Reviews (45)

This book is definitely HOT!
Before I started this book, I knew very little about DW MX. After reading this book, I was competent at making professional websites with DW MX. Lynda Weinman deserves all the praise she can get for a job very well done in putting this book together. After every exercise you've acomplished knowing how to perform another task with DW. I look forword to learning about Flash now with my Flash MX 2004 HOT book!

Fun book to work through, will gain basic DMX skills
I worked through the whole book, the style was nice, very good explanations, it was fun and not a drag. Great book to transition from another HTML software program. The reason I only gave it 3 stars vs 5, it is very basic (nothing wrong with that).

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 instructionsside 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.

Reviews (19)

Well-written, Comprehensive, Simply the Best
I've had a bit of experience with Dreamweaver, but this book rounded out my education. It contains all the information I needed (and more), has clear & well-written text, and an excellent structure that allowed me to access the information very quickly (they even made the binding in such a way that the pages lie flat). Not only is book accessible, but it continues to be a valuable resource on my bookshelf. As others have mentioned, one of the great things about this book is the fact that it also talks about Dreamweaver's limitations; options (such as frames) that could lead to problems later on. By the time I've gone through computer manuals, I usually riddle them with post-its in an effort to organize the information; this book is so well thought-out that so far I haven't needed to.

Earlier I'd bought the Visual Quickstart Guide's Dreamweaver MX manual (filled with post-it tabs in response to poor organization and because the information was so difficult to extract), but ever since I bought the McFarland book, the Quickstart Guide been collecting dust.

It ain't "intuitive"
Before reading further, one should note that this may be as much a review of Dreamweaver as David McFarland's book.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 is probably the most popular program for web-site creation.With Dreamweaver one can create complex web-sites more easily than if one were writing in hypertext markup language (HTML).(My son who does this for a living says he can create sites just as quickly by writing HTML directly, but his old man certainly can't.) But this is not a simple program to use.The slim green volume that accompanies the software merely scratches the surface and it is unlikely that anyone could put together anything more than the most rudimentary site with only the instructions that come in the manual.

Instead one needs a book like "Dreamweaver 2004: the Missing Manual" to begin to tap the potential of the program.This book is part of a series by Pogue Press aimed at supplementing software vendors' instructions.McFarland, using straight forward simple language, takes you through the steps to basic competency with the program, using several tutorials that one can download from the publisher's own website.

But don't think this will be a simple task.If you are not familiar with HTML you will have to get at least 200 pages into this volume of more than 800 pages to comfortably create a site.But you shouldn't stop there.Even if you skip to only the most essential chapters, you'll want to go back and consider how to integrate your website with programs like Flash and Shockwave.And if you expect to spend any time building or developing websites you'll also want to learn how to use the Dreamweaver power tools like snippets and templates.Advanced users can even learn how to create dynamic web sites tied to databases.The author covers it all.Unfortunately the software is powerful but not very intuitive.As a result, as I used the program to revise my own website, I found myself frequently looking in the book's index to find help.Most of the time I found it easily.

And the dirtiest secret of all is that eventually, if you want to build complex websites, you are going to have to learn some HTML.Oh, not a lot of tags, but at least the structure of the language, so you can go into the code and make changes.I found myself occasionally lousing up a page so badly that I couldn't figure out how to use the Dreamweaver design tools and had to go into the program's code view to straighten things out.Of course, this wasn't the author's fault - he gave me everything he could, but it's a complex program.Still I don't see how anyone who's serious about building a website would want to be without Dreamweaver, and how anyone who's not an experienced programmer (and perhaps even some who are) would want to be without this book.

Reviews (26)

Adam Souza Web Design Search Engine Review
Adam Souza is reviewing the book because Adam Souza has learned that when searching for his name Adam Souza, because someone with my name has done book reviews on Amazon, my web site, http://www.adamsouza.com does not get ranked as high. So this is a test. If what I read in the book holds true this may help up my ranking...ironic.

It doesn't teach tricks however it doesn't teach SEO either
This book teaches some web site design, some usability, and some basic SEO. Author thinks that SEO is not about getting top rankings. So, how can you expect her to teach you SEO? Do not waste your time and money if you know some basic SEO which you can find free on the internet.

Reviews (22)

no stars
I bought this book hoping that this book would shed some additional light on Dreamweaver MX templates. Mistake!!!! I found that the first 150 pages are very technical and would have been more useful if there were some excerises to augment the explanations. I have been using lots of Dreamweaver MX books lately and this is one of the poorest that I have come across. The authors are writing in a way that is hard to understand. I have also purchased Dreamweaver MX Magic and I found that much easeir to learn from mainly because the points that the authors are trying to make are made through supporting exercises. I was forced to rate this as one star but i feel that this book doesn't deserve any stars.

