PHP 5 Fast & Easy Web Development (Fast & Easy Web Development)

Rating:
Summary: Clear demonstration of how PHP works got me rolling!
Review: I have the original version of this book-I've been overdue in its deserved praise. At least I've bought another worthy title by the author, "Teach Yourself MySQL". This version adds sections on the burgeoning XML and MySQLite and some other stuff. My idea of programming is that you don't want to expend undue effort to understand a book about a programming language or even the language itself. Your energies are best applied to your actual task at hand. That's the beauty of this book(and of PHP!). The clear, staightforward and simple examples of how PHP actually works got me rolling and I've gone on to create some rich and feature packed dynamic websites. The reference sections are quite useful too, though they are not comprehensive- www.php.net fills in the holes.

Rating:
Summary: "ok" for web developer, coding errors are troublesome
Review: This is an "ok" book for web developers. It has some nice features if you can get past the amount of errors in the coded examples and the sometimes confusing and contradictory explanations. There is very little discussion of basic concepts, therefore, I would not recommend this book for anyone who does not have some programming background.
The title, PHP 5 fast & easy web development, is indicative of the book's contents. It provides a series of potentially useful PHP scripts that you can adapt to develop database interactive web pages (emphasis is on the MySQL database). However, like the 2nd edition of Julie Meloni's "PHP fast & easy web development," this book is plagued with coding errors which are not only annoying, but also make understanding the various features of PHP more difficult.
The book starts with instructions on how to install PHP, Apache and MySQL. The remainder of the book consists of a series of increasingly complex scripts, detailed step-by-step. For the first half of the book, the examples are relatively easy to read and carefully documented. However, halfway through the book, segments of code begin to appear without adequate explanation, and as the book progresses, it becomes more a cookbook of code to retype rather than a clear explanation of what the code mean. Instructions about where to insert new lines of code are difficult to follow. In addition, some explanations appear contradictory, which adds to the confusion. The errors in the coded examples are excessive. I can understand a few typos, but lines of code that are substantially different or are missing completely can be found in every chapter. This is unacceptable and unprofessional in a book that is supposed to help you learn a new programming language.