The Pragmatic Programmers sent me the above titled book for review. My first initial take was that this book would bash India and the other countries who are leading the way in (stealing American’s jobs) offshore outsourcing. This topic has become literally the hottest discussion topic in the IT field. (see our sister site).

The subtitle for this book, “52 Ways to Save Your Job” is really more appropriate for the book. I guess Mr. Fowler threw in India for shock value.

The first chapter of the book explains the author’s journey to India to create a “seed team” for offshore development. He looks to hire 25 initially with an ultimate goal of hiring 250.

After the initial chapter the balance of the book focuses on the subtitle above. It is the balance of the book that has led me to share this book with my entire team at work. It describes in detail what I have been teaching my people for years now, its not about the hands-down work, it is about marketing, learning the business and selling yourself. Or, as our CIO puts it, being employable versus being employed.

The chapters I found most interesting are:

• Supply and Demand — you can/t compete on price
• Coding don’t cut it anymore — learning the business is what keeps your job, your job
• Love it or leave it — find your passion
• Understand business basics — this allows you to create value for yourself
• Mind reader — think ahead, think way ahead
• Marketing perceptions — perception is reality
• Being present — clients want to see you — this is something the offshore worker cannot provide (yes I know there is video conferencing but its not the same)
• Lead ‘em — lead the offshore workers
• Manage /em — manage the offshore workers

My conclusion is that this book is an absolutely essential read for all levels of IT workers. The book is a short read at 185 pages and is easy to read as well. The book is priced a little higher than I would like; it should be priced in the $15 range. The only negative is that some of the chapters are too light in actionable steps. Consider this an intro and then go research the topics that you find interesting and rewarding.

Product Rating:

Company:
The Pragmatic Programmers

Requirements:
N/A

Pricing:
19.95

Reviewed by:
Allen

Competition:
N/A

Pros:
Excellent book for keeping your job.

Cons:
A little pricey, could go more indepth on some topics.

Bottom Line:
Absolutely worth a read for any IT worker.

Browsing through your favorite library, or online store, you might say to yourself, “A book about phpMyAdmin? What’s there that I don’t know already?”.

Well I’ll tell you. Having worked with phpMyAdmin for the last seven years, I did only know about 10% of the options which are available in phpMyAdmin, if you want to use it to the fullest extent - and so promises the cover, “Increase your MySQL productivity and control by discovering the real power of phpMyAdmin.”

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Transcending CSS is quite the book! Andy Clarke did an amazing job with this book. It really doesn’t fall under the category of ‘traditional CSS book’, but rather a design book, which mentions CSS and markup. Never the less, it is my first 5 of 5 book, of 2007.

First off, is this book for you? This book is really for someone who already knows how to code in standard compliant markup, as well as CSS. This book concentrates on design aspects of the web, and for each design situation, it explains how things would work with CSS. So if you already know html, and know your way around CSS pretty well, this book is a must have. If not, then you might as well go learn how to do things first.

Transcending CSS is not strictly a CSS book, it takes elements of a design book, and throws in pieces of CSS knowledge, and goodies into the mix. As the author says, the principles of this book, are to “allow web designers to focus on their creative goals without being preoccupied with technical constraints” The title really explains the idea of the book.

The book has four chapters, all go over a different aspect, or idea of how to transcend CSS. The first chapter is titled ‘Discovery’, this chapter looks at the way most people work, and kind of gives an idea on how things should be, or the way things are best done. Chapter two is titled ‘Process’, and talks about how to apply things that you learned in the first chapter. Chapter three is called Inspiration, and it talks about searching for, finding, and applying inspiration. This is really my favorite portion of the book, it mentions a lot of things, that I wouldn’t have thought about inspiration which are extremely helpful. Then the final chapter is called ‘Transcendence’, and it talks about applying code to well thought out design.

I suggest, that anybody looking to get better at web design, should read this book. Just about everything about this book is great. The content is amazing, the design is excellent, but there is one downside. That downside is price. This book weighs in at a whopping $49.99 USD. This is a little pricey for a book, but it is really, well worth the price. If you’re looking to save money on it, check out Amazon.

My final thoughts on this book are very positive. I absolutely loved it, and I would have to rank it as my all time #1 favorite book. I give it a 5 of 5 rating, and suggest it to anyone and everyone, who knows basic xhtml/css.

