Product Description
Over 4 hours of full-motion, animated instruction with crystal-clear audio in Publisher. 138 individual lessons. The best Publisher tutorial available. Designed by software training professionals. Learn at your office or home - at your own pace. Includes all of the topics covered in a comprehensive classroom training. Deluxe Training includes a printable instruction manual (in PDF), along with practice exercises & keyboard shortcuts! Customize your training with the easy-to-use menu. Clear, easy-to-follow, step-by-step instruction. Watch the training sessions as many times as you want while you practice in Publisher. No messy set-up, no internet connections needed. The best way to learn Publisher on your own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Beware of the Other 2 Reviewers
This may be a great tutorial.I don't know.I don't own it.What I do know, is that the 1st two reviewers each wrote product reviews for 60+ items in the "Mastering..." series.They both own all 60 items, and coincidentally gave each item the exact same review verbatim.It sounds like they have a vested interest in the product--not that they own it and think it's a great tutorial.When a reviewer reads the reviews on Amazon, we expect honest reviews from real owners of the product--not hyped reviews from people with ulterior motives. ... Read more

Product Description
Full-motion, animated instruction with crystal-clear audio in Microsoft Outlook. 177 individual lessons in Outlook 2003, XP, 2000 and 97. The best Outlook tutorial available. Designed by software training professionals. Learn at your office or home - at your own pace. Includes all of the topics covered in a comprehensive classroom training. Deluxe Training includes two printable instruction manuals (in PDF), along with practice exercises & keyboard shortcuts! Customize your training with the easy-to-use menu. Clear, easy-to-follow, step-by-step instruction. Watch the training sessions as many times as you want while you practice in Outlook. No messy set-up, no internet connections needed. The best way to learn Outlook on your own. ... Read more

Product Description

A fast paced introductory tutorial to this well established PHP/MySQL based content management system

• Get your Mambo website up fast
• Walk through the whole process
• Customise and extend your Mambo site

Customer Reviews (10)

why bother?
I bought this book to research how to implement a new site on Mambo CMS.It basically was a copy of basic explanations that are on the mambo site, and only addressed the structure that is in place with default values on the test page.Why bother spending the money when all of the info is online?And why call it a tutorial, when it doesn't show you how to do anything, but rather just explains what each thing is supposed to do?

Also, and this is my fault for not thinking about it when I was buying, but 227 pages of computer book is not worth $40.Even if it were really good, which it's not.

Disaster
Bad points :
------------
- No real structure
- Hardly any advice on why to use this or that function
- Most options not even explored (has the author ??)
- What is the use of including code with no explanation on how to use it and/or what it is for ?
- Expensive

Good points
-----------
- Gives some kind of an overview, but the time reading the book, one could have figgered that out by himself
- Explains some of the shortcomings of Mambo/Joomla

Conclusion :
------------
This has been the worst book I have ever read, and I do not understand anyone that gives it a score higher than 3 stars.. Expect the 'great' reviews to be written by the author or friends of the author, I serious disagree with their view !
A book should encourage the reader not demotivate..
Next time the author writes the book, he better stays at one place and get focussed (and not travelling from place to place and connect to free wireless lans... as he introduces the book)

Spent your money on books that are worth it, definitely not this one !!!

Part tutorial, mostly users guide
I have not used a CMS before, other than WordPress (that I consider to be a light-weight and focused CMS) so I decided to give Mambo a whirl but not without the help of this book. Unlike some other reviewers, the subtitle of my copy reads "A step by step tutorial" and so I read the book with that in mind.

There are a couple of minor problems with the book. It was originally written in German and translated to English. The translation is not perfect and a couple of sentences required rereading but this is a minor matter. The other problem is that one of the most useful tutorials is on how to install the German language module which, for a book that has been translated into English, doesn't make a lot of sense to keep. It would have been my wish to use this valuable space to provide other tutorials.

My review was focused on whether the book could help me download, install, set up, and use Mambo to build a Web site but unfortunately, it doesn't live up to my wishes. Some of the tutorials are good but for the most part, the largest chapter of the book reads more like a users guide than a tutorial and the last three chapters are for more advanced users.

Although the book does work as a decent users guide and it does appear to be better than Mambo's web site, this book could have had better tutorials.

Mambo is bigger than the title
If you have ever tried to build a web page for your own use or for a company, you know first hand that although it seems easy at first, it really isn't. A large number of technologies are involved, together with other extra-technological parameters like psychology, marketing, color theory, etc. The situation becomes a real nightmare when you have to build a website, an organized set of web pages, that interact between them and with the visitor. And what if you want to add extra features like document management, contact forms, sophisticated menu systems, to name a few? What if you want to make it have an elegant appearance that at the same time, must be easy to draw? What if you want to implement a mechanism that gives you the strength to modify content in an easy way? What if you want the changes to your navigation structure be reflected immediately on your menus?

You are asking too much! Or maybe not, since Mambo is here!

Mambo is one of the most sophisticated CMS in the market today. The good news is that is also free to use, because it is released under the GNU/GPL license.

