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Java CAPS Basics: Implementing Common EAI Patterns
by Michael Czapski, Sebastian Krueger, Brendan Marry, Saurabh Sahai, Peter Vaneris, Andrew Walker


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
May 2008
496 pages
Reviewed by Michael Ernest, May 2008
  (9 of 10)


The only complaint I have with this book is the word 'Basics' in the title. It's expected readers are familiar with EAI patterns, but better if they've read Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

The authors also assume readers are familiar, if not proficient, with the JCAPS tools. With that in mind, this book and its companion CD relate each discussed pattern to an implemented solution in JCAPS. It took me quite some time to figure out some of these solutions on my own, and I was pleased to have my hunches confirmed by experts. Other pattern implementations were not apparent to me; I'll save a great deal of time using them as given.

The discussion is thorough, deliberate and complete, including drawbacks and limitations that go hand-in-hand with certain pattern solutions. These are valuable insights, but they can make the reading heavy work at times. I recommend chewing off no more than a chapter's worth of patterns at a time, and reading each pattern implementation twice before implementing it once.

The companion CD has many screen shots. Don't be alarmed by the few illustrations in the printed text. The CD doc is 700 pages, and provides detailed graphic cues for implementing the patterns.

The price seemed high at first. With the companion CD, however, it's clear no small effort was made. I think the market could still another book though, one that covers JCAPS fundamentals. This guide is not for beginners.

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Pro PayPal E-Commerce
by Damon Williams


Apress
1 edition
March 5, 2007
279 pages
Reviewed by Katrina Owen, May 2008
  (8 of 10)


This book is aimed squarely at developers, however it does not assume that the reader knows the first thing about PayPal, and the introductory chapters do not require any coding background to understand.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the problems that PayPal addresses, the services that PayPal offers, advice on when one service might be more appropriate than an other, as well as an in-depth coverage of how to work with each service and integrate the service into a website or web application.

Throughout the book, the author highlights gotchas and provides helpful tips, such as 'remember to write down the fake credit card number the first time it is provided, because that is the only chance you get'. It becomes obvious that the author has spent time with the development community answering the same questions time and again, and seeing developers make the same mistakes over and over.

The book is language-agnostic, with code examples from many mainstream languages. Developers who have experience programming in a single language may find it difficult to port the knowledge to their language of choice.

Though all of the information is freely available in various forms of documentation on PayPal's website, I would highly recommend the book if you are considering using PayPal as a payment option as it is cohesive and comprehensive.

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Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide
by Mike Chambers, Daniel Dura, Kevin Hoyt, Dragos Georgita


O'Reilly
1 edition
April 2008
204 pages
Reviewed by Balaji Loganathan, May 2008
  (8 of 10)


I was trying to learn Adobe AIR and was looking for some good set of learning resources. I found the book "Adobe AIR for Javascript Developers" from O'Reilly by and started reading it online. A cool book, the authors have done great job on presenting the topics as an easilit readable pocket guide. Soon after reading this book, i felt i got the right resource i want for now.
I found this book a bit more than a usual pocket guide.If you are a beginner and don't know anything about AIR, then this book is the best bet.The chapters were well organized to take you from novice stage to advanced stage in AIR.Covers ADOBE AIR 1.0Chapter I and II of this book teaches you many information and technical details about the AIR which might lots of time if you have to get it from Internet.The authors have given lots of code snippets while explaining a topic instead of lots of theoretical text. Some thing that programmers always look for.This book also gives an insight about Webkit engine, architecture of AIR and the security model of AIR. The most interesting part in this book is the "Mini cookbook". The mini cookbook chapter contains worked out samples with complete code explanation. It includes samples that can help you understand (from AIR perspective) Application Chrome, Windowing, File API, File Pickers, Service and Server Monitoring, Online/Offline, Drag-and-Drop, Embedded Database, Command-Line Arguments, Networking, Sound.This book is worth buying for its content coverage and its also very cheap.

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JavaScript for Programmers (Deitel Developer)
by Paul J. Deitel, Harvey M. Deitel


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
March 2009
448 pages
Reviewed by Campbell Ritchie, April 2009
  (8 of 10)


Before buying, go to the Deitel website (www.deitel.com) and see whether there are text samples (there weren't when I reviewed the book). Deitel books have their own characteristic style which some people (myself included) like and others detest. Much of it consists of showing examples of the technique, and explaining how it works, line by line. I personally find this an effective way to learn.

As well as JavaScript, the book covers introductory XHTML, style sheets (CSS), XML and rich internet applications with AJAX.

The examples are clear, simple, and easy to understand; I often learn by copying and changing them. The book is clearly printed in greyscale and sturdily bound. I have even dropped Deitel books in the street without losing pages! I only found 1 misprint. It is generously supplied with links to other resources, and appears to be up to date.

The "Programmer" books appear to be taken from the corresponding "How To Program" books, with some of the simpler stuff taken out; they assume a "programmer" knows what a browser is, and (see page 307) what an IEEE785 number is! This book appears to be the "client-side" half of a "How To" book. Many of the twee drawings of ants have gone, too, and unfortunately there are no exercises at the end of the chapters.

I recommend buyers look at the "How To" book, ISBN 0131752421, and see how it compares for value for money.

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Assemble the Social Web with zembly
by Gail Anderson, Paul Anderson, Todd Fast, Chris Webster


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
December 2008
400 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, March 2009
  (5 of 10)


"Assemble the Social Web with Zembly" is the official book for Zembly. It shows how to use Zembly for Facebook/iPhone/flickr/Zillow/Dapper. Parts of the book read a bit like a commercial. For example chapter one spends eleven pages giving roughly the information you would get at a free conference talk. Then it gets more informative.

The introduction says the audience is people who either know or are willing to learn JavaScript. They do give references for those who don't know it yet. I had some difficultly with the intended audience. A good part of the book is step by step - almost as if the audience is new to the web (here's how to edit your profile, here's how to add a contact, etc.) Then periodically the book shows reams of JavaScript code. Something I'm not fond of in a coding book let alone a more general one.

A few places refer to features that are in beta or may change before release. Despite the disclaimer, this seems out of place in a book.

I did like how the book didn't assume you've built widgets before. The list of Facebook integration points was particularly interesting. I also really liked the activity diagram in the iPhone chapter.

The book had it's moments that I liked and didn't like. Overall I was neutral on it.

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Learning Dojo
by Peter Svensson


Packt Publishing
1 edition
November 2008
264 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, February 2009
  (7 of 10)


"Learning Dojo" gets you up to speed on using DoJo widgets quickly and efficiently. While the book does cover some advanced JavaScript concepts like closures, you should be comfortable with JavaScript before you start out.

The book was well organized. It starts with the basics of how to use the library and widgets. Later on, internationalization, theme and locales are covered. The example of a basic threading error in AJAX was helpful because it showed WHY approaches wouldn't work. I particularly liked the chart in chapter on with the "selling points" of Dojo.

While I did find one font error (page 28), if this is the biggest error I noticed things are in good shape. There was also a bit of wasted space. For example the almost two pages of character codes (listed one at a time) could have been a table to save space. These are just nits though and don't interfere with readability. And the authors does abbreviate code where possible. The examples build on each other so it isn't too overwhelming reading all that code.

Overall, I did learn a lot from the book. The "real world" examples have a good scope to them - a CRUD example is something many people do! And I really liked the unit testing widget. I learned of several sites to bookmark. Finally, Packt gives some money to the open source project when they sell copies of the book - a very neat concept.

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Pro Spring 2.5
by Jan Machacek, Jessica Ditt, Aleksa Vukotic, Anirvan Chakraborty


Apress
1 edition
August 2008
920 pages
Reviewed by Mark Spritzler, December 2008
  (9 of 10)


8 1/2, but since we only have 8 or 9, I liked it enough to make sure I rounded up instead of down.

I highly recommend this book to learn Core Spring. It is the only book currently out by Dec 08 that covers version 2.5. Other books still only cover 2.0

I found the writing easy to understand, I found that they covered the material very well with good examples. They cover a lot of material and leave you with great in-depth knowledge in each of those Spring technologies.

Now, I don't agree with everything they say in the book, but it isn't that they are wrong, but that I just disagree with certain statements. For example, in a Note section they stated that "They do not encourage the use of annotations on the objects you will persist using Hibernate." Using JPA Annotations, from an ORM tool expert, is a best practice and makes your life so much easier, in my opinion, and many other ORM experts. This note should have been left out of the book, unless they wanted to fully cover why.

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Ajax - The Complete Reference
by Thomas A. Powell


McGraw-Hill
1 edition
February 2008
654 pages
Reviewed by Jesper de Jong, May 2008
  (9 of 10)


This book is about writing Ajax web applications. It consists of four parts: Core Ideas, Applied Ajax, Advanced Topics and appendices.The first part explains what Ajax is and describes different ways of implementing Ajax in considerable detail. It describes some pre-Ajax techniques for implementing dynamic web applications, discusses the XMLHttpRequest object, data formats such as XML and JSON and goes quite deep into the issues that you will encounter when using the different techniques. In the second part, a number of concepts are presented by developing an Ajax library. There are chapters about networking, security, user interface design and website and application architecture. In the third part some more advanced techniques are described, such as calling web services.

What I especially liked about this book is that it goes deep into the details if needed. For example, differences between web browsers are described in detail. The book isn't just a cookbook that explains step by step how to build an Ajax web application - it focuses on making robust and secure applications that will work well on the different browsers and operating systems that are out there.

I would highly recommend this book to people who are developing serious Ajax web applications. This book contains a lot of valuable information, I certainly learned a lot by reading it.

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Service Oriented Java Business Integration
by Binildas C. A.


Packt Publishing
1 edition
February 2008
436 pages
Reviewed by Marc Peabody, May 2008
  (5 of 10)


I was hoping to simply learn more about Java Business Integration. The first 70 pages are a decent start on this. Following that, however, ServiceMix component tutorials abound, and not in an entertaining cover-to-cover read kind of way.

The writing is often wordy and grammar and spelling slips are fairly common. Most books I set down to thoughtfully consider interesting points but more often I wondered why the author boasted working with many desperate systems (later I realized the author meant disparate) or if wetting my hands with code was anything like getting them dirty.

There isn't much of a practical flow from chapter to chapter, the "Use Cases" never really explain the problems that the samples solve, and seeing the my console's output match the book's screenshots after running the code (which is completely downloadable) isn't particularly gratifying.

If you're working with ServiceMix but frustrated by a lack of documentation, then this book might be the right fit for you. Otherwise I recommend you save your money for something else.

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jQuery in Action
by Bear Bibeault, Yehuda Katz


Manning Publications
1 edition
February 2008
376 pages
Reviewed by Ernest Friedman-Hill, April 2008
  (10 of 10)


jQuery is a Javascript framework that aims to let you think structurally and conceptually, rather than worrying about syntax and other details. In that largely succeeds, and so does this remarkable book.

Every technical book should be like this one; having written a few myself, I know that's a tall order. "jQuery in Action" is concise but clear, humorous but not silly, and answers all the questions it raises, quickly. The reader is never left wondering "But what about..." for more than a sentence or two. The authors clearly gave a lot of thought to pedagogy, because things are explained in a clear way which progresses naturally from chapter to chapter. Factor in the extremely readable style and the handsome diagrams, and it's easy to see why reading this book is a sheer joy.

For each major feature of jQuery, this book provides a "Laboratory page", a kind of interactive HTML playground where you can try the feature out using different options. The remarkable flexibility of these pages is a testament to both the power of jQuery and to the imagination and creativity of the authors.

Perhaps the most commendable feature of "jQuery in Action" is its unflinching honesty. Too often authors are selling you on a product, and they'll gloss over rough spots to win you over. These authors don't do that. They present their topic as it is, describe its merits, and let the reader decide.

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Manning Publications
1 edition
February 2008
376 pages
Reviewed by Katrina Owen, September 2008
  (9 of 10)


jQuery in Action is rock-solid documentation, well-written, and easily assimilated - even for a relative neophyte such as myself. The book is not a how-to write JavaScript book, but it does contain an appendix which helps readers who are less than proficient in JavaScript to get up to speed.

While the book starts out with the very basics of selecting elements and interacting with the DOM, the text rapidly progresses to much more complex uses, including animations, ajax, and how to extend jQuery with plugins and custom functions. It includes non-trivial examples (yeah!) and 'labs' where the reader can get their hands dirty and experiment in a controlled environment.

