Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
April 2005
360 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, August 2005
(9 of 10)
"Spring into PHP 5" is a good book for those new to programming. Readers need a very basic knowledge of HTML. Anything intermediate, like forms, is explained. Programmers (especially those who know Perl) can still learn PHP from this book since each section is clearly marked. They should just be prepared to skim a lot.
Books in this series consist of one to two page "chunks" grouped into chapters. Each chunk builds on previous ones, which provides for a nice flow. The chunks make it easy to understand what readers should get out of each section. Each chunk contains examples to apply these concepts. Many chunks also include screenshots of the input/output.
I found the book to be very clear. The appendices provide an excellent language reference. My only real complaint is that the book could use some best practices. Especially on when not to use a language features. All in all, the book is WYSIWYG. It lets you "spring into PHP" and get started very quickly.
(9 of 10)