Good content - difficult reading!
Dreamweaver MX Templates is the only book on the market that cover the complexity of the new MX template system. This book is codecentric and it has some pretty advanced concepts that might be difficult for a beginner in Dreamweaver.

There are some answers in this book to some questions that I have had since the upgrade from DW4 and my life working in templates has now become much easier in dealing with DW Templates. Another good point is that the authors have a ready made site with hands on examples that get you working in the concepts that they explain.

I think the book could have been written better, but the content is good and for the most part accurate.

Could've been written in 20 pages
I bought this book based on all of the glamourous reviews it received about 5 months ago, upon its release.When I read the book, I was really skeptical about its integrity and ability to teach the subject.I'm a very experienced web-developer and programmer, so I typically gobble up computer books with a great understanding.This one, to be honest, was really hard for me to follow.I went through the entire book, and yet I still don't feel comfortable using templates.To be honest, in many ways I am more confused.I used to use templates all the time in DW4 and that was all self-taught by simply reading the online Macromedia help.However, since DWMX added a slew of new template features, I decided to buy this based on all the feedback I read here, as well as the official DW message board.

I really think the authors have a hard time communicating their thoughts.They are very technical people, and often technical gurus have a hard time conveying information in a concise, useful manner.There are many steps that are so poorly worded that they have to be read a few times to get a good understanding.Also, I was really disappointed that they didn't cover more on Nested Templates.That was really the main reason I purchased this book, and yet, it was barely covered.Also, they didn't cover ANY template usage with dynamic server languages (ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, etc.), and I think that may have been really helpful.

Here's my big problem with this book.Although I only rated it "2 stars", I would still buy this again.Why?Well, unfortunately, it is the ONLY book that covers Dreamweaver Templates with some form of detail.Other books (such as Dreamweaver MX Bible, Inside Dreamweaver MX) just touch on templates.To make matters worse, you can't rely on Macromedia's help because it is full of errors (some have been fixed), and is also incomplete and confusing.

Editorial Review

The appearance of the second edition of CGI Programming with Perlheralds the beginning of the neoclassical era of Web service. CGI--or commongateway interface--is the original back end for client-driven, dynamic Web-pageservice and deserves consideration as the Romulus of the Internet Empire. But,where first-edition author Gundavaram described the lonely Romulus laying thebrick foundation of dynamic Web-page service in 1996, second-editioncollaborators Guelich and Birznieks have pitched in to resurrect Romulus amidthe crowded streets of modern Rome. Why bother? Surely four years have broughttechnological revolutions (Java, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion) that render CGI'soriginal brick-by-brick approach as obsolete as, say, Roman mythology--or bricksand mortar.

And yet not. It is an ambiguous blessing that the original CGI persists,adhering to the underside of Web service by the duct tape that is Perl. Thispoint is not missed by Guelich, Gundavaram, and Birznieks, whose advocacy of CGIis both bolstered by the growing applications module base of Perl and temperedby their awareness of CGI's structural limitations. Both new and returningreaders of CGI Programming with Perl should browse the last chapter firstin order to appreciate the proposed solutions to CGI's greatest sin: itsimpractical slowness in a world of a million-hits-per-day Web service. Thechapter describes CGI-compatible FastCGI and mod_perl technologies thatcircumvent the process-spawning slowness of the simple CGI. Advanced users mightwant to skip directly to O'Reilly's fine mod_perl tome, Writing Apache Modules with Perl andC, by Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern.

The authors' second pass at CGI pedagogy is a lucid, honest, and expandedaccount that develops functionality of dynamic Web pages in a rationalprogression--from HTML client-server and CGI syntax basics to generalinput/output, forms, e-mail, graphics, and simple database applications,including maintaining client state and data persistence under the otherwisestateless HTTP protocol. The authors offer synopses of cookies, JavaScripting,server security, and XML, all of which are described in detail in otherbooks.

Reviews (21)

Comprehensive Technical Manual for DWMX
Agreed, this is not a book for people starting out designing their first ever website. That's true and a very important point. However, it shouldn't result in a low star rating - the book is not aimed at beginners!

This book is aimed at the professional user of DWMX, and as such, it does a great job. DWMX has become a huge product - the tool of choice for large web projects. Therefore, a book which details all of DWMX's commercial features will NECESSARILY be overcomplex and confusing for a beginner.

