The Official Bbedit Book

Rating:
Summary: Outdated, bloated, hack job...
Review: A pale shadow of the BBEdit v4.5 manual -- don't buy this book. As a long-time user of Bare Bones BBEdit, I eagerly awaited the release of "The Official BBEdit Book," seeking to learning more about harnessing the awesome power of BBEdit and perhaps some of its secrets. Bitter disappointment is my description of this 381-page 'hack job.'

It's dated, only covering BBEdit 4.0, the previous version. This doesn't bode well, considering it's an "official" book. Mention of BBEdit 4.5, the latest version, amounts to one sentence with no mention of MacOS 8 or new features like contextual menus and the Table Builder. One of BBEdit's most important and powerful features Global Regular Expression Parser (GREP), has a scant 5-1/2 pages devoted to it. Absent are adequate explanations, insight or examples of real world GREP. In contrast, BBEdit v4.5's slimmer User Manual contains a superior section on GREP. Contrary to the title page, the included CD-ROM does NOT contain, "...tools and extensions not available elsewhere."; they are included on the BBEdit v4.5 CD-ROM or elsewhere.

Much of the text is taken up with HTML coding and tags, which is admirable since 90 percent of users buy BBEdit for that task, but a more accurate title might have been "Creating Web Pages with BBEdit." Also, the chapters on HTML, Perl and Frontier seems to have been recycled from other sources and are of limited value.

Forget this book -- it's a poor imitation of the User Manual with some web coding added for bulk. My advice -- buy one of Lynda Weinman's excellent html design books and BBEdit v4.5. You'll be better rewarded and learn much more than "The Official BBEdit Book" could ever teach you.

Rating:
Summary: Outdated, bloated -- BBEdit's user manual is better!
Review: A pale shadow of the BBEdit v4.5 manual -- don't buy thisbook. As a long-time user of Bare Bones BBEdit, I eagerly awaited therelease of "The Official BBEdit Book," seeking to learning more about harnessing the awesome power of BBEdit and perhaps some of its secrets. Bitter disappointment is my description of this 381-page 'hack job.'

It's dated, only covering BBEdit 4.0, the previous version. This doesn't bode well, considering it's an "official" book. Mention of BBEdit 4.5, the latest version, amounts to one sentence with no mention of MacOS 8 or new features like contextual menus and the Table Builder. One of BBEdit's most important and powerful features Global Regular Expression Parser(GREP), has a scant 5-1/2 pages devoted to it. Absent are adequate explanations, insight or examples of real world GREP. In contrast, BBEdit v4.5's slimmer User Manual contains a superior section on GREP. Contrary to the title page, the included CD-ROM does NOT contain, "...tools and extensions not available elsewhere."; they are included on the BBEdit v4.5 CD-ROM or elsewhere.

Much of the text is taken up with HTML coding and tags, which is admirable since 90 percent of users buy BBEdit for that task, but a more accurate title might have been "Creating Web Pages with BBEdit." Also, the chapters on HTML, Perl and Frontier seems to have been recycled from other sources and are of limited value.

Forget this book -- it's a poor imitation of the User Manual with some web coding added for bulk. My advice -- buy one of Lynda Weinman's excellent html design books and BBEdit v4.5. You'll be better rewarded and learn much more than "The Official BBEdit Book" could ever teach you.

Rating:
Summary: Way, WAY Out of Date!
Review: I am a fan of LeVitus, and a huge fan and enthusiastic user of BBEdit. And I can't fathom why anyone would want a book that covers only through BBEdit 4.5, when the current version (with numerous significant changes) is BBEdit 7.03. Save your money, and apply it to purchase of BBEdit 7.03.