"Building websites with Mambo" is a book by Hagen Graf and Packt Publishing that will guide you and introduce you to this magnificent CMS system.

The author is an experienced Mambo user and the book is based on his experience. It is aimed to someone who wants to go down and dirty right away with Mambo.

In chapter 2 you will be guided to install Mambo. Mambo can be installed on several environments, from Windows, to a dedicated Linux server. For sure, you will find instructions for your environment here.

In chapter 3, you will take a quick tour on the default view of Mambo: what you will see as a first time user. You will be introduced to terms that you will use every day. The illustrations help the reader understand the environment quickly.

Every CMS, and Mambo is no exception, has two views. The front end is what visitors see, and the back end from where you build and administer your website. Chapter 4 serves as an introduction to the back end environment. You are going to spend a lot of time here, so read carefully, and experiment with your Mambo. The author uses plain language to explain the new features. A large number of figures make the life of the reader easier. Chapter 4 is one of the largest in this book. After all back end is Mambo!

Mambo wouldn't be what it is today, if it hadn't a large number of 3Party extensions that expand its functionality. In this case Mambo serves as a framework for them. But this is technical jargon and probably you are not interested for it right now. Hagen Graf knows that, so in chapter 5 goes right into the point and introduces a number of the most popular plugins you will ever use with Mambo. Namely a forum, a calendar, a picture gallery, adding comments, creating multilingual pages and an online shop. You read well! You don't need a number of different applications to accomplish all that. You can do it all from Mambo!

Chapter 6 introduces one of the things that gives extremely power to Mambo, the templates. With templates you can alter the appearance of your site and you can do it in no time... Just select another template and your site has a new face. Simple as that! There is a huge number of free templates waiting for you to download and use. But if you want to build your own, then this chapter is written for you. Unfortunately you will learn only the basics. This is not a surprise, as the whole book, serves as an introduction.

In chapter 5 you used a number of extensions to add extra functionality to your site. In chapter 7 you will learn how to make your own extensions. The existence of this chapter is a pleasant surprise. You don't expect to find information for such a special subject in an introductory book. The info provided serves as a simple introduction to this huge area. I wonder if it could be otherwise. Building extensions for Mambo requires good knowledge of PHP and MySQL programming. It is not a subject that will ever bother the everyday user of Mambo. But if you really want to know how to do it, then be advised that the info is just introductory. Maybe a new title will be released, specializing into this area.

The overall impression from the book was good. The figures were a lot and explanatory, the language was simple, the info provided was targeting the new comers. I missed a couple of things. A step by step guide on how to build my first Mambo site and an in depth analysis of how to build extensions.

Despite that, I recommend this book to someone that wants to know Mambo and doesn't have the time to surf around trying to collect all this info.

Read it at the Bookstore first
A friend bought this and he raved about how it was the end all to Mambo knowledge. Of course I had to get...his copy and see for myself. I handed it back after 5 minutes never to want to hold it again. Like the guy below, if you need something to read while on the squatter, get it. Otherwise, download the mans into your PDA and read away. ... Read more

Product Description
An introduction to Internet resources, this guide includes step-by-step exercises with screen shots illustrating what the user will see on screen. It shows readers how to choose the right tool for the job, gather information, and communicate with others via the Internet. Emphasizing non-technical explanations, the book helps inexperienced users learn tasks such as: sending and replying to e-mail, subscribing, using and unsubscribing to mailing lists; understanding and using URLs; and browsing and searching the World Wide Web. Overviews of each lesson help the reader to understand what each tool does and why it is important. Learning objectives, examples, hints and references offer additional support, and special opportunities for colaborative learning. ... Read more

Product Description
Details how to retrieve and use Mosaic, covering establishing the SLIP connection with the included Chameleon software, downloading and installing Mosaic, navigating the Internet landscape, and more.(Intermediate) ... Read more

Product Description
Tutorial begins with coverage of some of the basics of Python programming. Using plenty of skill-building exercises and interactive programming sessions to help those new to programming develop an understanding of concepts and practical techniques. Softcover. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Very nice
The content of this book is excellent. I am a novice jython programmer and have been playing with jython for about three years. I have tried numerous tutorials and even have obtained jython books. This one is the best so far. It covers things I did not know existed in jython. The presentation of material is logical and follows a nice gradient of complexity. My only peeves are that the examples are sometimes erroneous and that my book did not come with the examples on disk.

I use this book as a reference
Not only did I write this book. I also use it for a reference.
I find it quite handy.

Very rough, distracting code samples but still worth a look
I've been banging around in this book for a few days now and feel compelled to let the potential buyers know a couple things if they are considering this book:

1) The code samples are atrocious but well documented. The indenting got fouled up on many of the soucrce code samples (typestting problem?) so as to confuse a python/jython novice like me. The author will occassionally show you a bit of source code and then show you output from the execution of what is clearly a different source file. This is very distracting and if I didn't already have some inkling of how Jython works I'd really have a hard time with this book. Sure seems a shame becuase the explanations of the source code are more complete than you'll find an a typical intro book and this is really very helpful in tracking down the author's/typsetters errors and getting the reader REALLY familiar with the inner workings of Jython. The Sample files on the author's website do help clear up the code errors in most cases.