I'm certain that readers with a good background in JavaScript (object-oriented, unobtrusive, robust JavaScript - not the cowboy stuff) could whip through this book in a day or two and be well on their way to using jQuery library to build elaborate applications. After reading through the book once, I spent several months slowly digesting morcels of it, writing a lot of code, and reading (and re-reading) sections as the need arose.

I keep the book handy as a reference, as I am constantly 'almost' remembering how to do something or other.

My first real project using jQuery was transforming a relatively brittle (and very confusing) homegrown ajax application to use jQuery. One of my colleagues commented that the code now "reads like a story". Bear, Yehuda - you guys are making me look good. Thank you!

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Manning Publications
1 edition
February 2008
376 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, June 2009
  (9 of 10)


"jQuery in Action" grabbed my interest and kept it. This was a great contrast to the previous book I read - "Learning jQuery 1.3" which made me want to pull my hair out at the copious HTML code. By contrast, the longest "jQuery in Action" code example was 3.5 pages and there were only a few approaching this length. The vast majority were significantly shorter and all were easily digestible.

Note that this review is for jQuery in Action 1st edition which covers jQuery 1.3. If you go to the publisher's website, you can buy the second edition which covers jQuery 1.4. While only three chapters of the second edition are available, you can see them as they get written. Plus it includes the e-book for the current edition. If I were buying the book now, I'd choose this arrangement. It's a great idea on the part of the publisher as it solves the "I want to read a good book about jQuery now but don't want the latest edition ASAP."

The book comes with some "labs" that you can download to try out concepts. I really liked following along and trying out the selectors/effects interactively. There was an emphasis on good coding concepts such as Unobtrusive JavaScript and Progressive Disclosure throughout. I really liked the emphasis on idioms and good techniques. I also liked how there was a page on why browser detection is bad before showing how to do it.

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Head First JavaScript
by Michael Morrison


O'Reilly Media, Inc.
1 edition
January 2008
650 pages
Reviewed by Katrina Owen, May 2008
  (9 of 10)


Head First JavaScript starts off by illustrating why JavaScript can be useful (adding pizzaz, interactivity, and excitement to a website), and then goes about leading the reader in experiments, exercises, and games which introduce various aspects of the language: variables, scope, objects, control statements, and events. The book also introduces debugging and very basic Ajax.

The irreverent Head First style cleverly disguises the fact that you will walk away from the book understanding 'stuff'. This is not a recipe book, and it is not a code mill. The examples are for one purpose only: trick your brain into understanding a concept. The exercises do the same thing - often adding emotional spice by letting you walk straight into a trap (a typical mistake made by most novices), and then helping you understand exactly why you made that particular mistake on the very next page.

Did someone say "Just in Time" learning?

If you are a JavaScript guru, the book will probably be an entertaining read, but not much more than that. If the extent of your javascript knowledge is copying and pasting scripts written sometime prior to y2k and then tearing your hair out when they don't work the way you need them to, then this is the perfect place to start gaining the proficiency you need to start writing your own scripts from scratch.

Head First JavaScript is a great foundation, and will have you reading and enjoying more advanced texts in no time.

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Ajax Security
by Billy Hoffman, Bryan Sullivan


Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
December 2007
504 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, February 2008
  (9 of 10)


With the advent of more sophisticated client-side web apps -- facilitated by AJAX and the JavaScript XmlHttpRequest object -- have come more numerous and more easily discovered security issues. As the authors point out, AJAX combines the vulnerabilities of traditional web apps and web services.

This book is billed as "The Hands-On, Practical Guide to Preventing Ajax-Related Security Vulnerabilities", and it delivers admirably on that count. It covers in detail the wide range of attack possibilities - from traditional web attacks and JavaScript hijacking over client-side storage and offline vulnerabilities to request origin issues, mashups and even CSS. An analysis of two JavaScript worms and a couple of chapters presenting tools to help test AJAX application and popular AJAX frameworks round out the book. Many illustrations and code examples help convey the subjects, as do details of what to look out for in particular browsers or server software. It's hard to picture a web worker (be it developer, tester, producer or manager) that doesn't take away something (and more likely quite a bit) from this book.

It's written in a style that makes it easily approachable, and complex topics are explained well. Although some of the later material assumes knowledge of the earlier stuff, most chapters can be skipped if the reader isn't interested in a particular topic, and revisited later. I recommend the book to every web professional.

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Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
December 2007
504 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, January 2008
  (10 of 10)


Anyone involved in developing/testing AJAX should read "AJAX Security." It covers preventing a hacker from attaching your application. The audience includes developers, QA and penetration testers. While there are code snippets, they are explained well. While managers aren't in the target audience, I think they could benefit from understanding the concepts presented in the book.

The book begins with a brief review of AJAX architecture with an emphasis on security. The writing style is quite engaging including a chapter walking you through an attack from a hacker's point of view. All the major known categories of attacks are included including resource enumeration, parameter manipulation (with SQL and XPATH injection), session hijacking, JSON hijacking, XSS, CSRF, phishing, denial of service, etc.

I particularly liked the analogies to things that happen in the physical world such as resource injection into a roommate's "to do" list and hijacking another customer's paid order in the deli. These made it easy to visualize the problem even for people who don't code often.

The authors were realistic and included the limitations and drawbacks of each tool/framework mentioned. I liked the chapter analyzing two major JavaScript worms including the source code. This really hit home on the importance of certain practices!

All information was up to date as of printing including comments on all four major browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari.) They even mentioned the HTML 5 specification. The book is not server side language specific, which was nice.

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Pro JavaScript Design Patterns
by Ross Harmes, Dustin Diaz


Apress
1 edition
December 2007
269 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, April 2008
  (9 of 10)


"Pro JavaScript Design Pattens" is a useful read regardless of whether you have a JavaScript or server side language background. An advanced topic that appeals to such varied audiences is tough to do, but the authors succeed admirably. In fact, I can't do such a job, so read the chapter that applies...

JavaScript developers:
The book covers how to write good clean object oriented code in JavaScript. It introduces concepts that are not present in JavaScript along with how to simulate them. The sections on when to use a given pattern are well written.

Server side language developers:
The book covers how to implement in JavaScript the design patterns we are accustomed to. Before getting to this, there are several chapters on JavaScript idioms which are very useful. There were also a couple patterns that a server side developer might not have encountered because the server side is not so memory constrained.

Everyone:
The book also covers tradeoffs of using the patterns. I appreciated where they mention the slight performance hit and how to check/profile if it is a problem for you. All patterns were described clearly and succinctly. There were some real examples as well. At times, it is a bit code heavy -- one example had 1.5 pages of implementation details that had nothing to do with the topic at end. Overall, I think the book was great. If you have a significant amount of JavaScript code, the concepts in this book are critical.

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Advanced Ajax: Architecture and Best Practices
by Shawn M. Lauriat


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
October 2007
384 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, January 2008
  (6 of 10)


"Advanced AJAX" is targeted towards AJAX application architects. Note that readers should be comfortable learning by reading code. For example, chapter 1 has two pages of code for a GUI widget. This seems heavy for a conceptual book. Elsewhere, the main idea got lost in six pages of view code.

I liked the non-technology specific sections. Browser tools included Safari and Opera plugins. All the "hot" security topics were covered (SQL injection, XSS, CSRF.) Tradeoffs were listed for different alternatives. Performance included CPU, memory and bandwidth. Trying out examples on the companion website was nice.

Many server side techniques were PHP specific, such as SQL injection. While six pages of code is good for PHP developers, I was surprised. The code was readable without being fluent in PHP, but unnecessarily narrows the audience. The 15 pages of screenshots/description on the PHP documentation tool could have been used for another topic. Wouldn't a PHP developer already know how to use PHP?

While I liked the presence of an accessibility chapter, I was confused. WCAG/Section 508 were introduced clearly early in the chapter. For the rest of the chapter, I wasn't clear on what pertained to WCAG, what was 508 compliant and what was coming in the future.

If you are a hands on PHP AJAX developer interested in architecture, this is an excellent book. Non-PHP developers or people who want to focus on architecture (rather than code) are better off with a different book.

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Enterprise AJAX
by David Johnson, Alexei White, Andre Charland


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
August 2007
496 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, November 2007
  (7 of 10)


The subtitle of the book -- "Strategies for building high performance web applications" -- nicely sums up what this book is about: Not so much a tutorial about AJAX that takes the reader from 0 to 100%, but rather a collection of topics that relate to AJAX-based web applications, bundled into book chapters. The chapters span a wide gamut, from basic browser technologies like CSS/DOM/JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest, to more advanced stuff like the design of JavaScript code, Web Services, and the handling of sizable chunks of data within JavaScript. The book also covers issues of the software development process as they relate to AJAX applications, like usability, prototyping, testing and project risk management. Three case studies round out the book, but don't provide much additional insight.

If a chapter isn't of interest to the reader, it can generally be skipped without impacting the understanding of later material. Everything is explained with plenty of code examples, along with explanations of what gotchas to look out for when running under different browsers.

The book would have benefited from a more thorough proofreading. As it is, an annoyingly large number of typos, duplicated words and sentence fragments, and even incorrect picture captions and footnotes, have crept in. Nevertheless, the authors clearly know their stuff, and break it down into pieces that are easily digested and readily applied. Just about any web developer will get useful ideas out of Enterprise AJAX, no matter how big his projects.

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Ajax Construction Kit: Building Plug-and-Play Ajax Applications
by Michael Morrison


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
July 2007
312 pages
Reviewed by Katrina Owen, August 2007
  (7 of 10)


This book is aimed at people who make web pages for fun, and have little to no (java)scripting experience. If you haven't the faintest idea what Ajax is and does (I didn't when I picked this book up), you may emerge with understanding and excitement. This book will help the uninitiated realize just how many slick tricks can be accomplished with Ajax.

The Ajax Construction Kit promises to hand you working Ajax goodies. It delivers on this promise! It also provides you with a good understanding of how to tweak and nudge the applications provided, so that you can incorporate them into your own websites. If you wish to transform the goodies to any significant degree, or learn how to build your own Ajax applications you will need to find a different set of resources. This book does not set out to teach you how to program.

The book comes with a CD which has the source code for all the goodies in the book - AND a working webserver for your convenience in the form of a Live CD. If you would rather work in your own, familiar, environment rather than Ubuntu Linux, it also provides both the code and a server which you can install locally on a Windows, Mac, or Linux variant.

The author does apologize a lot when things get technical. Come on! We love this stuff, and it is presented well, so it isn't the least bit scary.

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Ajax Starter Kit
by Phil Ballard


Sams
1 edition
June 2007
224 pages
Reviewed by Christophe Verre, September 2007
  (7 of 10)


This kit comes with an Ajax Quick Start Guide and CD.

First of all, the Quick Start Guide, which actually is a book called "Sams Teach Yourself AJAX in 10 Minutes". You'll get introduced to Web technologies, such as HTML and JavaScript. Then starts a fast paced Ajax introduction where you will learn what Ajax is. It goes straight to the point so don't expect detailed explanations, but nothing should leave you clueless. There is a nice chapter on Ajax common traps, which explains what you should take care of when developing in Ajax. I wish there were such a chapter on debugging too. Finally, you are introduced to some common Ajax libraries, like Prototype and Rico.

The CD contains sample files, utilities, Ajax libraries, and an amazing PDF file. This PDF contains six books in one. You get the "Ajax Quick Start Guide", "Sams Teach Yourself (STY) JavaScript in 24 Hours", "STY XML in 10 Minutes", "STY HTML in 10 Minutes", "STY CSS in 10 minutes", and "STY PHP in 10 minutes", all in the same PDF.

All in all, this Starter Kit gives you a quick overview of what Ajax is. If you're impatient to know about Ajax, this 200 pages guide will suit you. If you don't know anything about HTML, CSS or JavaScript, then this package can be handy. If you are looking for something more practical, you will need some other materials, as there is no good tutorial in this guide.

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Ajax in Practice
by Dave Crane, Bear Bibeault, Jord Sonneveld


Manning Publications
1 edition
May 2007
456 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, June 2007
  (9 of 10)


The back cover says that "Ajax in Practice" is a "second generation" book. The book covers a mix of problem/solution descriptions for common problems, Ajax tips and advanced JavaScript techniques. The cookbook style is useful if you are trying to implement a specific Ajax effect. The book touches on a number of libraries/toolkits where appropriate. It also covers integrating with existing Ajax libraries.