This book will not spoon-feed you with a 'Hello World' project-based introduction to web page building. It WILL help you organize code versioning within your project or plan for a more easily maintainable web project etc etc.

As a web-development professional currently working alone, I find the book very useful.

Learning Dreamweaver
If you are new to Dreamweaver and web page designing, you would be makng a mistake if you purchase this book.The book is designed for an experienced individual in computer applications and unless you devote a large percentage of your time on web page design, it is not recommended.The author should split the book in, perhaps, four different sections beginning with a simple web page design.The first section should contain no more than 25 pages to allow beginners to experiment on one page design. The second section should deal with multiple page design.The other sections should relate to more complex designs used by professional users.Nowadays, many people are purchasing web sites and, because they cannot design pages and are not prepared to pay high prices for web page design, the sites are not being used.It is my firm opinion the the layout of this 1000 page book should be changed.

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Reviews (12)

Don't waste your money
I totally agree with the other reviewer who advised not buying this document.First, it's only a few pages long, and certainly not worth paying money for.Second, the information is not anything special - it can be found on the web, where it belongs.It's merely a short article, and the first thing I've ever bought from Amazon that hasn't been worth the money.I am disappointed that Amazon would even decide to put such a short and 'thin' document on their website and sell it as a book.Can I get a refund?!

Watch out for dated information...
I'll laud the author for putting dates on his link references in the back of the ebook, but he really should use the "standards" for webpage references (yes, there is a standard!)The dates give me an idea when the information is culled.In this case, the information was culled from fall of 2002, and apparently included his attendance at a Search Engine Strategies conference.

I think for $7, if you are going no further, this ebook can provide you with some important and valuable information.Yes, you could find it on the web--but how much is your time worth? He gives some suggestions as to what to do and what not to do--and, by and large, those are good suggestions. As for length, a small business owner really doesn't want to or need to, wade through tons of information.

However, as his history of meta keywords indicates, the web changes fast.This ebook is now a year old.I did a project for my online internet fundamentals class (at Foothill College--foothill.edu) on increasing page ranking.(Wanna copy--email me at zapseo on yahoo.) 6 months ago, and I considersome of the information in that out-of-date--for instance, emphasis on Google, which, at the time, was responsible for 80% of web searches. However, things have changed.If my report of 6 mos ago is out of date, what about one written 12 mos ago?

You do have to watch out, because as the book implicitly indicates, what is today's method for achieving search engine ranking could get you banned tomorrow (yes, some search engines will not index some sites because of "spamdexing").

I'd have to go back and look, but I disagree with him on one important point:you cannot raise your google pagerank by internal linking. This was not what the results of my research showed.

I'm divided (as you can see by my rating) about this book.Good information...for now. But to keep up with the very dynamic world of web searching, the reader should not get comfortable.To get and maintain a decent search engine ranking takes ongoing work, and keeping up with changes in the web.Web ranking can change, dramatically, overnight (do a search on "google dance").You are better off, imo, with having an ongoing relationship with a web professional (it will be worth it), just like you have one with your tax person.Let them keep up with the changes, and you, the small business owner, do what you are good at.

Reviews (23)

How to get your hands dirty quick
As with the other titles in the Sam's Teach Yourself xxx in 24 Hours series, this book aims at quickly arming you with enough knowledge of Perl to start programming in the language in no time.If you are a complete newbie to programming, this book is not for you, because it takes a "focus on the trees, ignore the forest" approach.In other words, you are thrown into coding right away.There's no high-level discussion of data structures and programming gotchas, etc.There's a lot of stuff crammed into each lesson, and some of the lessons will likely take more than an hour (and more than one pass) to understand.While this is not a reference at all, and many subtle details are omitted (which is actually a bad thing in the long run because Perl is such a complicated language), the book does get you started quickly.A lot of practical examples are given to show you how the language works, and many of the snippets included can be used in your actual programming endeavors.For example, you can take the code to find unique elements in a list as is and use it without any modification (save for using your own variable names).

If you already have some programming background and need just one book to learn Perl quickly, this is the book for you.After this, I'd recommend the "camel book", i.e., "Programming Perl" published by O'Reilly, which gives a forest-over-trees treatment to the language, plus it contains a useful reference on the language.

