Books for/about - web

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition)

Publisher: New Riders Press
Authors: Steve Krug

ISBN: 0321344758
List Price: $35.00
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Summary: The Single Best Volume on UI Design
I have said for many years that "there isn't one programmer who doesn't think he he can't do design, and there isn't one who can." -- Steve Krug comes pretty close to proving that we can learn, though. This book is wonderful; it makes the essence of good design so clear that it seems obvious, seems like you've known it all along.

This book should be read by anyone who has any intention of coming near a software development process. If you're going to be in the room, you need to have read this book. Otherwise, sit outside and stay very quiet.

Summary: Excellent book
"Don't Make Me Think" is clear, concise, and very, very funny. I would recommend it to anyone developing a commercial website. Good job!

Summary: Great Read!
The author definitely practices what he preaches by keeping the book short, to the point and very enjoyable to read. I did not read the first edition, but this book was a great! I would have loved to have seen more real-situation examples, but otherwise well worth my money and a must have for all web designers.

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Head First Design Patterns

Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Authors: Elisabeth Freeman Eric Freeman Bert Bates Kathy Sierra

ISBN: 0596007124
List Price: $44.95
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Summary: Sesame Street for Software Developers!!!
This book absolutely rocks! I truly have a passion for software development, but I find most books to be just plain dry and boring. This book takes a light-hearted and fun "Sesame Street" type approach to teaching design patterns. If you want to learn more about this subject and have fun doing it, you won't find a better book! It's not only fun, the examples make it very easy to understand the core concepts of design patterns. You won't find this type of approach in the Gang of Four book or Sun's "Core J2EE Patterns" book. If I were designing a computer science curriculum for a university, this book would be required reading!

Summary: The best book on Design Patterns!
This book helped me pass the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect Exam. I had tried to read the Gang of Four book, several times, but it just couldn't hold my interest. Using this book, the related poster, and some flash cards I made up, I was able to master all the patterns in the GoF book in just a couple of weeks. I got 100% on the design patterns questions on my cert!

Highly recommended!

Summary: Excellant Book even if you are not a Java developer
This book was recommended by a friend. When I got the book and started to look at it I was afraid I had just wasted my money. The style of the book is so different from other technical books I have read, I thought I would not be able to read this one. This was not true. The book is really easy to read and I found the style perfect for this topic. I can't say enough good things about this book. I can say that I am a C# developer and I was totally able to relate to 99% of all the examples in this book. If anything this book will help you understand how similar the to languages and their frameworks are similar.

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	The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Voices That Matter) Publisher: Peachpit Press Authors: Dave Shea Molly E. Holzschlag
ISBN: 0321303474 List Price: $39.99 Amazon Price: $26.39 Usually ships in 24 hours Buy this book from amazon.com or from amazon.co.uk	Avg Cusomer Rating: 5 Reviews: Summary: The art side of web design Yes, I admit this book is not as technical as one would think when thinking about books on CSS. However, this book has opened up my eyes to the art-side of web design like no other book has. I've read "art" books, and I've read "technical" books. This book brings me the best of both worlds, looking at the art side of technical websites. I recommend this book for those who have faith in the art side of web design and don't just see them making boxy websites for corporates for the rest of their life. Summary: 5 Stars... Buy this Book. CSS IS about DESIGN. Hello - As a college web graphics, HTML, and CSS instructor with a history in graphic design, there is not greater book (especially combined with a careful review of the actual website the book is based upon) written on CSS that brings out its strength in design. How ironic that the critics here are upset that it spends so much time on design. That's the point. Most web developers DO NOT study carefully the principles of graphic design and how to apply them, so they miss its power (not just Beauty... but the power to persuade, among other things). I disagree that there is not enough CSS explanation in the book, though it is probably not the book for a total beginner. If you have written a bit of CSS code in your pages, AND what to learn what design is all about then you will understand it, and this is an invaluable book. Be sure to take the time to visit the CSSZenGarden.com site and chew on the concepts with the real examples. Summary: ESSENTIAL Reading For ALL Web Designers 'the Zen of CSS design' by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag is one of the most important web design books on the market today. The word Zen is truly the right way to describe this text, as it is laid out so carefully and calmly, you can't help but feel your heartbeat go down and your tension decrease as you enjoy this wonderful text. Using examples developed on their own web site csszengarden.com, the authors study a myriad of different approaches, the decisions that were made when developing each of these sites, and the ways that CSS can easily be altered and modified by the web developer. Looking at all the facets of web design from font selection, image choices, tables, color picking, etc etc etc this is the perfect resource for anyone that is in charge of designing a web site which is being used as an online application, corporate web site, or even a personal site. The authors combine years upon years of experience to produce a guide that is informative, pleasing to read, and calming to look at. ESSENTIAL buy for all web designers that want to learn the difference between a good web site and a great web site. Learn that sometimes MINIMIZING maximizes a users experience and discover how to get there with this exceptional book. ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Summary:

