Rating: 
Summary: Poor introduction to PHP and general programming
Review: I already know Perl and C++. Learning PHP was very easy for me using this book. That being said, I don't think I would have had such an easy experience without my previous knowledge. Butzon leaves out several important concepts such as file IO and advanced searching with regular expressions. He talks nothing of modules and libraries. He seemed to write the boook with the intention of getting readers hooked on MySQL for all their database needs. PHP By Example is fine for experienced programmers to learn the basics of PHP, but I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone else.
Rating:
Summary: Poor introduction to PHP and general programming
Review: I already know Perl and C++. Learning PHP was very easy for me using this book. That being said, I don't think I would have had such an easy experience without my previous knowledge. Butzon leaves out several important concepts such as file IO and advanced searching with regular expressions. He talks nothing of modules and libraries. He seemed to write the boook with the intention of getting readers hooked on MySQL for all their database needs. PHP By Example is fine for experienced programmers to learn the basics of PHP, but I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone else.
Rating: 
Summary: Very helpful book
Review: I had an advanced knowledge of HTML before reading this book as well as some C++ and Perl. Right from the start I loved this book. I read it through in 2 days and most of the basics stuck in my memory. Butzon is straight to the point with everything and shows you examples of how everything works and can be put to practical use. I still use the book as a referance if I forget something.
Rating:
Summary: Very helpful book
Review: I had an advanced knowledge of HTML before reading this book as well as some C++ and Perl. Right from the start I loved this book. I read it through in 2 days and most of the basics stuck in my memory. Butzon is straight to the point with everything and shows you examples of how everything works and can be put to practical use. I still use the book as a referance if I forget something.
Rating: 
Summary: pass Buy Oreilly instead
Review: I have been on QUEs web site and been trying to get the corrections for this book for a while but its a no go. QUE sends me the standard try the web site-which is worthless. The errors start from early on (even the table of contents says "Getting started with programming HP" missing the leading P.) I have been able to slug through but you better know a fair bit of HTML and programming if you are to tackle this book (you will have to correct the mistakes yourself) <if anyone figures out whats wrong with ch07ex08 let me know I am going over it and found several mistakes but after a day I am starting to think there is something big I am missing>
I have learned more from Programming PHP by Oreilly. and by reading and altering portions of SquirrelMail.
Rating:
Summary: pass Buy Oreilly instead
Review: I have been on QUEs web site and been trying to get the corrections for this book for a while but its a no go. QUE sends me the standard try the web site-which is worthless. The errors start from early on (even the table of contents says "Getting started with programming HP" missing the leading P.) I have been able to slug through but you better know a fair bit of HTML and programming if you are to tackle this book (you will have to correct the mistakes yourself)
I have learned more from Programming PHP by Oreilly. and by reading and altering portions of SquirrelMail.
Rating:
Summary: Pass on this one
Review: I know nothing of PHP, but know quite a bit of HTML. I thought this book would have much by the way of examples so I could learn PHP. But, I found this book to be hard to crack, since there are hardly any examples to follow (never could understand why the book was titled PHP BY EXAMPLE). And what examples there are, assume that you are an experienced programmer. I fell apart after the first chapter but gave it my best shot to understand the author's poor writting and explainations. I can't wait to sell this book to my nearest Half Price Bookstores. This was a real waste of my money!
Rating:
Summary: Badly paced and out of date!
Review: I picked this book up because I needed to learn PHP and really liked the 'XML by Example' book in the Que series. This book does not work very well, however. The pacing is too slow, with lots of the book's content spent laboring through trivial language elements (control structures, functions, etc.). In the final example, when the book culminates in a useful Web application (a simple, MySQL-based guestbook program), the reader who tries to get the code to work discovers that the book is out-of-date, relying on global variables and session management information that is done very differently in current releases of PHP. I was able to debug the example with help from O'Reilly's 'PHP Cookbook', which helped with everything except figuring out a way to get my money back for this turkey.
Rating:
Summary: Badly paced and out of date!
Review: I picked this book up because I needed to learn PHP and really liked the 'XML by Example' book in the Que series. This book does not work very well, however. The pacing is too slow, with lots of the book's content spent laboring through trivial language elements (control structures, functions, etc.). In the final example, when the book culminates in a useful Web application (a simple, MySQL-based guestbook program), the reader who tries to get the code to work discovers that the book is out-of-date, relying on global variables and session management information that is done very differently in current releases of PHP. I was able to debug the example with help from O'Reilly's 'PHP Cookbook', which helped with everything except figuring out a way to get my money back for this turkey.
Rating:
Summary: Best ever on PHP
Review: I tried several books, including the welling thompson one.This book is the best, straight to the point and easy to understand. Highly recommended for anyone new to php and keen to learn fast.
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