To be honest...not that great.
Reading this book is kind of like riding a bicycle for the first time. First, you sit on the bike and place your feet on the pedals - in the beginning of the book, you slowly learn about variables, arrays and how Perl programs are constructed. So far, everything's doing great. You're understanding everything that is being said to you, then all of a sudden you get pushed down a huge hill going at a very fast speed. Before you know it, you crashed. That's how it is reading Clinton's book. The beginning is great - great introduction and you start to feel your confidence grow as you tell yourself, 'I can do this!' After Chapter 5, everything goes chaotic. Clinton slams difficult tasks in your face without providing any answers or solutions to his exercises. After every chapter, there is a quiz that gives you around 3 questions and answers about the chapter you just read. The book then provides you with very difficult exercises that have no solutions provided for you. I felt very lost and disorganized on some chapters that describe regular expressions and filehandles. The author has two different chapters on files - one for filehandles and one for opening, reading, and writing files. That was one of the most common sense things Clinton should've done: Kept all the file(s) information in ONE chapter instead of spreading it out between 2 chapters that are half length of the book away from each other. Another problem that kept arousing were his code examples. A lot of his code included extra garble that was not necessary for successful completion of the program. Also, a lot of his examples did not work properly. On one of the other chapters that discussed databases, Clinton wrote an database look-up program that you could look up people by their e-mail address or phone number. The problem with that was you couldn't add any people to the database using his code and I had to modify it extensively to get it to work. I had to get help from other sources throughout that chapter and throughout his book to accomplish the tasks.

I will tell you that I did learn the fundamentals of Perl using this book, but there were many, many times that I wanted to throw it against the wall. I highly recommend two books instead of Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours. For people who want to learn Perl and learn it well, check out Randal L. Schwartz & Tom Phoenix's 'Learning Perl 3rd Edition' by O'Reilly publishing. That book creates an amazing foundation to master Perl AND provides answers to all the exercises. People who would like to learn the basics of Perl with extensive CGI programming, check out Jacqueline D. Hamilton's 'CGI Programming 101: Perl for the World Wide Web.' Jackie's book is an amazing piece of literature that provides you with great coding examples that work and are understanding. She even updates her website daily to update her code and add great new features to it.

Both books are great priced and are a more reasonable alternative to Clinton Pierce's book. If you have a solid programming background, then you might get through this book in a breeze, but if you're a beginner, leave the copy on the bookshelf.

Effective book, but be selective
Sam's Teach Yourself Pearl in 24 hours covers Perl basics and CGI basics for the web. It discusses about SSI (server side includes) on the surface. Even even better still, it comes with a CDROM with the Perl interpreter which you can install on your PC/Mac. So you can immediately get up and running with writing Perl programs and trying the exercises.

I got the book on Sunday evening. By Monday night, I had completed a Customer Review system for my webpage. It is similar to this page that you are currently reading. By Thursday night, I had completed a real time inventory check status. It's the one that says whether the item is in stock.

I must say that this book has made me a very productive programmer. I had learnt and implemented so many stuffs in just 4 days compared to the weeks and months of web surfing and trying to figure out what people were saying on forums. Now I already know how to implement wishlists, gift certificates, logins, forums, etc.

Before you get the assumption that it's so easy, let me explain my background. I'm a programmer by profession and a damm good one. With over 10 years programming experience, I have twice won awards for programming genius. My contribution was so good, it got translated to Spanish and published by several other magazines. I'm trying to impress upon you that I am reading this book from a very skilled programmer point of view. But I have no knowledge of Perl whatsoever.

When I picked up this book, I expected Perl to be cakewalk, but I was a bit disappointed by the way the information was presented. It is sometimes too technical for a first timer and the author fails to clearly explain what a function does. It is sometimes lacking in illustrations and also contains a lot of questions designed to trick the student. Until now, despite reading certain chapters over and over, I still cannot understand what the author is teaching.

If you understand programming fundamentals, then this could be a good book for you. It covers a wide range of topics. And you still can get by even if certain explanations are less clear.

But if you a a newbie programmer, then I don't recommend this book because without some programming background, you may not understand at all what the book is saying. Imagine scalars, arrays, lists, hashes. There's no clear explanation what they are, but dives straight into how to declare and use them with complex examples. If you don't know what is an array or loop, then this book is not for you. If a seasoned programmer like me have trouble understanding certain parts, then a lot of other people will also not understand it.

Reviews (12)

Grab this book to save bandwidth and improve speed!
King has some amazing insights and tips on how to get your website to respond faster. Your clients will be happy, your ISP company will charge less and your site will be faster.

The bandwidth you will save on a single month will cover the costs of this great reference. Plus, you get a good overview of search engine visibilty.