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Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition

Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
Authors: Dave Thomas Chad Fowler Andy Hunt

ISBN: 0974514055
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Summary: Great for learning
For learning Ruby, this is a great book. It'll help you learn the basics (although a little coding will help you more than reading will), and then, it'll introduce you to some of the more advanced topics. A great introduction.

Summary: A Must For Ruby and Rails Developers
This book is a must for both Ruby and Ruby on Rails developers. It is extremely well written and contains much more than a normal programming book. Most importantly it assumes that you're above average intellegence and doesn't pull punches when it comes to complex ideas.

I could ask for no more out of a programming book. The Pragmatic Programmers have taken over my life with good reason.

Best for Intermediate and Advanced programmers (people who have already learned at least one other programming language or scripting language.)

Summary: Not a Good Introduction or Reference
Ruby and the Rails framework (Ruby on Rails) have gotten major attention in the past year, primarily as an alternative to the complexities of using Java and J2EE APIs for typical N-tiered web applications using a Model / View / Controller framework.

"Programming Ruby" is supposed to be a combination of primer and reference for the Ruby language. Compared to some of the "classics" in programming such as "Programming PERL" (Larry Wall), "The C Programming Language" (Kernigan & Ritchie) or "The C++ Programming Languate" (Stroustrup), this book falls way short as both a primer or reference.

First of all, if you're interested in Ruby at this point, you're probably interested in using the Rails framework built using Ruby. This book provides NO information about Rails at all. This isn't a fault of this book, it's just something you need to know because many code examples you'll find on the web aren't "Ruby" examples per se, they are examples of using APIs within the Rails framework. Another book by this author is due out shortly covering Rails but based on the organization of this book, I would browse it in a bookstore before buying.

I've learned multiple programming langues over the years (Pascal, C, C++, a bit of Assembler, UNIX shell, PERL, Java) and I think most programmers expect any book on a programming language to tackle the material in the following order:

* installing the language
* running or compiling a basic program
* data types for the language
* variables, assignment and data structures / objects
* conditional expressions / control structures
* unit / module organization for source code
* advanced class / object concepts
* standard libraries for DB, network, security functions, etc.

As another reviewer stated, this book doesn't explain the Ruby language's use of symbols (:somesymbol) until page 323, even though it would be logical to explain symbols at the same time Ruby's hash type is explained. The difference between thisvariable, @thisvariable and @@thisvariable is explained very early but seems out of context because the scope of these variable types isn't clarified until the reference section. I think most experienced programmers will find the sequencing of chapters in this book confusing.

You can definitely learn key aspects of Ruby from this book but this will definitely not be the only book you'll want or need if you are learning Ruby to use Rails. Rails itself definitely shows some promise for simplifying some aspects of web development but I presume it will take another 2 years or so for the framework to stabilize and useful documentation to emerge. It definitely isn't clear from this book how Ruby as an underlying language for the Rails framework was a better or needed choice over implementing something like Rails with PHP or PERL that have already achieved wide familiarity.

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Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide

Publisher: New Riders Press
Authors: Charles Wyke-Smith

ISBN: 0321305256
List Price: $34.99
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Summary: Finally, a book on CSS I can understand!
Great book for someone venturing into the world of CSS. The author is very good at explaining how things work, why they work, has good analogies and some web history to boot. He also explains what doesn't work with some browsers, and how to work around that (if possible). I can finally start using CSS beyond basic formatting here and there. I'm looking forward to getting his next book as well!

Summary: All of the essentials are here.
Title: Stylin' with CSS
Author: Charles Wyke-Smith
Publisher: New Riders
ISBN: 0-321-30525-6
Pages: 265 pages
Reviewer: Philip High
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I admit it. I'd rather read a really good "How To" book than the latest "Whatever Code" adventure. And for me, this title did not disappoint. Early into the attractive and logically designed pages I would have enthusiastically given out 5 stars. Unfortunately I had to pull back from that a little for a couple of reasons I will go into later. Still, for content and readability I would not hesitate to recommend this book.