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If you’ve been looking to start up your own web app like many people, you may have heard about Ruby on Rails before. Ruby on Rails is a ruby framework made especially for implementation of websites on the web. In the last year or so Ruby on Rails has been on fire and only a few books have emerged that are really great. This book isn’t the best book on the topic that you will find but it’s really a decent book.

As with all of the other Wrox books I’ve read in the past, this book jumps right into the teaching. Now the only real prerequisite to reading this book is that you should probably know html before you get started. Otherwise you will be pretty confused in the later chapters.

The first chapters starts with a bang, and explains how to install Ruby on Rails on your local computer. This is followed by a long set of tutorials that teach you how to write ruby. Granted it is all very basic stuff the book makes sure that the reader understands everything before moving on. So by the time you actually get to the part of the book where the building of the web app is started you should understand and know how to use ruby.

The actual Rails part of the book starts on chapter 4 and it runs you through very basics of starting a Rails project. Once you’re through with that you will move on to the next chapter which teaches you how to make the most basic of a web app, something that you wouldn’t put out to the public but something that you should be able to learn from quite quickly.

After that you will learn how databases react with Rails. The book explains how the databases are connected, and goes over basic database design. It really explains things quite well.

The last few chapters are about improving the back-end of a Rails app, implementing ajax in all of your pages, and goes through and explains unit testing. The part about unit testing was a little bit confusing for me and hard to follow, but I eventually got what it was all about.

So this book is good for anyone who already knows html and really wants to get their own web application up and running. It is a little hard to follow at times, but if you keep reading on you will find that things make sense after a while. The book isn’t priced to high it rings in at a $35 price-tag, but that is cheap compared to some of the other Ruby on Rails books that are out there.

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I have reviewed many HTML books over the past few years. Each one presents the information in basically the same way. Item name followed by a description and example. This book takes a new approach to teaching what can be a dry subject, HTML. I am calling their approach creative; that is their style of presenting the information differs from the norm. The colors, the fonts, the layout, the examples, they are all very creative.

Today, just as in 1995, HTML is the key to making any web site. Are there tools to do it automatically? Yes, there are such tools. However if you use the tools without understanding how they work and what they produce, you will never fully understand how to create a web page properly.

The book starts with a basic understanding of HTML using a fictional company, Starbuzz. The authors show you how to create a file on both Mac and PC and each bit of code is displayed in a large, easily readable font.

Chapter four is something not always found in a basic HTML book. This chapter explains how the web page “works.” What I mean is that they discuss URL’s, root folders, FTP, linking, default pages, domain names, etc. This chapter is the transition to actual live web pages vs. working on your local machine.

I am glad to see that the authors discuss code compliance and validation. If you read my blog entries, you can see how important I think this is. In fact, code compliance and validation separates the coders from the wannabes. They show examples of how to use the W3C validator and make corrections to obtain compliance. Included in this discussion is the dreaded Doctype. They even have a crossword puzzle on page 262 that will help get the compliance issues to sink in.

The next topic the book covers is XHTML. I disagree with the authors on the flow of information here. I would have discussed CSS and then XHTML. I consider writing XHTML advanced and to offer one quick chapter on it might not do the new coder any justice.

The largest chunk of the book covers CSS. The components of CSS (headings, images, elements, identification, paragraphs) are all included. These chapters are the best example of the clear descriptions and explanations using examples and creation of sample web sites. I really like the size of the text for the examples, it is very readable and the annotations make it easy to understand inside the context of the code.

The next block of chapters discuss layout using DIV. This is where it is at today. I tried to fight it for a few years, but no more. When creating a new web site, you should look at using DIV. While it might not be right in every situation, it sure does make things more accessible. The book shows how to create several DIV layouts, two-column, three-column. Also included is a discussion on relative and absolute positioning.

The last chapters cover additional information about using XHTML. I still think that the prior XHTML discussion belongs with this piece. The authors explain how to create lists and forms using XHTML and CSS. This should wet your appetite for more thorough XHTML reading.

In summary, I think this book is well worth a purchase for the new web developer or designer. While even the most experienced developer would pick up a trick or two, the book really lends itself to a newbie. The book is about 600 pages and there is value to each page. The games and puzzles are a nice break from the traditional and offer a way to really get the information learned in the chapter to stick. I would easily consider this book the most fun reading I have done about HTML/CSS/XHTML ever.

Product Rating:

Company:
O’Reilly

Requirements:
n/a

Pricing:
34.95

Reviewed by:
Allen

Competition:
n/a

Pros:
Creativity, new media methods, just under 700 pages and very clear explanations of some complicated subjects.