Best practical web performance optimization guide available
Covering a wide variety of techniques, this book describes many of the common causes of slow pages andhow to avoid or remedy them. While not specific to load testing, it is a valuable reference for thosewho have the task of making a site faster. Many of the methods provided here are simple but rarely implemented - they should be!

Michael Czeiszperger
Web Performance, Inc. Stress Testing Software
http://www.webperformanceinc.com

A MUST read for every web designer and developer!
When the GUIguy reviews books, it is usually with the intent of reading fairly quickly to get a sense of the author's approach, their writing style, and the value of the content.

When I picked up Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization, an amazing thing happened: I was captivated by the content and the style. Amazing! A first! I found myself reading every word and every line of code, lest I miss some gem hidden within the letters.

Andy King's basic premise is clearly stated: "At current bandwidth-to-CPU speed ratios, bandwidth is the limiting factor." Therefore, optimization of code is vital for a well-received web site.

Sure, that's easy to write, but how do you do it?! The author meticulously goes through many, if not all of the ways code can be streamlined, addressing HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, and even more.

As for style, you can almost hear the author talking; the conversational tone pervades the tome. The book is a delight to read, and the text is peppered with subtle and not-so-subtle humor like "Link to external style sheets site-wide to cache in." Even code snippets are occasionally injected with nostalgia and rib-ticklers. (There is a reference to Burma Shave signs-search the web if you don't know what that is- and even the Emperor with No Close. (sic))

And for those who wonder why all this optimization is important, the author opens with two chapters on the Psychology of Performance, with well-researched excerpts and citations from human factors writings. The forward is even written by usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

There is a companion site (http://www.speedupyoursite.com) that contains all the code along with all the references, chapter summaries, chapter excerpts, color figures, etc. After all, web sites are living documents, and having all this information on a web site allows it to be updated easily.

Editorial Review

When Peachpit Press released the debut edition of JavaScript for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, it immediately became one of the most useful tools for busy Web developers. Now in its fourth edition, this book has been improved, expanded, and more finely tuned.

Written for Web coders who have at least some familiarity with HTML, the book doesn't necessarily require you to have knowledge of JavaScript programming or scripting. The presentation is illustrative and productive, and concepts are introduced via practical examples, explained briefly, presented in code, and then explained line by line. Using judicious screen shots and new code highlighted in red, the authors have made JavaScript for the World Wide Web quite intuitive. In this new edition, they point out features compatible with only certain Web browsers using new IE and Netscape icons.

Along with its core content, the text includes an excellent genealogy of the various flavors of JavaScript, complete with an extensive object flowchart that is colorcoded by browser version. It also steps outside the base language with a chapter on visual development tools that use JavaScript, like Dreamweaver, GoLive, and Fireworks.

There are tons of useful scripts in the book, and the publisher provides a companion Web site where you can get each script, as well as an interface for viewing the code in action. You can download all of the scripts in a single Zip file. This is simply a must-have guide to JavaScript. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• Browser detection
• Rollovers
• Cycling banners
• Frames
• Windows
• Form validations
• Regular expressions
• Date and time display
• Event handling
• Cookies
• Cascading style sheets (CSS)
• DHTML
• User interface design
• Bookmarklets
• Visual development tools
• Debugging
• Genealogy and reference

Reviews (16)

A Valuable Asset For All Web Developers
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large Scale Web Sites, 2nd Edition, (the Polar Bear book) was written by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville and this second edition came out in August of 2002. It is a book about web site development from two pioneers in the field of information architecture whose backgrounds are in the fields of library studies and information systems. Both are published authors and experienced in web site development.

Mr. Rosenfeld and Mr. Morville use architecture as a base of understanding for readers to comprehend the essential elements of developing a web site project focusing on the design of the organization and managing the information effectively within a web site in order for users (consumers) to find and manage the information more effectively and efficiently.

The authors talk about broad concepts and principles of web site design which allow readers to think about applying these concepts creatively to their own site development. The authors target some specific areas of web site development. For example, the authors want readers to think about the goals and intended audience of the potential web site, the content that will be placed in the site, and also the structure of the site. All of these elements could be considered universal to web development. Yet, the authors explain in such a way that allows readers (or designers) to apply these concepts individually to their own area of development. Other topics covered include user interaction, and navigation and search systems that allow users to access, retrieve, and manage information from the web site more appropriately.

This book, although extremely technical in some chapters, explains the importance of web site development comparing it to architecture, specifically information architecture, emphasizing the importance of successful information retrieval from a collaborative view point.