I have been using CSS styles and style sheets for 6 or 7 years via Macromedia's Dreamweaver. Yet, I always felt I wasn't really maximizing their potential. And after reading this book I confess, I was basically clueless! Now I am enlightened; let the brethren rejoice. From now on, content and presentation will be safely segregated in my brain and on my web pages. Well, actually it might take a while to reach this Valhalla, but such is the quest of "Stylin' with CSS."

All of the essentials for implementing the power of Cascading Style Sheets are here. From basic text styles to total page control, including multi-column fluid layouts with drop-down roll-over menus floating in the horizontal center of a vertically tiled background image -- Charles Wyke-Smith has got you covered. And any "deeper knowledge" not encoded here is conveniently referenced in the text and in the many, actually informative, sidebars. Can I get a witness?

Yes, the information is abundant. But, what really sets this book apart is the writing. The style is both clear and entertaining with the lessons building skillfully and solidly on each other. Code examples are helpfully separated from the text by paragraph style, font, and color, with new lines highlighted in red each time they are added. The author also makes use of the time-honored teaching technique of "tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em - tell 'em - then tell 'em what you just told 'em." Sound boring and redundant? Actually it's very effective and herewith handled transparently so that you don't even mind having your ignorance thrice pummeled!

I also appreciated the writer going beyond just the "how" of rules to include illuminating bits of "why," such as the move to XHTML and the rationale behind a "web standards" approach that separates content from presentation (to accommodate multiple platforms and media). And, do you know what pseudo-classes really are besides esoteric cryptology? They are styles that cause rules to be applied dynamically when certain events occur! Amazing!

Now for the stale bread and whiney part. The subtitle says this book is written for designers (i.e. me) but the examples are less than inspiring visually. I know, it's for clarity and focus. But at least a little "dazzle" would help to motivate the sometimes nodding back row. Thankfully there are some inspiring sites referenced for your own research. OK, forgiven. But the worst sin is that the glorious path to stylistic freedom is littered with piles of typos! I'm not just talking about the odd gum wrapper here. Sometimes it gets a little confusing and definitely distracting. Perhaps this is the result of contemporary budgets and schedules that have replaced hands-on editors with spell-check, but maybe we should reconsider and S L O W D O W N just a little.

I realize I point this out at my own peril as a frequent offender myself, but then nobody is paying to read this! To be fair, this is not the only book or publisher that suffers in this way. It's practically a trend! The author has gracefully acknowledged the problem on the related website and asked for feedback to improve the next edition. That website, by-the-way, also contains very helpful downloads of the written examples. So heaven smiles again. Final judgment -- if you are a designer with beginning to intermediate web building skills and are interested in the fundamentals of CSS -- get this book. Amen.

Summary: Stylin with CSS - A Designer's Guide Book Review

Title: Stylin' with CSS - A Designer's Guide
Author: Charles Wyke-Smith
Publisher: New Riders
ISBN: 0-321-30525-6
Pages: 265 pages
Reviewer: Philip High
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

I admit it. I`d rather read a really good "How To" book than the latest "Whatever Code" adventure. And for me, this title did not disappoint. Early into the attractive and logically designed pages I would have enthusiastically given out 5 stars. Unfortunately I had to pull back from that a little for a couple of reasons I will go into later. Still, for content and readability I would not hesitate to recommend this book.

I have been using CSS styles and style sheets for 6 or 7 years via Macromedia's Dreamweaver. Yet, I always felt I wasn't really maximizing their potential. And after reading this book I confess, I was basically clueless! Now I am enlightened; let the brethren rejoice. From now on, content and presentation will be safely segregated in my brain and on my web pages. Well, actually it might take a while to reach this Valhalla, but such is the quest of "Stylin' with CSS."

All of the essentials for implementing the power of Cascading Style Sheets are here. From basic text styles to total page control, including multi-column fluid layouts with drop-down roll-over menus floating in the horizontal center of a vertically tiled background image - Charles Wyke-Smith has got you covered. And any "deeper knowledge" not encoded here is conveniently referenced in the text and in the many, actually informative, sidebars. Can I get a witness?

Yes, the information is abundant. But, what really sets this book apart is the writing. The style is both clear and entertaining with the lessons building skillfully and solidly on each other. Code examples are helpfully separated from the text by paragraph style, font, and color, with new lines highlighted in red each time they are added. The author also makes use of the time-honored teaching technique of "tell `em what you're gonna tell `em - tell `em - then tell `em what you just told `em." Sound boring and redundant? Actually it's very effective and herewith handled transparently so that you don't even mind having your ignorance thrice pummeled!

