Active Books

Has a very broad content for beginners. But one off the thinks that makes this fly art incredible is the surrounding, and in B&W you may get a little depress when you are reading it!

This book is listed as 368 pages. Thankfully there were only 349. I thought I was reading a novel. Each chapter began with a verbose, and usually self backpatting, 4-5 page introduction of the authors personal conquest while fly fishing. It took me so long to read, that I was out of time to return it. I sincerely believe the "meat" of this book could have been communicated in less than 200 pages, and probably less than 100 if color photos(other than the 10 pages in the center of the book that were of no benefit) were used. Actually, few photos of the "how to" were shown,the sketches carried most of the weight. Most of the black-and-white photos were of an already caught fish that bolstered the authors standing with his audience. L.L.Beans books are done and offer more info. Let's cut to the chase so that we can get back on the water. I would not recommend to beginner of advanced fishermen. I think that any book that includes fly tying or pictures of fishing flies commands color photos. How many fishing lures have you ever bought from a black-and-white catalog?

I am very disapointed with this book. McNally wastes a lot of time pumping himself up by telling us about how he won some distance casting contests back in his prime, how fly line used to be labeled when he first got into fly fishing, and other useless info. His section on fly casting is pitiful and provides no real information to a beginner. The funniest part is his fly casting problems and remedies - I've seen better information on an index card. His section on fly tying is also useless.

The final offense is that in several pictures of trout, McNally describes how the trout was handled gently and released carefully. Then in the saltwater fishing section, he catches a small dolphin and shows a picture of himself gaffing the dolphin with a caption that reads "Dolphins are good eating!".

McNally might be a great fly fisher but his book as awful. I would recommend the LLBean book over this one for beginners anyday.

I'm reading this book right now and I love it! I used to read his articles years ago in Field and Stream and Outdoor Life and Sports Afield and I'd forgotten what a fine writer he was. I like the way he tells good stories while he's taking fishing and even though I can't yet get to some of the places he's writing about, he sure makes me want to be there. This is the sort of book that a book lover will enjoy and a book lover who is also a fly fisher will especially enjoy every bit of it! My husband, Tom, who is a writer himself, also has read it and is every bit as keen on it as I.

just a quick word about this wonderful book: within two months of reading it, and having never fly-fished a day in my life, i took 23 creel-size trout in two days from Helton Creek, North Carolina. this book guided me throug the purchase of all my equipment, and instructed me on all the techniques in using it. in the nine months since i first read this book i have caught all three species of trout, countless pan fish, crappies, small- and large-mouth bass, and one baracudda. i highly recomend it to anyone interested in fly-fishing.

Good book condition. Thank you.

I am very much intrested to get this book. You see I am in India and this book is too costly for me to get. So I request you to release this book in Indian edition.

Good content but poorley explained at times.
Usefull for ATL controls as it has usefull information, if only it was better explained with more complete examples then it may have rated a 5. Still I believe it is a usefull book but I would welcome a later edition which gave controls a fuller explanation.

The main thing that I have against this book is that its is neither "Professional" nor "Beginning" book. Authors spend a lot of time talking about things that should be familiar if not obvious for professional COM programmer, but fail to spend enough time on subjects that really matter like ATL. Although they stated that no prior knowledge of ATL or COM is required, if this is a case you probably won't understand the book at all. Good example is OLE DB chapter: talking a lot about relational database theory, ODBC, OLE DB but not enough about ATL database access templates. It's a typical bloated book teaching you how to repeat the project that authors did and nothing else. If you have some COM experience this book is a waste of time (you won't learn ATL from it - at least not as much as you would like). If you are new to COM you won't use it either, as it will not explain COM or ATL enough for you to understand.

I read this book & recalled the Charles Petzold days. Let me tell you I am not reminiscent of those days. However, their introduction reminded me of Petzold's Programming Windows 3.0 book. That's how antiquated I believe the introduction to be. The same holds true for the remainder of the book & its coverage. The only good thing I can say about this book is the fact that it mentions classes such as CComBSTR. When transitioning from MFC to ATL, MFC die-hards try to make a strong argument in favor of MFC with CString. Besides the fact that MFC can be contained in ATL @ the expense of code dependence & a larger memory footprint, CComBSTR allows for a counter offensive. @ any rate, @ one point, the author himself considers getting back on track so as to avoid having the reader throw the book away. I must confess, a short while after, I did just that! I believe, your time is better spent elsewhere...

Active Measures by Alexander Court is an exciting book. From the very beginning, I found the story intriguing and informative. I look forward to Alison Carter's next mission.

