Slashdot Book Reviews
Plone 3 Multimedia
Trevor James writes "Plone 3 Multimedia is an excellent book focusing on adding multimedia including images, audio and video files to a Web site built using the Plone 3 CMS. Overall this book has a nice balance and mix of text, screenshots and code. I recommend the book for Plone power users including Plone developers and users who want to enhance and expand their core Plone multimedia arsenal. You'll get more out of this book if you already have a Plone site running but want to add more multimedia based capabilities to it." Read on for the rest of Trevor's review.
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Plone 3 Multimedia
Trevor James writes "Plone 3 Multimedia is an excellent book focusing on adding multimedia including images, audio and video files to a Web site built using the Plone 3 CMS. Overall this book has a nice balance and mix of text, screenshots and code. I recommend the book for Plone power users including Plone developers and users who want to enhance and expand their core Plone multimedia arsenal. You'll get more out of this book if you already have a Plone site running but want to add more multimedia based capabilities to it." Read on for the rest of Trevor's review.
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R In a Nutshell
joel.neely writes "R is a statistical computing environment that is fully-compliant with state-of-the-art buzzwords: free, open-source, cross-platform, interactive, graphics, objects, closures, higher-order functions, and more. It is supported by an impressive collection of user-supplied modules through CRAN, the 'Comprehensive R Archive Network.' And now it has its own O'Reilly Nutshell book, R in a Nutshell, written by Joseph Adler. I am pleased to report that Adler has risen to the challenge of the highly-regarded 'Nutshell' franchise. As is traditional for the series, this title mixes introduction, tutorial, and reference material in a style that is well suited to a reader who already has a background in programming, but is a new or occasional user of R." Read on for the rest of Joel's review.
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Groovy For Domain-Specific Languages
RickJWagner writes "This is a book targeted primarily towards the Java programmer who doesn't yet know Groovy. Groovy is a dynamic scripting language that runs on the JVM and offers easy integration with the Java language. Groovy also offers dynamic language features that lend themselves to the creation of DSLs (Domain-Specific Languages). This book attempts to simultaneously teach the reader how to use Groovy and how to build a DSL." Keep reading for the rest of RickJWagner's review.
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Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook
RickJWagner writes "This book takes an interesting path to teaching Plone 3 development. Unlike most software instructional books, it starts way back in the often-unread Preface by listing 10 requirements a mythical customer is asking the reader to implement in Plone 3. The requirements are realistic and I think would probably be quite a stretch for an inexperienced Plone developer. The rest of the book is dedicated to implementing those 10 features, and coaching the reader on Plone 3 development along the way." Read on for the rest of Rick's review.
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Magento 1.3 Sales Tactics Cookbook
Dmitry Dulepov writes "Magento is a very popular open source e-commerce platform. It was created by the company named Varien in 2007. Varien worked with osCommerce but it did not suit Varien's expanding requirements. After writing more and more changes to osCommerce, Varien finally wrote its own e-commerce software from scratch. It took Varien seven months in 2007 to publish the first public version of Magento." Read on for the rest of Dmitry's review.
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SketchUp 7.1 Architectural Visualization
dango0 writes "SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization – Beginner's Guide is a detailed guide that will figuratively take you by the hand and teach you how to make stunning photorealistic and artistic visuals of your projects with free software and free resources that you can find all over the Internet." Read on for the rest of Dan's review.
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Blender 2.49 Scripting
terrywallwork writes "A few days ago I received an email from Packt Publishing informing me of their new Blender 2.49 Scripting book. I was very interested in reading this book as there are very few Blender books that cover the scripting aspect of Blender 2.49 and Python. So I navigated my way to the packt publishing website and ordered myself the ebook version. They were having a special at the time and I ended up getting a full color ebook for less than £9. If nothing else the price is extremely impressive." Read on for the rest of terrywallwork's review.
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Blender 2.49 Scripting
terrywallwork writes "A few days ago I received an email from Packt Publishing informing me of their new Blender 2.49 Scripting book. I was very interested in reading this book as there are very few Blender books that cover the scripting aspect of Blender 2.49 and Python. So I navigated my way to the packt publishing website and ordered myself the ebook version. They were having a special at the time and I ended up getting a full color ebook for less than £9. If nothing else the price is extremely impressive." Read on for the rest of terrywallwork's review.
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Pentaho 3.2 Data Integration
diddy81 writes "A book about the open source ETL tool Kettle (Pentaho Data Integration) is finally available. Pentaho 3.2 Data Integration: Beginner's Guide by María Carina Roldán is for everybody who is new to Kettle. In a nutshell, this book will give you all the information that you need to get started with Kettle quickly and efficiently, even if you have never used it before.The books offers loads of illustrations and easy-to-follow examples. The code can be downloaded from the publisher website and Kettle is available for free from the SourceForge website. In sum, the book is the best way to get to know the power of the open source ETL tool Kettle, which is part of the Pentaho BI suite. Read on for the rest of diddy81's review.
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CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development
RickJWagner writes "CodeIgniter is a multi-purpose, open source PHP web application framework that can dramatically reduce the amount of coding required in developing a full-featured website. This book promises to introduce the reader to the most productive APIs and demonstrate their usage with minimal code snippets. In that regard, I think the book lives up to its promise." Read on for the rest of RickJWagner's review.