I also appreciated the writer going beyond just the "how" of rules to include illuminating bits of "why," such as the move to XHTML and the rationale behind a "web standards" approach that separates content from presentation (to accommodate multiple platforms and media). And, do you know what pseudo-classes really are besides esoteric cryptology? They are styles that cause rules to be applied dynamically when certain events occur! Amazing!

Now for the stale bread and whiney part. The subtitle says this book is written for designers (i.e. me) but the examples are less than inspiring visually. I know, it's for clarity and focus. But at least a little "dazzle" would help to motivate the sometimes nodding back row. Thankfully there are some inspiring sites referenced for your own research. OK, forgiven. But the worst sin is that the glorious path to stylistic freedom is littered with piles of typos! I'm not just talking about the odd gum wrapper here. Sometimes it gets a little confusing and definitely distracting. Perhaps this is the result of contemporary budgets and schedules that have replaced hands-on editors with spell-check, but maybe we should reconsider and S L O W D O W N just a little.

I realize I point this out at my own peril as a frequent offender myself, but then nobody is paying to read this! To be fair, this is not the only book or publisher that suffers in this way. It's practically a trend! The author has gracefully acknowledged the problem on the related website and asked for feedback to improve the next edition. That website, by-the-way, also contains very helpful downloads of the written examples. So heaven smiles again. Final judgment - if you are a designer with beginning to intermediate web building skills and are interested in the fundamentals of CSS - get this book. Amen.

Summary:

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	Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site Publisher: IBM Press Authors: Mike Moran Bill Hunt
ISBN: 0131852922 List Price: $49.99 Amazon Price: $31.49 Usually ships in 24 hours Buy this book from amazon.com or from amazon.co.uk	Avg Cusomer Rating: 4 Reviews: Summary: Finally all ends covered for SEO and SEM This book covers all angles. I was thoroughly impressed by the amount of detail that has gone into it. I'm half way through the book and still want to stick my review in here so that future buyers know that this book is definitely worth it. I've checked the SEO and SEM landscape for books to buy and this definitely is the best one out there. Now for the bad stuff: 1. No statistics that say : Company X has benefitted by 30% increase in revenue after SEM. (I had written to the author about this, and he mentioned that companies are very private about statistics and will not reveal any, even if their name is not revealed. This is still the kind of information that management is looking for.) 2. The book mentions various resources to check, as you read. There's no comprehensive list of resources page and so I have to make notes as I go. Hopefully future editions will address these issues. Thanks. Vivek Chandran ('Viv-ache') Summary: A must-have for a web developer's bookshelf I'm a web designer branching out into search engine optimization and marketing so that I can provide my clients the full package. This is just the book I need. The material is current, proven reliable, and covers everything I need to know to create a winning site, from design to dollars. I can't recommend it enough. Many thanks to the authors. Summary: If you have a website... you need this book! I was fortunate enough to attend a live seminar giving by Mike Moran, one of the authors of this book. Mr. Moran's knowledge of this subject is enormous and he communicates it in a way that is easy for anyone to understand. He outlines how optimizing your website for search engines is the responsibility of both the Marketing Department and your Web Master, while providing real-life examples of how this was accomplished at IBM. His seminar was so helpful, that I acquired his book within an hour after it ended! Mr. Moran also has a website, www.mikemoran.com, where you view his seminar schedule. Summary:

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Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual (Missing Manual)

Publisher: Pogue Press
Authors: Barbara Brundage

ISBN: 0596101589
List Price: $39.95
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Summary: Great approach to Photoshop Elements 4
While the Elements 4 manual isn't exactly missing, it is no where near as complete as this one, which covers every feature in great detail. This book belongs on the shelf of every digital photographer who is using Elements.

Summary: Photoshop Elements 4 The Missing Manual
I adopted Photoshop Elements 4 One on One to use for a class I am teaching on Photoshop Elements 4. This book did not come with a CD. One has to go online to get the lessons that go with the book. That can be a problem for students who do not have Internet access when they are working from home. Believe it or not some people still do not have the Internet!

I have used the book to gain addtional information about Photoshop Elements 4 and found it to be very good. I just think a CD or DVD should have been included. All of the classroom books used in the community college have CDs or DVDs in the back of the book so students expect it today.

Summary: Manual for Photoshop Elements $
It was brand new and undamaged. Exactly what I expected.