2) Bear in mind that the author goes out of his way to familiarize you with the basics of Python, so he can get to the Java integration. For this reason the reader is really getting an introduction to Jython. This is ok since the author points this out in the opening of the book and guides you to pertinant sections if you have experience with Python, C++, Java or OOAD in general.

Had I to do it over again I probably would wait for a second edition with the code errors corrected. But if you really need a good low level intro to Python, this book, warts and all, has been more valuable than other titles that introduce the language. I attribute this to the really detailed 'plain english' explanations of the code.

To be fair I can't comment on the Java integration portions (the sample code or the writing) as I'm just finishing chapter 6, so I'm still learning about jython itself).

Straightforward, reader accessible text
Python Programming With The Java Class Libraries: A Tutorial For Building Web And Enterprise Applications With Python by Richard Hightower (CTO at Trivera Technologies) is a practical and completely user-friendly guide to teaching yourself to combine Python programming language with the more widely-used Java. This "user friendly" tutorial covers everything from Java and Python basics to advanced topics such as using Python and Java Swing to create GUI's, working with SQL and JDBC, applets for Python and Java, and much more. Step-by-step instructions, countless examples, and straightforward, reader accessible text makes Python Programming With The Java Class Libraries a superb and highly recommended resource for Python and Java programmers from all experience levels and backgrounds.

Not a bad book for a Jython kick-start
This book focuses heavily on demonstrating key concepts with the Jython interactive interpreter. While this method is not entirely without its drawbacks, it has the distinct benefit of letting you try out code one line or block at a time (which is one of my favorite benefits of Python in general).

Some books are noted for their depth, others for correctness, some for the range of concepts introduced, etc. And of these, I'd say that this book demonstrates the absolute basics of a wide range of Jython areas better than anything else I've read so far. It's the sort of book you can pick up, open to the middle of, and start coding quickly (assuming your system is set up properly, of course).

While there is room for improvement in future editions, this seems like a good first edition. ... Read more

Product Description
In Detail

Joomla! started as a fork from Mambo in 2005, when many of the original developers of the Mambo CMS moved to working on Joomla! It has rapidly grown in popularity and, according to its own description, is a "Cutting Edge Content Management System and one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management systems in the world. It is used world-wide for anything from simple homepages to complicated corporate websites. It is easy to install, easy to manage and very reliable."

While the Joomla! CMS has the flexibility and power needed for complex, full-featured web applications, it is also simple to use to create basic websites. Its powerful, extensible template system can deal many different data types and control of user access, approval of content, scheduling of content display, and rich administrative controls are all included.

Approach

This book takes the reader through the tasks essential to create a Joomla! website as rapidly as possible. The necessary tasks are explained with clear step-by-step instructions. The author's chatty and engaging style makes this book very readable.

Who this book is written for?

This book is suitable for web developers, designers, webmasters, content editors, and marketing professionals who want to develop a website in a simple and straightforward process. It does not require any detailed knowledge of programming or web development, and any IT-confident individual will be able to use the book to produce an impressive website. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Fine just for an intro
It like an overview of the cms system, but not a real guide for development with joomla framework.
Its perfect for people who needs to manager only the admin enviroment an a few hacks on templates.

A very good book for beginners, very useful book for advanced users
"Building Websites with Joomla 1.5" is an excellent choice for all developers and webmasters who didn't have a chance to work with Joomla! CMS. The book is very easy to read and it's really ideal for webmasters who didn't have a real development experience. Joomla! CMS is a good choice for entering the world of CMS-based websites and this book will provide you an excellent introduction how this popular CMS is working and how you can administer it.

At the beginning of the book you get all the information how to install Joomla! on different server types and after you complete your first installation, the book will give you all the necessary information about the frontend and backend. What I really like in this book is the fact that it gives a really good overview about the basic module functionalities: menus, login forms, online status, polls, breadcrums, banner management, etc. All web newbies will receive enough information how to use these modules and web veterans will use first few chapters as a quick overview of Joomla modules and components.

After first 200 pages you will learn how to expand your Joomla! installation with additional extensions and how to create your first template, custom component and how to integrate new functionality into your first Joomla! website. In chapter 16 you will use the knowledge from previous chapters to create a new website for vintner family Bertrand. This will be a good practice to test your Joomla skills.

As I said before, with this book basic knowledge of Joomla! Beginners will be very thrilled with this book, advanced users will appreciate it because it is a good resource for more advanced CMS-based projects.