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Windows 7: The Missing Manual
r3lody writes "It took me a little while after Windows 7 became available before I gave up my Windows XP desktop and purchased a new laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium pre-loaded. Like those who endured the change to Windows Vista, I found myself floundering around a little trying to figure out all of the new bells and whistles Microsoft had added to its operating system. Windows 7: The Missing Manual by David Pogue is meant to address the needs of people like me. The book, while readable by beginners, is written for users with some acquaintance with Windows. Advanced users will find the book too simplistic, but users up to the intermediate level will find it a handy reference to the new features in all of the flavors of Windows 7." Keep reading for the rest of r3lody's review.
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Joomla! 1.5 Beginner's Guide
TimKrause writes "I just recently received Packt's new Joomla! 1.5 Beginner's Guide by Tiggeler. If you're new to Joomla!, this is one of the best titles out there in terms of helping you get started with your first (perhaps second or third) Joomla! site. Tiggeler does a nice job covering all of the basics: everything from downloading and installing Joomla on a server, configuring it, and confirming the installation to working with and then removing the sample data that Joomla provides. The book lives up to its promise by including a chapter that promises the reader they'll have a site up and running in about an hour. Based on my own experiences, I suspect that, for most intermediate developers, Tiggeler is right; for beginners, expect to take a little more time." Read on for the rest of Tim's review.
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Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging
johnmccollum writes "A wealth of tools are available to debug and test Django applications, but knowing when and how to use these resources can intimidate the new user. Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging, by Karen M. Tracey, aims to walk the user through the process of creating a web application from scratch, ensuring that the resulting code is bug-free and ready for production." Keep reading for the rest of John's review.
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Drupal 6 Attachment Views
Trevor James writes "Green's book is without a doubt the definitive practical guide to using the Views 2.x module in Drupal 6, and to creating complex and dynamic page, block, and attachment-based views for your Drupal site. One big plus to this book's structure is that Green uses a real "live" production website project as a guide (he states early on that he was working on the site build for the client while writing the book and that the client approved of using the site build as the book's main example) — all of the chapters and subsequent tutorials are focused on building a site for a company that specializes in hiring out contractors and subcontractors. It's nice to see real-world examples being used in a computer tutorial book, especially one focused on Drupal and Drupal Views. The data Green is accessing is real data and this helps to engage the reader and show the multitude of real situations that a developer will get involved with when developing Drupal Views." Read on for the rest of Trevor's review.
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The Design of Design
asgard4 writes "Coming up with sound, elegant, and easy to implement designs is not a trivial matter, as Fred Brooks, author of the classic book The Mythical Man-Month, acknowledges in his latest book The Design of Design. In many disciplines — especially in software development — the design process and how to produce good designs is relatively poorly understood. Teaching the design process to students is even more difficult. In the form of opinionated essays, Brooks attempts to summarize what we know about the design process, how it has changed over time, and how we can produce better and more elegant designs. Brooks has decades of experience designing large systems and is well known for his involvement in the design of IBM's OS/360. Even though Brooks is a computer scientist, the book applies equally well to many other disciplines outside of software development that have a formal design process, such as architecture. A lot of his examples come from other engineering disciplines and architecture. But of course he presents the obligatory OS/360 case study as well." Read on for the rest of Martin's review.
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Programming Clojure
eldavojohn writes "Programming Clojure by Stuart Halloway was very near to the perfect book for me. It covers many things common to many Lisp languages while highlighting in moderate detail the things that make Clojure unique and worthy of some attention. The book spends a large amount of time dealing with the intricacies of interfacing fluidly with Java (down to a package rewrite inside a large project). This fits me perfectly as a Java programmer, and I now feel ready to experiment with peppering functional language capabilities into an object oriented language. The book also strives to show how to simplify multithreading through functional programming, which is good because I find multithreading in Java a serious headache that few are good at. Programming Clojure, released in May 2009, is currently the only book out there devoted to Clojure, and the introduction is written by the language's creator, Rich Hickey, who says, 'What is so thrilling about Stuart's book is the extent to which he "gets" Clojure.' The book earns its place on the Pragmatic Bookshelf by guiding the user through rewriting a part of Ant into a new build tool called Lancet — adding to the project what you just learned about Clojure at the end of each chapter." Keep reading for the rest of eldavojohn's review.
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Matplotlib For Python Developers
Craig Maloney writes "Ever since there was a collection of numbers, it seems that invariably someone will want a graph of those numbers. There are literally hundreds of different styles of graphs, and almost as many programs and tools to make those graphs. Matplotlib, a library and toolkit for the Python language, provides an easy and effective way to make some impressive graphics with little more than a smattering of Python. Matplotlib for Python Developers is equally impressive at distilling the core set of features of Matplotlib in a way that shows the reader how to get the most out the Matplotlib toolkit." Read below for the rest of Craig's review.
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Hacking Vim 7.2
briancarper writes "Vim is an open-source text editor with a power and flexibility matched only by the steepness of its learning curve. As the author of this book states, 'Vim Can Do Everything' but configuring it to do so is sometimes daunting. Hacking Vim 7.2 aims to help the average Vimmer get the most out of customizing Vim, for fun and productivity." Read on for the rest of briancarper's review.
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CMS Made Simple 1.6
cnymike writes "CMS Made Simple 1.6: Beginner's Guide by Sofia Hauschildt, recently published by Packt Publishing, is intended for new users of the open source content management application, CMS Made Simple (CMSMS). True to its title, the book delivers in all respects and provides a solid foundation from which to grow as you explore the rich possibilities of building sites with CMS Made Simple. The author, Sofia Hauschildt, is a consultant, programmer, and tutor and has a gift for communicating in a straightforward, readable manner. The technical level of writing never exceeds that which could be easily understood by a neophyte. The book does assume that the reader has some knowledge of HTML and CSS." Read on for the rest of cnymike's review.
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