General Books

HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide)

Elizabeth Castro

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> XHTML

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 173 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

It's important for anyone who creates Web sites--even those who rely on powerful editors like Dreamweaver or GoLive--to know HTML. The World Wide Web Consortium rewrote HTML as a subset of XML (dubbing it "XHTML 1.0") and the allowable code will eventually be stricter. Tags that are being phased out are labeled "deprecated"--current browsers can still handle them, but if you want your site to keep up with future browsers, not to mention conform to accessibility requirements, you will want to get on top of XHTML.

Of course, Elizabeth Castro manages to write books that not only speak to those who are already fluent in HTML, but are good for newbies too. She makes it a breeze to create sites that are visually stylish and technically sophisticated without the expense of buying an editor.

Among the topics covered in her new book, HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: using the (relatively newer) structural tags (like doctype and div); correctly using older tags (like p and img) that have been modified in XHTML; writing XHTML so that formatting is done by the style sheets; writing those style sheets (cascading style sheets, a.k.a. "CSS"); creating a variety of layouts; and dealing with tables, frames, forms, multimedia, a bit of JavaScript (including mouseovers), WML (for mobile device displays), debugging, publishing, and publicizing your site.

As with all Visual QuickStart Guides, this one features clear and concise instructions side by side with well-captioned illustrations and screen shots that show both the source code and the resulting effect on the Web page. The index is extremely detailed, making this a great reference.

Also great for reference are the outstanding appendices. The first is an extensive list of tags and attributes, indicating which are deprecated and/or proprietary and on which page they are discussed. A similar appendix shows CSS properties and values; given the future of Web coding, this chart alone is worth the price of the book. Other handy charts cover intrinsic events, symbols and character Unicodes, and an expanded color chart that goes way beyond the virtually archaic Web-safe palette. All of which makes this a definite must-have for every Web designer's bookshelf. --Angelynn Grant

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Hands-On Training

Garrick Chow

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Web Development -> Programming -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Hands-On Training is the latest, updated version of the highly acclaimed publication from the leading trainers on Dreamweaver at lynda.com. In this book, readers will find carefully developed lessons and exercises that teach readers modern Web design techniques and workflow with the latest version, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. Now that the software is an integral part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, Web Standard, and Design Premium packages, there is an even greater need for the clear, step-by-step approach this book offers. Readers will learn to define a Web site; lay out pages effectively with Cascading Style Sheets; use tables; create rollovers; work with templates, media objects, and forms; and design for mobile devices. They'll also learn how to use the new features in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, including the new Spry framework for Ajax, Spry widgets and effects, advanced Photoshop CS3 integration, a new Browser Compatibility Check feature, CSS layouts, a new Manage CSS feature, integration with Adobe Device Control for creating mobile content, and Adobe Bridge CS3. Accompanied by a CD-ROM loaded with classroom-proven exercises and QuickTime training videos, this book ensures you'll master the key features of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 in no time.

Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual

David McFarland

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 85 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Welcome to Dreamweaver CS3. This new version of the popular web design software offers a rich environment for building professional sites, with drag-and-drop simplicity, clean HTML code, and dynamic database-driven web site creation tools. Moreover, it's now integrated more tightly with Adobe's other products: Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, and their siblings. But with such sophisticated features, the software isn't simple. So say hello to Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual, the fifth edition of this bestselling book by experienced web site trainer and author David McFarland. This book helps both first-time and experienced web designers bring stunning, interactive web sites to life. With jargon-free language and clear descriptions, this new edition addresses both beginners who need step-by-step guidance as well as long-time Dreamweaver users who need a handy reference to address the inner-workings of the program. Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual teaches designers how to construct and manage web sites by examining web-page components and Dreamweaver's capabilities through "live examples." With a complete A-Z guide to designing, organizing, building and deploying a web site for those with no web design experience, this book: Takes you through the basics to advanced techniques to control the appearance of your web pages with CSS Shows you how to design dynamic database-driven web sites, from blogs to product catalogs, and from shopping carts to newsletter signup forms Teaches you how to master your web site, and manage thousands of pages effortlessly Witty and objective, Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual is a must for anyone who uses this highly popular program, from beginners toprofessionals. Altogether, it's the ultimate atlas for Dreamweaver CS3.