The book assumes you know basic JavaScript, CSS and HTML. If you are new to Ajax, I recommend reading a "first generation" book like "Ajax in Action" first. This book is a lot easier to follow if you have some exposure to Ajax. In particular, the problem/solution style involves learning by reading a lot of code. This is overwhelming on the first shot. I had to pull out my copy of "Ajax in Action" to follow parts of it. While some of the examples are long, they don't include unnecessary code.

I liked that the book has a common flow to it. Even though there are seven authors/contributors, the style is the same and it makes sense. I learned a lot about specific uses of Ajax along with examples/techniques of good Ajax code. This should definitely be the second Ajax book you read!

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SOA Using Java Web Services
by Mark D. Hansen


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
May 2007
608 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, October 2007
  (7 of 10)


The book covers the development of web services using the Java EE 5 platform. It provides a comprehensive yet detailed overview of the various components that play a part in it, from JAX-WS clients using REST and SOAP, through data binding with JAXB, to developing, packaging and deploying JAX-WS services, and the various JSR standards covering these technologies. The author also points out the shortcomings of these APIs, and possible workarounds.

At every step of the way ready-to-run example code is presented that illustrates the points made in the text. The code is also tied to numerous WSDL and Schema examples, so the reader should not be afraid to delve into those. The examples culminate in a program accessing various shopping sites via web services, and exposing their accumulated information via a web service itself, thus tying both ends together.

The writing is technical and to-the-point. Sometimes the minutiae of the examples become a bit exhausting, but if a chapter isn't of immediate interest to the reader, it can generally be skimmed over; the chapter introductions and conclusions provide enough hints that the reader knows what he's missing.

This reviewer wouldn't recommend the book as a tutorial for someone who's never developed web services. It is a good introduction to JAX-WS and associated APIs for experienced developers, though, or a reference of the finer points for anyone who doesn't use these technologies continuously.

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Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns
by Michael Bowers


Apress
1 edition
April 2007
494 pages
Reviewed by Katrina Owen, May 2008
  (9 of 10)


I absolutely love this book. I have two copies of it - one at work, one at home.

The author focuses on browser compatibility, and accessibility to screenreaders. I have been disappointed only once - when I thought 'accessibility' included those who do not use a pointing device. But that is more of a javascript question than CSS/HTML, and therefore falls outside the scope of the book.

Most CSS/HTML code I see employs the "programming by coincidence" model. Add a rule here to fix something that doesn't quite work there, use a negative margin here, maybe a browser-specific hack there. In the end, it works. It might even look pretty good, but invariably, the result is unnecessarily bloated.

Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns makes it possible to code deliberately. It provides a solid fundamental understanding of how elements and rules interact, and especially how the same element or attribute will behave differently in different environments.

In several cases, it has saved me hours of trying to achieve something which simply cannot be done in the current specification. At the same time, it has provided enough information to find a different approach that does work.

The book is very systematic, and while it is a great read cover-to-cover, it functions very well as a reference volume. The 'patterns' format (name/problem/solution/pattern) makes it very easy to locate the exact information you are looking for.

Summary: Buy this book. Read this book. I mean it.

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Apress
1 edition
April 2007
494 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, July 2007
  (9 of 10)


"Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns" is a valuable reference for using CSS on your website. You should be familiar with reading or writing CSS and have some experience with HTML for this book to be readable. In particular, you should feel comfortable with CSS syntax and high-level concepts.

The book is still useful if you know CSS "a little" -- you may have to read parts a few times. In particular, there are a few places were terms are defined after they are used. It's a bit of a catch 22, for the author as introducing those terms relies on the initial sections. There aren't many of these and all becomes clear by reading the patterns twice.

I liked the style of having code/screenshots on one side and the pattern/description/limitations on the other side of each two page set. This consistency made the book easy to follow. I particularly liked the emphasis of making the patterns accessible to people using different browsers, screenreaders and with Javascript disabled.

Some of the design patterns are teaching patterns to understand concepts and terminology. The rest are techniques you could want to use when designing a web page. Some techniques are self-contained, like styling text. The end of the book builds more complex patterns out of those that came before. The box model and layout ones are quite valuable.

The companion website lets you play with each pattern. In summary: buy this book!

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ppk on JavaScript
by Peter-Paul Koch


New Riders
1 edition
September 2006
528 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, October 2006
  (9 of 10)


"ppk on JavaScript" fills an interesting void with the focus of today's JavaScript books. Most books either focus on "JavaScript in 21 Days", "JavaScript -- Complete Reference" or "AJAX". This book covers techniques for creating clean and accessible JavaScript functionality.

The book's stated audience is someone who knows at least some JavaScript -- a beginning level or up. Basically, you should feel comfortable reading and understanding code. I think the book might be a little overwhelming for a beginner to understand. A beginner could read it twice; once right away and once after reading another JavaScript book.

The author views JavaScript as a technique to add usability. He shows how to create "unobtrusive" JavaScript. In other words, the JavaScript stays out of the HTML page and the page works without JavaScript, albeit with less functionality.

Eight case studies (real life examples) are used throughout the book. The author points out why he selected certain techniques. He also notes bugs and where he would have done things differently. I particularly liked the emphasis on separation of concerns.

Keyboard users are also discussed from an accessibility point of view in several chapters. In other chapters, only users without JavaScript enabled were discussed. I would have liked a little more consistency with how accessibility was treated.

Overall, the book was very good. The tips were useful and I enjoyed the emphasis on design. And AJAX is discussed from the point of view of how it was used before it was called AJAX.

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JavaScript & AJAX - Learn JavaScript and Ajax the Quick and Easy Way
by Tom Negrino, Dori Smith


Peachpit Press
6 edition
September 2006
512 pages
Reviewed by Pauline McNamara, January 2007
  (4 of 10)


My opinion about this book would be much higher if it had not claimed to be a learning book. The intended audience are people with basic familiarity of HTML, and the authors "don't assume that you know anything about programming or scripting." If you fall into this category, I'd wouldn't recommend this book.

It starts with a couple gentle introductory chapters, followed by a very dense syntax dump in the third chapter. The intended reader may survive the sink or swim approach, but I suspect they're more likely to give up after that chapter. The now requisite Ajax chapter towards the end seems quite out of place, again because of the context of non-programmers just picking up scripting.

The rest of the book is a collection of useful examples in a cookbook style, with line-by-line annotations of the code (however not explaining the syntax specifically). If you learn by watching, or if you already write code and are looking for a good JavaScript cookbook, you'll be happy to have this on your shelf. If you've never coded a loop before, you'll need other books to really learn the mechanics.

Strengths: good cookbook for experienced programmers, sprinkled with useful tips (albeit buried in code explanations).

Weaknesses: way too much information that a learner has to take on faith, narrow column format drastically reduces code readability.

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HTML, XHTML and CSS
by Elizabeth Castro


Peachpit Press
6 edition
August 2006
456 pages
Reviewed by David O'Meara, October 2006
  (9 of 10)


My first impression was that the page layout was strange for a book, but then I realised that the layout and presentation of data was the point of the book, so I stopped worrying and went with the flow.

It treats HTML and XHTML as the same thing, only distinguishing one from the other when a specific point needs to be made. This was a nice way to start as it removes the mystery of XHTML and allows the reader to concentrate on getting things displayed. I was also interested in the way the book worked from basic structure to applying ids and classes without introducing styles. These aren't introduced until chapter eight where you (hopefully) already have a feel for basic structure, layout, and markup.

The book races through the easier parts of HTML and I guess it could be possible for a complete novice to get lost, so pay attention in the first chapter. The book is rated for 'intermediate users' though, so complete beginners may want to be wary. The good news is this leaves room at the end for bonus content like character encodings, problem solving, marketing and RSS.

It is easy to see why this is a popular web design book. Topics are laid out in a no-nonsense manner that makes everything look easy and achievable, there is plenty of content without being heavy, and the layout provides the flexibility for colored examples and additional points of interest. Also, don't overlook a web book that is printed in color!

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AJAX - Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
by Edmond Woychowsky


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
August 2006
432 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, September 2006
  (3 of 10)


This book misses the mark of explaining where and how to use AJAX.

Less than half the pages deal with AJAX itself; the rest is taken up by introductions to (X)HTML, JavaScript, XML, Path, XSLT and Ruby (on Rails) - technologies that are related, but which the brief coverage here doesn't do justice. Furthermore, pages upon pages of HTML element/attribute listings, DOM methods or XSLT functions don't further the insight into AJAX.

The sole in-depth example is a shopping cart application, which is fine, but plenty of simple ready-to-run examples that show various aspects of working with AJAX would help much more. Other examples use outdated techniques like XML islands and hidden frames, which muddles the picture further.

The authors' style of writing also gets in the way. It's probably supposed to be easy-going, but includes a stream of witty and self-deprecating remarks that detract from the content, and by the 10th repetition of "this is all mad-scientist stuff" this reviewer was yearning for some actual stuff, not fluff.

The chapters of the book that do talk about AJAX provide a decent introduction to the XMLHttpRequest object, and how to use it to transfer information back and forth from the server. It?s all bits and pieces, though, and no big picture is ever provided. Anyone who was inspired by Google Mail or Google Maps to build AJAX apps will not know where to start after reading this book.

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Practical Ajax Projects with Java Technology
by Frank Zammetti


Apress
1 edition
July 2006
528 pages
Reviewed by David O'Meara, September 2006
  (8 of 10)


I have read some AJAX books and enjoyed them, but they typically concentrate on the client side and coverage of what occurs on the server side, if any, is generally PHP or a smattering of almost anything. But I'm a Java guy. The book I've been looking for would have not only the server side examples in Java, but would also use Java as the basis of discussion on client-server communication and the tools available to ease the whole process.

The examples cover a variety of interesting projects and technologies, but the coverage of CSS, JavaScript, Servlets etc is very light as to be almost non-existent. Some of the sample code has been cut and paste without too much scrutiny, so they are often bloated by useless or even empty javadoc blocks but this is more of a annoyance than a real problem. Appendix B has several pages of useful links, but I would have liked to have seen this as a closing chapter of the topics that didn't warrant complete coverage.

Interestingly, while core AJAX books tend to favour the client action and be light on what happens on the server, this book leans the other way. If you are looking to buy a single book to cover AJAX this will cause you a problem, but now that you are fore-warned if you get the correct combination of client and server AJAX coverage you'll be well served for your future needs.

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Pro Ajax and Java Frameworks
by Nathaniel T. Schutta, Ryan Asleson


Apress
1 edition
July 2006
336 pages
Reviewed by Balaji Loganathan, October 2006
  (8 of 10)


The authors have taken good efforts to neatly introduce, analyses and compare various javascript tools specifically meant for AJAX.

The flow of the book is well managed and its very reader friendly.

This book is definitely a one stop reference for knowing what development tools, editors, libraries available for supporting AJAX in Java web applications.

Comes with 50MB examples source code. The source code has been configured to easily deploy and test using ANT.

This book mostly addresses the freely available AJAX tools.

Few drawbacks I found:
A lot of pages have been spent on describing and comparing between java frameworks, the authors could have avoided it since this book about using AJAX in java framework.
The code listings in the chapters (like html, javascript, jsp) were not well formatted, so it very difficult to read.
The authors gives more preference to JSF framework which is again not the context of the book.
That's it.

Since the book is published recently(July06), this book covers many latest AJAX and JAVA Framework products, so its saves your time on finding a right tool for your AJAX based websites.

I don't want to write again the table of contents of this book but want to mention that you will sure learn all the bit and pieces that you need have for setting up a AJAX based java web applications.

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Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax
by Christian Heilmann


Apress
1 edition
July 2006
512 pages
Reviewed by Andrew Monkhouse, September 2006
  (9 of 10)


Up until now, most JavaScript books I have seen have not really described how to be a good JavaScript programmer - most of them have lead by example (which is how many JavaScript programmers I know learnt JavaScript). Unfortunately learning JavaScript by simply viewing other people's code without understanding why it was written the way it was could also lead to learning by bad example.

Christian Heilmann's "Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax" is different - it teaches the reader the concepts that will help them to become a good JavaScript programmer. Perhaps more importantly, it teaches how to use JavaScript, CSS, DOM, and Ajax in a degradable manner, so that all visitors to your web site will be able to access it. Christian explains not only the guidelines for developing good code, but the reasons why it is important.

Christian's passion for creating maintainable, standards compliant, usable websites is clearly visible in his writing. Throughout the book he reiterates key issues that good programmers should know, and demonstrates them in his code.

This is an excellent book on JavaScript, and one that I will thoroughly recommend to anybody new to JavaScript programming. I also recommend it to anyone who plans to make their website more accessible to a wider audience (and who doesn't want that?).

