O'Reilly publishes some of the best desktop reference manuals around, and this book is no exception. The In a Nutshell collection provides an in depth view of the topic as opposed to the Pocket Guide series. This book details the use of ASP Objects and ASP Components, devoting a chapter to each object and each component. If you are just learning ASP, this book would be a good learning tool. If you are an experienced programmer, it is a nice reference book to keep in your collection should you ever need it.

The only real disadvantage of the book is that all the code examples are written in VBScript. For the beginner who is just getting into ASP, it would be better to start with a book on VBScript and then give this book a read.

If you are currently working in ASP .Net, you probably want to get a different reference manual as the book does not cover .Net technology and languages. It stills gives you a good description of objects and components in ASP, but an ASP .Net reference would be better suited for you.

I enjoy having O'Reilly books on my bookshelves. While I don't typically read them from cover to cover, they are great references to have around. From time to time I need a refresher on simple things that I have not used in awhile, or I need to find information on something I have not used before.

Some people can go through life without worrying about XML (Extensible Markup Language); as far as they are concerned, it's all a big technological mystery. Other people need to work with XML, however. XML Demystified is a first step towards that understanding.

The book is part of a Demystified series from McGraw-Hill that can probably be looked at as a competitor to the Dummies series books -- a fast introduction to a particular subject that gives you the basics and teaches you the vocabulary, but isn't going to teach you everything you need to know.

There are some advantages to the Demystified series. First, you don't have to carry around a bright yellow book with the word Dummies emblazoned on the cover. Second, it strips all the filler out of the Dummies series -- the cartoons, the pages of snarky introduction to each chapter, the sometimes forced lists of ten at the back of the book. In its place XML Demystified gets serious. There's a quiz at the end of each chapter (with the answers in the back of the book) as well as a final exam. That's probably fitting, for the authors are both faculty members at Columbia University, as well as consultants.

Now that we've established that this is a more serious treatment of XML, what do they cover? The book takes a step-by-step approach to the basics. After an introductory chapter, you learn what's in an actual XML document in chapter 2; how the XML files are basically a database constructed of tags, like HTML tags, that hold data.

The power of XML actually comes from the X. It is an eXtensible language that anyone can customize for their own situation. You do that by creating Document Type Definitions, which is the topic in Chapter 3. Once you learn these two chapters, you know enough to create an XML document. However, you don't know enough to use them. That's what the rest of the book covers, in chapters on: XML Schemas; XLink, XPath, XPointer; XSLT; XML parsers and Transformations; Really Simple Syndication (RSS); XQuery; and MSXML.

As a webmaster and blogger, I'm probably most familiar with RSS as an XML application. So looking at their RSS chapter in a little more depth can illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the book. In many ways, the strength and weakness are the same -- it covers RSS in ten pages. They give you the basic tags you need to construct an XML feed using RSS 2.0, starting with a bare-minimum feed and then introducing some of the other tags that will make the feed more useful. However, the chapter is somewhat disengaged from the real-world. There are a couple of paragraphs of history, correctly citing Dave Winer as the father of RSS. They do give links to two aggregators (newsisfree.com and syndic8.com) that you could follow to find out more. Their sample RSS feed shows that they are using RSS 2.0, which at least alludes to the fact that there may be more than one RSS standard, but otherwise ignores the whole subject of different RSS versions, Atom, etc.. And while the conclusion to the chapter states that RSS "enables content providers to make their documents available to other web sites using an aggregator much like a local newspaper distributes their news stories to media outlets using a news wire service", nowhere in the chapter (nor the book) does the word blog or weblog come up. Since this book has a 2005 copyright date, it seems to be a curious omission for one of the most popular uses of RSS.

That probably sums up the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Like Dragnet, which concentrates on just-the-facts-ma'am and quickly plows through a story, this book quickly gets through the facts in each of its chapters. The writing is clear and straight-forward. However, it probably skimps a little in relating a particular subject to how it is actually being applied to the real world, or what tools are available to implement it. Of course, including that material also is fast way to date a book, and make it obsolete more quickly. So this book may be even more useful in a classroom setting, where the instructor can provide the real-world context, than it would as a teach-yourself book. Since the authors are actual teachers, this may be their intent.

