‘Recipes and solutions for PHP programmers’

This is a very good book, actually one of the best recipe books I’ve read period.

You can tell that the authors are still actively writing code – you can feel it as you read the chapters. The book consist of a series of techniques (they call recipes) that are commonly needed by php programmers.

Some example recipes:

• How to Sort Arrays
• Send HTTP headers
• Encode a string for use in a URL

… this book is packed with all kinds of php goodies. There is much more to be found .. I just never list too much from a book since you can easily look it up online.

THE ‘QUICK HITS’

After a brief introduction, each chapter provides a bunch of micro-tips related to the recipes discussed in the chapter. They call these tips: ‘quick hits’.

I found the ‘quick hits’ to be very useful because they provide a very concise and easy to read look at aspects of the php language. I can see myself referring to this book often just because of the ‘quick hits’.

I actually keep this book nearby to flip through once and a while, just to give me ideas. It has already helped on a php 5 project I am working on.

CONCLUSION

This I think is a great book. It has lots of practical information and is without a doubt, one of the most useful books on programming I’ve read – and I’m talking all languages.

Buy the book if you work with PHP or planning to.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

PHP Cookbook presents PHP by task rather than by language construct. For example:

• Accessing Substrings
• Controlling Case
• Parsing Comma-Separated Data
• Taking String Apart

The above list is taken from chapter 1 on strings. You’ll notice that there are no function names listed, but rather string related tasks.

That style of organising and presenting the material by common task, makes ‘PHP Cookbook’ very handy for any PHP programmer.

In my experience as a web developer, there have been many times when I would have a task to preform but wasn’t exactly sure how best to handle it … a book like this allows you to flip around and find what you need.

YOU WILL LEARN THINGS TOO!

Besides showing how to preform common tasks with PHP, PHP Cookbook also does a good job discussing PHP concepts and aspects about the language – for example:

What is the difference between ereg and preg?

We learn that preg works more like Perl regular expressions, where the function also needs delimiters – you will have to get the book to learn more!

HOW THE RECIPIES/EXAMPLES ARE STRUCTURED:

Each recipe is broken down into three subsections:

1. Problem – a simple statement of what we are trying to do.
2. Solution – a concise code snippet (usually) doing what we need to do.
3. Discussion – shedding more light on the subject at hand.

CONCLUSION

I like the ‘cookbook’ series of books. If you are a PHP programmer, I know this is a book you probably should have sitting on your desk.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

Over the last few years a whole bunch of CSS / web standards based books have hit the market. Some were good and some sucked
but there was one thing that was been consistent about them: they all reflected the maturing web design community.

You need to pay attention the word maturing: there were still a few technnical things that had not exactly settled in terms of how web designers should do things.

HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables using CSS is among the first books I’ve seen that demonstrates a maturity in web design.

WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT

It’s all about modern web design practices and techniques. The following topics are covered over 450 pages:

01. Basics
02. CSS 101
03. CSS Code
04. Validation & Backward Compatibility
05. Color
06. Fonts
07. Text Effects
08. Simple CSS Layouts
09. Three-Column Layouts
10. Fixed-Width Layouts
A. CSS Miscellaneous
B. CSS Color Reference
C. CSS Property Reference

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?

If you are a total noob to web design, this is not the book for you. You can start with my free web design tutorial to get your feet wet, then you’ll be ready to buy this book!

You need to have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS. Once you have that, this book would quickly guide you through the sometimes thorny path to web design nerd glory.

Again, a book worth getting.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

I’ve reviewed several AJAX books and each has their own slant on the subject. Build Your Own AJAX Web Applications is the first that actually got me to think of AJAX based applications as a replacement for the traditional desktop applications.

… You’d figure I would have clued into this reality before, but for some reason, it only clicked while reading chapter 2!

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR

Clearly you need to have a web programming background to understand this book. If you’re shaky with programming and object oriented programming is a great mystery to you, then you might find aspects of this book challenging.

On the flip side, if you want a refined and advanced approach to injecting AJAX into your web work, and you are comfortable with Javascript and a server-side language like PHP, then this is a very good book.