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BPEL Cookbook
by Jeremy Bolie, Michael Cardella, Stany Blanvalet, et al.


Packt Publishing
1 edition
June 2006
188 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, December 2006
  (5 of 10)


The book is billed as a showcase of BPEL best practices, demonstrated by showing 10 real-world projects from a variety of companies. It doesn't become clear what constitutes the "best practice" of each project, though, as there are no comparisons or discussion of alternative solutions. Sometimes the mere fact that something is doable using BPEL apparently makes it an SOA best practice. The cases are descriptions of particular solutions using BPEL, and there is no overarching theme to tie them together. They do serve to highlight particular problems faced when implementing SOA, and how to address them using BPEL, though.

One aspect of the book this reviewer found problematic is that almost all cases use (and sometimes require to use) the Oracle BPEL implementation, Process Manager and Process Designer, all the way to showing plenty of screenshots of its GUIs and dialog boxes. While this will be helpful for Oracle shops, it limits the usefulness of the book for developers using different software, especially as some cases rely on Oracle-specific details like the implementation API and management tools.

The book is relatively short at 170 pages -- which this reviewer counts as a plus in the days of 1000-page technology books -- and is well written and illustrated. Anyone determined to use BPEL will find interesting ways to use it in it. A justification for using BPEL it is not, as it assumes that SOA in general, and BPEL in particular, are industry best practices.

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Professional Ajax
by Nicolas Zakas, Jeremy McPeak, Joe Fawcett


Wrox
1 edition
February 2006
432 pages
Reviewed by Ernest Friedman-Hill, March 2006
  (8 of 10)


"Professional Ajax" shoots from the hip. Go ahead, scour the web. Find every forum, article, or review about Ajax that allows users to post comments. You'll find a common complaint: "We've been doing that for years, we don't need a fancy new name." These guys understand this comment. They know what they're doing here, and they've got the battle scars to prove it. Call it what you want: Ajax, Web 2.0, or just business as usual, these authors know how to get the job done.

You won't find oversimplifications here: the authors don't skimp on details as they describe what goes into Ajax applications and show you how to build your own. The book concludes with a large and lovely guide through the process of developing a realistic Ajax-based email client similar to Gmail.

This is a nice pragmatic guide to coming up to speed with what's happening in interactive Web application development. You won't go wrong with this book.

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Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
by Matjaz Juric, Benny Mathew, Poornachandra Sarang, Matjaz Juric, Benny Mathew, Poornachandra Sarang


Packt Publishing
second edition
January 2006
372 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, June 2006
  (6 of 10)


The book starts off with a couple of chapters giving the motivation for why one might want to use BPEL, and an overview of the complete Web Services stack that supports it. As a number of those standards are not in widespread use, this provides some helpful context.

The heart of the book are two chapters that explain BPELs capabilities, and show them in action in an example that gets expanded step by step to make use of all those features. This is a sensible approach, as each step introduces just a bit more new stuff than the previous one covered.

Almost half of the book is taken up by introductions to two commercial BPEL servers from Oracle and Microsoft. This may be helpful for a reader who happens to run those products, but doesn't further the insight into BPEL itself.

The final chapter provides a reference to all BPEL features and constructs, which were introduced earlier in the book.

After reading the book, this reviewer had a much better feeling for what BPEL can and can not do. The lasting impression, though, is that BPEL sits on top of a large stack of WS-* standards, most of which struggle for adoption themselves, and that use of it should be considered carefully, as there may be simpler ways of achieving what it strives for.

The overall style is dry and technical, and a more thorough editing might have done some good, but the book is quite readable nonetheless.

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Packt Publishing
1 edition
October 2004
270 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, April 2005
  (8 of 10)


"Business Process Execution Language for Web Services" is a good tutorial and reference for BPEL. The authors state that the book is targeted towards current web services developers and architects. Appropriately, the book assumes knowledge of XML, UML, and of course, web services.

The book was written by three authors and the chapters are separated by author. One author wrote chapter one, which includes an overview of BPEL, concrete examples of workflow and how BPEL fits into the big picture. The main author wrote chapters two through four, which flow well and teach BPEL through a running example, along with describing Oracle's BPEL tools. The third author wrote chapter five, which describes Microsoft's BPEL tools. The book ends with a clear, concise syntax reference. While all the chapters provide valuable information, the first and last chapters seem disjointed from the remainder of the book.

There are plenty of diagrams to show architecture and flow, something very important in BPEL. The meat of the book teaches BPEL, something it does very well. The examples in chapters two and three gradually grow in complexity and build on each other. When describing Oracle and Microsoft's tools, appropriate screenshots are provided. I recommend this book for anyone starting out with BPEL or just looking to learn it.

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Foundations of Ajax
by Ryan Asleson, Nathaniel T. Schutta


Apress
1 edition
October 2005
296 pages
Reviewed by Gregg Bolinger, December 2005
  (8 of 10)


The first round of Ajax books have hit the shelves and Apress is trying to make their mark with Foundations of Ajax. A thin book with only 273 pages including the index, Foundations of Ajax hits the mark with its recipe style format and examples.

Foundations of Ajax starts out the way most tech books do with a bit of history and primer for what's to come. Most people familiar with web applications and design can probably just skip chapter 1 and possibly 2. But don't skip anymore. Chapter 3 jumps right in with your first fully functional Ajax enabled web page and it doesn't let up. Some of the examples are dynamic tool tips, textfield autocomplete, dynamic drop down lists, and my favorite, the progress bar. The elements of each example are well explained and easy to understand but aren't diluted with pages of theory and why's. This book is all how.

The last few chapters all deal with tools for the developer to help make Ajax development easier. It talks about Firefox extensions, JSUnit, and lightly touches on some Ajax frameworks though no working examples of any of the frameworks are shown.

The book was not without its faults, however. There are syntax errors lightly scattered throughout some of the examples. This was frustrating because I had to debug javascript for someone else's errors. The book also assumes a fair amount of Servlet knowledge and J2EE web app deployment know how. While I'm all for examples in Java, this does limit the books potential customer base. Ajax is pretty much server side technology agnostic. It can be used with ASP, PHP, J2EE, Ruby, and many others. And while the book does touch on this fact, newbies to Servlets will find running the examples difficult.

I whole heartedly enjoyed this book and it really wet my appetite for Ajax and how I can use it to improve my own applications UI and provide a better experience for the end user. I'd highly recommend this to anyone wanting to learn the "Foundations of Ajax".

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Apress
1 edition
October 2005
296 pages
Reviewed by Lasse Koskela, November 2005
  (8 of 10)


"Foundations of Ajax" is the first book I've read about the technology, regardless of the astonishing hype it has received lately. It was an easy read, I learned a lot, and, while I was left wanting something more, still, I'd say this is a great book for getting started on Ajax.

The first half of the book runs through a quick history of web technologies and gives a pretty balanced view on the "why" and "why not" of Ajax, explains the fundamental technologies and techniques, and showcases some typical Ajax features like auto-completion, auto-refreshing pages, and a file upload progress bar. While at times the pace of the discussion seemed a bit slow even for myself (not being too familiar with JavaScript in general), I found the fundamentals given on XMLHttpRequest and DOM to be very valuable in terms of understanding what's happening "under the hood" when using those fancy Ajaxian features.

The second half of the book is more focused on tooling. The authors have done a huge favor to the reader by showing how to debug and test JavaScript code, although I had to re-read a page or two of the jsUnit chapter after falling off the sled on how and where the tests are actually executed. The first appendix gets an honorary mention as well, as I found the list of cross-browser compatibility tips to be extremely useful.

The downside to the book, in my opinion, is that while the second appendix does enumerate a long list of Ajax frameworks, only Taconite (the authors' own framework) is presented in any detail. Frankly, I would've wanted to see the authors present even short examples of more "mainstream" frameworks such as Dojo and Prototype. Somewhat related to this, while after reading the book, I feel I have a good foundation for Ajax and would certainly be capable of putting together some fancy Ajax widgets, I'm afraid I wouldn't get as much "done" as I could if the book would've allocated more inches on using state-of-the-art Ajax frameworks. Having said that, I knew that that wasn't a goal for the book so it's not really too big an issue for me.

In summary, a great book for building a foundation on Ajax technology. Get it, read it, hack on some JavaScript, and then go learn the latest and greatest Ajax framework.

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Apress
1 edition
October 2005
296 pages
Reviewed by Ernest Friedman-Hill, September 2005
  (9 of 10)


Ajax is an unusual beast. It's not a product. It's not a standard. It's not a tool. It's not a proper noun -- it's an acronym. Instead, Ajax is a collection of techniques for building highly interactive Web based applications using industrial-strength JavaScript and asynchronous communications, and it's taking the Web development world by storm. This is one of the first books to appear on this hot topic, and it's a good one.

"Foundations of Ajax" takes you through the whys and wherefores of Ajax, as well as the meat and potatoes, at a brisk pace. The examples are crystal clear. Multi-language code as used in Ajax is hard to describe clearly. Choosing a particular language for server-side code might have alienated some readers unfamiliar with that language. This book uses fixed XML files to sidestep the problem, which leads to startlingly simple descriptions.

I found the second half of the book even more valuable. The last few chapters talk about tools and techniques for building real-life professional-grade applications. There is excellent, detailed information about documenting, unit testing and debugging for JavaScript, debugging Ajax communications, and using some of the newfangled Ajax frameworks that have begun to appear. These chapters credibly demonstrate that it's possible to treat JavaScript as a Serious Programming Language.

In sum, I think that "Foundations of Ajax" is an excellent piece of work which belongs on every Web developer's bookshelf.

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Ajax in Action
by Dave Crane, Eric Pascarello, Darren James


Manning Publications
1 edition
October 2005
680 pages
Reviewed by John Wetherbie, December 2005
  (8 of 10)


Ajax In Action is a code-driven introduction to the collection of technologies and techniques that are known as Ajax. The book has many code examples and the last five chapters take you through the development of some Ajax applications including combo boxes, type-ahead help, and adding Ajax to a portal site.

The authors emphasize that developers and architects need to have a different mindset when developing applications that use Ajax versus traditional web applications. An asynchronous (the first A in Ajax) web application will act differently than a traditional web application and needs to be thought about and designed differently. There will also be more JavaScript code to manage and the authors emphasize good coding and code management techniques.

I enjoyed the chapter on performance and the fact that it focused both on speed and memory use. The appendices cover Ajax tools for your toolkit, an excellent JavaScript overview, and Ajax-related frameworks and libraries. The appendices are really good but I appreciate that their information is located such that it does not break the flow of the book.

This book is a very good overview Ajax and its technologies. It assumes you are reasonably familiar with JavaScript, CSS, DOM, and how web applications work. My one complaint is the feeling that the discussion of patterns and refactoring for a developer not familiar with these tools was a little light and could have been beefed up a bit.

I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.

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Manning Publications
1 edition
October 2005
680 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, December 2005
  (10 of 10)


"Ajax in Action" is not only an excellent book on Ajax, but the best JavaScript book I have ever read. The authors note early on that Ajax is a process, not a technology. This theme permeates the book. There is an emphasis on requirements, design, implementation, testing and maintenance. So the book shows how to do a real project, not just how to code.

Keeping with the real project theme, there is information throughout on refactoring and design patterns. The authors present low level coding idioms as well. All this creates a language for coding Ajax applications. The second half of the book walks you through the entire development process for five sample applications.

The book targets a wide audience range, from enterprise developers to self-taught scripters. Basic concepts are explained concisely for newcomers and experienced developers may skim certain sections. However these sections are a very small part of the 600+ page book.

An appendix covers an introduction to JavaScript. While you would want to supplement it with materials from the web, it clearly covers the advanced topics that are hard to find elsewhere. There are also introductions and tips on CSS and DOM. In short, I learned a ton about non-Ajax development and page manipulations too.

And the book even has a screenshot of JavaRanch! I was expecting a good book when I saw Bear and Ernest's comments on the back. But it still managed to exceed my expectations!

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Manning Publications
1 edition
October 2005
680 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, September 2005
  (9 of 10)


Over the past months, the Ajax commando has been actively pursuing its revolution on the web petitioning for a richer and more standardized interaction model. Everyday, the commando manages to substantially increase its headcount by enrolling a growing number of frustrated developers who were promised to an execrable future.

