth having if you are in the field or are serious about improving your visualizations.
   
   Some of the negative comments in reviews must refer to the first edition. My second edition has (some) color images as appropriate throughout the book. There are still a few errors, but not a large number. There are definitely a few low quality examples.

4 comments about Mastering Resin.

1. it seems the 'authors' copied materials from caucho's site without testing anything at all. and they can't even copy things right(large chunks of thing are missing almost on every page) their worse offense occured on load balancing (charpter 19) where EVERYTHING IS WRONG! Have the 'authors' even used resin? Has anyone really reviewed or edited the book? How can so much garbage got published? Jesus Christ will be so displeased to see such a piece of crap was dedicated to him! Richard and Joseph, you two are truly shameless!



2. This is by far the worst technical book I have ever read! full of ridiculous errors! I don't think a single person proof read the book. Don't get ripped off! STAY AWAY! I would donate it to my library but I wouldn't want the library to put trash on the shelf. My advise is to just read the online docs from caucho.com and if your questions aren't answered there then you should reconsider using resin at all.



3. A coworker loaned me this book, which I attempted to use to setup some of the more advanced features of Resin. I read the one relevant chapter, which was lightweight and riddled with errors in both the code/config listings and the narrative. This book is worthless. I found what I needed on Caucho's web site.



4. The book is not accurate and what it does cover just skims the surface. If you want accurate info, go to Resins web site. Total waste of money.

1 comments about Object-Oriented Metrics in Practice: Using Software Metrics to Characterize, Evaluate, and Improve the Design of Object-Oriented Systems.

1. The table of contents helps me to decide whether or not I want to buy a book. The "Search inside this book" feature was not available so I thought this would help.
   
   Table of Contents
   1 Introduction
   2.1 Metrics and Thresholds
   2.2 Visualizing Metrics and Design
   2.3 Conclusions and Outlook
   3 Characterizing the Design
   3.1 The Overview Pyramid
   3.2 Polymetric Views
   3.3 Metrics at Work
   3.4 Conclusions and Outlook
   4 Evaluating the Design
   4.1 Detection Strategies
   4.2 The Class Blueprint
   4.3 Conclusions and Outlook
   5 Identity Disharmonies
   5.1 Rules of Identity Harmony
   5.2 Overview of Identity Disharmonies
   5.3 God Class
   5.4 Feature Envy
   5.5 Data Class
   5.6 Brain Method
   5.7 Brain Class
   5.8 Significant Duplication
   5.9 Recovering from Identity Disharmonies
   6 Collaboration Disharmonies
   6.1 Collaboration Harmony Rule
   6.2 Overview of Collaboration Disharmonies
   6.3 Intensive Coupling
   6.4 Dispersed Coupling
   6.5 Shotgun Surgery
   6.6 Recovering from Collaboration Disharmonies
   7 Classification Disharmonies
   7.1 Classification Harmony Rules
   7.2 Overview of Classification Disharmonies
   7.3 Refused Parent Bequest
   7.4 Tradition Breaker
   7.5 Recovering from Classification Disharmonies
   A - Catalogue of Metrics Used in the Book
   A.1 Elements of a Metric Definition
   A.2 Alphabetical Catalogue of Metrics
   B - iPlasma
   B.1 Introduction
   B.2 iPlasma at Work
   B.3 Industrial Validation
   B.4 Tool Information
   C - CodeCrawler
   C.1 Introduction
   C.2 CodeCrawler at Work
   C.3 Industrial Validation
   C.4 Tool Information
   D - Figures in Color
   References
   Index
   
   For more information on the book visit the publisher's website (Springer) and search for the title.