Tag: Book review
All the articles with the tag "Book review".
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Book review: Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook
Over the past few months, I’ve been doing technical reviewing for a great Windows Azure book: the Windows Azure Development Cookbook published by Packt. During this review I had no idea who the author of the book was but after publishing it seems the author is no one less than my fellow Windows Azure MVP Neil Mackenzie! If you read his blog you should know you should immediately buy this book. Why? Well, Neil usually goes both broad and deep: all required context for understanding a recipe is given and the recipe itself goes deep enough to know most of the ins and outs of a specific feature of Windows Azure. Well written, to the point and clear to every reader both novice and expert.
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Book review: Refactoring with Visual Studio 2010
Yet again, Packt Publishing has sent me a book for review. For once, one without the typical orange/black cover but instead a classy white/black cover: Refactoring with Visual Studio 2010 by Peter Ritchie. Since my book shelf is quite heavy on the Packt side (really, almost have their complete collection I guess, they keep sending me books), I was a bit in doubt if I should write yet another review for one of their books as I think I’m starting to sound like a Packt marketing guy. After reading it though, I thought that this book deserves some credit!
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Book review: PHP 5 E-commerce Development
Once again, Packt Publishing has asked me to do a book review on one of their latest books, "PHP 5 E-commerce Development” by Michael Peacock. The book promises the following: All of this is true, but… Not all is negative of course! The writing style is good and provides an easy read. Next to that, all concepts and pitfalls that go with building an online commerce site are well explained. Still, my advise on this book would not be “buy it”.
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Book review: Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development
My book shelf is starting to look a lot like the warehouse of Packt Publishing: I’ve received yet another book from them. Different from all previous reviews I did: this one is a PHP book, titled “Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development” by Keith Pope. A chapter overview: Let’s also state the obvious: Zend Framework evolves much faster than publishers. The framework is now at 1.9.6, while the book covers 1.8.0. Do not let this stop you from reading this book! Let me explain why… These 2 points actually summarize the whole book. Great read, great content and a must-read for everyone who is not completely sure about his application design skills. Congratulations, Keith!
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Book review: Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0
It sure looks like August 2009 is the month in which I found multiple books on my doormat for review. Last week I did ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Development, this time I’ll be reviewing a competitor to my own book on ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly: Simone Chiaretta and Keyvan Nayyeri’s “Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0”. Let’s start with the “official book overview”, which I usually copy-paste from Amazon. This book will learn you: After doing some reading over the weekend, I can say this book is great! It follows a different path than most of the ASP.NET MVC books out there today: of course it offers the basic introduction to ASP.NET MVC, it talks about models, controllers, views, …, however: it also covers more advanced topics like dependency injection (using NInject).
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Book review: ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Development
From time to time, the people at Packt Publishing send me a free book, fresh of the presses, and ask nicely if I want to read it and write a review on my blog. Last week, I received their fresh ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Development book, written by Curt Christianson and Jeff Cochran, both Microsoft MVP (ASP.NET and IIS). According to the website, the book aims at learning people how to build a CMS. Now, I know from writing my ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly book that these texts are written mostly by marketing people.
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Book review: Learning Ext JS
For a project at one of our customers, we’re building a rich web application using the Coolite web controls in ASP.NET MVC. Coolite is a great product, wrapping all Ext JS widgets in an ASP.NET control. Upon ordering a license for both, we received two free copies of Packt’s “Learning Ext JS”, providing better insight in what’s going on behind the curtains of Coolite.
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Announcing my book: ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly
It’s been quite a job, but there it is: Packt just announced my very first book on their site. It is titled “ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly”, covering all aspects ASP.NET MVC offers in a to-the-point manner with hands-on examples. The book walks through the main concepts of the MVC framework to help existing ASP.NET developers to move on to a higher level. It includes clear instructions and lots of code examples. It takes a simple approach, thereby allowing you to work with all facets of web application development. Some keywords: Model-view-controller, ASP.NET MVC architecture and components, unit testing, mocking, AJAX using MS Ajax and jQuery, reference application and resources.
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Book review: Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2008
Another book review, this time for Packt’s “Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2008”. The book introduces you to the main types of testing available in Visual Studio Team System 2008 for both desktop and web applications, and then walks you through deploying, running, and interpreting the results of tests. The book starts with an overview of why you need testing and then lists all available test types in Visual Studio 2008. It also explains the differences between a stand alone Visual Studio 2008 and a Team Foundation Server backed version. Each chapter thereafter covers one of the test types in detail: unit tests, web tests, advanced web tests, load tests, manual tests, …
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Book review: ASP.NET 3.5 Social Networking
Last week, I found another book from Packt in my letterbox. This time, the title is ASP.NET 3.5 Social Networking, written by Andrew Siemer. On the back cover, I read that this book shows you how to create a scalable, maintainable social network that can support hundreds of thousands of users, multimedia features and stuff like that. The words scalable and maintainable seem to have triggered me: I started reading ASAP. The first chapter talks about what a social network is and proposes a new social network: Fisharoo.com, a web site for salt water aquarium fanatics, complete with blogs, forums, personal web sites, …