Summary:

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Ajax in Action

Publisher: Manning Publications
Authors: Dave Crane Eric Pascarello Darren James

ISBN: 1932394613
List Price: $44.95
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Summary: One of the best book I read in few years
I bought this book after a long time I was looking for a good book on AJAX. I read the revies on Amazon - and decided to give it a try - it was worth every cent paid for the book.

The authors take real life examples, and show how to implement the solution using AJAX. They pay attention to possible pitfalls, and the code that displayed in the book, can be used as is !

It is defenetly one of the best book I read in few years.

Summary: This book will answer questions about design and refactoring, security, speed and system resources for Ajax applications
If you are looking for some Ajax code to copy and paste into your webpages, this is not the book for you. But if you are creating Ajax web applications on a large or small scale and need to consider such aspects as design and refactoring, security, speed and system resources, then this book will help answer some of these questions. Although the authors, Dave Crane, Eric Pascarello and Darren James, discuss mostly the client-side of Ajax, their approach for this book is to re-teach web programmers away from the standard/classical webpage and introduce a new way for the server, browser and webpage to work together through Ajax.

The first part of the book concentrates on what Ajax is and how it differs from standard/classical web programming. The authors discuss the four core technologies of Ajax (JavaScript, CSS, DOM and XMLHttpRequest) concentrating on the different ways each is used and how they work together in an Ajax application. Ajax takes the concept of separation of tasks to an advanced level.

Once you are familiar with this new approach to these four preexisting technologies, you are ready to work on refining the coding process. Ajax uses a larger amount of JavaScript compared to classical webpages and the webpages are refreshed less often. The author's approach to managing a large Ajax code base is by design framework and refactoring which is a fancy way of saying they teach you to write small, reusable chunks of code where each chunk has a specific task. They take this code component framework further by using the Model-View-Controller architecture which separates an Ajax application into three parts. The Model is the part that performs the task and the View is the part that presents the results. The Controller is the liaison between the other two. By keeping these parts separate, your code is more reusable and more easily maintained. Changes to one part do not directly affect the other part.

With Ajax, the user does not have that familiar "click and wait" routine as the webpage refreshes to reflect changes. With Ajax, as the information is passed to the server and data is returned to the browser, there is no need to refresh the webpage. Therefore we need new ways to keep the user informed as to the process. A few of the new visual feedback components discussed here are the status bar, pop up dialog and inline highlighting. All of these happen asynchronously.

Many books do not address the topic of security. One thing I liked about this book was that the authors discuss potential security issues when using Ajax and several possible ways to close these security holes. Another area covered was performance issues such as speed and system resources. First you learn ways to monitor the performance of your Ajax application and then how to analyze and improve your code.

The book finishes with five sample projects which are built step-by-step. The first is an Ajax web form. In this project you learn how to use Ajax to link form input fields in such a way as to pre-populate the values (choices) in the form fields. The choice made by the user in one form field causes the values for the second field to be updated as necessary. This can be done without reloading the webpage because the two fields are linked and Ajax does the updating in the background. Next you learn how to create an Ajax type-ahead suggest feature (such as the Google Suggest) and ways to possibly improve on this using an object-oriented TextSuggest component. Moving from forms to more advanced user interface features, you will learn how to create an Ajax portal project such as A9.com, an Ajax based live search system and how Ajax can work with external RSS protocol instead of a server.

The authors first walk you through coding these projects and then show you how to refactor each into reusable components. When you have finished, you should have a code library that you can apply to any Ajax web application.

Dave Crane is a computer programmer and simulation modeller. Eric Pascarello is an ASP.NET developer and the author of JavaScript: Your Visual Blueprint for Building Dynamic Web Pages (2nd ed.). Darren James is the architect of the open source Rico project.

Summary: Good introductory book for budding AJAXian
This book is my first AJAX book and frankly speaking this book did keep up its promises with a good introduction and smooth-sailing examples. I am not a Client-side scripting expert, but I found this book feeds a lot basics about Javascript and even CSS. These scripting langaugaes are important when you are working with Ajax.
The book has lots of examples that you'll find useful to fully understand what is going on. I found I could modify several of the examples and drop them into my own Ajax project. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get introduced to Ajax programming and could also use a primer on Javascript and CSS.
I may probably buy another one other book on Ajax simply because it is still evolving and not standardized. Thus I feel sure there's more tricks to learn till AJAX hits all parts of the Internet. Worth reading + worth a buy and you will NOT be disappointed.

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