Beginning CouchDB (Expert's Voice in Open Source) Review

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Beginning CouchDB (Expert's Voice in Open Source) ReviewWith such a fast-moving target as a pre-1.0 app like CouchDB, this book does a good job of bringing you up to speed on CouchDB and some of its supporting tools like CouchApp. It is a noticeably gentler pace than the definitive CouchDB guide (focusing on brevity and concepts) and tries to give more explanation in a step-by-step fashion.
However, overall the book doesn't deal with the "why" so much as the "what". This is good to get you started with, but will not be a book I would likely refer back to much. As a niggling point, there are small but annoying differences between code & corresponding text in several places, and each chapter seems to use a different example. Some continuity would both smooth things out, and make the book feel more cohesive. The introduction to javascript and JSON was useful to me, but more skilled web 2.0 people will not see the need for this. As a beginner, the RESTful approach could have been worth elaborating on. Some parts of the book feel faster-paced than others - perhaps depending on your existing knowledge.
Finally, I was less than impressed with the PDF version of this book. The images are low-res and therefore largely illegible, especially in the later stages of the book. A lot of the images were unnecessary. The sample code can't be cut and pasted, which for me was one of the top 2 reasons to grab the PDF version. This could be the Mac Preview app I am using but still it's annoying that you can't download the code snippets from anywhere, nor cut'n'paste the content from the PDF.The publisher could easily address the points above, especially in the online version. This is a good get-started book but will likely suffer from rapid aging as the CouchDB ecosystem continues to grow.
Beginning CouchDB (Expert's Voice in Open Source) OverviewWe often talk about Cloud Computing, but this is an actual, concrete piece of it. And it does reside on a normal PC right in front of you, not on distant servers on another continent. This book gives a beginning developer a way into manipulating cloud data without having to pay homage to SQL gurus or giving money to cloud providers. The tech is there and it works now. We show you how.

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JavaScript and Ajax for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide (7th Edition) Review

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JavaScript and Ajax for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide (7th Edition) ReviewThe audience for this book is beginning/novice web developers with a knowledge of HTML but not of JavaScript. The book begins with an introduction to basic JavaScript language features and then proceeds to work through a number of examples according to category (images, frames, browser windows, forms, regular expressions and strings, user events, and cookies). After, there are two chapters on AJAX fundamentals.
The book does not claim to be an in-depth resource. The general purpose of the QuickStart series of books is to provide an overview of the main concepts and practices in use by web developers today. It is meant to be a STARTING POINT to introduce novices to technologies, not as an in-depth reference. The authors of this and other QuickStart books point this out continually, yet still get bad reviews from people who have not taken the time to read about the purposes of various series from technical publishers. This is unfortunate for the public as well as unfair to the authors.
A previous reviewer mentioned what he took to be atrocious coverage of Ajax. The book contains two chapters exclusively covering Ajax. The first covers the fundamental techniques used to take advantage of this combination of technologies. The second chapter explores some of the popular Ajax toolkits currently available. This is consistent with the purpose of the book. Some readers may be interested in heading down the development path, yet others may be more interested in design and in using pre-existing tools. This book caters to both and has no intention of deceiving either reader.
The following quote is a good example of this. It is an excerpt from the title page of Chapter 16, which follows the introductory chapter (basic XMLHttpRequest usage, etc.) and precedes the Ajax toolkit chapter:
"[Writing] Ajax applications can be difficult. They often require a great deal of knowledge of working with the DOM, CSS, JavaScript, and server resources. Since this is a book for beginning scripters, we've shown you how to do some easy things with Ajax, so you can see that learning Ajax techniques is well within your reach. But many books have been written that are completely devoted to showing intermediate-to-advanced scripters how to create Ajax applications, and our Ajax chapters are no substitute for that kind of in-depth exploration."
As for the dual-column formatting that some reviewers disliked, it is consistent with the formatting of the entire QuickStart series, as well as the QuickPro series of the same publisher. The format is nice for tackling specific techniques in a concise amount of space. It is not as abstractly engaging as conventional technical books, but it is not meant to be. The format is excellent for explaining techniques (especial design techniques) as well as for conveying a sense of quick forward momentum.
I've only recently started reading books from Peachpit Press. I like these books because they get me up to speed quickly, and act as a comprehensive starting point, allowing me to understand "where I need to go from here."
This book is excellent as a broad introduction with lots of real-world examples. If you're a novice web developer with a decent grasp of HTML wishing for a comprehensive introduction to JavaScript and practical JavaScript techniques, this is the book for you.
However, if you're well-grounded and are looking for more in-depth coverage of JavaScript and Ajax techniques, "Professional JavaScript for Web Developers" (Nicholas Zakas / Wrox Press) and "Professional Ajax" (Zakas, et. al. / Wrox Press) are excellent in-depth resources geared toward real-world professional development, and both are among the best peer-reviewed titles in existence on these subjects.JavaScript and Ajax for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide (7th Edition) OverviewThis task-based, visual reference guide has been fully revised. It uses step-by-step instructions and plenty of screenshots to give beginning and intermediate Web designers what they need to know to learn JavaScript. Readers can start from the beginning to get a tour of the programming language, or look up specific tasks to learn just what they need to know. In this updated seventh edition, readers will find new information on Ajax design and modern coding techniques.

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