With "Ajax in Action" out of press, the commando will now be able to drastically accelerate its evangelization process. The word is spreading that this book is a tremendously useful field guide specially written for developers in the trenches waiting for the killer solution that will help them build cutting-edge web applications of unprecedented quality. After showing how to switch from traditional to Ajax web development, the authors present the core techniques underlying Ajax as well as a couple design patterns and how these fit into the Ajax development model. Furthermore, the book also contains great best practices that can considerably enhance the user experience and that teach you how to design Ajax applications with security and performance in mind. The second part of the book is fully dedicated to presenting five hardcore examples (live search, etc.) whose main goal is to provide developers with ready-to-use off-the-shelf Ajax components that can be seamlessly integrated into any web application.

Whether you are frustrated by low tech web development or you are willing to discover how the potential of Ajax is greater than the sum of its parts, swallow this 600 pages bible and join the commando now.

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Manning Publications
1 edition
October 2005
680 pages
Reviewed by Ernest Friedman-Hill, September 2005
  (9 of 10)


Ajax is a Web programming technique for developing rich, interactive interfaces using only JavaScript, HTML and CSS on the desktop. It's changing the landscape of the Web, and this book will help you gear up to be part of the revolution. Renaissance men David Crane and Eric Pascarello show you how to weave together the pieces that make up an Ajax application: JavaScript, server scripts, HTML, CSS, and XML. They teach you the tools and techniques you'll need to develop industrial-strength applications using JavaScript.

This is really two books in one: first, it's a look at the Ajax technologies and prescriptions for their effective use. There are detailed discussions of relevant design patterns and of strategies for designing usable and secure applications. There are substantial discussions of a number of Ajax frameworks, libraries, and development tools, as well as developer features of Web browsers that you've probably never learned about but can't live without.

The second half of the book is a cookbook, with detailed blueprints for concocting your own versions of several Ajax showcases: dynamic double combo boxes, typeahead select boxes, and Web portals with selectable, draggable portlets. There are even recipes for assembling standalone Ajax applications that use existing third-party Web services as a back-end. The cookbook builds on the earlier parts of the book by applying the design patterns and refactoring techniques therein described.

If you're serious about helping to revolutionize the Web, you need this book.

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Web Services Platform Architecture
by Sanjiva Weerawarana, et al


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
April 2005
456 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, July 2005
  (8 of 10)


In their current incarnation as an implementation of the service-oriented architecture (SOA), XML web services are made up of a host of loosely coupled standards. Among them, we can find the traditional SOAP, WSDL and UDDI specifications as well as the WS-* specifications, which comprise, WS-Addressing, WS-Policy, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Security, WS-AtomicTransaction, WS-BusinessActivity, WS-BPEL, etc. On the one hand, these emerging standards aim at better decoupling the variety of concerns that make up the web services technology stack. On the other hand, developers and architects often find themselves stuck in front of this big maze of documents.

Five IBM collaborators have teamed up in order to make this entire technology stack accessible to web services-savvy people and to show how it is implemented by XML web services. The fourteen very well-written, yet sometimes overly tortuous, chapters elegantly introduce how the discovery and negotiation vertical layers orchestrate the transport, messaging, description, quality of service and business process horizontal layers. The authors finally put the dissected technologies at work with two concrete case studies that illustrate how these technologies build up into a consistent whole.

I would definitely not recommend this book to XML agnostic people and novices. Moreover, the content is intentionally not targeted at developers as it does not contain extensive and detailed code coverage of the different specifications. As a consequence, this book is best suited to consultants, architects and technical managers willing to better understand the web services platform architecture.

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Web Services in Finance
by Paul A. Watters


Apress
1 edition
November 2004
256 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, November 2004
  (6 of 10)


Given that I'm currently working for a financial institution and that I have been developing web services solutions for a while now, I could only dream of ever seeing a book titled "Web Services in Finance". When I picked it up, I was hoping to see web services technologies applied to real and concrete financial case studies. However, I must admit that the reality was quite different.

The book is very well written but its content has not much to do with what the title advertises. The book does not provide much information as to how to use web services for carrying out hardcore financial business. The author merely uses some financials terms here and there for explaining basic web services concepts and for showing some toy examples. He voluntarily stays at a very high level, which completely defeats the intent behind the title he has chosen in my opinion.

Even though I expected something else, I still found this book to be a fun read. It can definitely be valuable for beginners in that it provides a very good introduction to the fundamental web services technologies, such as SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc, and it also goes into important topics like security and qualities of service. My biggest complaint is just that the box does not match the description that stands on it.

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Real World Web Services
by Will Iverson


O'Reilly
1 edition
October 2004
222 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, December 2004
  (9 of 10)


You would like to concretely jump into the web services movement but all you can find are the same old books with invariably repetitive and boring toy examples, such as the infamous StockQuote and Wheater web services. Don?t look any further and grab yourself a copy of this book. Will Iverson takes a significantly different approach and shows you how to build concrete web services applications by leveraging existing web services APIs provided by important industry actors, such as, Amazon, Google, eBay, Gracenote (CDDB), FedEx, PayPal, Interfax, etc.

What's more, the author does not limit himself to presenting dry facts about how to work with those web services. Instead, he elegantly demonstrates how to compose them in order to create competitive analysis, list auctions and estimate shipping costs, integrate billing with faxing technologies, syndicate searches, aggregate news from different sources using Quartz and RSS, build a custom CD catalog, dig out and deliver hot news, automatically create daily discussions on Blogger and LiveJournal, and much more.

Basically, this book provides exactly what is often missing from other tomes while managing at the same time to stay extremely simple and straightforward, yet very complete and accurate. I would definitely advise it to any Java developer who is eager to start writing effective and working web services code.

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Developing Enterprise Web Services: An Architect's Guide
by Sandeep Chatterjee, James Webber


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
November 2003
592 pages
Reviewed by Ajith Kallambella, July 2004
  (8 of 10)


Consider this - Web Services and SOAP is perhaps the only recallable evolution of technology that has witnessed the single largest involvement of standards bodies and industry bellwethers. The result? A puzzling plethora of proffered protocols that continues to confuse both sideliners and early adopters every day.

While managers are finding it increasingly difficult to understand the direction, developers are craving for clarity, consistency and a unified approach for WS adoption. "Give me the tools" they cry every day, while they keep adding to their "To Read" list a handful of new acronyms every week. The big question is, when can we build Rome, if at all?

With a gentle and brief (thank god!) introduction to underlying concepts such as SOAP, XML and UDDI, authors start talking about broader concerns - conversation, transaction, security, workflow, QoS and everything in between. While accentuating nuances of evolving standards and guessing the future trends, authors offer strategies, patterns, and tips on pitfalls to avoid. They skirt around the political interoperability issues around J2EE and .NET and focus purely on the standards. Architect's Note included at the end of every chapter makes title justified.

An implementation of WS-based ordering system presented as a case study concludes the book by bringing it all together through excellent step-by-step approach.

Although almost a year old, this book can be a survival guide for people in the trenches and the ROI-Savvy managers as well. It helps you tell the wheat from the chaff.

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J2EE Web Services
by Richard Monson-Haefel


Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
October 2003
928 pages
Reviewed by Kyle Brown, February 2004
  (8 of 10)


If you intend on doing any serious Web Services work in Java over the next couple of years, you need this book. It's an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting -- 887 pages!) tome on the subject.

Richard manages to cover all of the major standards and API's for Web Services, in sufficient depth that you can develop to them, and appreciate the subtleties in how they interact. It's chock-full of examples, and loaded with information from one of the best authors in the business.

However, there are a couple of things in the book that aren't covered as deeply as they could have been. My personal bone is that the coverage of Security is drawn directly from the spec -- which means that because the spec is kind of fuzzy with regard to security that your container may have different behaviors than the behavior that is assumed. He doesn't discuss Web Services security at all (which is quite understandable given the focus on the spec), but given that it's a part of most implementations of J2EE web services, may have been a good thing to cover for perspective. Overall, it's still a very, very good book, but not perfect. Just be aware that the Web Services capabilities of your particular container may differ slightly.

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Enterprise Services Architecture
by Dan Woods


O'Reilly
1 edition
September 2003
223 pages
Reviewed by Ajith Kallambella, December 2003
  (6 of 10)


In the second book in the series between O'Reilly and SAP, author Dan Woods takes the reader through an interesting tour of Enterprise Services Architecture and the evolution of WebServices(WS). He makes a business case for applying WS in the enterprise and argues that despite slow standardization and lack of broader vendor support, WS strategy will surely benefit early adapters.

For starters get this - The concept of Web Services was actually conceived by SAP! Woods shares the historical perspective and speaks about implementing the very first SOA based applications while working at SAP. The thin UI layer of MySAP.com uses a services layer to communicate with loosely coupled components and data services.

This book is aimed at senior management and IT professionals involved in building software solutions for the ever-changing enterprise landscape. This is a book about the philosophical, ideological and evolutionary significance of SOA. In the section titled Making a business case for the use of SOA, Woods looks at Ent.Web Services through the eyes of a consultant, an analyst, a venture capitalist and finally a system integrator, and quotes from the very best industry experts in each of these domains. Beyond the trenches of IT shops, in what Woods describes as Part Engineering discipline and part Computer Science applied to practical business problems, he hypothesizes that pervasive use of Web services will ultimately result in an incremental improvement towards a more efficient society. Efficiency will primarily apply to reduce annoyances of everyday life such as filing for taxes, setting up health insurance or getting a driver s license. Freed up human capital will cumulatively help build efficient, elegant and practical living conditions for all.

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Web Services - A Manager's Guide
by Ann Thomas Manes


Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
June 2003
352 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, March 2004
  (9 of 10)


Anne Thomas Manes takes a non-technical, yet quite original, approach to explaining all the odds and ends of web services from a manager's perspective. This book is targeted at managers in strong need of a quick and comprehensive view of web services, it does not contain a single line of code. Programmers, be advised.

The author first lays some foundations by giving some pieces of basic information on what web services are and aren't, how they can be used and when, and most importantly why one should consider using them or why not. In order to illustrate their practicality, some real-world scenarios are given where web services are being successfully used while bringing real value (Amazon, Google, etc).

Ann Thomas Manes goes on explaining the fundamental technologies underlying the web services infrastructure, such as XML, WSDL, UDDI and SOAP. She also deemed necessary to introduce historical facts about the inception and development of these technologies. People who tend to loose the overall view over who does what in the web services world might like these anecdotes.

The author also briefly touches upon advanced topics, such as security, transaction, orchestration and choreography.

Finally, the author wraps up by giving an extensive, yet non-exhaustive, list of open-source and commercial web services platforms and UDDI registries available on the web. She also provides a good deal of very helpful evaluation guidelines that should help you select the proper web services tools that suit your particular project.

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The Unusually Useful Web Book
by June Cohen


New Riders
1 edition
June 2003
408 pages
Reviewed by John Wetherbie, June 2003
  (10 of 10)


The Unusually Useful Web Book could have been titled The Book You Should Read To Help You Plan, Design, Build, and Maintain A Successful Web Site. Everyone who is on a team developing or maintaining a website should read this book and then re-read it frequently to keep the information and lessons fresh.

This book provides an overview of the processes, the techniques, and the technologies that can (and should) be used to develop and maintain a successful web site. If you are looking for an in-depth technical book on HTML, CSS, or other specific tools this is not that book. Buy this book anyway! It will be worth it.

The book is divided into four major sections: Planning Your Site, Designing Your Site, Building Your Site, and Maintaining Your Site. Each section has good information that you can use right now whether you are starting to create a new site or are involved in the maintenance and upgrade of an existing site.

A conscious effort was made to make the book look and feel like a website. This approach works very well. Sections are short, important points are highlighted, and I found myself following "links" to more in-depth information on topics that were of interest to me. This book lives up to its title by being full of unusually useful information and also being unusually readable. I think this book is going to be an instant classic.

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Java Web Services in a Nutshell
by Kim Topley


O'Reilly
1 edition
June 2003
600 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, July 2003
  (8 of 10)


After the JavaOne 2003 conference, there is no more doubt that web services are one of the next big things that is going to gain ground in the distributed computing world. The advent of web services is said to be at least as big as the change from mainframes to the client/server architecture. In order to be prepared for this, developers need to quickly acquire plenty of practical knowledge. This book provides an in-depth coverage of how to go about programming web services using J2EE 1.4 and the latest release of Sun's Java Web Services Developer Pack (JWSDP). All this is coupled with an extensive quick reference to Sun's web services APIs.

The book first gives some insights on the purpose of web services and how they are architecturally organized. Then, it delves into the SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ), the Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM), and the client-side Java API for XML Registries (JAXR). It also investigates the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and deeply explores the Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC). The use of JWSDP's tools and configuration files are examined and explained as well.