TOPICS COVERED

• An overview of the basic technologies you’ll need to use to build Ajax applications.
• Understand the XMLHttpRequest object, the core of Ajax applications.
• Build a cross-browser XMLHttpRequest wrapper that you can use in all of your Ajax projects – using OO Javascript.
• Build an Ajax application site monitor that works in real time.
• Learn how to use Ajax without breaking older browsers or causing accessibility issues.
• Fix the “Back button” problem.
• Use JSON, YAML, and XML to communicate with the server.
• Create an Ajax search application that pulls data from Amazon, del.icio.us, and Google.

.. yes, I got this list from amazon, but why reinvent the wheel!

MY CONCLUSION

I like the fact that the book does a good job of teaching AJAX while not getting bogged down in useless code and text – the book is concise, to the point and thin.

Get the book.

Stefan Mischook

This book targets beginners to PHP but NOT total beginners to code and programming – I think that certain explanations of the basic programming concepts, may confuse a some people.

Doesn’t matter though, once you’ve done my free video tutorials (found on this site,) you will be able to breeze through this book.

Besides the basics of PHP programming, the book does a good job teaching basic database theory and concepts – but not so much to bore you to death.

Instead (like the rest of the book,) the coverage of database theory is just enough to get you going with MySQL.

A good title for people new to modern web design practices that include:

• CSS for layouts
• Semantic code
• Accessibility in web design

The topics are covered within the context of small usable projects, that can easily be adapted to your own web design work.

Though published in 2005, the material is still relevant and still is a pretty good buy.

Web Design with Dreamweaver 8 teaches how to use Dreamweaver to build modern, standards-compliant websites.

This is a great book if you are a web designer (with some experience) ready to take the next step in terms of understanding modern web design methods: as you learn to use Dreamweaver, the author gives concise coverage of various modern web design practices like CSS for layout, semantic web design etc …

Project driven for much of the book, you are guided through a series of common web design task:

• Styling links with CSS
• Laying our pages with CSS.
• Creating and styling forms.

… and much more.

Each project covered, is representative of something you would want to do in the real-world, but not so big to bore the hell out of you …

A good book for anyone who wants to learn how to use Dreamweaver 8.

Web design has changed drastically since this book’s first edition came out … and thankfully Web Design In A Nutshell has been updated accordingly.

As with all of Oreilly’s ‘Nutshell’ books, Web Design In A Nutshell covers each topic in a concise and yet complete manner making it both a great learning title (for people with some web design skills,) and a great reference.

Some of the topics covered:

• CSS – basics, page layout methods, hacks, tricks etc
• HTML, XML and XHTML
• Accessibility
• Web graphics

… and so much more.

Besides the core coverage of the material itself, this book is also packed with great references to web sites and other good books on web design.

Get the book.

This is the famous ‘PickAxe’ book that Ruby nerds talk about. A very well written book that is concise and to the point.

A COUPLE OF COMMENTS:

This is one of those books that reads very well. I had a hard time putting it down even though the coverage was deep – you’ll learn a lot about Ruby and maybe more about programming in general.

I never give the TOC of a book (that you can easily look up,) but I should mention 2 major divisions:

1. Part 1 is a tutorial that leads you through the core Ruby language.
2. Part 2 goes into the Ruby environment – the tools that you have available with Ruby. There’s a lot and they work well.

There is much more (advance Ruby concepts, Ruby reference) but I will leave that for you to look into.

FINAL COMMENTS:

What can I say … if you are using Ruby or you want to learn Ruby, you need to get this book.

The book begins with a great introduction to AJAX and then provides a useful grab-bag of commonly needed AJAX applications.

For example:

• Processing Web forms.
• Validations: credit card numbers, email addresses etc …

What are AJAX ‘hacks’?

AJAX ‘hacks’ are concise code samples that can be used as ‘components (if you will,) that you can plug into your own work.

Besides the usefulness of having a reusable collection like this, you can learn a lot from the ‘hacks’, since each one is coupled with a good discussion.

Some highlights:

• Ruby on Rails and AJAX discussions
• Examination of the open source AJAX libraries like Scriptaculous and Rico.
• The concise and clear coverage of AJAX basics.

As with all O’reilly books, the writing is clear and concise and well presented.

Note: this is not a beginners tutorial … you will need to be able to work with and understand JavaScript.