Cons:
If you like traditional books, this one is not for you.

Bottom Line:
Certainly an interesting book and worth a look for its creative teaching methods.

First off this book is not for beginners. To understand what’s going on, you’re going to need to know html, css, and a little bit of javascript. If you don’t know these things, this book will be hard, and maybe impossible to follow. The book starts off a dive right in approach, and doesn’t waste any time.

This book is good for someone who needs to learn a few specific things, that they can do with CSS. The book has 10 chapters and each chapter focuses on a new topic. This is the kind of book, where you don’t have to read through the whole thing, instead you can just pick a chapter, and learn about that specific topic.

There were a few notable chapters, which I’ll mention here, that will be of use to anyone who buys this book. The others may not be as useful, so I’ve refrained from mentioning them. The chapters I’m not going to talk have to do with custom borders, applying css to a webmail application, styling a web-based file viewer, and styling of a calendar.

The first chapter focuses on tabs. It goes through how to make tabs with css, and how to display different things in different things with different tabs, using iframes. It goes really in depth with the code, but there is little explanation of what’s going on after the code starts.

Chapter two is really the most basic, yet most useful and important chapters of the book. It is about multi-columned layouts. It goes over the code, and then talks about common errors that people run into. I really like how the author explains some of the things in this chapter.

In chapter three and four, the author goes through dynamic drop down menus. Chapter three goes over the basics of dropdown menus, basics of coding, and simple design elements. Then in chapter four, he moves on to more advanced features of dropdown menus.

Chapter five talks about slide shows. This is one of the things that I didn’t know how to do, prior to reading the book. The book did an ‘OK’ job on explaining the topic. I came out of it wondering a little bit about what I had just learned, and had to go back and re-read a few things to really get a grasp on things.

This book in my opinion didn’t really do a good job at getting some of the concepts across. That may be just be, but I think that to follow this book, with precision, you have to have a decent amount of experience in web development. I really don’t think that it’s worth the full $35, and you could find other books out there that help you far more, for a smaller price.

Product Rating:

Company:
Wrox / Wiley

Requirements:
n/a

Pricing:
$34.99

Reviewed by:
Jake Dahn

Competition:
n/a

Pros:
Supplies whole projects, that can be used in real world websites.

Cons:
The book is hard to follow, and it is mostly code, if you’re not already skilled with html, css, and javascript, this book is not for you.

Bottom Line:
If you want a book with whole projects, this is for you. Otherwise there are better options available.

Most web developers have dealt with picture and/or image data in one of their applications before - examples include the development of an online gallery, profile pictures (avatars) in community software, photo processing for services, pictures inside articles, etc.

Dealing with this kind of data from PHP, you might know that the bundled GD library is limited indeed and you eventually end up looking elsewhere for a more comprehensive solution.

Here comes ImageMagick (IM) to the rescue.

Background

Many developers have used at least one software which relies on IM’s “convert” utlity.

Examples of this kind of software include the infamous gallery called
“Gallery(2)”, another well known one is called “Coppermine”, the award
winning content management system “Typo3″, community software such as
“phpBB” and “smf”, or even commercial ventures such as “vBulletin”.

Even though my list of examples is very PHP-flavoured, interfaces for ImageMagick are of course also available in other programming languages, such as Perl, Java, C and many more.

ImageMagick is quite a powerful tool, beyond the “convert” utility it includes a couple other helper applications - sometimes far too many. Unfortunately the manual is not always detailed enough when it comes to providing examples of usage.

Since all the capabilities never match up to documentation provided, “ImageMagick Tricks” looked very promising to me at first sight. The book is divided into an introduction starting with a short rundown on the utlities (display, convert, import, animate, composite, montage, mogrify, conjure and identify), then continues to “Installation and Configuration”, followed by more in-depth chapters about the utilities and is concluded by three chapters with “real-life examples”.

Getting into it

I started to read this book over the course of three days on my daily U-Bahn (subway) trip to work. So imagine getting on and off the train, not always having a seat - the book is still very readable and easy to understand - once you get home/to work you itch to try out some of the examples.

Due to the nature of a current project, I found incredibly helpful tips in this book - even though I have five years of working experience with ImageMagick, but I guess the saying that, you really never stop learning, has some truth to it.