Summing up, this book nicely follows O'Reilly's "In A Nutshell" philosophy by being more of a "daily companion" to keep handy than a high-level tutorial. I recommend it to any developer willing to get or stay in touch with the new trends in web services development.

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Designing with Web Standards
by Jeffrey Zeldman


New Riders
1 edition
May 2003
456 pages
Reviewed by John Wetherbie, November 2003
  (8 of 10)


Designing with Web Standards by Jeffery Zeldman has two main points: 1) using web standards will save you and your clients time and money and; 2) you can achieve great effects by using web standards. The author takes the practical view that using web standards is a good thing but isn't dogmatic about it. The majority of examples in the book focus on a "hybrid" strategy that makes web sites compatible with older browsers by using tables to provide some of the layout structure in conjunction with CSS.

The first four chapters provide an overview of where web design has been and where it is currently with the advent of XML. Even if you aren't into history I highly recommend reading the latter part of chapter four for the pointers to resources on the web.

The second section focuses on constructing the design of a web site using the "hybrid" approach mentioned above. The reader is introduced to the differences between HTML and XHTML, to CSS, problems you will run into with various browsers and their solutions, accessibility, and the DOM. Designing a site only using CSS for controlling the presentation is the topic of the last chapter in this section.

I found the book an enjoyable read. This book is more for web designers who don't have much experience with CSS. I would also have liked the book to have more on "pure" CSS approaches but can understand the author's pragmatic viewpoint.

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Java Web Services Architecture
by James McGovern, Sameer Tyagi, Michael Stevens, Sunil Mathew


Morgan Kaufmann
unknown edition
April 2003
831 pages
Reviewed by Gregg Bolinger, July 2003
  (5 of 10)


This book should have been titled "1001 ways to use XML with JAVA". And it should have been 5 books. It took me forever to get through this 800 page book on Java Web Services. I felt there were way too many concepts to try and understand in one book alone. I also didn't see the need for an entire chapter on SOAP. There are plenty of SOAP books out there.

What I did like about this book were the examples. There were a lot of them and I won't buy a book without good, complete, working examples.

To summarize, there are better books out there for the money on Java Web Services.

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Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them
by Jeff Johnson


Morgan Kaufmann
1 edition
April 2003
344 pages
Reviewed by Jessica Sant, June 2003
  (9 of 10)


If you get paid to develop a website, you should have this book. As the title says, "Web Bloopers" (along with its companion website www.web-bloopers.com) details 60 of the most common (and annoying) design mistakes committed by web developers and then tells you how to avoid them.

Each blooper is explained in words as well as in pictures (snapshots are taken of various sites around the web), and then the author explains why the blooper is so bad and how to avoid it. As with any design, there are trade offs, sometimes you have to commit one blooper to avoid another, but as long as you realize that's what you're doing, you're gold. This book is very well organized. The title of each blooper is a good summary of the problem. The index in the back helps you to quickly find examples both good and bad (and it also lets you see if you're company has been made an example of) the author even points out some blooper's in his own publisher's website).

If everyone who is responsible for creating websites took the time to read this book, think about the user, how intuitive their site is, and how easy it is to glean information from it, the Internet would be a much nicer and friendlier place. I highly recommend this one.

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Web Services Patterns: Java Edition
by Paul B. Monday


Apress
1 edition
April 2003
352 pages
Reviewed by Thomas Paul, August 2003
  (8 of 10)


Now that we have read all the books on the basics of web services and have a good understanding of how they are supposed to work it is time to get down to actually trying to create some decent designs for our web services applications. That is where this book fits in. The book shows how to apply design patterns to a web service architecture in order to solve common design problems. If you are designing a web service architecture you will want to read this book before drawing another UML diagram.

The book starts out by looking at the design patterns used in web services itself. This part of the book was interesting but not overly useful. The next part, making up most of the book, covers design patterns that you are likely to need in developing web applications. This part of the book is excellent. Each pattern is discussed in detail and then demonstrated in a case study that is developed throughout the book. The book covers twenty different patterns so there is bound to be one that is applicable to your application.

The book contains only snippets of code from the case study so you will need to download the code in order to get the full value of the case study. The reader of this book should be comfortable with web services and design patterns in general and be ready for an in-depth discussion of web services architecture.

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JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook
by Danny Goodman


O'Reilly
1 edition
April 2003
576 pages
Reviewed by Eric Pascarello, May 2003
  (8 of 10)


JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook is a unique recipe that will teach you the most discussed topics in JavaScript and DHTML. The book is set up like a forum. A question is asked, the answer is given, and a discussion follows. The method this book follows is great for those who learn from vast examples on a broad range of topics.

The book looks at regular expressions, arrays, cookies, strings, objects, and much more on the JavaScript side. The DHTML side explains how multiple level menus are made, contextual menus, navigation trees, event handlers, validation methods, style sheets, and much more. The book discusses browser compatibility and problems that it may cause. In the discussion, solutions are proposed to counteract those problems.

This book is great for the person that wants to jump into the DHTML realm of programming and does not want the weighed down basics of JavaScript coding. This book will not teach you how to program JavaScript from the fundamental level, but it will teach you how to make scripts that are powerful and compatible!

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Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture: The Savvy Manager's Guide
by Douglas K. Barry


Morgan Kaufmann
1 edition
April 2003
245 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, July 2003
  (8 of 10)


Service-oriented architectures (SOA) have been around for quite some time now (think DCOM, CORBA and Jini). Their main goal is to provide support for connecting various heterogeneous enterprise services together. As inter-/intra-enterprise collaboration and integration become increasingly vital, industrial and research consortia have recognized the need for building a new generation of SOA. Indeed, the author presents web services as the most likely set of technologies that is going to impose itself as the next generation of SOA.

If you expect tons of XML and Java listings, this is not a book for you. This book is primarily targeted at managers in need of evaluating how their companies could benefit from web services. It clearly identifies the driving and restraining forces for adopting web services and explains how to manage such a technology change. The author voluntarily remains at a high level of abstraction and does not delve too much into details. However, he does a good job of illustrating the various components that interact within a distributed system and how (and why!!) web services could be integrated into such a system. As a concrete example, the author discusses how a business traveler could take advantage of web services (travel, car and hotel reservations; personal, manager's and wife's calendars synchronization; on-the-fly itinerary; etc).

In summary, this book provides a valuable introduction to SOA in general and web services in particular. I would have expected more than 200 pages on this exciting subject, though.

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How to Do Everything with JavaScript
by Scott Duffy


McGraw-Hill
1 edition
February 2003
448 pages
Reviewed by Eric Pascarello, March 2003
  (9 of 10)


"How to Do Everything with JavaScript" is a great book for everyone, from the beginner to the expert who needs a good refresher. This is one of many books on JavaScript I have read and this definitely will not leave my desk. "How to Do Everything with JavaScript" can be used as a reference for difficult topics, or a quick guide to the fundamentals of JavaScript. The book topics are covered in great detail with well thought-out explanations and examples. Classes, arrays, functions, objects, DHTML, browser compatibility, debugging your script, frame communication, and countless other things are delivered in manageable chunks which make this book a great resource. Many of the basic questions asked in the HTML and JavaScript forum can be answered just by reading this book!

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Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization
by Andrew B. King


New Riders
1 edition
January 2003
528 pages
Reviewed by John Wetherbie, May 2003
  (8 of 10)


Ever been on the web waiting for a page to download and thinking it was never going to finish? It's a pretty safe bet that the answer is "Yes". It is even possible that you are responsible for creating one of those pages (or even an entire website of them). If you want to make the webpages you create load faster, run, don't walk, to get Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization.

This book presents techniques for optimizing your webpages by optimizing the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images that compose them. Speed Up Your Site shows you where and how to cut the unnecessary bytes from your pages. As the author says in the Introduction: "every byte counts." This book will make you stop and think about how you construct webpages.

The book starts with some theoretical background and then dives into optimizing HTML/XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The remaining sections cover optimization for graphics and multimedia, search engines, server-side techniques, and compression. There are also five case study chapters that provide additional insight into the techniques presented. The many references that point the reader to additional information are a very nice touch. I definitely learned a great deal reading this book and think you will, too.

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Mastering Web Services Security
by Bret Hartman, Donald J. Flinn, Konstantin Beznosov, Shirley Kawamoto


Wiley
1 edition
January 2003
376 pages
Reviewed by Chris Mathews, March 2003
  (5 of 10)


This book definitely has its ups and downs. It gets off to a good start with an excellent overview of general security fundamentals and does a good job of explaining where web services fit into the picture. The authors then provide coverage of most of the current web service security technologies, though some like XACML and WS-Security are only briefly mentioned. For the most part the coverage is fairly good; however more practical examples would have been nice to see. I was somewhat surprised at the lack of coverage given to Passport and Liberty Alliance. Passport gets roughly half a page and Liberty Alliance gets about two pages. In neither case does the book go into any discussion on how these technologies would be implemented.

My biggest problem with this particular book is its bias towards Quadrasis EASI. At times the book feels like one of those TV infomercials that you get stuck watching on Sunday afternoons (okay maybe that's just me). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that all four authors currently work for Quadrasis and have a vested interest in Quadrasis EASI. While this interest may be understandable, it is unwelcome in a book entitled "Mastering Web Services Security".

Overall, this book is well written and does contain value, especially if your organization uses or plans to use Quadrasis EASI. However, I do not believe anyone will be "Mastering Web Services Security" from this book alone.

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Developing Java Web Services
by Ramesh Nagappan, Robert Skoczylas, Rima Patel Sriganesh


Wiley
1 edition
December 2002
784 pages
Reviewed by Thomas Paul, March 2003
  (9 of 10)


The cover of this book says, "Timely. Practical. Reliable." and that is a good description of the book. It covers the current state of Java APIs for web services, it gives plenty of well thought out examples, and it provides enough information to actually make the alphabet soup of acronyms understandable. The book starts with an introduction to web services. The next section covers web services architecture and the standard technologies of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI. Interoperability with non-Java applications is demonstrated with a .NET example. The book is written by three Sun employees so it does tend to be a bit Sun-centric as the next sections shows. The Java Web Services Developers Pack (JWSDP) is given plenty of coverage. JAXP, JAXB, JAXM, JAX-RPC, JAXR, may be just acronyms when you get this book but after reading the six chapters covering the JWSDP they will be technologies that you understand. A case study wraps up the six chapters putting the whole thing together. The book ends with a chapter on security and a look at Sun ONE. The book is full of examples demonstrating how to use each of these technologies. When you read a line such as, "The real fun is understanding how the EncryptDecrypt class works," you know you are dealing with authors who love code. For developing Java web services you will be hard pressed to find a better book than this one.

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Maintaining & Evolving Successful Commercial Web Sites
by Ashley Friedlein


Morgan Kaufmann
1 edition
December 2002
442 pages
Reviewed by Eric Pascarello, May 2003
  (8 of 10)


Maintaining & Evolving Successful Commercial Web Sites is for people that have a small commercial site and want to make it grow. The book talks about how to manage the data that your website contains and the data it receives from your customers. The book explains the importance of repetitiveness between each page of the site so the site can be easily navigated. This book explains in detail Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and how to apply it to your website. Also, there is a section on how to manage meetings with your client/boss so you are time efficient. The section I found very helpful was how to measure and report how your site is doing. It shows you what statistics are important and where you can get services to keep this information.

The book is laid out in four sections that can be read separately. It is an easy read and explains each topic in great detail. The book contains real-life examples and shows how they are implemented. This book will not tell you how to make a web page, but it will tell you the tools you will need to make it flourish.

I would also highly recommend this book to all the clients out there that own a website and have no clue what is going on. After reading this book, you will be able to ask your web designer questions on improving your site, you may even be able to understand what the web designer means when he throws XML, ASP, CRM, CMS, or CGI into the conversation. This book allows you to get more from your site while spending less time working on it.

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Webmaster In a Nutshell
by Stephen Spainhour, Robert Eckstein


O'Reilly
third edition
December 2002
520 pages
Reviewed by Corey McGlone, February 2003
  (10 of 10)


Webmaster In a Nutshell is a conglomeration of reference materials for today's web developer. Nary a web development project goes by when you're not called on to remember something that you'd done so long ago that you can't quite remember how it goes. That's where this book comes in. Webmaster In a Nutshell covers everything from HTML syntax to dynamic content to server performance and everything in between. Keep in mind that this is not a become a webmaster in 24 hours book. Unless you've done a good amount of web development in the past, it's doubtful you'd get much out of this text. The reference materials are great, but this text is not designed to teach you to be a web developer. Rather, it's a handy reference for the jack-of-all-trades that is today's web developer.