Overall, I consider this book to be a highly valuable reference material on any web designers desk. However, frankly, some chapters were just way over my head. The material was very technical in some chapters and spoke to business professionals in other chapters, doing exactly what it was intended to do. I welcome the opportunity to review it more throughly from a course development stand point and I consider it to be a very well written and researched and very valuable book on web development

Definitive Resource for Information Architecture on the Web
A must read for anyone involved with Web design and management. Rosenfeld provides an excellent foundation that includes a definition of information architecture, and an equally compelling explanation of the grey area that exists between it and other practices (design, usability, development, etc.)

Sections that describe the artifacts of information architecture include wireframing, sitemaps (chapter 12) as well as those principles that impact site and third-party search, like controlled vocabularies, metadata and labeling systems (chapters 6-9).

For those involved in enterprise-wide projects, Rosenfeld includes excellent discussions of how IA fits into business strategy and concludes with 2 helpful case studies.

Reviews (7)

Excellent instruction for librarians . . .
I retired five years ago after thirty years in a very large public library system, and recently found it necessary to return to the trenches for awhile, in a rather smaller system. In that half-decade, of course, the Internet changed drastically and, even though I'm constantly online and intimately familiar with the major search engines (and many of the minor ones), there was a large number of new reference information sources with which I was not at all familiar. So I went looking for professional tools to remedy my ignorance. This is the first book I've seen in the publisher's "CyberAge" series, and medthodologically, it's quite good. As others have noted, the static nature of print-on-paper means rapidly outdated material, but Sherman and Price show you how to attack the problem, so, even though I came across several (unfortunately) extinct databases, I was able to locate several new ones, too. This is a terrific instructional work for reference librarians, and the accompanying web site is near the top of my bookmarks at work.

Great guide to out of reach resources
"The Invisible Web" is a thorough, thoughtful guide to finding information lying just outside the reach of search engines. It can be divided into two parts.

The first part describes the strengths and weaknesses of search engines as tools for finding information on the World Wide Web and provides a good overview of the technical and business limitations that lead to the weaknesses. At the same time, the authors also provide a high-level explanation of how search engines operate and a comprehensive explanation of what types of resources are left out of search engine indexes. Although this section is a bit repetitive, it also stands as the best explanation I have encountered on the subject of Web resource accessibility (and inaccessibility) through the popular tools that searchers have at their disposal.

The second part provides a list of Invisible Web resources (resources that can not be indexed by search engines), organized by subject, with annotations. I personally did not find this list comprehensive, but it is a good place to start for those who have previously relied solely on search engines and directories for Web searching.

If you want to understand what resources are just beyond the grasp of search engines, and get a hand on them yourself, "The Invisible Web" is a great book to get you started.

Note: some of the URL's sited in the second part of the book are now gone. This is not a criticism of the book, but a reflection of the ever-changing nature of the Web.

Reviews (5)

relevant, practical and well-balanced
Programming Web Services with Perl is principally a book on implementing solutions using XML-RPC and SOAP in Perl. It also covers complementary and alternative standards such as WSDL, UDDI, and REST in some detail. And on the periphery, it finishes with a whirlwind tour of developing message routing, alternative data encoding within XML, security, transactions, workflow, internationalization, service discovery, extension, and management techniques and specifications.

The book assumes the reader will have the knowledge of an intermediate level Perl programmer. I.e., the reader is assumed to have a working knowledge of references, data structures, and object-oriented Perl. On the other hand no previous knowledge of XML, XML-RPC, SOAP or XML related technologies is required.

It should also be mentioned that both of the authors Randy J. Ray and Pavel Kulchenko are also the principle developers of the most popular XML-RPC and SOAP Perl modules: XML::RPC and SOAP::Lite respectively. That said, the book is not a soap box for the authors to tout the merits of their tools.

Rather, it is a practical book which starts with grounding fundamentals. Readers should walk away with a core understanding of XML-RPC and SOAP and not just a particular tool set for working with them. The authors examine the alternative XML-RPC and SOAP tools, illustrate how they are used, and give practical and even handed reasons why their modules should be preferred. Which comes down to issues of features, active development, support, and the amount of work required to code to a particular interface. They then settle down to a comfortable and thorough guide to XML::RPC and SOAP::Lite.

