Great beginners book
I think the people that criticize this book don't see the forest from the trees. Yes, there are typos, but this book goes into many of the things I was looking for in getting my ecommerce site going. I think a little more of an introduction/explanation of the basic concepts of html objects would be nice. That said, I have used many of the code examples in my site and am pleased with the results. I had an idea of the functionality I wanted on the site and every time I went to the book to find an example, it was there. Initially I was wondering about how I was going to install all of these tools (mysql, php, apache) and when I saw a reference to the xampp installer I was quite relieved. I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone interested in building a website with these tools.
It's time is past!!
Well its been on my shelf for a couple years and how I've opened it. I am on page 165 and back to Amazon to search for a book to replace it.
The book is outdated. The forum for the book is not well visited. The support code for the book is failing images and some files. The code is written inconsistantly, different authors, and there is no mention of this or proper coding examples. Variables are created on the fly and creates some error messages with uptodate PHP. The explanations of certain things requires several readings sometimes to fill in blanks that a beginner should have explained. The use of CSS is not even mentioned so far and the html does not meet Xhtml standards. We must not forget the book was copyrighted in 2004.
I have purchased "Beginning PHP and MySQL 5" by Jason Gilmore and it seems to be a resonable book but leans more towards a reference text. The search continues...
Namaste,
Kevin Tough
This book was written by functional illiterates
The authors are great PHP programmers, I have no doubt, but terrible writers. I do not recommend this book. Like most bad technical writers, they make a big production about trivial concepts, then gloss over difficult concepts without explaining them in detail.
A Truly Excellent Book for the "Beginner"
This book is really quite good. It's very interesting & definitely very readable. When I read it, I got straight down to business, so to speak. It gives very practical examples starting you off with making a movie review site which was very interesting! All in all, an excellent book to give you a working knowledge of PHP & MySQL.
That said, there are some shortcomings.
-Significant amount of typos in the code
-Some minor parts of the code requires redoing (which I found out through a forum dedicated for the book)
-For those of you with absolutely no experience in programming, you might find some concepts aren't covered enough in detail
As I said before, overall, great book.
-ive 1 star for the shortcomings.
Richard
Solid coverage of beginning topics
I used this book as a tutorial on the subject with graduate students who had only basic programming experience and we all agreed that it was a great way to get started with database-backed PHP work.
(11 reviews)