The writing is very straightforward and little time is spent on introductions of topics. In most cases, a topic will have just a couple pages of introductions followed by many pages of reference materials. With the exception of PHP and XML, which are covered heavily in this text, it's doubtful that you'll learn any technologies from scratch with this book. However, as a reference for technologies that you already have experience with, this book succeeds brilliantly. It covers a wide range of technologies and is remarkably complete and concise everything a webmaster could would want in a reference text.

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Apache: The Definitive Guide
by Ben Laurie, Peter Laurie


O'Reilly
third edition
December 2002
536 pages
Reviewed by Matthew Phillips, February 2003
  (5 of 10)


If you are looking for reference material to sit on your bookshelf, you can't go wrong with this book. If you want learning material this book might help, but I would look elsewhere.

The title is very descriptive. All the directives are in here and organized pretty well to make a great reference. There are sample configuration files throughout the book so that you may see how the directive should look. The book covers extending Apache with Perl scripts, PHP, Java, and Cocoon.

I did have some problems with this book. Although the back cover refers to it describing Windows support, I found the coverage of using Apache on Windows to be lacking. The coverage of connecting Tomcat to Apache used Tomcat 3.2. There was also an obvious bias on the part of the authors against Java technology. I downloaded the source code, but there were no instructions on how to unarchive it in Windows or how to use it. I am sure I will refer to this book when I need to know something about Apache, but if you really want to learn the ins and outs of Apache to become a professional webmaster then look elsewhere.

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Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld


O'Reilly
1 edition
February 1998
202 pages
Reviewed by Frank Carver, October 2001
  (8 of 10)


This is a relatively slim book with a clear focus. It's not about web page design - it's about web site design. In particular it's about designing a scalable site where information is well organized, consistent and easy to find.

This specific topic is covered in great depth, and includes all aspects of categories and labelling, navigation, searching, links and layout. It also covers the process of researching and deciding on who and what a web site is for, and managing the practicalities and politics of getting a large and complex site up and running.

The authors are librarians and information architects, and it shows. The style is dry and to-the-point, with relatively few illustrations. This book won't help you build beautiful sites, or implement database-driven "web applications", but if you want users to be able to find the information they need, this book is a vital addition to your bookshelf.

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O'Reilly
second edition
August 2002
486 pages
Reviewed by Margarita Isayeva, June 2003
  (7 of 10)


The second edition is about twice as long as the first. The first part of the book covers the same ground as the first edition. I was somewhat less enthusiastic about this than Frank. Since the first edition was published, this subject has had some (albeit scattered and cursory) coverage in other books and articles, and many things now seem self-evident. I did find that classification of information seeking behaviors -- browsing, searching, and asking questions provides a useful mental framework; and the hierarchical vs. faceted classification approach has interesting parallels with Object-oriented vs. Aspect-oriented programming counterparts. Other than that, the first part lacks the "A-Ha!" effect that I usually look for in books.

Chapters added in the new edition discuss the process of building an information architecture. Here the discussion is centered on methodological, political and business issues in large organizations and is more useful for someone who wants to become a professional Information Architect than for a general audience.

I would define the book's genre as "textbook": it introduces the main concepts in Information Architecture and teaches the vocabulary of this professional community. When I subsequently came across the "Boxes and Arrows" site, I found that I could understand its vernacular without problems.

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XSL FO
by Dave Pawson


O'Reilly
1 edition
August 2002
264 pages
Reviewed by Mark Spritzler, October 2002
  (6 of 10)


XSL:FO is about taking XML documents and transforming them into XSL:FO documents which can then be sent to an FO procecssor to create PDFs or other print formatting documents.

It focuses on the tags and properties of XSL:FO. This book does not cover using it with your Java programs.

After trudging through a reading of O'Reilly's book on XSL:FO, I have determined that this is not a book to read straight through. I have also determined that this is not a good book to read if you are a beginner to the XSL:FO world.

This book is very detailed and covers all aspects of XSL:FO. It reminded me of the time I had read O'Reilly's UML in a Nutshell. Their examples are hard to picture, and therefore were difficult for me to understand. Maybe this is because I am a visual person. Even so, This book seems to be a great reference book to use when you are creating XSL:FO documents to transform. However, from my inexperience with XSL:FO I could not determine how valuable a reference it would be.

I would highly recommend buying this book only if you have XSL:FO experience and can grasp it's concepts quickly and need a good reference book. However, if you are a beginner like myself, I would look to some of the good tutorials that are online, or in a good magazine like Java Developer's Journal.

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Java and SOAP
by Robert Englander


O'Reilly
1 edition
May 2002
276 pages
Reviewed by Ajith Kallambella, April 2003
  (6 of 10)


Overview -
SOAP is what makes the Web Services clock go around. In fact, SOAP can easily be used as a stand-alone channel without incurring the overheads of publish-find-and-bind cycle apparent in Web Services. Java's ever growing XML support makes it a language of choice for anyone considering implementing SOAP.

Why you should read this book -
Whether you are writing a new SOAP service or simply using an existing one, understanding what happens under the bonnet helps make your system more robust.

What this book covers -
This book covers almost everything you have to know about how Java supports the technology - core APIs, SOAP encoding, structure of SOAP messages, attachments, platform interoperability issues and some nice guidelines. It also includes some getting-started examples with two different SOAP servers- Apache and GLUE ? to help the reader understand how SOAP implementation differs. There is some introductory material covering JAX-RPC, JAXM, Apache Axis and WSDL. The chapters are well organized although the writing lacks reader-friendly approach.

Cons -
The book came out in May 2002 and hence a few things are out of date including SOAP spec and Apache implementation. Examples seem rather trivial and lack depth. Advanced SOAP programmers or those considering enterprise integration will be disappointed. Coverage on .NET interoperability is a far cry from even being introductory. I hope the next version of the book will adequately address real integration issues such as performance, transactions, and security.

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AXIS: Next Generation Java SOAP
by Romin Irani, S. Jeelani Basha


Peer Information
1 edition
May 2002
250 pages
Reviewed by John Wetherbie, August 2002
  (8 of 10)


If you want to jump in and start learning about and creating web services this is a good book to have. As the title indicates, this book introduces you to the Apache eXtensible Interaction System (AXIS). AXIS is an implementation of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

The book walks you through an introduction to SOAP and related standards and how to install AXIS on your system. From there you deploy a simple web service and walk through the elements of AXIS in more detail. A discussion of Handlers and Chains, which allow you to add your custom functionality to AXIS, has its own chapter. The book finishes up with a case study that pulls all the topics covered together in one application.

The book contains a great deal of example code and diagrams to explain what is going on. The fact that it does this in less than 300 pages is the best point about the book. This book is definitely meant to get you going with AXIS. The one complaint I have is that the book does not have an index.

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Son of Web Pages that Suck
by Vincent Flanders


Sybex
unknown edition
April 2002
320 pages
Reviewed by Salman Halim, October 2003
  (8 of 10)


This book teaches the reader about what constitutes good Web site design and is the sequel to "Web Pages that Suck"; it does this primarily by way of negative examples: sites where the design is somehow flawed. Then, specific explanations of why the design is wrong are presented; this is accompanied by guidelines on how to fix some.

The book doesn't stop with just a series of Web site snapshots with large red crosses through them; there are general guidelines on how one can design a site to avoid the problems outlined. Each chapter ends with a summary of the more important points from the chapter. One of the features I enjoyed is the "Two-Minute Offense" sidebar where a specific Web page's snapshot is shown and the user is told to examine it for two minutes and try to spot all the problems -- an explanation of each problem the author spotted follows.

The companion CD contains several shareware utilities as well as all the links mentioned in the text -- because of the nature of the Web, some of the links are no longer valid and some of the Web sites mentioned in the book have changed their look. (Several did so after appearing on the author's site!)

The only thing that rubbed me the wrong way were the somewhat (intentionally) creepy photos of the author in various poses and garb on all the sidebars; they are meant to be amusing, but I just found them creepy.

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Web Service Faceplates
by Stephen Mohr, Michael Corning, Erik Fuller, Donald Kackman, Michael John


Wrox
1 edition
March 2002
291 pages
Reviewed by Margarita Isayeva, August 2002
  (8 of 10)


Interesting and innovative book, but mainstream programmers looking for practically applicable solutions should look elsewhere.
The book explores a blend of ideas:
1) shift of processing logic from server to client;
2) declarative rather than procedural programming;
3) model-based and schema based development with automatic code generation.
The fact that Web services were chosen as an illustrative example is tangential to the nature of these ideas. Moreover, parts specific to Web Services are particularly weak.
First chapters illustrate implementation of "faceplates" - chunks of data, representation and behavior; technically, a single XML file with embedded Jscript that server sends to the client. The client (IE browser) applies specified in hard-coded manner XSLT stylesheet and presents the result to the user. "Since the creators of the service are well versed in the nature of the service, they are arguably the best one to create a user interface for it. They know what the user should be shown" - I have trouble with this philosophy of Web Services.
As a next step "faceplates" are made SOAP-enabled. I am unsure what the service gained from wrapping its data in SOAP tags if SOAP shell is added as a string literal on the server and thrown away by the client.
Another word of caution: all implementations are thoroughly Microsoft-centric.
Real strength of the book are chapters devoted to Schema-based programming and Petri Nets as formalism for modeling state of an application. Full version of this review is posted in the "Book reviews" forum.

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Soap Programming with Java
by William Brogden


Sybex
unknown edition
January 2002
448 pages
Reviewed by Michael Ernest, March 2002
  (5 of 10)


This book was rough going for me; I'm still not sure what it's about or what I gained from it.

I expected to read a) a vision of SOAP's place in network computing, and b) how Java applies to it. What I got was a sprawling discussion that included more than it left out -- UDDI, WDSL, .NET, DOM, SAX, XML-RPC, Jini, JMS, J2ME, JDBC, JAF, Tomcat. Some of these were covered by bullet points, or links to "more information," or term definitions, or tables of who's doing what. And I simply forgot what I was reading and started over two or three times.

There are dozens of snooped SOAP chatter listed in the book, which I think the reader is just supposed to pore over and "understand." For me, those listings support my conviction say either XML is a waste of time, or there's nothing to understand about it. I can count on one finger the books I have read about HTTP that show listing after listing of HTTP traffic; it doesn't explain itself.

The lack of direction and cohesion in this book makes it frustrating to read. I learned what SOAP is; after that, I'm unsure. Lots of things are covered, but without attaching significance to many of them, it's hard to say if that's good or bad.

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Professional Java Web Services
by


Peer Information
1 edition
January 2002
600 pages
Reviewed by Margarita Isayeva, March 2002
  (5 of 10)


I have a feeling that this book will miss its target audience.

The word "Professional" in series title apparently signals that you are expected to know what Web services are, how they fit in distributed computing model, why do you need them, and whether you need them or not in the first place. The book brings you directly to "how to" and digs into mundane implementation details - lots of code and mandatory for Wrox books case study. It isn't clear for me what value lightly commented code delivers to the audience defined as "professional". All discussed packages (Apache SOAP, Axis, Glue etc.) come with their own examples and pretty good documentation...

Code-driven approach would serve better not "professionals", but beginners, "following" learners, if to use Alistair Cockburn's terminology. "They need one (procedure - M.I.) to learn first, one that works. They copy it; they learn it." Of course, to be useful for beginners, discussion needs to be more gentle and instructions more detailed and accurate...

It wouldn't be fair to say there is nothing besides commented code, though. There are "theoretical" chapters for each contributing protocol: SOAP, WSDL, UDDI etc. which do not deviate too far from corresponding specifications. There are chapters on assorted issues from security to JAXM/JAXR, but I did not get much from a brief overview.

In short, this book is too difficult and too terse for inexperienced programmers, and too verbose and unfocused for experienced folk.

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JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
by David Flanagan


O'Reilly
fourth edition
December 2001
900 pages
Reviewed by David O'Meara, April 2002
  (8 of 10)


This book is for programmers. The coverage of the various core-programming practices is fairly light and is usually explained in comparison to Java. It won't teach you how to code with JavaScript if you don't have something to base it on. This lends itself to programmers, who don't necessarily want to drown in familiar concepts. The down side is that the book is less likely to be useful to nonprogrammers.

The previous version of the book focused mainly on the uses of JavaScript in browsers. However the new version treats JavaScript as a complete language, with extensive coverage including DOM and CSS.