The overall style in writing and structure reminded me a lot of the various cookbook-books by O’Reilly - a series I really respect, recommend and adore for its simplicity and helpfulness.

You do not have to learn what you do not want to or need to in order to get down to business and solve problems. For example in the beginning I skipped right through the installation part and only used the examples for “convert” since I did not use “compose” (and all the others) in the project.

And that is what I like.

Last but not least “ImageMagic Tricks” is also a book to refer back to every once in a while. It gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling of security to solve more issues when the demand arises.

Jakob Nielsen is out to make the web more “usable.” His latest book, “Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed” co-authored with Marie Tahir, takes on the most important page of your site, the homepage. The homepage of a web site is critical, not just because Neilson says so, but because you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The authors present 113 homepage usability
guidelines that will make your site easier to use, and then they apply them mercilessly to 50 popular sites.

The preface includes a short description of the role of the homepage followed by some of the common metaphors. The authors explain why a home page could be compared with a magazine cover, a building lobby and a table of contents in a book. They state that since a site review by Nielsen’s group typically costs $10,000, the book’s value is over $500,000. If Nielsen does charge $10k for a homepage review, the sites that are reviewed have saved a lot of money.

The first chapter in the book covers the 113 homepage guidelines. The guidelines are categorized into groups such as “Communicating the Site’s Purpose” and “Navigation.” The guidelines are well presented and easy to understand. Some of the tips I like include:

• Include a “Privacy Policy” link - This is critical when gathering any
  personally identifiable information.
  
• “Spell out abbreviations in the first instance.” I have seen many
  times where companies use acronyms without definition.
  
• “Don’t use generic instructions, such as “Click Here” as a link name.” The authors explain how using meaningful text in links tell users what they will get when they click on the link.
  
• “Input boxes should be wide enough for users to see and edit standard
  queries on the site.” I think designers generally put the look over the function. If the typical user would enter 10 characters, make sure the input box can handle same without having to scroll.
  
• “Let users choose whether they want to see an animated intro to your
  site.” I agree 100%, a user should be able to select whether they want to enter the site immediately or go through the intro first.

The second chapter takes the principles previously defined and applies them to 50 top web sites. Sites such as FedEx, Accenture, Amazon, CNN, DirecTV, Victoria Secret and others get the full treatment. Each homepage has 4 pages in the book devoted to it.

The first is a screenshot, taken on a PC using Internet Explorer. The next page gives a description and review of the homepage. Also included on this second page, is a very useful pie chart showing the “Breakdown of Screen Real Estate.” The categories include: Self promotional, Filler, Unused, Advertising & sponsorship, Content of interest, Navigation, Welcome & site identity, and Operating System & browser controls. A small screenshot is very useful to see the category breakdown. I am not sure why they included the “Operating system and browser controls” category as this is useless since everyone has a different setup. If I took the screenshots using Netscape running on my Mac, that percentage would be different. On the other hand, this category is always the same 19% which allows the other categories to be accurately represented.

The third and fourth pages of each review pick apart the page piece-by-piece. It seems every site has around twenty items that the authors feel should be corrected.

At the end of the book is an appendix including a small category-colored screenshot from the sites that were reviewed. This allows you to compare the sites at a macro level. Also included are other across-the-board reviewed site elements such as logos, search features, ahopping carts
and popups.

I may not agree with everything Nielsen says, but “Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed” provides good background for further discussion. It seems to be geared more towards the entry-level and intermediate front-end designers and developers. At some point in the near future, my design and development team at work will read this book, at a minimum, for the guidelines and principles. A co-worker of mine pointed out that with all of Nielsen’s usability talk, the book’s physical size is somewhat un-usable. I believe this book is a worthwile purchase for anyone in the web field.

Usually I am quite skeptical when it comes to the types of books that claim to “teach you something in 24 hours”. SAMS Publishing hired a guru-like author to write this book. Kynn Bartlett is a participant in the W3C technical working group (http://www.w3c.org) and the infamous HTML Writers Guild.

“Teach Yourself CSS in 24 Hours”, starts off with the basics of CSS scripting. The book discusses what Cascading Style Sheets are, how they are supported among the different browsers (and platforms) and how they are used with HTML.

Part I is a general introduction to CSS. Part II begins by explaining the CSS Box Model and inheriting properties of CSS classes (”The Core Principles of CSS”). Part III continues with styling text, backgrounds, lists, tables and general page layout and webdesign using Cascading Style Sheets.