OK Joomla! book
If you are looking for a book that takes you really under the hood of Joomla, this is not the one. This book provides you with the basic information to set up Joomla! 1.5 and to do a little changes here and there. If you for instance are looking for a tutorial book showing how to interact fully with the frame work by making your own classes, stay away from this. You find most of the information on this book online

Just Starting with Joomla, Then buy this book
A number of years ago I set about planning the re-launch of a website. I was using a blog system. I learned about `CMS' and did my research. I narrowed down my options to Joomla, Drupal, Plone and a few others. I then went off to my local bookstore. There I went through the books. I decided on Joomla and looked for a good book to use. It is key that a `how to manual' speak to you in a manner that you can understand. I choose Building Websites with Joomla 1.0 by Hagen Graf. That started me on the Joomla journey.

I have just finished reading the sequel Building Websites with Joomla 1.5. The book is even better than the first edition. Graf explains what a CMS does, the changes from version 1.0. The book explains all the parts of Joomla. It even covers the more advanced areas of creating your own templates and components.

If you are just starting out with Joomla, this book gives you a head start. If you are already experienced with using Joomla, but not customizing it, this book is for you. This book will defiantly be on the "within reach"Book shelf.

Scott Wolpow is a member of the New York Joomla Group. He also builds and hosts Joomla sites.

Good Reference, Weaker Tutorial
Packt Publishing sent me a complimentary copy of "Building Website with Joomla! 1.5" by Hagen Graf to review. I specifically was interested in this book as I was researching the use of Joomla! as part of redoing an elementary school website.

First off, the book was well organized. It begins with an introduction to web content management systems and the role they play today in web sites, covers a brief history of Joomla!, and then focuses the rest of the book on the installation and configuration options. As a first time Joomla! user, I can definitely say that the book helped me out quite a bit in understanding the way things were configured. Chapters 4 through 12 focus on different areas of Joomla!, including menus, extensions, components, and content in sufficient detail to make a useful reference but in a way that a first time user can get through the configuration. As a reference, this is the book's strong point.

Where I was a bit disappointed was that I was look more for a tutorial, rather than a pure reference book. Given that I was setting up a new site using Joomla! for the first time, I was hoping for an extended step by step approach that would take me through a complete site development. While there is a chapter in the book called "A Website with Joomla!," it was only 12 pages long and was presented more in the context of a demonstration than a tutorial.

Overall, I was pleased with the book. I think it will be a useful reference as I develop the site, but I also think I've still got more work ahead of me to get the site out the door. ... Read more

Product Description
In Detail

The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) is software that allows a computer to act as a print server, receiving print jobs from client computers, managing them, and sending them to the appropriate printer. It consists of a print spooler and scheduler, filters to convert print jobs to the format required by each printer, and a backend system to send the data to the chosen printer from client applications. Since every printer manufacturer does things differently, printing can be very complicated, and has always been a hard issue in the UNIX world for this reason. By providing a portable, modular printing layer, CUPS brings printing for UNIX into the modern age. It applies open standards for network printing through the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) and uses platform-independent drivers (Postscript Printer Definition, PPD) to print. Today, CUPS is the default printing system for a large number of Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) and UNIX-based operating systems.

This book assumes that you have no knowledge of CUPS. It starts by telling you the story of how CUPS came to be and why there is such excitement about it. We then move on to installing, compiling, and managing your print network. Haven't you struggled to find the right directives for your printer? Enough of that search, this book will tell you where to find what. Not only that, but widely used directives and their uses are explained here along with directions to use them. There is more: you can learn how to manage the ever increasing print job load, set up your clients, and manage users. All this done, you will learn how to monitor, filter, and secure your CUPS server.

What you will learn from this book?

• The unique and powerful features of CUPS
• Installing and compiling the CUPS server
• Checking printer status, accepting and rejecting print jobs
• Restricting user access
• Setting different printer options, printing multiple copies
• Classes, client, server, and printing directives
• Important cupsd.conf directives that will help you manage network, server, browsing, and security options.
• Configuring manual and automatic print queues
• Communicating with single and multiple servers with clients
• Integrating with other systems like LPDs and Mac

This book is for Linux/Unix System Administrators interested in designing and setting up a CUPS network and provides enough knowledge to understand how the technology works, make decisions about deployment, and then implement a stable work environment. No knowledge in CUPS is required but readers need to be comfortable with working in the Linux/Unix environment. On the whole, readers should have basic knowledge of the Linux environment. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A useful guide
CUPS is a powerful and configurable printing system, and this book's author does a very good job of discussing it and its options clearly. Anyone working in a business or computer lab setting would find the book useful and probably more enjoyable and easier to parse than using man pages and Google searches. I think this is especially true in a place with multiple workstations, several shared printers, and users set up with individual accounts and in specific user groups.

My favorite feature in the book is that for most configuration options, multiple methods of making the changes are discussed. There is information on using the command line, using the CUPS web interface. Also wonderful is the detailed description of the major options for configuration file settings, and a useful comparison between the language used for configuring the Apache and CUPS daemons. ... Read more

Product Description

Install, manage, and customize your MediaWiki installation

• Get your MediaWiki site up fast
• Manage users, special pages, and more
• Customize and extend your MediaWiki site
• Create new, attractive MediaWiki themes

Customer Reviews (10)

This is *the* book if you want to have your own mediawiki
I recommend the book "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" for editors of your custom mediawiki, but for administrators, this book: "MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide is well worth the $40.00.