The book itself is a brief 221 pages, including the index. It probably wouldn't hurt to splurge on an extra ten pages or so, sprinkled throughout the book, suggesting some of the tools you could use such as text editors, or specialized XML or HTML editors that can help you write valid XML code. It may also help to have a website where you can download some of the bigger chunks of example code, to save the drudgery of typing it in yourself. As a former instructor, I know that there are definite benefits to having your students get familiar with the actual nuts-and-bolts by typing it in. On the other hand, the book does emphasize speedy learning with "a time-saving approach."

Reading Dreamweaver MX 2004 - Web Application Recipes reminded me of the first movie in the series of spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood, the mostly very GOOD, a little bit of BAD, and a touch of UGLY. Let me explain.

First, it might be helpful to have a brief glimpse into my background so you have a better understanding of my approach to this book: I spent four years as a high level language (PL1) programmer for General Motors back in the 70's. When the web first started in the 90's I developed a dynamic website for artists utilizing the very fist version of Cold Fusion and Access. That turned into an expensive hobby so I had to forgo the website and get a real job. I am now just getting back into web development.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 - Web Application Recipes is essentially a cook book for real life web applications that are appropriate for many dynamic internet and intranet sites. The authors have taken the approach of teaching dynamic Dreamweaver MX 2004 via a series of hands on exercises that walk you step-by-step through the development process. In the end you will have learned how to create, and actually do create, the following: (1) a user login, (2) employee lookup, (3) conference room scheduler, (4) in-out dash board, (5) survey builder, (6) time cards, (7) journal and (8) mail merge. Each recipe also contains the necessary lesson steps to develop the code needed for the proper administration of each application.

The first two sections are an overview of datasource design and the Dreamweaver workspace. It is designed to be just that, an overview. In my opinion the chapters are very basic and may not be sufficiently descriptive for someone who does not have any experience in working with databases or with Dreamweaver. But then again, that is not the primary focus of the book.

The recipes are written for programmers that use ASP VB Script, ASP Javascript, Cold Fusion and PHP. The procedures necessary for each of these programming language are clearly distinguished from one another, where necessary. (My interest is in learning Cold Fusion so I did not follow, nor can I comment on, the other languages.)

The code necessary for each recipe is already written and easily downloaded from the Webassist site once you answer a book-related security question. This makes it easy to quickly go through the lessons because the code can be readily inserted into the web page that you are designing. For those who are purists and prefer to actually type in the code by hand the book also lists the actual code for each language.

Because the recipes are designed to be backward compatible with Cold Fusion 5, some of the current Dreamweaver MX 2004 features, such as components, were not used. I would have liked to have seen the Cold Fusion examples written both for version 5 and MX. But overall, I would say that the book is very GOOD.

There is, however, a touch of BAD. I, for one, would liked to have seen a bit more of a discussion about session variables. In addition, the authors specifically state that rather than refer to the Recipes datasource name directly, it is preferable to refer to it using a variable defined in the Application.cfm file using the following code:

      <CFAPPLICATION NAME="Recipes" SESSIONMANAGEMENT="Yes">

      <cfset Recipes="Recipes">

Unfortunately, the authors then go on to refer to the actual data source name, Recipes, in subsequent code rather than referring to the data source variable name, #Recipes#.

Also, in order session management to work properly a line of code (see above) needed to be added to the Application.cfm file and changes needed to be made to the Cold Fusion Administrator, something the book failed to mention. It took a bit of research on the web to figure this one out.

And now for the UGLY. I found several examples in the book where the code written on the pages did not match the code that was inserted by the snippets. For example, on page 58 the following Cold Fusion code is listed:

      <cfif  IsDefined("Form.StoreProfile")>

            <cfset  Session.MM_UserID=MM_rsUser.UserID>

      <cfelse>

            <cfset  Session.MM_UserID="">

      </cfif> 

However, the actual code inserted by the snippet provided in the download file reads: 

      <cfset Session.MM_UserID=MM_rsUser.UserID>

      <cfif IsDefined("FORM.StoreProfile")>

        <cfset Session.UserStore=MM_rsUser.UserID>

      <cfelse>

   <cfset Session.UserStore="">

      </cfif>

Another example: page 67 items #7 states that we should enter the following code in the Go To field of the dialog box after a new user registers: "report_projectssummary.cfm." The Go To link should actually read "protectedpage.cfm", which is the user login page.