The topics and issues are illustrated throughout using real world web services. For example creating an XML-RPC client for O'Reilly's Meerkat news wire, or a SOAP client to covert use.perl.org's journal stream to RSS. Code is presented to the reader filtered down to highlight each particular issue as it is discussed. This is nice in that it avoids listing slight variations of the same code multiple times, but on the down side it can also leave the reader flipping back and forth to reassemble an example in their head. Full code for each example is provided in the appendices. And all of the example code may be downloaded from O'Reilly at [their web site].

All-in-all, the book is a thorough practical introduction to working with XML-RPC, SOAP and related technologies. When I started reading the book, I was a bit disappointed to see that it only covered XML-RPC and SOAP related services. When I finished, I was impressed with how very much information they'd managed to pack into so few pages.

And yet, I was left wishing there'd been a more through coverage of interoperability issues between other SOAP implementations and things like custom de-serializers. To be honest interoperability and de-serialization are mentioned, and the authors do an excellent job of referring the reader on to sources for continued reading on most other topics.

The book does an admirable job balancing content, length, and information density. Not to mention an excellent job delivering the information that will still be relevant years and not just weeks from the date published. Most of the topics I'd wished to see covered in more depth are those that are still developing and consequently most likely to become quickly dated. In short a well balanced practical guide to applying XML-RPC and SOAP to solve problems.

A "complete reference" is oh so hard to find...
And yet this book covers every aspect of web service development utilizing perl.As a long time user of the original Frontier::RPC2 module, things have come a long way, and with that greater complexity, the concepts have grown in scope considerably.This IS the book that you want to read if you REALLY want to understand SOAP and XML-RPC.From the XML DTD's to implementation code (either standalone applications or utilizing mod_perl) this book covers everything in between.In all it is a welcome addition to the O'Reilly family of Perl books.

Editorial Review

Hard core programmers would say that HTML is for dummies. Evenso, for those of us who want to build and maintain our own Web sites, but cringeat the sight of anything resembling a programming language, HTML 4 forDummies is the hand-holding guide to help us through those processes.

Because many HTML editors do all the site-building work for you, it's strangethe authors chose to wait until appendix C in the back of the book to explainwhy you must know HTML. Still, their reasons for learning HTML are sound, andthe advice they dispense is solid.

Beyond going through the ins and outs of HTML tags, the book does a fine job ofexplaining what design elements work and how to avoid common mistakes. Thesection on XHTML ensures that budding site builders have all the latest tools attheir disposal.

Reviews (9)

Excellent Addition to Hacking Exposed Series
Companies go to great lengths to segregate their internal networks from the rest of the world. They implement firewalls and DMZ's to protect their computer systems from the malicious code flying about the public Internet. For the most part, companies can simply block incoming traffic from getting through to their network at all from the outside world. However, in order to host a web site the web server must be accessible from the public Internet. That means that the web server offers an inroad to the internal network if not configured properly.

Hacking Exposed- Web Applications: Web Application Security Secrets & Solutions by Joel Scambray and Mike Shema will show you what you need to know to protect your web servers. The authors explain how an attacker gathers information to identify target systems and seek out the vulnerabilities they can exploit to break in. They go into great detail to discuss the myriad of vulnerabilities on various platforms such as Apache, IIS, J2EE and more.

This book will help you understand just how much risk your web servers are exposed to- vulnerabilities within XML, cross-site scripting and other input validation attacks, SQL injection attacks and more. Thankfully, the authors go on to provide valuable information for how to guard against these attacks and ways to harden your web servers to protect them.

Anyone who administers a web server or develops web applications should read this book to understand the pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Tony Bradley is a consultant and writer with a focus on network security, antivirus and incident response. He is the About.com Guide for Internet / Network Security (http://netsecurity.about.com), providing a broad range of information security tips, advice, reviews and information. Tony also contributes frequently to other industry publications. For a complete list of his freelance contributions you can visit Essential Computer Security (http://www.tonybradley.com).