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Freeman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 223 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Tired of reading HTML books that only make sense after you're an expert? Then it's about time you picked up Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML and really learned HTML. You want to learn HTML so you can finally create those web pages you've always wanted, so you can communicate more effectively with friends, family, fans, and fanatic customers. You also want to do it right so you can actually maintain and expand your Web pages over time, and so your web pages work in all the browsers and mobile devices out there. Oh, and if you've never heard of CSS, that's okay - we won't tell anyone you're still partying like it's 1999 - but if you're going to create Web pages in the 21st century then you'll want to know and understand CSS.

Learn the real secrets of creating Web pages, and why everything your boss told you about HTML tables is probably wrong (and what to do instead). Most importantly, hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions how his HTML is now strict, and his CSS is in an external style sheet.

With Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking web-safe colors still matter, and the foolishness of slipping a font tag into your pages. Best of all, you'll learn HTML and CSS in a way that won't put you to sleep. If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect: a visually-rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, this book will load HTML, CSS, and XHTML into your brain in a way that sticks.

So what are you waiting for? Leave those other dusty books behind and come join us in Webville. Your tour is about to begin.

"Elegant design is at the core of every chapter here, each concept conveyed with equal doses of pragmatism and wit." --Ken Goldstein, Executive Vice President, Disney Online

"This book is a thoroughly modern introduction to forward-looking practices in web page markup and presentation." --Danny Goodman, author of Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Guide

"What used to be a long trial and error learning process has now been reduced neatly into an engaging paperback." --Mike Davidson, CEO, Newsvine, Inc.

"I love Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML--it teaches you everything you need to learn in a 'fun coated' format!" --Sally Applin, UI Designer and Artist

"I haven't had as much fun reading a book (other than Harry Potter) in years. And your book finally helped me break out of my hapless so-last-century way of creating web pages." --Professor David M. Arnow, Department of Computer and Information Science, Brooklyn College

"If you've ever had a family member who wanted you to design a website for them, buy them Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML. If you've ever asked a family member to design you a web site, buy this book. If you've ever bought an HTML book and ended up using it to level your desk, or for kindling on a cold winter day, buy this book. This is the book you've been waiting for. This is the learning system you've been waiting for." --Warren Kelly, Blogcritics.org

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day

Avinash Kaushik

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The only book on Web Analytics you'll ever need 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Technologies evolve, but the PROCESS by which we should collect and analyze online data in order to gain solid, actionable insights will remain constant for the foreseeable future.

I have been fortunate enough to work with some of the smartest online marketers in the business, and, to say the very least, most of these people -- especially those in the analytics community -- seem content to share their expertise in the most confusing and theoretical manner possible. But not Avinash Kaushik. And in "An Hour a Day," Avinash proves why he is the world's most trusted name in analytics: he brings us up to his level without unnecessary jargon, so we can actually understand how to do this stuff!

Without question, this book is required reading for ANY online marketer, business owner, or anyone currently outsourcing their web analytics. (Warning: You may become better at this than the people you're paying to do it for you!)

Have a website you're not properly tracking? You're not alone! Less than a third of e-commerce and B2B sites have sufficient web analytics tracking -- let alone a process by which to glean insight from it -- and it's not the technology's fault. The problem is that most people don't understand the VALUE and NECESSITY of web analytics. They don't realize it's the difference between sink or swim. For most organizations, web analytics is an afterthought; something pawned off to those with technical knowledge when it should really be understood by those who need to use this data to make serious business decisions. Well, folks, those days are over. If all you know about your site is how many page views, uniques, or (*yikes*) "hits" it's getting, you're in much worse shape than you currently realize, simply because you have no idea how much money and attention you're missing out on if you have no clear goals in mind or a system by which to quantify it.

If you're not measuring it properly, how can you ever claim to have an online strategy that's working? How else will you know how successful your campaign is? How else will you know which elements to test and optimize?

Whether you're a beginner or you know just enough about web analytics to be dangerous, you should absolutely buy this book today. The book pays for itself a hundred fold in the very first hour of the very first day.

Editorial Review:

Written by an in-the-trenches practitioner, this step-by-step guide shows you how to implement a successful Web analytics strategy. Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, in his thought-provoking style, debunks leading myths and leads you on a path to gaining actionable insights from your analytics efforts. Discover how to move beyond clickstream analysis, why qualitative data should be your focus, and more insights and techniques that will help you develop a customer-centric mindset without sacrificing your company’s bottom line.

