Review by calvinnme for Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program (4th Edition)
Rating:
This book is much better with more detail and in a more interesting format than the Deitels’ other books on computer technology. It has been so in the previous three editions, and this edition continues the tradition while updating the contents to reflect the new technologies on both the client and the server that are available for rich Internet applications. It has a very good introduction to Javascript for the novice programmer as well as a good explanation of Ajax. In fact, it’s one of the clearer explanations of that technology that I’ve seen. I really liked the section on Adobe Flash CS3 and how the authors illustrated the usage of the application by building a simple interactive game. The appendix is very useful with information on XHTML tags,

Javascript, and various coding systems. Very much recommended for someone starting out programming who wants to know what programming on the Internet is like in the year 2007 without already being an expert desktop programmer in C++ or Java. If you’re not familiar with the Deitels’ approach to technical books, they favor an example-based approach with lots of recipes in numbered steps and “live-code” examples that are usually color-coded so that certain portions of the code are highlighted as the text discusses each portion. For this subject the approach works well and keeps things moving. The product description does not show a table of contents, so I do that next:

Part 1: Introduction 1

1 Introduction to Computers and the Internet 2

2 Web Browser Basics: Internet Explorer and Firefox 28

3 Dive Into Web 2.0 50

Part 2: The Ajax Client 117

4 Introduction to XHTML 118

5 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 159

6 JavaScript: Introduction to Scripting 19

7 JavaScript: Control Statements I 234

8 JavaScript: Control Statements II 278

9 JavaScript: Functions 321

10 JavaScript: Arrays 362

11 JavaScript: Objects 403

12 Document Object Model (DOM): Objects and Collections 458

13 JavaScript: Events 487

14 XML and RSS 515

15 Ajax-Enabled Rich Internet Applications 588

Part 3: Rich Internet Application Client Technologies 635

16 Adobe Flash CS3 636

17 Adobe Flash CS3: Building an Interactive Game 683

18 Adobe Flex 2 and Rich Internet

19 Microsoft Silverlight and Rich Internet Applications 770

20 Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 830

Part 4: Rich Internet Application Server Technologies 857

21 Web Servers (IIS and Apache) 858

22 Database: SQL, MySQL, ADONET 2.0

23 PHP 905

24 Ruby on Rails 956

25 ASPNET 2.0 and ASPNET Ajax 1009

26 JavaServer FacesWeb Applications 1118

27 Ajax-Enabled JavaServer Faces

28 Web Services 1225

Part 5: Appendices 1303

A XHTML Special Characters 1304

B XHTML Colors 1305

C JavaScript Operator Precedence Chart 1308

D ASCII Character Set 1310

E Number Systems 1311

F Unicode 1325

Review by Devon Cayer for Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program (4th Edition)
Rating:
This book goes indepth into every possible web development code/means/software it’s simply amazing. I have good experience in C++ but none in web development, this book is akin to savitch’s book on C++, it’s very well done and very in depth I would highly recommend it to anyone who is eager to learn to do web design.

Review by RLC for Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program (4th Edition)
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This book is a required text for a class. Everyone, including the professor hates it. The book is not very thorough on most subjects covered (for my class), to the point the instructor has to create tutorials for every chapter. The professor is an actual working programmer not just an academic, so immediately his opinion gets a bump. I complete the homework by reading the W3 Schools documentation and Murach I only use the this over priced question set for the required homework questions. The book lightly brushes over topics say in Javascript then there is a program example and the actual usage of the topic is then either just as lightly explanined or at times not explained at all. Granted, one can get from the syntax how something is being used, but a thorough explanation of hows and whys is expected from a textbook!

I don’t know if this book reflects on the rest of the Author’s body of work, I am sure he is a great programmer just not so much with the teaching, or maybe just textbook aspect, but I am really not interested in buying anymore of his high dollar materials only to find out they akin to this one. I am left wondering: how does a book this poor get to a 4th edition???? Must be the politics of textbooks maybe there aren’t that many offerings.

Final recommendation – don’t buy this if you can at all help it.

Review by trash80 for Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program (4th Edition)
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This is used in our Web Admin class at school. It talks to a reader so lowly that it becomes monotonous and excruciating to read. It does not make a good reference as the information isn’t indexed well. The book does exceed in great lengths to explain every single detail of every aspect of every web building tool that one can purchase. It requires purchase of either Microsoft or Adobe products to use, there is no Open Source sources for use. Aptana is excellent for an Open Source web development tool. That is one area the book become specific, it details how-to on paid for products. Several classmates found the book to be just as bad. I learned more on w3schools in two days, than anything this book offers.

I gave it two stars only because it could be a great book for someone emerging from a cave and deciding to be a web administrator.

I have found this for several Deitel books. If you want excellent sources of information, get books from O’Reilly publishing, or Wiley publishing. Or better yet, search amazon by subject, and find a book with more than 20 reviews, and at least 4.5 stars.

Previous to this class, and this book, my experience as a web admin was minimal to none. Other parts of computing were quite familiar.

Review by Kay Dahlflower for Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program (4th Edition)
Rating:
I didn’t realize what a great book I was getting. It is a huge textbook that is well written and includes online resources. Overall, it is the best computer book I have ever seen, read, used, or owned. I recommend it to others.

Oh…and…Javascript and Java programming language are two different things (this book covers Javascript). I will look for more Deitel books in the future…and not just because I need a good book on Java programming.