IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book
Title: Google Advertising A-Z: Essential AdWords & Image Ads Tips for Getting the Most Clicks at the Lowest Cost
Publisher:
Authors: Editors of BottleTree Books LLC
Rating: 5/5
Title: Google Advertising A-Z: Essential AdWords & Image Ads Tips for Getting the Most Clicks at the Lowest Cost
Publisher:
Authors: Editors of BottleTree Books LLC
Rating: 5/5
My Google advertising campaign was getting a click through rate of around 1%, which is borderline for Google slowing or deleting your ad. I used the "optimizers" in Google Advertising A-Z to double my click throughs in a matter of days. Some even got as high as 7% click throughs. Who knew that the order of the ad lines, punctuation and capitalization were important. I used the industry example section of Google Advertising A-Z that shows what ads work and those that don't in many industries. The $9.98 for this book will pay for itself many times over. For me it did in a few days of advertising.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Resource Guide (It-Resource Kit)
Publisher: Microsoft Pr Rating: 1/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Resource Guide (It-Resource Kit)
Publisher: Microsoft Pr Rating: 1/5
I found SQL Server 7.0 Resource guide to be short on specifics and would describe it as a general overview of 7.0. To troubleshoot problems with replication I had to refer to previous versions of Inside SQL Sever 6.5. If you already know SQL server from pervious versions this book will not add much to your library.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Writing Stored Procedures with Microsoft SQL Server: The Authoritative Solution
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Matt Shepker
Rating: 1/5
Title: Writing Stored Procedures with Microsoft SQL Server: The Authoritative Solution
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Matt Shepker
Rating: 1/5
I've purchased Sams' books before, and have not been disappointed until I received this book. The book's examples and sytax explanations seem to be cut-and-paste from SQL Server's help files. I expected better and more detailed examples in this book. I wanted some coverage of constraints, which was not included in this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Learning PHP 5
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: David Sklar
Rating: 4/5
Title: Learning PHP 5
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: David Sklar
Rating: 4/5
There are more new books being published about PHP than you can shake a joystick at. PHP (along with program friends - MySQL and Apache) has become very popular among developers and web designers, and for good reason. As a programming language, it is particularly suited to web development projects, while being relatively easy to write, use and learn. More importantly, it's open-source and free, cross-platform, and widely supported.
The book, "Learning PHP5", by David Sklar, is one of the latest volumes dealing with PHP. It describes itself as "a Pain-Free Introduction to Building Interactive Web Sites" and provides a gentle introduction to the latest version of PHP, which is version 5 and only recently available.
This book is not particularly useful for those experienced already with PHP, nor for those wanting to upgrade their knowledge of PHP from versions 4 and earlier to the newest version. It probably is not particularly useful for those power programmers who need and want a deep and comprehensive coverage of the topic. But it is a very well-written and designed introduction to PHP 5 for beginning programmers or those experienced PERL, ASP, or Cold Fusion programmers who want to learn a different language. There are many illustrations and code samples sprinkled throughout the book. Sklar, however, occasionally skims over some topics in furtherance of the completion of some practical examples.
The publisher is O'Reilly Media, Inc. which seems to have an editor's policy of covering complex computer-related topics in a comprehensive manner by publishing a range of volumes covering different aspects of a topic or from different angles or for different audiences. O'Reilly also publishes volumes on moving to PHP 5 ("Upgrading to PHP 5"), detailed and technical PHP ("Programming PHP"), and a collection of solutions to common PHP programming problems ("The PHP Cookbook").
The author, Mr. Sklar, is an experienced consultant in computer software development and technical training. He is the author of "Essential PHP Tools" and coauthor of the afore-mentioned "The PHP Cookbook". He takes a deliberate and comprehensive approach to explaining PHP 5, not in great depth, but with an intent of providing enough information, concepts, detail, and scope to create a pleasant and useful read of a technical subject. The basic promise of PHP is in the relatively easy creation of more dynamic and
interesting web sites which would include, for example, product catalogs, blogs, photo galleries, event calendars, forms, and more.
There are 13 chapters and 3 appendices. The early chapters provide an orientation to PHP including its place in contemporary web development, its basic rules, and its syntax. They explain the basic background of PHP and how it interacts with the browser and web server. Later chapters introduce primary concepts like loops, arrays, and functions. The idea here is to facilitate learning the fundamentals of the grammar and vocabulary. Chapters 2 through 12 have short exercises at the end of each to allow the reader to practice writing PHP code and to test learning. (The answers are contained in Appendix C.) Experienced programmers and geeks may recoil at the inclusion of these exercises, but they are useful for beginners.