I like that this book covers so much, yet doesn't try to cover everything.I'm sure that you can find the rest of what you need for a complete reference by Googling and reading the mediawiki that supports mediawiki.

Very Satisfied
I am new to wikis and this was an excellent resource for me. Yes, there are a few errors here a there but I still consider it a very good reference. After this book you will be able to do more deep research on your own.

This book is based on version 1.9.0, which is clearly stated in page 20.

really needs an editor
I bought this book because I'd been looking in vain for information on customizing MediaWiki, having hit the proverbial brick wall trying to get beyond the basic configuration on my team's intranet wiki. I was a bit hesitant after reading earlier reviews mentioning that this book was poorly written, but bought it anyway being the *only* book available on MediaWiki.

Given my prior (although minimal) exposure to MediaWiki, I was able to skim through the first four chapters rather quickly. The second half of the book has promising chapter titles, and does contain several code snippets & hacks, but I continually found myself wondering how a professional title made it to press with such poorly written prose. I found the explanations of key concepts to be rather circular, never clearly communicating "the big picture".

Bottom line: If you're starting from scratch, this book should get you started & help as a reference if you need some hacks later on. Otherwise I'd skip it.

Subject OK, writing awful
I think this book sells purely because there is little in the way of alternatives.The documentation in the MediaWiki wiki itself is patchy, jumbled, and confusing to navigate.I wanted a more 'polished' reference book, and this is the only book on Amazon devoted solely to MediaWiki.

Content-wise it is _OK_.There is very little in here that isn't already available on-line, but at least it is presented in a more logical manner.The first half of the book is really aimed at contributors to MediaWiki, such as creating and editing a page, uploading and inserting images, and creating tables.True, Administrators will also need to know this, but it's probably safe to assume that anyone purchasing an "Administrator's Guide" already knows this.Certainly, it didn't teach me anything new.The second half gets more useful, covering administration of access rights, creation of skins, managing namespaces, and so on.That said, it does include huge swathes of code, which take up a fair bit of room - if you don't want to add the 'page rating' the author provides, then it's just a waste of space.

The book is also missing some key information.There's a section on thumbnailing images, but the book neglects to mention that the functionality to deliver this isn't included in MediaWiki and has to be installed separately.(At least in the version I installed, but as there's no information provided on the different versions of MediaWiki there's no way of knowing whether this is why...)It's also vague on some tasks, such as "Figure out how to run PHP scripts from the command line."

My biggest problem with the book is the quality of the writing.This is absolutely appalling.Maybe I'm a bit more sensitive to these things, being a Technical Writer by profession, but the amount of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes is absolutely shocking.I found almost 100 errors just whilst I was casually reading it - I'm sure there would be many more if I looked more closely.Most of these would have been detected by using a spellchecker, and many of the rest would have probably been picked up by Word's grammar checker.For the most part this is just annoying and distracting, but some, such as repeatedly misspelling the HTML HREF tag as HERF, are just unforgivable.It hardly puts ones faith in the author - if they can't get this right, what's the chance of the sample code being correct and actually working?But what is really shocking is that the book lists five editors, two reviewers and a proofreeader in the "Credits".None of these people deserve any credit whatsoever, as the quality of this book is below what I would expect from a 15-year old.

In fact, I suspect that the book was actually written by a 15 year-old.The tone used, the examples (the wiki developed throughout the book is a wiki for ghost stories...), the logic of exposition, is all very 'youthful'.It's as though some teenager with an Internet connection and a bit of time on their hands had built themselves a wiki, and then someone had remarked to his parents "Wow, little Timmy knows so much about wikis I bet he could write a book on it!".

Given the lack of competition you may want to go out and buy this book anyway.Just don't expect a detailed technical reference, and be prepared to overlook the frequent grammar and spelling errors...

Excellent resource for a mediawiki administrator
When I started the wiki DharmaFlix.com, I had no experience in administering a wiki - just a hope and a prayer. For the vital information on wikis, which is in the details, I scoured the large amount of information available on the web, especially at the mediawiki website: http://www.mediawiki.org/. This was certainly helpful and got the site started. But I really wanted a comprehensive Bible of Wikis, that would allow me to grasp the full potentiality of this web development platform. I looked for a book to serve this need, and lo and behold, MediaWiki Administor's Tutorial Guide had just been published. Well I immediately bought it and read it cover to cover. It is very readable and I would think a current must-read for anyone desiring to found a wiki. DharmaFlix.com is flourishing very much because of this book and its author, Mizanur Rahman. ... Read more

Product Description
In Detail

A web mashup is a new type of web application that uses data and services from one or more external sources to build entirely new and different web applications. Web mashups usually mash up data and services that are available on the Internet-- freely, commercially, or through other partnership agreements. The external sources that a mashup uses are known as mashup APIs.