This is an excellent read and gives a unique insight into psychological espionage from the perspective of a Physician-Assassin. If you like spy and political intrigue-type novels, then you will really like this one. If you are more the Historical Novel-type and historical accuracy is a must, then you might get distracted by some of the author's historical "liberties". As far as the criticism about proper Swedish spellings etc, if you are the kind of person that bases your judgement of a book's enjoyability on such things. then this one isn't for you. If you like spy thrillers with an interesting point of view, check this one out!

A Physician who moonlights as an Assassin. Interesting. An exposee of a friendly governments treatment of its refugee "problem", provocative. A look into the power elites solution to this problem ,interesting and hopefully flawed. This is just one layer of this onion though. (I won't give it away to the readers who are actually reading this as a hint as to whether to buy this book.)But, suffice it to say the deeper the main character gets into this onion,the more rotten it becomes.Extremely Provovative. I was unsure as to the purpose of this book though . Was it written as an excuse to uncover and expose this rottenness or, merely telling a tale in a "damn the torpedoes ,straight ahead" style . There are some factual errors that belie very flawed research ,you'll see them referred to if you read the other reviews.
Also you'll find some plot jumping,and the odd credibility gap.But its that "Extremely Provocative" layer of the onion that make this worth a read. And I'll give one hint here ,its not the Swedes who end up with the blackest eye.
Would be glad to hear from any Swedish people regarding the true situation in your country regarding refugees.I'm aware that is a problem in several European nations.

I really enjoyed this book. I picked it up in an airport for an East to West Coast flight. It is a fun thriller that takes an interesting historical premise and pushes it to the limit. A lot of Swedish readers seem offended, but this makes the book more intriguing. Is there truth to the author's claims? Is he getting close to a touchy subject? There are a few editing mistakes, but sadly, what modern book doesn't have them. This book is a solidly good political thriller. It is there to be enjoyed, not to be scrutinized as reference material.

I'm a swede myself, so I wonder of what country A.Court actually is writing about. Because I don't recognize Sweden in his version. First I thougt he had mixed up Sweden with recent Serbia, but in the final chapters I wonder if he havent had Afghanistan in mind. His background research looks like it's based on some (small) recent history reports but mainly on some more-then-typical tourist broschures. I thought that you could expected more of a "world-recognized operational expert" in the field of destabilize governments and psychological warfare. Anyway! I'm not insulted. I havent read such a funny novel in years. Its funny because its so stupid. Its true that nobody can learn Sweden about lying of its history(especially when it comes to WWII) but if anybody thinks he know something about how its in Sweden after he had read this novel, he is terribily wrong.

This should have been an excellent book. I bought it after carefully considering many other books with similar focus (including reading the Amazon reader reviews). I've been using DW since version 2 and certainly didn't want a basic primer. This book promised to zero in on exactly what I wanted: using DWMX to create dynamic sites with ASP.

All 5 authors seem to be knowledgeable and competent writers; a single author wrote each chapter. But IMO this book sorely needed editing for overall consistency and comprehensiveness. The whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

I suppose I was expecting something structured along the lines of Wrox's "Beginning ASP Databases": an ongoing, easy-to-implement tutorial that illustrates all of the theory in a consistent manner.

But the tutorials in this book were fragmented and difficult to follow, each one using different conventions, and often omitting information (which was sometimes found in later chapters but would have been useful earlier).

I'd love to see a second edition of this book that takes all of this information but presents it in a more cohesive manner. As it is, in order to set up PWS and get any of the examples to work, I had to rely heavily on other books and online tutorials (notably the Webthang tutorials for DWMX). It's been an exercise in frustration.

Being a beginner to the world of database driven web applications I found this book somewhat useful. My only major beef with the book is that in my experience using the tutorials and exercises and trying to apply them to ASP.NET, the screens and server behaviors didn't match up correctly leaving me scratching my head and randomly searching Dreamweaver's pull-down menus for the correct item to match my current tutorial step? Now I'm not sure if this book was just too early for the .NET world and I am trying to apply the latest and greatest technology to a inappropriate book or if the marketing for this book was just too ambitious? Overall a decent book, but don't bank on this being your "bible" if you are working in ASP.NET.

This book was a total let down.

I had great hopes when I scanned the contents of the book, but the whole book is badly written, and gives an overall impression of being rushed through.

There are far better books for creating dynamic sites with Macromedia products, and I strongy urge anyone to seek alternative reading.

Very disappointing.