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

Tim Ash

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A good book to get you going successfully with your landing pages 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The author no doubt knows his subject and I suspect he's good at what he

His discussion on testing is good and important. And he does answer some important questions. For example, should a landing page have lots of navigation or just enough? This book will help you in increasing your conversions. There's no doubt about that. But most of the information is available on the Web at this time. And I personally felt a lot was left unwritten and unanswered.

- Susanna K. Hutcheson

Editorial Review:

How much money are you losing because of poor landing page design? In this comprehensive, step-by-step guide, you’ll learn all the skills necessary to dramatically improve your bottom line, including identifying mission critical parts of your website and their true economic value, defining important visitor classes and key conversion tasks,   gaining insight on customer decision-making, uncovering problems with your page and deciding which elements to test, developing an action plan, and avoiding common pitfalls. Includes a companion website and a detailed review of the Google Website Optimizer tool.

Building powerful and robust websites with Drupal 6

David Mercer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Recommend as a buy for new users... 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

...as an introduction to Drupal 6 and especially those individuals intending to build a Drupal site.

While researching and learning about Drupal 6 I bought and used this book, along with quite a bit of information provided on the Drupal main site. It is now full of little post-it notes to pages I used or referred to constantly while building our web site.

One of my immediate feelings is it could have been quite a bit larger, especially at the retail price of $44.99 US, coming it at only 362 pages including the index. I did manage to get a 'two book' discount (25%?) as I also bought "Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5, by Hagen Graf, from Packt Publishing. I'll be using that sometime in the near future as I research and learn Joomla!-based web site development. Most if not all books also come in an eBook electronic version, and the Adobe .pdf of this title sells for $30.59 US on the Packt Publishing web site.

As a technical writer I can be a bit picky when it comes to a books structure. Beginning with the table of contents I really don't agree with how the book chapter and topics were outlined and structured. Chapter 1 Introduction to Drupal, and Chapter 2, Setting Up the Development Environment, were okay and indeed useful as it included site planning, and setting up a development instance to work from, something often overlooked in what I would define as a beginners book on site building. But Chapter 3, Basic Functionality, is where I begin to take issue. It immediately jumps into Third-party Modules, those developed and contributed by the Drupal community. I feel more could have been written first on the core Drupal modules and the functionality they provide, just my opinion, as I would have used a prior discussion on Drupal core modules as a segue into the Third-party contributed modules. The remaining topics on blocks and menus was indeed right on. Chapter 4 Site Configuration, and Chapter 5 Access Control, could also have been a part of or followed Chapter 1, as it directly applies to site planning, and having read it earlier on it would have contributed to a better set of site plans.

The remaining chapters begin to flow nicely together going from Basic Content in Chapter 6 and Advanced Content in Chapter 7 where it discusses vocabularies, taxonomy, and thesauri (spelling corrected), something I am quite interested in developing with our site. The section on the Content Construction Kit (CCK) was just a tease, as this Third-party module is so much more, and something you'll discover on your own once you start digging into it and using it. That said I do think it was good to include and hope to maybe see another volume dedicated just to using combinations of the CCK, Calendar, Date, and Views 2 modules, with lots of real world examples to reuse or learn from.

One last note on Chapter 7, the section titled Creating a Feature-Rich Page. I feel should have been pointed out better that this page is not a themed page, and the page code tested too as I found a typo on top of page 230; no opening table tag. I found other typos in the book as well and that will automatically drop my rating down a star; page 4, first sentence, now instead of no. Page 9, again first sentence missing a 'to' ... - not only do we not have to develop the entire site... Page 12, bottom of page, word reversal; Drupal has many of common the features used in social networking sites. Sorry but with text checking algorithms what they are today this is inexcusable.

The remaining chapters provide an initial entry into theming and advanced functionality like jQuery and I already have my eye on two other books related to Drupal from Packt Publishing, "Learning jQuery" and the forth coming release "Drupal Multimedia" due out in September 2008. I think I'm going to be quite busy for many months to come multi-tasking between reading and reviewing these books and actual site development for web applications with them, but this isn't work, it's fun!

