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Message from Dean - May 8th 2007
I am currently testing out a new version of the APF Bridge Component - If you notice any errors within this demo store please drop me a line.
Rating:  -
I am a programmer that looked into acquiring some PHP & MySQL knowledge, and this book was the perfect choice. For those with some experience in another programming languages, the pace of the book is perfect and thoroughly covers what needs to be known.
For complete beginners with no programming experience this book might be too hard, as it assumes the reader has some knowledge of programming principals and does very little to cover them.
Rating:  -
Peachpit Press' books seemed geared for the literary minded, so that what shaped my decision while scanning this book. For someone who had written some code but really didn't understand the concepts, this is a great book. However, it's still just a beginning, as I find myself referring to the manuals and forums for further clarification.
I liked the layout, although sometimes it was confusing to match the code to the explanation, which might appear on a separate page.
The author has a website forum where he responds to queries about the content of his books.
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This book is really great! I am just a neophyte at PHP and this book makes so much sense. I followed all the steps the book listed and so far everything is working. I haven't used the online forum community that comes with this book, but I imagine that it'll be useful when I am stuck. This book is very fun, easy to understand and really enjoyable to read.
Rating:  -
I would agree with other reviewers that this book is not for people who have programmed before. I personally found it close to useless since it involved so much hand holding (including instructions, nearly each time, to open up a new file, to save it, to load it in the browser, etc). The one positive aspect is that it is very clearly and consistently written, and the information is presented in a way that is easy to grasp and understand.
However, mainly I fail to see how making a "visual" version of this is of any benefit at all. For visual thinkers I think a visual guide would be useful, but most of the images used in the book are simply screen shots of source code -- how on earth is that useful? Basically it makes the source code harder to read and adds only the borders of a standard GUI (in this case, OS X) window. In any case, they generally repeat sections of the same source code in the text of the book itself, leading to wasted space.
In addition, for some unknown reason they decided to lay the book out using narrow columns. As a result, nearly all of the lines of code wrap considerably, even where it would be problematic for them to do so. The line wraps are clearly marked but in my opinion it would still be confusing for a beginner.
So the graphics are a waste of space, the columns hinder reading of the source code, and the instructions assume a user who doesn't even know the basics of creating a web page (which I would recommend as a prerequisite to making a dynamic web site).
I am not sure what a replacement guide is, but I don't recommend this for experienced OR new programmers.
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PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro GuideI have just completed this book and will now be moving on to apply what I learned on my website. If you are familiar with HTML/XHTML then this is the book for you, this book is well written and is good for both beginners and advanced programmers alike. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn PHP6 & MYSQL 5.
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