Rating: 
Summary: Not for the beginner...
Review: Don't do it!! If you're new to programming, I recommend staying away from this book. It teaches programming using programming language. It's like trying to learn Greek by reading a Greek newspaper. Here is an example from the book, it explains what an environmental variable is:
"Environment variables are used to store options and parameters that customize the application environment. Applications can access the values of environment variables and adjust their behavior accordingly." If this example didn't make sense to you, don't expect the author to clarified it any further. For the most part, the entire book is written using programming jargon and not much plain English at all. Here's another example, (one of my favorites):
"A database table should contain only atomic values. That is, no column should have a composite value." I am sure this means something to someone, but to explain atomic values by saying they're not composite values is far from plain English! I nearly threw the book after reading this! Nowhere did I find a simpler explanation of what is meant by atomic values. I guess the author thought "not composite" was sufficient enough. I had to get this book for a class. I have read over half of it and still have no clue how to program with php. I actually experience anxiety when having to complete reading assignments from this book because I know it will only cause confusion and frustration. Plus I have yet to figure out if there is any logical order to the way the material is presented. Each chapter seems to be independent of itself - not building on much of the previous chapters. All in all, a very disappointing book. Despite the title, this is not a beginner's guide. If you already understand programming than maybe this will help you learn php. But if you are new to programming, stay away from this book... far, far away!
Rating: 
Summary: Get a book with debugged code
Review: Don't waste your money I bought this book after reading the reviews here and my experience with one of their other books (A Beginners Guide Flash MX, this was a very good book). I have had nothing but a headache trying to get the code to work from chapter 4 and 5. I've given up and don't recommend this book to anybody until the code is debugged. I feel I shouldn't have to go to PHP sites to get help in debugging code. Too bad from the reviews it looked promising but alas buy another book on introductory PHP.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book
Review: Great book. I use it more as a reference book now, and it basically never leaves my desk. I constantly use it, and have bookmarks throughout it. I'm not sure how great it would be for a novice programmer, but if you under stand x=x+1 you should have no problem learning php with this book.
Rating:
Summary: Very Nice
Review: I have been coding php for about 4 months, I had read the documentation over at php.net alot. It still felt that i was missing out on something and I needed more. So my next option was a book. I picked this one and its great. It gets my thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: Very Nice
Review: I have been coding php for about 4 months, I had read the documentation over at php.net alot. It still felt that i was missing out on something and I needed more. So my next option was a book. I picked this one and its great. It gets my thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I started web development writing out pages and pages of HTML and started to want a little more from my websites. I decided to learn a web programming language, and php was the language that i chose. I decided that if i were really going to learn the language, i would need to buy a book on it. After looking for a while, i found this book and from the reviews and other sources, it looked like a great book. After reading through the first couple of chapters and learning the basics of PHP i knew i had bought a good book. My favorite part about this book is the vast amounts of code snippets that it has incorporated into it. I can just look up something in the index, go to the page, type the code into my website, and that feature will be added to my site. I would suggest this book to anyone who wants a quick introduction into the PHP language. You dont need to know any previous knowledge about php, for it starts from the basics and works its way up.
Rating:
Summary: Condescending and Incomplete
Review: I, for one, don't expect myself to know anything about a topic when I first start reading a book around it - especially when that book has the word 'Beginner' in the title. However, I DO expect the author to know quite a bit, and to pass on that knowledge. Others may find it excusable that, with recent releases of PHP (meaning 4.2.0 and later), the scripts in chapter four won't actually work with a default PHP configuration - but I don't. I found it infuriating to have such a result, especially since it took me about an hour to resolve. (Kudos to php.net's page on 'Using Register Globals' for explaining things.)
Also, what kind of author calls a project a 'Busy Box?!' C'mon. That's all I can say. C'mon. Osborne has put out some excellent books (such as Herb Schildt's C++ books), but this one is _not_ up to their standard. It's an easy read, and a reasonable way for an experienced programmer to pick up PHP quickly (aside from the aforementioned caveats), but there have GOT to be better books out there.
Rating:
Summary: Condescending and Incomplete
Review: I, for one, don't expect myself to know anything about a topic when I first start reading a book around it - especially when that book has the word 'Beginner' in the title. However, I DO expect the author to know quite a bit, and to pass on that knowledge. Others may find it excusable that, with recent releases of PHP (meaning 4.2.0 and later), the scripts in chapter four won't actually work with a default PHP configuration - but I don't. I found it infuriating to have such a result, especially since it took me about an hour to resolve. (Kudos to php.net's page on 'Using Register Globals' for explaining things.)
Also, what kind of author calls a project a 'Busy Box?!' C'mon. That's all I can say. C'mon. Osborne has put out some excellent books (such as Herb Schildt's C++ books), but this one is _not_ up to their standard. It's an easy read, and a reasonable way for an experienced programmer to pick up PHP quickly (aside from the aforementioned caveats), but there have GOT to be better books out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as bad as they say
Review: The examples in this book are decent. It has a path from beginner to intermediate that is acceptable. I think its main setback is that it doesnt really get into how the data is being parsed based on the code you write. Something he doesnt explain in the book that I found out the hardway (getting laughed at by the geeks in efnet-#php) is that globals are not turned on by default. This book assumes they are and doesnt tell you what thats all about. I would recommened this book to someone who doesnt want to learn php, but is more interested in stealing some codebits to put some projects up quickly. While I refer to it from time to time, when I do, im usually looking for the mickey mouse approach which this book seems to embrace. I wonder if I am allowed to say mickey mouse in a review.
Rating:
Summary: Code examples need work.
Review: This book looked promising from the reviews. The code examples were buggy, I stopped trying to work through this book and picked up PHP Essentials by Julie Meloni and had a much better experience. There are better beginner books, get one of those instead.
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