Editorial Review:

This book updates the bestselling Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites for Drupal 6, the latest, much improved version of this popular open-source Content Management System. Targeting readers with little experience in website design, unfamiliar with PHP, MySQL or HTML, and with little to no experience of Drupal, it looks pragmatically at the steps needed from knowing you want a website right through to designing and building it like a pro, and then successfully managing and maintaining it. Experienced author David Mercer uses a friendly, engaging style that is clear and concise, allowing readers to advance rapidly until they can tackle any problem with confidence. Drupal is an elegantly designed, well-supported and flexible open-source CMS platform that empowers anyone to create a website or blog and is rapidly becoming first choice of people in the know. With this powerful tool you need not pay professionals to design a site; you can do the job yourself.

Head First Design Patterns (Head First)

Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra

Amazon Price: $29.67 List Price: $44.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: O'Reilly Media, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $23.00

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Software Design, Testing & Engineering -> Object-Oriented Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Software Design, Testing & Engineering -> Software Development

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 243 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

You're not alone.

At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse, a flat tire), so you look to Design Patterns--the lessons learned by those who've faced the same problems. With Design Patterns, you get to take advantage of the best practices and experience of others, so that you can spend your time on...something else. Something more challenging. Something more complex. Something more fun.

You want to learn about the patterns that matter--why to use them, when to use them, how to use them (and when NOT to use them). But you don't just want to see how patterns look in a book, you want to know how they look "in the wild". In their native environment. In other words, in real world applications. You also want to learn how patterns are used in the Java API, and how to exploit Java's built-in pattern support in your own code.

You want to learn the real OO design principles and why everything your boss told you about inheritance might be wrong (and what to do instead). You want to learn how those principles will help the next time you're up a creek without a design pattern.

Most importantly, you want to learn the "secret language" of Design Patterns so that you can hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions his stunningly clever use of Command, Facade, Proxy, and Factory in between sips of a martini. You'll easily counter with your deep understanding of why Singleton isn't as simple as it sounds, how the Factory is so often misunderstood, or on the real relationship between Decorator, Facade and Adapter.

With Head First Design Patterns, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking Decorator is something from the "Trading Spaces" show. Best of all, in a way that won't put you to sleep! We think your time is too important (and too short) to spend it struggling with academic texts.

If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect--a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, Head First Design Patterns will load patterns into your brain in a way that sticks. In a way that lets you put them to work immediately. In a way that makes you better at solving software design problems, and better at speaking the language of patterns with others on your team.

Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics

Jennifer Niederst Robbins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Everything you need to know to create professional web sites is right here. Learning Web Design starts from the beginning -- defining how the Web and web pages work -- and builds from there. By the end of the book, you'll have the skills to create multi-column CSS layouts with optimized graphic files, and you'll know how to get your pages up on the Web.

This thoroughly revised edition teaches you how to build web sites according to modern design practices and professional standards. Learning Web Design explains:

• How to create a simple (X)HTML page, how to add links and images
• Everything you need to know about web standards -- (X)HTML, DTDs, and more
• Cascading Style Sheets -- formatting text, colors and backgrounds, using the box model, page layout, and more
• All about web graphics, and how to make them lean and mean through optimization
• The site development process, from start to finish
• Getting your pages on the Web -- hosting, domain names, and FTP

The book includes exercises to help you to learn various techniques, and short quizzes to make sure you're up to speed with key concepts. If you're interested in web design, Learning Web Design is the place to start.

Learning Python, 3rd Edition

Mark Lutz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 121 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The authors of Learning Python show you enough essentials of the Python scripting language to enable you to begin solving problems right away, then reveal more powerful aspects of the language one at a time. This approach is sure to appeal to programmers and system administrators who have urgent problems and a preference for learning by semi-guided experimentation.

First off, Learning Python shows the relationships among Python scripts and their interpreter (in a mostly platform-neutral way). Then, the authors address the mechanics of the language itself, providing illustrations of how Python conceives of numbers, strings, and other objects as well as the operators you use to work with them. Dictionaries, lists, tuples, and other data structures specific to Python receive plenty of attention including complete examples.

Authors Mark Lutz and David Ascher build on that fundamental information in their discussions of functions and modules, which evolve into coverage of namespaces, classes, and the object-oriented aspects of Python programming. There's also information on creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for Python applications with Tkinter.

In addition to its careful expository prose, Learning Python includes exercises that both test your Python skills and help reveal more elusive truths about the language.