This book shows you how to write web mashups using Ruby on Rails-- the new web application development framework. The book has seven real-world projects and each project is described in a methodical step-by-step way, showing how you can write a web mashup from the ground up.

APIs covered in the book

This book covers: Google Maps API, Yahoo geocoding services, Geocoder.us geocoding services, Geocoder.ca geocoding services, Hostip.info, Google Spreadsheet, EditGrid, Clickatell, Interfax, Amazon ECS, Sparklines, Facebook, Indeed, DayLife, Technorati, Futef, WebserviceX Currency Convertor, Weatherbug, Google Bases, Geonames, Flickr, Paypal, Google Calendar, Google Account Authentication, Google Data, and Google Spreadsheet Data.

What you will learn from this book?

You will learn what a mashup application and a mashup plug-in are and how you can effectively use mashup technology to do more than just Web 2.0 startups. You will also learn how to use Ruby and Ruby on Rails to combine, mix, and match up nearly 30 mashup APIs from small to really large scale, and from completely free to commercial to:

• Map a fleet of kiosks in an online map
• Send marketing messages through e-mail, SMS, and fax
• Sell and track the sales of books
• Search for jobs through a Facebook application
• Show all sorts of information on a geographic location
• Buy and pay for movie tickets then post the screening information in an online calendar
• Apply, approve, and pay for employee expense claims

This book is for Ruby on Rails developers who want to expand the features of their site by consuming remote external data and services. Basic knowledge of Ruby on Rails programming is required but you need not have any experience of any of the APIs used. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Tries to cover too much, ends up covering too little
Providing a whistlestop tour through building a range of Ruby on Rails applications on the back of other services, Ruby on Rails Web Mashup Projects is aimed at those who are already comfortable building rails applications and want some sense of how they can be enhanced using a variety of other visualisation, data and processing providers.

Aside: The term `mashup' is one of those tech terms that's almost impossible to pin down. I should note that the way it used in this book (seemingly any application that draws on a third-party services) is not a way I'd choose to use it, but I'd rather focus on the book itself than on titling semantics.

The book hits all the usual suspects--google maps, flickr, technorati, wikipedia--and also covers the basics of building a facebook application, using paypal for payment processing, and sending faxes and SMS messages through a third party gateway. For those who want a quick overview of all of those options it'll give you enough to get started, though as a result of the pace only the very basics of each service is covered and anyone wanting to build a sophisticated app will have quite a bit of work in front of them learning the nuances of their chosen service providers.

Along with providing little detail of each service, the book suffers from not really digging into a number of topics that would make it a much more useful companion. Big challenges when building applications dependent on other peoples' servers include effective testing, caching, surviving third-party service outages, and good ways of integrating your interface code into your application.

Lip service is paid to the need to be prepared for a third-party service outage, but no examples of how to survive are offered. It wouldn't have been hard to illustrate ways of falling back to local databases or to secondary services, but none is offered. There's no mention of writing tests, so no opportunity to offer ways to use mocks to test the local code or to discuss how you might automate your testing of the integration itself, and caching is similarly overlooked except in the case of amazon e-commerce services where it is used to preserve historical data that amazon doesn't make accessible.

The absence of testing really shows through in some of the code offered. Much of the code demonstrated in the book is overly complex and procedural, with little in the way of modular, reusable components. Similarly there's little by way of discussion of where such code fits into your rails application, with some classes that are clearly models (albeit non-ActiveRecord models) dropped into the lib folder, and numerous very fat controllers.

Rather than covering seven separate projects, this box would have been much stronger had it focussed on two or three, but worked through them in significantly more detail. Possibly there wouldn't have been a chance to touch on as many services, but by building up one of the more diverse systems like the ticketing application in detail, covering failover, testing, clean integration with a rails app, and other such topics this could have been a much richer book with appeal for a far wider range of developers. As is, it's worth skimming through if you're looking for advice on sending faxes or SMS, but won't help much with the real challenges of building a robust application that's dependent on third-party services.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher. ... Read more

Product Description
An innovative training tool that allows you to try theinternet before you invest in modems, seminars, service providers,telephone bills or software. You'll think you're actually on-line asyou "connect" to the Internet and browse through simulated screens ofthe Internet and WWW -- No modem or hookup needed!You'll experienceeverything from emailing, browsing, shopping, chatting to downloadinggraphics, sound, movies, and creating your own web page. Become "netliterate" with the Internet Training CD - the ultimate training toolfor the Internet. This CD guides you through the process - before youspend your money! ... Read more

Product Description

Get the most from cPanel with this easy to follow guide

• Everything you need to manage files, email, and databases using cPanel
• Organise your web site⦠create subdomains, custom error messages, and password protected areas
• Analyse site logs, ensure your site and data remain secure, and learn how to create and restore data back ups
• Use advanced features, find powerful cPanel add ons, and install web scripts from within cPanel: osCommerce, Mambo, phpBB, and more.