This book is not for beginners. So if your new to data driven web sites, This book is not for you. Its starts of with just a few pages telling you about the new advances made within dreamweaver and just dives straight in at the deep end about the dynamic stuff. WHY CAN'T THESE AUTHORS WRITE IN A SIMPLE MANNER? They seem to assume that evrybody knows as much as them. Anyhow can I have my money back, please?

I went through this book and can now design dynamic data-driven ASP pages. Since Macromedia is focused on Cold-Fusion it is a relief to have a reference that explains using DreamweaverMX with ASP. There are more hosting providers available offering ASP hosting (at a reasonable price) than offer Cold Fusion (usually adds 20 or more US dollars a month to the base cost of hosting). So it is "cheaper" to work with ASP. I found this book to be very helpful and highly recommend this to anyone who wants to move from static pages to dynamic. It covers all the basics you would need to connect to a database and build recordsets and use the behaviors in DWMX. There is tons of info on the internet also. This book taught me a lot in a short amount of time and then I found all sorts of sites on the internet that had tutorials or free downloads. After reading this book I was able to understand the things on these various websites. I could then zero-in on a particular solution to something I was doing for a client's site and get the answer either from the book or from an online source. The foundation I got from this book has enabled me to dive deeper into DWMX and take better advantage of its many tools. I had a design background (Quark, Illustrator etc) and needed to make the jump to the "dark side" - programming and handcoding. This book de-mystified those scary subjects and I am now seeing lines of code in my sleep.

I already had good success learning HTML and Javascript from other Weekend Crash Course books and put it to use at work. So I expected the same from this book. After 23 chapters of things I already knew about HTML and Visual Basic, Mr. Smith begins his application. Like another reviewer here, I was absolutely lost. (The errors in the book don't help.) I loaded his eOrganizer example from the CD, changed the connection to the Access database I built according to chapter 22, and I can't get any further.

His insistance on structured programming is the death of his lesson. I know the value of structured programming, but structure has no value if I can't write a program. The basics should be taught before forcing style upon the reader.

I need to connect web pages to databases. Sorry, Mr. Smith, I'll have to buy a different book to learn how.

ASP 3 Weekend Crash Course by Eric A. Smith is a good book to teach a beginner how to get started with Active Server Pages. The early chapters do a good job to ease the reader into ASP and provide him or her with a good foundation to build upon. Unfortunately this book has fallen victim to a number of typos, which can frustrate the reader. The approach of the book is to build up one's skills and then utilize each in an application (called eOrganizer). Unfortunately there are problems with some of the code and even the application that can be downloaded from the web site needs to be tweaked to work right.

In summary- I feel that this book needs to be corrected and reissued. If all revisions are done, this book will be an excellent resource and worthy of more than 2 stars.

Perhaps the words "Crash Course" in the title are just a bit to seductive for the newbie to ASP and VB Script. As a reader of many programming and application books over the years, (but in no way a professional programmer), I flipped through the book at the store and was pleased to find a "spoonfull" approach to the coverage of material. As a professional trainer, this was really a good sign so I bought the book.

First the good news. For someone who needs a brief yet understandable introduction to HTML, SQL, and Database design, this book was up to the challenge. The explanation of the role ASP plays in Web development was also clear. So I entered the material on VBScript with high hopes. That's when things began to go downhill.

First, if I had not had some knowledge of what a function or subroutine is I would have been totally lost. As it was I was stretching to understand. When I hit the section on "structured code" I really hit the wall. Here I was, coming from learning HTML and some JavaScript, being presented with the idea of generating all of my pages in ASP! (I don't dispute the advantage of this approach but this was not the place to put this material! (Just looking at all the "Write Lines" stressed me out!

I then began to run into many instances where I think the author assumed I knew concepts and terms. A whole bunch of information on server variables, "includes", and error handling blew me away, so by the time I got to databases and the application piece (eOrganizer)it was all over. Nothing really hung together at all. Objects, methods, collections, includes, etc.,all fogged my brain. How do they work together?

In all fairness, my rating is based on how the book met my needs as a non-professional programmer with limited experience in writing code. I was interested in learning the concepts involved in creating database driven web pages for training and educational purposes. I had a basic working knowledge of HTML,exposure to Javascript and Access, and WYSIWIG editors like FrontPage, so I wasn't completely ignorant. I believe learners like me would benefit from a more comprehensive book that adequately covers the vocabulary,concepts,proceesses involved in developing ASP. I would also suggest an approach that builds an actual application throughout the book (similar to Paul Wilton's excellent book "Beginning Javascript". I just don't think the "examples" throughout the book are robust enought to teach a concept.