The book still has one of the most concise listings of functionality and browser compatibility, which is its greatest asset. It is an invaluable resource when you need to build some stable and compatible code. This is even more important with the recent changes in Netscape6.

Providing sample code isn't the primary aim (although there is still a bunch), but combined with the other resources available on the internet it should be all that someone with existing Java skills requires to build what they need using JavaScript.

A simpler coverage might make life easier for you in the short term, but this book will help you do whatever you want, whenever you want. If other books feed you for a day, this book won't feed you for a lifetime, but it'll stand by you until the next version.

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Building Web Services with Java: Making Sense of XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI
by Steve Graham, Simon Simeonov, Toufic Boubez, Glen Daniels, Doug Davis, Yuichi Nakamura, Ryo Neyama


Pearson Education
1 edition
December 2001
450 pages
Reviewed by Kyle Brown, January 2002
  (8 of 10)


This book provides coverage most of the current web services standards and technologies, and gives you at least an understanding of where they all fit, while still providing you with enough depth on the crucial ones (SOAP (with Axis), UDDI, etc.) so that you can get started with real projects.

I particularly liked the way in which the authors have created an all-in-one reference book on the most important web services technologies. For instance, I've never been able to read SOAP messages without having a reference on XML namespaces and XML schemas handy -- no more -- it's all covered in this book.

The coverage of the new Apache Axis project is especially good; not only does it explain the advantages of the new architecture for handling SOAP headers, but it gives code examples for making use of these new features. This is to be expected, since many of the authors of this book are major contributors to the Axis project.

I also found the chapters on Web Services security and UDDI to be helpful and enlightening. While all of the chapters in the book don't live up to the promise of these excellent chapters, it's still overall a great introduction to this new set of technologies.

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Content Critical
by Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton


FT Press
1 edition
December 2001
256 pages
Reviewed by Frank Carver, September 2003
  (7 of 10)


This book is primarily about web site design, although that may not be very obvious from the title.

The overall premise is that the job of producing and running a web site has a lot in common with traditional paper publishing. Central to this idea, and the inspiration for the title, is that whatever the site, people actually visit it to read words. Not to look at pictures. Not to admire layout or coo at dynamic navigation menus. To find and read content. Everything else is at best irrelevant, at worst a distracting nuisance or even a reason to leave the site completely.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, and generally follow with the recommendations that the author makes about how to encourage and profit from this understanding: keep things simple, short, and fresh; understand your readers; make it easy to find stuff; treat editing and publishing as key business functions and so on.

What I find slightly disappointing is that the book itself doesn't entirely embody these values. The style is repetitive and often long-winded. As a well-edited web site or a conference presentation this would pack a much more powerful punch. I finished reading it mostly out of duty.

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Professional C# Web Services: Building .NET Web Services with ASP.NET and .NET Remoting
by Andrew Krowczyk, Zach Greenvoss, Christian Nagel, Ashish Banerjee, Thiru Thangarathinam, Aravind Corera, Chris Peiris, Brad Maiani


Wrox
1 edition
December 2001
550 pages
Reviewed by Thomas Paul, September 2002
  (7 of 10)


Building web services is generally a simple task in .NET. This book covers the two methods available to .NET developers to build web services, ASP.NET (referred to as XML Web Services) and .NET Remoting (a technology similar to RMI, although with more flexibility). There are several books that cover building web services with APS.NET but this book is rare in that it covers both technologies. If you aren't interested in .NET Remoting then you may want to look elsewhere. Overall, this book does a nice job of covering web services in .NET although it could have been better. The book suffers from the common problem of multiple authors, it tends to be repetitive. For example, the SOAP protocol. is explained in detail in chapter 2 , and then again in chapter 4. The chapter on web services security gives a good description of cryptography but doesn't discuss other issues of web service security. Although the book does discuss user authentication (although briefly) it does not discuss the problem of passing user cre dentials from one web service to another. At least half the book is case studies and examples so the actual content is not deep. The book is a fairly good basic introduction to web services. If you are new to web services and you are looking for a book that covers ASP.NET and .NET Remoting, you could do a lot worse than starting with this book.

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Hack Proofing your Web Applications
by Jeff Forristal, Julie Traxler


Syngress
1 edition
June 2001
608 pages
Reviewed by Frank Carver, October 2002
  (8 of 10)


This book aims to be a "one stop shop" covering all aspects of web application security, however your app is written: Java. CGI, Perl, PHP, Active X. To a large extent it succeeds, and in a surprisingly readable way. Each chapter covers on aspect of hacking or security, and ends with a summary, a "fast track" checklist, and a FAQ for the topics covered. The book is sold like software - you can register for a "1-year upgrade", to keep the content fresh.
Important topics include both detailed and general hints on how to read and spot security holes in code in different languages; and how to "think like a hacker", and use hacker tools to test your own security. Above all, the book emphasizes the need for creative thinking and to avoid producing code carelessly.
I know from experience that security is often ignored if it's seen as too hard to understand, plan or test. Don't be a victim of your own ignorance, read this book.

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Practical information architecture, a hands-on approach to structuring successful websites
by Eric L. Reiss


Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
November 2000
192 pages
Reviewed by Carl Trusiak, November 2000
  (5 of 10)


This book covers common sense information for website development through the entire design process. Beginners can gain useful information on site structure and the design/development process. However, it lacks the depth of information to make it truly useful as a reference manual. This is best suited as a supplementary text for an html or e-commerce course

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HTML & XHTML
by Chuck Musciano & Bill Kennedy


O'Reilly
fourth edition
August 2000
672 pages
Reviewed by Angela Poynton, October 2001
  (9 of 10)


This was the very first book I've ever read about HTML, years ago I taught myself HTML by using tutorial available on the net. Over those years it hasn't changed much, but now with HTML becoming integrated with XML (therefore becoming XHTML) things are changing quickly.

This book will help those who already know basic HTML through the transition and is also comprehensive enough to be usful to someone who's never written HTML in their lives. Typical of O'Reilly books this not only has chapters which go into things in-depth but also comprehensive appendices which can be used as handy references along with a pull-out "Quick Reference" section. It's extremely easy to read and I recommend it to anyone who has to deal with HTML or XHTML.

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GUI Bloopers
by Jeff Johnson


Morgan Kaufmann
1 edition
March 2000
584 pages
Reviewed by Salman Halim, August 2003
  (8 of 10)


This book discusses some of the more common problems with modern user interfaces. It takes the approach that the user interface is arguably the most important aspect of an application (or Web site) and shouldn't take a back seat to the business logic therein.

The book begins with a treatise on what a GUI should be like and serves as a good set of things to keep in mind when designing an application's front-end. The bloopers themselves are arranged by category, one category to each chapter. There are 82 bloopers in all, so the book contains quite a decent amount of information.

The individual bloopers themselves are laid out quite well: there is a description of the blooper and the common variations thereof (usually with a picture from a real or sample application demonstrating the problem); this is followed by guidelines on how to avoid the particular blooper (often with a fixed version of the original pictures).

There weren't any real problems with the book; the only thing that irked me was the author's habit of pointing out something that was a problem and following it up with, "Bzzzt. Blooper!" It was cute the first time but quickly became something that grated on me.

Recommendation: for someone who knows how a GUI component works, but doesn't know how to make it look professional, this is a great book. Everybody who does GUI work could learn something here, though.

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Designing Web Usability
by Jakob Nielsen


Peachpit Press
1 edition
December 1999
432 pages
Reviewed by Frank Carver, June 2001
  (7 of 10)


This book is widely regarded as a web usability classic. Not everyone loves it, though. Opinions range from "he is a genius" to "the book is obsolete". The book is bigger than it need be. Nielsen argues strongly that web sites should be concise, but that doesn't carry over into his writing. In several places a paragraph or two seemed very familiar, having already been used earlier. There are lots of colour screenshots of web pages, mostly to point out flaws. I agree with most of what he says: Make things simple, easy and effective for users; make your pages download as fast as you can; provide a site search and so on. Where he lets himself down is in speculating about what the internet might be like five, ten or even twenty years from now. This is a complete waste; I got fed up wading through it. It's also too heavy on opinion and too light on practical detail for me. Nielsen claims he plans to write a "how to" book, but that's no use now. The section on internationalization, for example, tantalizingly mentions a few things (US switches go "up" for "ON", European ones go "down"; don't use baseball metaphors etc.) then leaves it up to the reader with very little help. Well worth absorbing, but I won't often dip into it again. Unless you are a collector, borrow it rather than buying.

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Building Web Applications with UML
by Jim Conallen


Addison-Wesley Longman
1 edition
December 1999
320 pages
Reviewed by Carl Trusiak, April 2001
  (7 of 10)


If you are new to UML and are looking for a good book to learn with, then this book isn't for you. On the other hand, if you are experienced with UML modeling, you can save yourself some time by skipping the first five chapters. The real meat of the book gets started in chapter six. From there, it is extremely packed with information to help you model a website. The biggest disappointment for me was the minimal number of examples in Java, Servlets and JSP. There are a few. However, the complete Model Example is in Active Server Pages. I'd really love to see an erratum for the book with the example done using Java Technology. If you need to learn a standard way for your organization to model dynamic web pages, this book is a must.

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Webmaster in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition
by Stephen Spainhour, Robert Eckstein


O'Reilly
second edition
June 1999
536 pages
Reviewed by Frank Carver, December 2000
  (8 of 10)


This is one of a small set of books which I use all the time. It doesn't cover Java as such, but is a mine of useful and accessible information on HTTP, HTML, JavaScript, XML, CSS, CGI, Perl, PHP and Apache configuration. Although I have many other books which cover these areas, usually in much more detail, this book is often all I need to answer a particular question. To me, this book, along with Unix in a Nutshell, show how good a "Nutshell" book can be. Small enough to carry about, and packed full of genuinely useful information.

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Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
by Philip Greenspun


Morgan Kaufmann
1 edition
April 1999
608 pages
Reviewed by Frank Carver, September 2001
  (8 of 10)


This book covers such a wide range of subjects - HTML, web design, SQL, server configuration, e-commerce, accepting credit cards, scalability, futurology, search engines, choosing a database, the nature of buying software, system admin and loads more, all in great depth - that it'a almost impossible to characterize the contents. It's also packed full of beautiful, but completely unrelated, photographs; all taken by the author!

Philip Greenspun runs a successful web consultancy with several very busy sites, and seems to have tried to distill all that he has learned into one book. A lot of what he says is very wise, and although I disagree with some of his technology choices, he has thought everything through in great detail. There are quite a few sections which I will re-read and study for my own projects, but many others I will never bother with again. The book's main drawback is its size, which makes it hard to cherry-pick just the bits you need.

If you are looking for ways to use the latest technology to make a web site look cool, this is not the book for you. If you are building or running a site or business with lots of users, and you want to keep them and avoid going crazy in the process, you need this book. And the photos really are good.

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Web Design in a Nutshell
by Jennifer Niederst, Richard Koman(Editor)


O'Reilly
1 edition
December 1998
580 pages
Reviewed by Frank Carver, December 2000
  (3 of 10)


I bought this as a companion to the excellent "Webmaster in a Nutshell", but was somewhat disappointed. It seems at first glance to be packed with useful stuff, but the core of day-to-day material on HTML, JavaScript, SSI and CSS is virtually the same as in "Webmaster in a Nutshell", and the rest is mostly hand-waving introductions to topics such as streaming audio and video on the web or, strangely, an Adobe Photoshop tutorial. Even stranger, the one topic it doesn't seem to cover is web design. There's nothing about how to create interesting, useful or impressive sites, and precious little about page layout or navigation.
My recommendation would have to be to forget this book, but buy "Webmaster in a Nutshell" for the nuts and bolts, and look for a decent web design book which is actually about web design rather than just web page construction.

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The Web Page Design Cookbook
by William Horton, Lee Taylor, Arthur Ignacio, Nancy L Hoft


Wiley
unknown edition
November 1995
672 pages
Reviewed by Frank Carver, November 2000
  (5 of 10)


This book is getting old now, and only covers basic HTML, so it's little use as a reference. What it does have, and what keeps me from discarding it in favour of newer and more comprehensive guides is it's sensible advice on web site design. It's one of the few web design books which actually covers web site design issues! It urges readers to think in terms of simple sites with useful content, and consider how the information might be used by people from all over the world as well as the usual issues of download speed and browser compatibility. Probably not worth buying these days, but borrow it from a friend or check it out of the library if you do see it.

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