In Detail

Customer Reviews (6)

Excellent reference book
I find this book to be an excellent reference book while using cPanel. Before purchasing this book, it was a tedious process trying to find and use other help sources, not to mention a little confusing too.
I find that both books by Aric Pedersen "cPanel user guide and tutorial" and "Web Host Manager Administration guide" are of equal value.
I highly recommend these books if you are finding yourself confused.
Marc

Nice Book For beginners
This is a nice book for Beginners , you will learn a lot of stuff for Cpanel
i like this book , its help me to control my Servers .

cpanel review
this is a good book to explain the CPANEL that many web host supply you with.It basically goes through all the options you have on the cpanel. I was confused on what each item actually did - this book explains each one. this is why I purchase this book.And why i purchases from Packt publishers as they give back to open source community.

Finally a guide that truly explains cPanel
I recently purchased a genuine hosting account after having my domain names point to free servers for years. I put it off because I was afraid I would never be able to understand cPanel based on the info I was able to read on the net. It confused me, and was not specific to newbie users.

Thank goodness I found the one guide that made it easy to understand here at Amazon. It is a great book for anyone using cPanel, not just newbies, and the price was well worth every penny.

Creating Empires Web
[...]

Great For Newbies
If you have a Web host that gives you cPanel as part of your Web hosting package [...], you've got a great site control panel at your disposal. I use cPanel on all my servers, and while I'm fairly good at it, I know there are many folks out there who are a bit afraid of it.

I recently had a chance to look at this book (I was given a comp copy by the publisher as a neutral 3rd party host, like the above comment). For cPanel newbies, it's actually a great resource, going far above and beyond the built-in help that comes with cPanel and the documentation on their site (it's far easier to read, that's for sure). There were a few things mentioned in the book that I didn't know existed (I had no need for them, so I wasn't really looking for them), and a few things that were mentioned in the book that were slightly dated (which is bound to happen with this type of book). Overall, it was a good book for users of cPanel.

However, for folks like me who actually want to use cPanel and it's accompanying WHM software to manage your whole server, it doesn't touch on that at all. cPanel comes with a great back-end Web interface to manage your server's DNS, Apache config, mail server configuration, accounts setup, quotas, system upgrades and patches, security, resellers, backups, etc... . It also comes with a bunch of handy command-line scripts for lazy folks like me that would rather type one line instead of a hundred (easyapache is one example, and there are several for MySQL and email and DNS that I've used many times before). I would've liked to have seen more on that component of cPanel, as that'd be far handier to me (I usually rely on the cPanel forums for my info).

But it's a good book for folks out there who are looking for some help with cPanel's tools from a webmaster standpoint. Just dig into the WHM forums and docs if you're actually managing the system.

EDIT: There is a follow-up book to this that covers my original gripe about the book: it's lack of WHM coverage. ... Read more

Product Description
Add a new dimension to your HTML course with these CD-based interactive movie tutorials. Students will watch as an expert takes them through designing exciting web pages using HTML and XHTML, bringing concepts and techniques to life. They will learn essential skills such as adding tables, frame, and forms as well as more advanced techniques such as validating Web pages using XHTML, implementing Cascading Style Sheets, and validating forms using JavaScript. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

HTML Tutorial
The Video is used on our online class for college.It is excellent for watching what needs to be done, and then doing it.It provides all the necessary tools to learn such as: This is what we're going to do, this is how to do it, and this is why we did it this way.If it doesn't work this way, here are some possible errors.Writing code is not easy and confusing but this Video as a supplement to the Book has been worth it's money in gold!
BJ Winchester ... Read more

Product Description
Over 10 hours of full-motion, animated instruction with crystal-clear audio in Photoshop. 146 individual lessons in Photoshop CS, 7.0, 6.5, and 6.0. The best Photoshop tutorial available. Designed by software training professionals. Learn at your office or home - at your own pace. Includes all of the topics covered in a comprehensive classroom training. Deluxe Training includes two printable instruction manuals our students receive (in PDF), along with practice exercises & keyboard shortcuts! Customize your training with the easy-to-use menu. Clear, easy-to-follow, step-by-step instruction. Watch the training sessions as many times as you want while you practice in Photoshop. No messy set-up, no internet connections needed. The best way to learn Photoshop on your own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Do not waste your money here
I was very disappointed in this video course.
Rather than "mastering" Photoshop this was
more of a bare bones introduction to the various
concepts.The tutorials are very short and several
important concepts are dealt with in one sentence
in the syllabus and some are not touched on at all.
I contacted the company requesting a refund and they
told me that they do not offer refunds so I am stuck
with this amateurish product.
My advice is stay away from this company.You
could do much better by saving your money and
Googling "free photoshop tutorials"....Hundreds
of good ones available at no cost to you the happy
Photoshop student!
... Read more

Product Description
Containing clear instructions and hands-on virtual lessons, a book-and-CD-ROM package provides everything one needs to learn, practice, and connect, with lessons on how to access Internet services, the Usenet, other Internet resources, data protection, netiquette, and common acronyms. Original. (All Users) IP. ... Read more