I am convinced that there is no way for the "beginner" be ready to do anything productive after reading a "crash course"type book. They may be fine, however, for developers who already understand quite a bit about application development. I know the siren song of titles like "learn in a weekend" or "21 hours" may be smart marketing ploys but not very effective as training tools.

If the title and description of this book appeals to you, you should buy it! I like to pick up programming languages when I get tired of reading other things, and this is the best self teaching book for a language that I have ever read! ASP came surprisingly easy with this book, especially since to use it you really need to also learn HTML & SQL. This book explains ASP and gives you just enough HTML & SQL to get cracking. The only thing that was missing was a JavaScript primer, and as one of the reviewers already mentioned not all of the source code is on the CD ROM (no big deal to me, at least). If you are looking to create dynamic web content, I reccomend this book as well as it's companion for Java Script.

In the future, I will always look for this series of book when learning a new language!

This book will take you from zero to intermediate level in fewer pages than I've ever seen. Its objective is to be concise and easy to read and it achieves that. But expect to invest in a reference like ASP in a Nutshell if you want to go any further. (Most notable omission from the book is the File System Object.) As for whether one can absorb this book in one weekend: if you can program Web pages in another language, and you have a long attention span, that is not impossible, but most programmers will take one to two weeks. Crash courses like this are for those who are no strangers to programming. If you've never programmed before (HTML is not a programming language!), you are likely to find the pace of this book daunting.

What ever happened to one of the authors? His website went to pot and so did his blog. Quite sad actually. Then again, it goes to show that he probably doesn't care much for his readers and or people trying to report inaccuracies or criticisms of the book.

My vote? Never buy a book from someone that doesn't support their readers and gives them the proverbial finger when they go to the author's own website looking for a way to contact them.

This book has a great name but the book does not contain any substantial information related to debugging. Most of the information in the book are not for serious programmers.
My strong suggestion is do not buy this book for ASP.NET debugging or for ASP.NET as some of the reviewers have mentioned.

Title of the book is great and that's what I expected in the book. Unfortunately the book is below standards and if you are serious ASP.NET programmer this book is not for you. I have done extensive ASP and ASP.NET programming and so I am aware of most of the problems that occur nearly everyday when developing large enterprise level applications and I tried to finding these issues and best ways to detect them in this book , sadly it has no mention of the problems nor best suggestion for debugging ASP.NET. Additionally in order to make it a book they have topics highly irrelevant to the actual title which should have been the first chapters of some beginner books

There are good chapter about Tracing, code structures, and ADO.net debugging, and lot more. A must have for .Net Web developers. Code examples are in both VB and C#. I wish Author have included more code for COM based debugging.

To a certain extent, I find this title a bit of a misnomer, as this particular tome contains more than simply debugging. It is well structured to relate these additional topics to debugging, but it is a pleasure to go through a book that both covers its subject and many of the peripheral issues that can help you debug, as well.

While this book is not heavy on OO, which would make a nice additional topic, debugging OO or procedural is largely the same.

There is a good mixture of both C# and VB.NET code, which I applaud. It is important to know that debugging is the same, regardless of language.

I do have a slight beef with the amount of code that resides in the ASPX file. This comes from my belief that the separation of code and UI, via a CodeBehind file, is an important part of .NET. You may disagree with this assessment.

There are some good examples of using tracing in your applications. Tracing is a great tool to find where you are having problems. There is also a nice section on logging your application exceptions.

The material on caching, although not completely related to debugging, is a nice addition.

The book, overall, is aimed for more advanced readers. I think a beginner might be able to tackle some of the material, and probably should, but understand that you might get a bit lost if this is your first ASP.NET book.

This is a great book to get up and running with MOM 2005. After reading this, I suggest reading Microsoft(R) Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed (MOM): With A Preview of Operations Manager 2007 (Unleashed) to really solidify these concepts and fill in the gaps.

Well written, supply the technical information needed. Little long prolog but in the end well written and easy readable.

Are you a first-time MOM administrator? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Chris Fox, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that gives you what you must know in order to have a solid foundation for planning, implementing, and administering MOM 2005.

Fox, begins by bringing you up to speed on the basic concepts of operations management and how to get MOM 2005 up and running in your environment. Then, the author takes you through the components and tasks that you'll be working with most often as an administrator. Finally, he discusses the specific issues you'll encounter when using MOM in a larger environment, with a variety of platforms.

This most excellent book will help you get your job done. More importantly, this book helps you deploy MOM 2005 in large enterprises with heterogeneous platforms.

