It's quite clear from reading this book that Peter Gasston is very
knowledgeable about CSS 3 and, as he points out in the preface, this book is
a culmination of five years of work that he has spent writing about CSS3.
There is a clear order to the chapters. The earlier chapters are well
implemented and the items discussed there are used on a regular basis. The
final chapters are more speculative in nature.
The author takes a very methodical approach in the book. He covers numerous
topics in a clear and well-thought-out manner. He provides several examples
for each topic that is covered. There are 17 chapters and an appendix. After
each topic is introduced, the author informs you as to which of the major
browsers implements the feature. The last chapter discusses the future of
CSS3. The appendix collects all of the browser support tables that are found
in each chap... (more)
Beginning C# Object-Oriented Programming is a well-written book that meets
the stated goals of its author: "The target audience for this book is the
beginning C# programmer who wants to gain a foundation in object-oriented
programming along with C# language basics." This book works on a lot of
different levels. It gives the beginner a good feel for the software
development life cycle (sdlc). It goes from cradle to grave in discussing the
application design and implementation.
The book starts by laying out the foundation for a sample application called
the office supply ordering ... (more)
One of the most powerful tools that a developer can use for validating data
is the regular expression. A regular expression makes use of pattern matching
to determine if an item fits within the definition of the pattern. Some
validation that might take many lines of code to validate can be simply
validated by building the correct pattern. However, many developers are put
off by the feeling that regular expressions are too hard to master.
Several months ago, I started reading a book called Regular Expression
Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach by Nathan Good. It became quite clear... (more)
I'm sure that there are times when you visit your favorite bookstore to look
at new books on your favorite .NET topics and you cringe at the weighty tomes
sitting on the shelves. You open these books and page upon page of continuous
print swims before your eyes, but you figure it's important so you plop down
your hard-earned money, take the book home, begin to read it in you rocker
recliner and fall asleep.
O'Reilly has developed a new series of books called Head First that .NET
developers would be wise to take a look at. It uses a markedly different
approach to important topics... (more)
It's a daunting task to author a book of over 1000 pages and maintain the
interest of the reader. Matthew MacDonald is able to do so for several
reasons. He maintains a good sense of humor and he is not afraid to express
his opinion about a topic. Two examples come to mind. The first example is
during his mention of the creation of a new Microsoft framework for the
Internet called "MVC." He states that "to some the MVC pattern is cleaner and
more suited to the web, to others it's a whole lot of extra effort with no
clear payoff." In regard to some of Microsoft's practices he stat... (more)