Rating: 
Summary: I really don't like this book
Review: After looking all the good review, I decided to give it a try. But I don't like this book because:1) Too many text. It's like reading a story book. The paragraphs usually cover 2/3 of the pages. It's hard to read (at least to me). 2) Too few diagrams, which I found are very important in programming books. 3) The sample app is hard to install. I am still trying to make it run.
Rating:
Summary: I really don't like this book
Review: After looking all the good review, I decided to give it a try. But I don't like this book because: 1) Too many text. It's like reading a story book. The paragraphs usually cover 2/3 of the pages. It's hard to read (at least to me). 2) Too few diagrams, which I found are very important in programming books. 3) The sample app is hard to install. I am still trying to make it run.
Rating: 
Summary: Short and sweet
Review: After reading one review of this book about how short it was(and not that great a resource), and, after first seeing how small the book was, I was afraid that this review might be correct. But it has turned out to be the exact opposite. It gets right to the classes and configuration specs you need to get at in short descriptions and examples. I read "Programming Jakarta Struts" by Cavaness the week before, and found the content in Spielman's book almost as rich. I would use this book more as a learning tool and Cavaness' book more as a reference. I thought the cdmanager app example code was very good - although the source jar was not organized as required by the build.xml file(about my only criticism).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book - Straight to the point
Review: As a reviewer, I believe that the code examples were very high quality and showed the most important apsects of the Struts framework. As a developer, I've used this book to jump start my Struts-based application development. I especially like the "Struts Development Cycle" that describes best practices for designing, implementing, and deploying a Struts project. This book has valuable insights that you won't find anywhere else.
Rating:
Summary: Good book for experienced programmers
Review: As an experienced programmer who has bought books where the first half of the book covers the absolute basics of programming and the last quarter of the book is an outdated reference to an API, this book comes as a breath of fresh air.
This is a good inexpensive book for intermediate to advanced JSP and Servlet programmers to get up and running on the basics of Struts 1.1 in no time. It can be terse at times, but if you stay the course and finish the book (it's a short read at 126 pages) everything comes together nicely.
I have seen some negative reviews of this book and I think they stem from unreasonable expectations. This book is not for beginners. This book is not a "cookbook" or a reference book. This book does not cover the advanced features of Struts. For people looking for books like that, I recommend "Programming Jakarta Struts, 2nd Edition" or "Pro Jakarta Struts, 2nd Edition".
Rating:
Summary: Software Application Download Available
Review: As the author of the book, I want to address Mr. Jones' comment regarding the companion web site. There is an extensive Struts 1.1 application that is available for download to accompany the book at the companion web site. The reason the site was not available when Mr. Jones tried it is the unfortunate result of the publisher's site being in the middle of a site re-design. The publisher is aware of it and has the web master working on it. This has been unfortunately delayed by the holidays. However, I'm assured that the site should be back up shortly. I apologize on behalf of Morgan-Kaufmann and I hope Mr. Jones reconsiders and keeps the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing more than stratching the surface
Review: Even the user and dev guide comes with the Struts 1.1 binary is better than this book. The author just touched some basis here and there, without going into any details. Buying it is a waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!!
Review: Great book. Short, sweet, to the point. Well written. I can say that I haven't seen many books that pack such a technical punch page for page. Struts 1.1 is no longer a stranger to me.
Rating:
Summary: Bulls-eye---- right to the point
Review: I am a new Struts developer and found the Jakarta Struts site pretty hard to follow to get the information I needed. I purchased this book based on the reviews it has been getting and found it to better than I had expected it to be. It helped me totally understand what all of the Struts 1.1 components are, how
to use them, along with details on how to use the custom tags. This booksaved me days of plowing through source code and javadocs and now I'm ready to start my application development. Good job! I wish more books were written straight to the point and as useful as this one is. I really got a lot more than I paid for, for once in my life. I'll look for more books by this author. It was a real treat to have such a technical subject laid out in such an easy reading format. Bravo
Rating:
Summary: Not very practicle
Review: I bought this book in haste and I should have looked at it more closely. Although very imformative, you would need a good knowledge of Struts to really understand what she's talking about. The book is too wordy and lacks complete examples. Example are in snippets and don't give you a "complete" story of what is going on. If you are trying to get a grasp of how Struts works I would suggest skipping this book.
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