Product Description
Offers developers and technical managers a concise guide to the new landscape of Windows development. The book's independent perspective and straightforward descriptions make clear both the how the .NET technologies work and how they can be used. Softcover. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (27)

An excellent overview of what .NET is and what it can do
General rather than specific, this book has not aged a great deal. The author explains the overall concepts and the reasons for their existence rather than specific features of the .NET environment. For example, the role of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) in the sequence of source code to executable machine code for the languages supported in the .NET environment is thoroughly covered.
Brief descriptions of the features and differences of the primary languages of .NET, C#, C++ and Visual Basic are also covered. In this case, the detail is probably more than you would be interested in, as few people will be reading this book to learn about the control constructs in these languages.
There is an overview of the .NET framework class library, a survey of the role and how to use ASP.NET to build dynamic web pages, how to access data using ADO.NET and a mile-high view of how .NET is used to build distributed applications. The explanations are clear, giving the reader an unbiased and realistic look at what .NET is capable of doing for you.

Simple & General Introduction
When I read about the book before I bought it, I got the impression that it will talk in details about .NET applications and the way they interact with .dll files they link to. I was interested maily in product installation issues and deployment. I bought the book and read the chapters that I saw peratining to the subject. The discussion related to the issues I was looking for was not that deep or detailed to clearly explain deployment/setup issues that I am facing at my work. The book did, though, add to my knowledge about the way the .NET CLR works, memory management, ... etc., but very little about setup and deployment of .NET applications.

Excellent description of .NET for first timers
I've been involved with software for almost 25 years now. Despite that, I've done very little Windows programming and never got to do anything with .net technology. This book had been a perfect starting point for me. I've found it to be well written (I've been able to read it from cover to cover in about a week or so), and it provided me with just the insights I needed for .NET.
In particluar, I liked the broad persepctive of .NET technology it offers. This is essential for later conducting one's own search via reading the on-line stuff and other material (you'll never find something if you never knew you ought to have searched for it...).

The technical examples are very good - they illustrate the points the author is making, without needlessly burdening the reader with details & complexities that are sometimes found in books that focus on "how to write XYZ" .

Note that the book covers .NET 2.0.I hope there will be a next edition, covering .NET 3.0/3.5 and technologies such as WPF.

I highly recomend this book for folks with some SW background, that are unfamilar with .NET and wish to get some general feel for this technology before diving deep into specific areas.

Excellent map of the .Net world!
If you're a .Net programmer, you might think an overview book like this is beneath you - it probably sounds like management oriented fluff. However, we all have to admit .Net is huge and constantly changing. It's tough to keep up on all its facets, let alone, put them into some sort of historical context. This book does that for you. What's more, it explains the why's and what-for's behind the various .Net pieces better than any other book I've run across. I think even experienced dotnetters will enjoy quite a few 'ah ha' moments reading this book.

If you're a management type, the first chapter alone is gold. Read it, learn it, and you'll probably be able to understand what your average dotnet programmer is saying. Best of all, when they call the Intermediate Language "bytecode" (which I've noticed happens pretty often) you get to correct them: "bytecode is Java - in dotnet we call it IL." Surely this moment of triumph alone is worth the price of the book.

One criticism: Why a lion on the cover? I think it makes this book look like one of those learn how to program X in 30 days books, that is, a cheap poorly written ripoff. This book deserves better! I'd put it in the same class as a great introductory text book, so why not make it look like one.

Excellent
I'm a software engineer who has a background with C++ and Java. I normally stick up my nose at anything Microsoft. So I was skeptical picking up this book, but I'm glad I did. It presents the user with an overall look at the .NET framework.

This book is good for people with a Java background.

It probably wouldn't be a good book for the avid .NET user. ... Read more

Product Description
What is a MOO?

Many first-time visitors think that a MOO is a kind of chat room - and they are partly right. A MOO is like a chat room in that many users log on at the same time and communicate with one another. People become friends, enemies, even lovers! But that is only the beginning....

A MOO is like an adventure: It provides a sense of place. There are areas to explore and puzzles to solve.

A MOO is most especially a place whose users themselves can creatively extend the environment, from adding rooms and building objects to programming new commands.

The basics of MOOing are easy, and Yib presents them in an easy-to-learn sequence. The intricacies of MOOing are many and varied, as MOOers have expanded these environments extensively over the years. Yib teaches you how to use all the most popular enhancements, then shows you how to investigate and extend the environment yourself. A lively tutorial will have you programming before you know it!

Besides the fundamentals - enough to make you a confident user of any MOO - Yib provides an in-depth look at LambdaMOO, the original and largest MOO. She takes you on an armchair tour of its most interesting places, documents its most popular feature objects and player classes, and provides a thorough explanation of how to participate in its political system.

New MOOers will like this book because it is accessible. Experienced MOOers will appreciate its depth and comprehensiveness.

MOOing is fun! Yib makes it easy. ... Read more