Get Your Magnifying Glass Ready
I once had a PHP book that was in a larger format than this. It was on glossy paper and featured screenshots. It was a great book. I wish I could recall the name of it because I would like to obtain another copy.
I had hoped that this was that book but I was disappointed. I can't comment about the code in the book as I haven't begun to work through it. The focus of my problem is the miniscule type on the screencap images.
Now I'm not exaggerating; you could benefit from magnifying glasses when you look at the sample output as displayed on these small screencap images. If you are older like me and need to wear glasses these images will prove challenging to see. Since the book relies on these screencaps to display the sample code and output I regard this as a huge problem.
I understand the need for book publishers to reduce costs and that this effort has led to reducing the size of books but this result is a real detriment to the book's effectiveness. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem for a text-only book, but when you are trying to display screencaps the small size of this book's format (7 3/8" wide X 9 1/8" tall) isn't a suitable format because it forces the screencaps to be printed at what I consider to be too small a size.
Its a shame as the presentation format of visually learning is superior to just text but this book shrinks the screencaps too small to retain readable text in them. Too much fine print. :(
If reading ultra-fine print (seriously, its that small) isn't a problem for you then go for this book. If it is then look elsewhere.
Your friendly blueprint PHP & MySQL book
[...]
First of all I want to confess that I'm absolutely new to PHP and specially to MySQL. I made some try to understand PHP from some books from home library, but there're too advanced for me. In this book I found exactly what I was searching for.
There is no required knowledge level for using this book, but I would recommend it to beginners and intermediate users. For beginners it will be fast and easy PHP & MySQL reference, and for intermediate users it will be excellent book to remind them of all the things they forgotten (and more possibly to bring new stream in their knowledges).
I imagine this book would be useful to people who have no programming experience at all as this book covers basic programming concepts (which are the same in all programming languages) like variables, loops, and arrays, in great detail. Code in this book is for PHP 5 that is currently the latest version of PHP. I know that some companies in the world still stuck on PHP 4. So maybe this book will be helpful to people who wanna take quick overview of interaction of PHP5 and MySQL. I think some people would agree with me that jumping right away from version 4 to version 6 is not very convenient.
This is without a doubt a technical book and such books need to be written with simple language to be ready to everybody's grasp. This book is written with simple language and is very friendly. The book is full of short examples and I liked this book because of its simplicity.
Nobody stays behind as there are clarifications for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X users, so everybody stays satisfied. The detailed chapters on installation and configuration of Apache, PHP, and MySQL for all Windows, Linux and Macintosh are walking the reader through the complex process step by step, giving very clear instructions, explaining the reasons for the recommended configuration choices.
As it says on the cover: "Your visual blueprint for creating dynamic, database-driven Web sites". Book is printed on good quality paper and the most important this pages are not "busy" with a lot of information - inside you find many screenshots for every step you make, so you could have more control over your every action (step).
On a companion website you can download all codes for this book and get more information about author (also review table of content). Compressed .zip file with codes takes about 61kb on your hard disk and 532 kb unzipped. In case of interest you can first download code files and then order a book.
Would recommend
This book has very high visual appeal, and would actually make a beginner like me want to learn the material covered in this book. The book is well organized (every chapter begins with a few paragraphs explaining the objective of the chapter, then follows with 1-2 pages of learn-by-example), although some of the information regarding MySQL and PHP setup are a bit outdated and confusing. The pictorial examples are clear and readable, although I can see how someone would think they are too small. Overall, I would recommend this book the most to those with little to no scripting experience, as it may move a bit slow for those with a lot of programming or scripting experience.
A disappointment
Well, I have read acouple of Janet Valades publications and for the most part they are great. This book was not so great. It was really a waste of my money.
This book is just like the rest of the "Visual Blue Print" series, in that, There is way to much going on visually and not enough subject documentation.
If for some stange reason you cannot learn simply by reading a book, this Visual book wont help you either;The picture are to small.
Janet Valades is a wonderful writer, she just need to stray away from the Visual book publications.
Great Book
This book is great if you need a quick and easy setup and understanding. Unlike other authors; this one includes alot of pictorials of the results. The book should take atleast 2-3 days to complete with understanding of how PHP and MYSQL function.