Once you have completed Part III, you have spent a total of 18 hours learning CSS. That sounds like learning at the speed of light, but trust me with this book, it’s very possible.

Having only six hours left to master CSS you continue with Part IV, which covers CSS and printing, Internationalization, user interface, CSS and JavaScript and last but not least, CSS and XML.

The speed the author proposes that you learn and comprehend is reasonable. CSS is not a killer to learn, unlike a real programming language - such as C++ or Java. And remember, although the title states that the book will teach you CSS in 24 hours, it does not mean, that you take the 24 hour tour non-stop.

Reading each chapter I really began to like Bartlett’s style. Every item in the book is explained in brief but also has nice depth, always very straight forward and clear. I especially liked how the author added little boxes to each chaper that tell you workarounds, browser specific issues or how to debug your code - if what you learned so far doesn’t work.

Last but not least, the book features Part V - the apendix. The apendix covers “How to Read W3C Recommendations”, “Replacing Presentational HTML with CSS” and the “Glossary”.

Since I knew almost all the CSS techniques that Bartlett talked about in the preceeding chapters, “Replacing Presentational HTML with CSS” became my favorite and it’s probably the chapter all you codewarriors out there will love. It features a table that shows the HTML tag and the equivalent in CSS, so all that is left to do is to run “search’n'replace” with your favorite editor across your HTML files and violá - done!

As the name suggests “Teach Yourself CSS in 24 Hours” is a book for the beginner, not for intermediate and by far not for the advanced. Kynn Bartlett talks about everything you need to know about writing Cascading Style Sheets. You do not have to be a computer junkie or freak to understand what he is telling you.

If you worked with CSS before and if you are quite comfortable with it, you might look elsewhere for a more advanced CSS reference book.

Almost every web developer uses PHP and MySQL these days. Because it is such a popular combination, most web users think that all dynamic sites utilize both. Since it is not the only choice, I picked up this book as a reference for integrating PHP and MySQL code with JSP pages (SAP connector) for a client. Since this book follows the popular step-by-step scheme, we’ll start from the beginning.

The author of the book, James Turner, begins with the fundamentals of Java Server Pages (JSP). He goes into detail on JDBC, Tomcat and basic database interaction. Later he explains JavaBeans and discusses Servlets and the features and functionality they can add to JSP.

The next two parts focus on a sample application. The reader is walked through the entire process of creating an online store with category and product administration, shopping carts, checkout, order steps. It is like, “Build your own Amazon in 30 days!,” step by step. What I really liked about the sample application is that Turner did not just focus on the technical parts, he also goes into detail on functional specs and takes us with him on the long journey of software development up through the final stages of implementation.

Part IV, labeled “Advanced JSP Topics” brings us up-to-date on XML, LDAP, the Struts Application Framework, Enterprise JavaBeans and finally, Security, Load Balancing, Failover and more. The latter is pretty interesting because the author explains topics such as SSL implementation and integrating Tomcat with the Apache webserver.

Now what did I expect from the book? Overall, I am semi-pleased with the coverage. I expected at least a chapter or two on integrating JSPs with other technologies (”Hello, PHP calling!”). The author also failed to discuss alternatives on this sector. Apache’s Jakarta Turbine classes are not the only choice for developers. The Java-world offers countless ways (Slightly exaggerated!) to go into JSP and MySQL development. There are alternatives, such as the MySQL Connector/J or Resin JDBC engine. Having said that, the book is a bit shortsighted since it fails to at least mention all the tools that are made available to Java and JSP developers.

Definitively one the books fortes is the very comprehensive appendix and its walkthroughs on installing JDK, Ant, Tomcat and MySQL. Everything you need to get a fully functional testbed up and running on your computer at home or on a server anywhere else - on Windows or Linux/Unix. Every newbie will like this part! I also liked the discussions on LDAP and XML, although I feel that the reader is better off with an additional book on either topic. Certainly a nice addition to the book though.

If you peruse the last few chapters of the book, is “just” a step by step tutorial to building a program according to Mr. Turner’s scheme. Rather than a comprehensive overview of all available options that a developer might want to read about when spending US$40 on this book. Browsing some newsgroups I also found people who told me about errors in the sample source code provided.

Overall, not a very good impression. I am a beginner and I therefore can not recommend this book to other beginners. Experienced JSP coders will find it a tad boring since all the coding is rather simple and intermediate. Your money would be better spent elsewhere.