Chapter 6 provides a practical exercise - how to make and use a web form. The author shows how to access form variables, how to validate user-inputted data for security and efficiency reasons, and how to process forms using functions. Chapter 7 shows how PHP interacts with database programs, like SQL and Oracle, but focuses primarily on MySQL, and demonstrates how to organize data, connect to a server-based database, create tables, and input and retrieve data.
The rest of the middle chapters cover the use and implementation of cookies and sessions, handling dates and time, and working with files. The practical exercise using dates and times is creating and displaying a monthly calendar. The final chapters provide brief but practical coverage of XML, debugging, and in Chapter 13, other PHP aspects. PHP is amazingly useful, flexible, and practical. One can deal with graphics, pdf-formatted documents, and other media like Flash and Shockwave. It also has mailing and file uploading functions, encryption capabilities, and for more experienced coders, the ability to run shell commands. The upgraded PHP 5 has new capabilities which now include object-oriented programming.
Appendix A covers installing and configuring PHP for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux; Appendix B is a short primer on regular expressions and how to use them with PHP.
I found the book to be the most accessible introduction to PHP I have read. It provides the basic fundamentals, engages the reader in practical examples, reinforces learning with exercises, and provides an overall perspective on the scope of PHP programming.
Code examples used in the book can be downloaded at the O'Reilly site. More information is available at www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnphp5/index. html.
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Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 5/5
Peachpit's Visual Quickstart Guide philosophy is just about the best I've seen in getting you started in a new technology quickly. They seem to follow the philosophy of getting a fairly complex task programmed and running quickly. Then you can look around and see the individual steps that made it happen.
The way they do this is with an awful lot of screen shots with a fairly minimal amount of typing.
This is combined with a well thought out and complete index and allows you to quickly find out about any of the details that you might have missed.
There's only one real complaint I have about the book. It's printed using two columns per page. This makes reading some of the instructions more difficult (since they are multi line) than if there was only one column.
Great way to get started quickly.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL from the Ground Up
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Mary Pyefinch
Rating: 2/5
Title: SQL from the Ground Up
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Mary Pyefinch
Rating: 2/5
This book looked rather comprehensive when I flipped through it in the bookstore, but I was unpleasantly surprised to discover how much it lacked when I tried to use it at work the next day. None of the items I looked up were covered in any reasonable amount of detail, and many items weren't covered at all. For example, I found nothing regarding how to insert data from one table into another table! I had to borrow a co-workers book instead. This book is going back to the store today!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP : Training from the Source
Publisher: Macromedia Press
Authors: Jeffrey Bardzell
Rating: 5/5
Title: Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP : Training from the Source
Publisher: Macromedia Press
Authors: Jeffrey Bardzell
Rating: 5/5
This book is great for someone who has been teaching themselves web design. This book helped me go from using out-dated HTML 4.0 code to XHTML in a matter of a few days. A must have book for anyone learning web design.
Product: Book Textbook Binding
Title: McSe Training Guide: SQL Server 6.5 Design and Implementation (Training Guides (New Riders))
Publisher: New Riders Pub
Authors: David Besch, Sean Baird
Rating: 2/5
Title: McSe Training Guide: SQL Server 6.5 Design and Implementation (Training Guides (New Riders))
Publisher: New Riders Pub
Authors: David Besch, Sean Baird
Rating: 2/5
I found this book hard to use. The way they laid out the system and database catalogs was worthless. The examples were sparse to non-existent in the latter chapters (deadline approaching, maybe). The indexing chapters were almost informative enough to be useful. STILL, it's good enough to pass the test.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
I recently bought this book as a quick primer for an office project and i must say it was a refreshing read. Having spent the last 8 months learning javascript from various confusing and muddled sources, the intro to PHP here made me feel as if I'd bumped my head and web development suddenly crytallized! The instructions were clear, concise and nearly too well meaning. The code examples helped me to quickly apply my c knowledge and reinvigorate the otherwise dead office project for which I had purchased the book. The helpful appendix of essential functions was pretty much a bonus "pocket"-type reference. Also, the book opened my eyes to the power of MySQl and the ease with which PHP connects to it. I just finished a 8-week MCSD prep course, yet I didnt feel comfortable with SQL. This book went a long way toward making me feel at ease creating and manipulating with SQL. Looks like I wont be bothering to spend (waste) any more time trying to get my SQL Server 7.0 to operate reliably on a daily basis!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: How to Do Everything with Google
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen, Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen
Rating: 1/5
Title: How to Do Everything with Google
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen, Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen
Rating: 1/5
I have used Google for years. I was pleasently surprised to find that this book offers a bunch of tricks and tips that I was not aware of. The section on Google News was particularly enlightening. Many of the other functions of Google that I never used(image, froogle) I now understand and am impressed with thier usefulness.
All in all a good book. Great if you have never used Google, or even if you are an experienced user.