The best web hacking book today
I just finished reading Hacking Exposed Web Apps and was coming back to Amazon to fwd the recommendation to a friend who is a CSO at a Fortune 500 firm when I stumbled upon the review from hermie. I have to say that I disagree completely with hermie's assessment, and felt compelled enough to say so in print! First of all, the book does cover a number of web platforms besides IIS -- it's the only one I've seen that talks about web services in any detail (SOAP, UDDI, XML, etc.), and it also devotes entire chapters to both web app management and web client hacking as well (very salient but often overlooked topics in other books). Main author Scambray may be a Windows security expert, but the non-Windows expertise is very visible in the appendix on libwhisker and the chapters on surveying the app, attacking session state, and input validation, etc. This also calls into question the criticisms by hermie of the specific detail versus the depiction of broad concepts -- if you are after ancient security concepts, then you plainly shouldn't be reading the Hacking Exposed series! That's the point of each book in the series -- use fresh, relevant technical details on how to hack to illustrate cutting-edge *concepts* in computer and Internet security. I think hermie really missed the boat here. Finally, the straw that broke the camels back for me was the comparison to "Web Hacking" by McClure. McClure is an executive now running his own start-up, and the knock that I've heard on this book is that it is really non-technical and out-of-date in sections. McClure brought in strong contributors to drive the details, but apparently couldn't glue the right pieces together to make this book competitive. I have a borrowed copy on my shelf, but frankly could not get past the first three or so chapters. Sigh -- I guess that's the breaks when anyone can post their thoughts here in the review section :)

A decent introduction, but incomplete
I must admit, I was disappointed with Hacking Exposed Web Applications (HE:WA, as another reviewer called it).Overall, I thought it was basically mediocre.

My main fault with the book was that it was incomplete; equal and fair coverage was not given where it should be.For example, Chapter 9 "Attacking Web Datastores" should have been called "Attacking Microsoft SQL Server."While some of the general techniques (i.e. SQL injection attacks) in Chapter 9 could have been applied to any SQL RDBMS, much of it was very specific to a Windows/IIS/ASP/MSSQL setup.This doesn't help me much to write my bread-and-butter Unix/Apache/Perl/PostgreSQL or even
Java/Oracle apps any better.

It seems like the authors wrote their book to be "Hacking IIS Web Applications Exposed" and at the last minute decided to throw in some Apache and Unix here and there, with a sprinkling of Cold Fusion and Netscape Enterprise, to market the book more broadly.If they had just stuck within their expertise (Joel Scambray wrote for Microsoft TechNet's ironically-titled "Ask Us About... Security" column and wrote "Hacking Windows 2000 Exposed") and produced their original book, I think they'd of come up with a better product.

Another problem I have with HE:WA (and the whole HE series) is that they spend too much time on specific attacks and not enough time on the broader security concepts.For example, how useful is the first HE book today? How useful with HE:WA be in three years?I still recommend "Computer Security Basics" to anybody beginning in the security arena, and that book was published over a dozen years ago.CSB remains in print today because it teaches sound pragmatic security concepts that remain relevant today.

I will say, however, that HE:WA does do a better job than some of the other HE books about reinforcing broad concepts (like Input Validation) across all platforms and languages.I still do not feel they teach pragmatic security for web app development though, and it's being pragmatic that will save you from tomorrow's attack.(You've got to distrust your OS, double-check whatever your webserver says, hate your database, and ALWAYS validate your input and you'll be immune to almost all vulnerabilities discussed in HE:WA ).

Despite all the problems I have mentioned, this remains an okay book for a novice web developer looking to learn security, especially those of the One-True-Microsoft-Way persuasion.If you're looking for an alternative, I'm half way through "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" (co-authored by Hacking Exposed lead author Stuart McClure) on Safari. I like it better than HE:WA so far, and it seems to be fairly comparable on the target audience and topics covered (and it actually covers them!)I would give it a 4/5 or a 5/5 based on what I've read.

Reviews (19)

Not bad, but a little too simple...
The problem I found with this book was it's simplicity.It was easy to follow but it spent a lot of time on the basics of cgi/perl, and unfortunately didn't crossover into deeper waters.If you want to learn to make a guestbook, poll, or any other half-decent script, don't bother with this book.If you need the basics of cgi/perl it's a great place to start.

Not for programmers....
I bought this book as a reference to learn how to start programming in Perl & CGI - but have just found this book ill written and simply hard to follow.Other books in this set, such as PHP and MySQL, are wonderful resources - but this one just isn't.Not to mention I still havn't found the downloadable scripts that the book advertises.I am going to pitch this book when I get a better reference.

Reviews (16)

Poorly Organized, Examples Don't Work
I rarely criticize a text book, but for this one I must make an exception. My biggest complaint is that the examples are full of errors and the procedures are incomplete - leaving out critical steps to make the procedures work. For someone trying to learn Websphere from scratch, this poses an insurmountable obstacle to learning this topic. This indicates to me a rush job putting this book to press and failure to proofread the textbook and failure to test the examples.

I could go on, but the shortcomings already expressed are, in my opinion, justification for avoiding this book.

Not enough detail
This book is good at covering a wide range of details, but I wouldn't recommend it for an in-depth knowledge of Websphere, especially if you're a developer.