I just don't understand how can anyone rate an "essentials" book not good enough for not having enough details or "beef" in it. I have to give it 5 stars to make it fair. This book is great if you are absolutely new to MOM, it will get you there to install it and customize it at a basic level. I believe that the author gives you enough detail to let you drive on your own after this test drive. It really made my implementation easier, I gave the book to a coworker and he had about my same views. Just remember, if you are not new to MOM look somewhere else.

I had now purchased both of the available MOM books, both seem to cover roughly the same material, but neither really has any meat to it! I would have given this 3 stars, but unfortunately, the author makes a boring topic even more boring.

Yes, this book relies on CLC kits, and is tied to CLC. No, it does not provide stand alone plans. On the other hand, it is a good read, and provides a clear, concise overview of the assembly process for these boats- which is why I bought it in the first place.

Hi
i bought this book for the plans actually , but as other pepole said the plans are pretty useless , everything in them are very tiny .
if i read the reviews before i probably wasnt buy the book

This is a good book. Clear conceptions are presented. Good ideas and techicnics. building plans are a little limiteds and you will need some skill to make it usefull, but this is a book to people who has some skill. So the middle point is that books makes directions in sale building plans, may be this is the better idea to a kayak homemade. Plans could be more clear and you don't need to use a lent to read this font numbers or break your mind thinking how do somethings. To avoid this you will need to buy authors building plans.

The Kayak plans are detailed enough. No need to order the plans separately.

I think that if you don't have any background in stitch&glue it is a good start with.

I have found the book very useful.

This book did not meet my expectations. It does offer good wood working advice, and basic instructions of how to build a kayak, but the "complete plans" "for three new boats" listed on the cover consist of only three to five pages of tiny drawings for each boat. The author also encourages the reader to "buy the plans, or kit, before building any of the kayaks. If I bought the kits, I would expect the directions to come with them, and I feel a bit hosed for paying $15 bucks for a collection of little more than advertisements.

... but not very useful if you have a few games under your belt. It's the extreme basics of the game. If you're new, it's a worthwhile read, but otherwise skip it in favor of a heftier guide.

"A Complete History of Paintball" would be a better title.

This is a realy good guide if you are just starting or if you haven't started yet. It was not a help to me at all to me because i am a pretty expirianced player. The articles are written by expirianced players, but the book makes it seem like they are writing to begginers. I would not spend money on this if you are already got a grip on paintball, but it will help nonexpirianced players get a good idea, and if not, they could change the plan and have a complex stratigy! There were a whole lot of articles that got off the subject as well. The maker needs to make another book for more expirianced players to read and still get help or better ideas.

This is an excellent starter guide. It lets experts guide the beginner through a great way to get started. More advanced players may be bored with the slower pace, but beginners will enjoy it and welcome some of the repetition. The title "Ultimate" does not mean "Complete". For that, I would get the "Complete Guide to Paintball" (2nd edition). Or, do what I did and get both.

If you have been playing paintball for a while this book covers a lot of what you already know but I bet you will learn some new stuff too (excellent chapter on barrel technology). If you are new or relatively new to paintball then this book is perfect for you. It covers a wide range of topics including how to buy new and used equipment. At about the cost of a hopper full of paint this book is a good deal. Get this book and save yourself some money, time, and pain!

I found the book useful when I started in writing ASP, however, after I got through the book, I found it lacking as a reference and choose a more detailed reference to keep on the shelf.

I had to start ASP one year ago. I felt over this book in a bookstore and I never needed an other one. You have to have knowledge in programming and internet-technologies, so if you never have coded anything, forget this book. When you know how to handle Windows NT in the Internet, this book is a must.

This book is one of those that you buy and shelve due to lack of samples and references.. If you already know VB then this might help you. However, I find the ASP books by "Wrox" to be a better investment for my money, in addition they also have a website and a message board that provides you with ongoing support. It's not one of those I got your money and run situation. We're not asking for the history of the Internet.. but some decent samples and explanations would be nice..The author of this book should ask himself one question..why would someone buy a computer related "How to book"..

If you are a fairly experienced VB programmer you will cruise right through this book with a good overall understanding of how to port your VB knowlege to ASP. The examples in this book are very good. For just about any task, you can find an example like it, or an example that you can alter slightly in this book

This book is the greatest ASP book of all time (in my opinion). Many people have seen my copy and bought their own due to its excellent content. It is a great book for VB developers to start out with ASPs. The only negative point is that interdev 1.0 is used in the examples instead of 6.0. It is better to understand the code though.