The Dreamweaver Developer's Instant Troubleshooter Apress, 2003
What this book sets out to do - and to a large extent succeeds - is try to answer as many as possible of the questions that frequently frustrate users of Dreamweaver, particularly when making the transition to building dynamic websites. You could argue that you can get similar help by going to the Dreamweaver forum or by doing a Google search. You could, but would you get the answers from real experts - people like Rachel Andrew and Drew McLellan, both members of the Web Standards Project, or Gareth Downes-Powell, one of the most lucid writers on PHP and MySQL? Together with Nancy Gill and Kevin Marshall, they look at getting ASP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion and PHP up and running on both Windows and Linux machines. They walk you through the installation procedures for IIS, Apache and MySQL, catering for whatever your preferences or setup may be. And this is where the book really scores - they tell you what to do when things don't work the way you expected. They anticipate most of the common problems - and some not so common ones, too. With two of the authors active in promoting web standards, there's a strong emphasis on making the best use of Dreamweaver's improved CSS capabilities, and creating sites that are valid and flexible, including advice on how to switch to creating XHTML documents. Once you start creating dynamic websites, you'll find yourself turning to the later chapters, which offer a series of instant "recipes" for some of the most frequently asked questions about ASP, ASP.NET and PHP (but not ColdFusion, for some reason) - for example, how to create a random password in PHP, tables with striped rows in ASP, working with Server Control and Code-Behind in ASP.NET. If I have a serious criticism about this book, it's a pity that the final section was left to the individual authors' choice of questions. Although some issues (such as the notorious "Headers already sent" gotcha in PHP) are exclusive to a particular technology, it would have been nice to see answers to all the layout questions provided for each one. The user level is described on the back of the book as "Intermediate - Advanced". I would describe it as more "frustrated intermediate, aspiring to advanced". Everything is based on Dreamweaver MX, but is 99.9% applicable to MX 2004. |
The Web Programming CD Bookshelf O'Reilly, 2003
The great attraction of the O'Reilly CD Bookshelf series is that you get a collection of top titles for much less than it would cost to buy the books individually. You can also search them rapidly, not just one at a time, but all together. In the case of the two "definitive guides" in this collection, that's a major plus. Together, they come to more than 2,250 pages - most of them reference material - so it should save a great deal of time when you need to look up JavaScript syntax. The downside is that you either have to fire up your CD-ROM or store it permanently on hard disk. An even bigger disadvantage from my viewpoint is that I don't really want to read 4,668 pages on my computer screen. With a different O'Reilly CD Bookshelf, I ended up buying the print editions of two of the books for the sheer convenience of flicking through physical pages. What about the content, though? The only book I don't have is "Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL", so I can't comment on it, although I believe it has a solid reputation. Of the rest, "Webmaster in a Nutshell" is the only book I found rather disappointing. It's designed as a desktop quick reference, so it's more of a memory-jogger than a book to find solutions to problems in. Also, it seems to fall between two stools - web design and web administration - so fails to address either in much depth. The remaining four books are excellent, and reviewed individually on this site. I use "PHP Programming" and "PHP Cookbook" constantly, and would not be without them. The JavaScript and Dynamic HTML Definitive Guides are also both well written, and essential to anyone doing their own scripting. If space is at a premium or you like reading books on a computer screen, getting books bundled together like this certainly should save you money, but my preference would be to go for the individual books. |
PHP and MySQL Web Development (2nd edition) Sams, 2003
The book begins with a "crash course in PHP", followed by the basics of MySQL. Then the rest of the book is devoted to a series of real projects - including building a user authentication system, a simple shopping cart, a mailing list manager, and a web forum. Most of the projects are unchanged from the first edition, but the code has been rewritten throughout to reflect the tightening up of PHP security by turning register_globals "off" by default. Two projects also make use of PEAR, the repository of PHP code and extensions that was integrated with the release of v4.3.0. No previous knowledge of either PHP or MySQL is needed, although complete beginners will need to take the first six chapters quite slowly. But by the time you've worked through all the projects, you should have built up a sound and practical knowledge of dynamic data-driven websites, strong enough to take you on to the final chapter. This is a brand new project that goes beyond HTML into the rapidly developing area of Web Services using XML and SOAP. It uses live data from Amazon, but is readily adaptable to other sources of raw XML data. As proof positive that it really works, the chapter formed the basis for providing the pricing information on this site. To save space, some of the scripts for the later projects are on the accompanying CD-ROM, so if you're tempted to buy the book second-hand, make sure it's not missing or damaged. The CD-ROM also contains the full text of the book in PDF format, making it easy to search. Highly recommended. |
MySQL (2nd edition) Sams, 2003
