Overview
If you want an overview title that touches on the basic concepts of Web Application development - this is a decent choice if you must have a physical book. However, I don't really feel it is worth the steep price.
This book starts out with a very brief introduction to SQL, DB Design, programming and XML. Keep in mind, this is no substitute for real college courses if you want a career as a web app developer - but it will show you the tip of the iceberg.
What is interesting about this book is that it covers five different web app technologies - ASP.NET, Java/JSP, PERL/CGI, PHP and ColdFusion. So if you don't know what technology you're interested in, here's a chance to preview them all. If you've already made a decision to use a specific technology, you're better off buying a book that focuses exclusively on your choice.
Not a good text book
As a student using this book I would have to say that this book is not up to par with other text books that I've had. For instance, the answers to the review questions at the end of each chapter are thoroughly buried within the chapter and often extremely difficult to find. If the question was significant enough to show up as a review question, you should be able to find the answer with a careful review of the material, but this is not the case. The answers to the review questions should be either available in the Students Section on the course.com web site or in the back of the book. Also, the DVD which came with my book did not work! I do not recommend this book at all, especially as a text book!!!
Wonderful
This book is very informative and shows you step-by-step how to use the various technologies. The .NET information alone is worth the cost of this book. I am a webmaster and I feel that this book will help me develop better websites. You download the student files from http://www.course.com. The only down side is when I downloaded the student files, not all the chapters are available.
(3 reviews)