These types are errors are very confusing, especially to someone just starting to learn this type of programming. Frankly, they are also inexcusable errors on the part of the editor and proof readers.

To really get the most of this book one must actually sit down and complete the exercises, perhaps more than once; it's not a bedtime read. It takes time, a lot of it. In all honesty I did not have time to work through all of the eight recipes provided. I did, however, follow the user login recipe in detail and my comments are based on my experience with that exercise.

In summary, I think this book is a good learning tool and I do recommend it. However, I don't think it would take A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, but rather only A FEW DOLLARS MORE, for the authors to correct the BAD and the UGLY, and then I would take my comments and HANG 'EM HIGH on my recommended list as a great learning resource.

This book is probably the easiest thing you can do to help get CF certified. Read this book, go through the quizzes, take the accompanying online tests, and when you are consistently passing, take the test. If you want to be advanced certified, my recommendation is not to take the test until you can average in the mid to high 90''s for your quiz scores.<br /><br /> In my case, it was a job requirement for me to take my test at MAX 2005. I didn''t read every single chapter, although I had almost read everything in the previous version of the book. Instead, I focussed on chapters where I got questions wrong. I probably could have benefited from a few more hours studying before my test, but that was not the book''s fault. I passed, but missed advanced by about four or five questions (depending on whether they round or not).<br /><br /> I am a solution based developer. I learn by doing, and like many other CF developers, there are aspects of the language I do not know because I have never had to use them. For this reason and this reason only, I highly recommend buying the book. Even if you aren''t planning to certify, you will find this book to be a good ColdFusion reference.<br /><br /> My only fault that I found with the book was that certain chapters could have had a little more meat in them, and better questions. I think the sections of the test on LDAP, charting, and CFCONTENT could have had better questions, as I found the questions on the test for those topics MUCH harder than in the book.

I have used Fusebox way back in version 1/2, but have only used it sparingly over the years. I understand the concepts, but wanted a refresher course, and I figured Fusebox 3 was a good place to start.

The current version of Fusebox is 4.1, and 4.2 will be coming out soon, so I realize that there will be a lot of things to learn should I want to make the upgrade, but FB3 is still in use today, and many people are still using this version of the framework to develop new applications.

Discovering Fusebox 3 teaches the basic concepts of Fusebox, and goes through the Fusebox core. One thing it falls short on is how the tutorials are presented as "type this code". This is not an effective way of teaching me HOW to archtitect and code a Fusebok application. I also thought its method of not using conditional logic, where you include a query that will produce zero records, interesting, but not practical, for most situations.

An oddity about the book is how it numbers all of the paragraphs, which is an interesting idea, but not used in the Table of Contents OR the Index. It would have been a lot more effective if it had been used there.

This book came out in June 2002, before ColdFusion Components (CFCs) were a part of the language, so I can't discount the book for not covering them, but it's worth mentioning because a lot of Fusebox developers use them today. It also doesn't cover the Fusebox Lifecycle Process (FLiP) in any detail, but if you are wanting to use FLiP, there are other titles worth considering.

In short, if you are new to Fusebox, or want to develop in Fusebox 3 (e.g. still using ColdFusion 5, for example), this book may be a good one to pick up. It's a short read, and can be read over the weekend or on a couple of rainy nights. However, you will probably want to move onto a Fusebox 4.1 book, or a box with more use of FLiP once you're done.

I picked up this book several months ago, and I keep coming back to it. I have been using Dreamweaver for six years, and I still picked up lots of great tips in this book. It's great as a tip resource, and one that you will keep coming back to, and I highly recommend it for its content. My two complaints about it are related to each other: The titles of the tips and the organization within the chapters.

In this book, there are tips called "Alias: The Dreamweaver Command" (for Clean Up HTML/XHTML), which don't really tell you what the tip is for. More concise tip titles describing the tip would be a lot easier to find what you are looking for. I would also like to see groups within the chapters. That also doesn't exist in this book.

That said, I highly recommend the book. Though it's not perfect, it's great!