The reason for bringing out a second edition is because MySQL has undergone a major upgrade in version 4.0, which finally became the recommended production version in mid-March. The book details all the new features and illustrates them with working examples, including union joins, multiple table deletes and updates, transactions, and fulltext searches. Features planned for v4.1 are also covered, such as subselects and support for different languages in the same table (a major leap forward for anyone dealing with multilingual applications). Initially I was disappointed that, like MySQL4 itself, this edition is an upgrade, not a completely new product. But the more I use it, the more I realize just how indispensible it is, and my well-thumbed first edition has now been retired to the back of the bookshelf. Make no mistake, there's a lot of new material in here, as evidenced by the fact the page count has increased by 500, although some of that is accounted for by a larger, clearer typeface (which makes things easier to find). For experienced users and beginners alike, this should definitely be first on your list of MySQL books. This edition is 1,200 pages long - nearly half of it made up of useful reference sections devoted to SQL syntax, column types, operators and functions, as well as PHP and the Perl DBI. Because of the major changes to MySQL, Paul DuBois is careful to point out which version new features are available from, so there's no problem using it if you're still on MySQL 3.23. One minor gripe - it would have been much more user-friendly to put the version number right next to the sub-title for each feature, rather than at the end of the description. Still, that's a minor failing in a such a comprehensive and well-written book. Publishing note: although originally planned for release under the New Riders imprint, it's now published by Sams in their Developer's Library that also includes the new edition of Welling and Thomson's first class "PHP and MySQL Web Development". |
Dreamweaver MX: Advanced PHP Web Development Glasshaus, 2003
The book is written by the same team that produced "Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development" (also reviewed on this site - and recommended for beginners). Although it's a sequel, it avoids the annoying habit of some series of constantly referring you back to the other volume, so you don't have to have read it to get the most out of this one. The authors do use some of Dreamweaver MX's PHP functionality, but most of the book is pure PHP, so readers need to be prepared to dive in and get hand-coding. That's very much a plus, because to get the most out of any dynamic technology, not just PHP, hand-coding is essential. Dreamweaver's automatic code generation is great, but it can only get you so far. Subjects covered include graphics (particularly useful for creating bar and pie charts from dynamic data), file handling, e-mail, and a fascinating insight into working with XML. For me, though, the highlight of the book is the Content Management System case study by Gareth Downes-Powell. It not only brought alive for me the power of custom classes in PHP, it gave me the confidence to start creating my own. Even if the book were twice the price, it would be worth buying it for this case study alone. |
Beginning PHP4 Wrox, 2003
This is one of the few books that Wiley decided to acquire when Wrox went into liquidation in early 2003. It has now been reissued with a different ISBN number, but the content remains the same as the original Wrox edition published in 2000. |
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This is a book I never thought would see the light of day. It was just about to go to the printers when the original publisher, Glasshaus, collapsed. Apress came to the rescue, and now this book can come to the rescue of anyone struggling with Dreamweaver. First of all, a disclaimer, I'm partially biased about this book because you'll find my name among the credits as a technical reviewer.
I don't have a copy of this myself, but I've got the print version of all but one of the books, so feel more than qualified to comment. First of all, what it contains: a copy of "Webmaster in a Nutshell" (3rd edition), plus electronic versions of the following O'Reilly books on a single CD-ROM:
With the publication of this 2nd edition, a great book just got better. When the first edition came out, it was an instant bestseller, and deservedly so. It moves at a fast pace, but is thoroughly practical in its approach. Instead of going through boring "Hello World" routines, everything you learn is something you can probably find an immediate use for.
The subtitle of this new edition really says it all - "The definitive guide to using, programming and administering MySQL4". Whether you're a beginner or an advanced user, this book contains just about everything you need to know about running MySQL. Paul DuBois has a clear, engaging style that neither talks down to experts nor goes way over the head of novices. There's everything here from a beginner's tutorial to advanced joins and serious administration issues like database replication.
Only recently started out with PHP? Don't be put off by the "advanced" in the title. You'll certainly be advanced by the time you finish, but you don't need to be a PHP guru before you start. Anyone with a basic or intermediate knowledge of PHP wanting to take their skills to a higher level will find this an invaluable book. I was one of the technical reviewers, and working through each chapter I found my skills improving by leaps and bounds. The authors take time to explain how a particular technique works, so that it becomes part of your own knowledge, enabling you to move on and apply it to projects of your own. Far better than simply copying a routine because "that's the way it's done".
A very thorough and user-friendly way of learning a new subject. The authors assume complete familiarity with HTML, but no prior knowledge of either PHP or any other programming language. The book covers all the basics (including installation on both Windows and Linux) through to relatively advanced database manipulation in combination with MySQL. It contains an excellent routine for displaying search results over several pages.
