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I recently reviewed the book that launched Prentice Hall's Negus Live Linux Series for Linux Magazine. Live Linux CDs is an excellent introduction to the wide variety of ways Linux Live CDs can be used (they're not just for Windows users to 'test drive' Linux anymore). I was curious however to see what a series of books based on live CDs would look like. Enter 'Practical PHP and MySQL'.

Jono Bacon (co-author of The Official Ubuntu Book and Linux Desktop Hacks) has taken an interesting approach in writing this book. The premise is to use a Linux live CD to teach the readers how to build eight specific web applications. How he does this is unique.

Kris Hadlock's book hits the ground running and you'd better have the "legs" to keep up. Quite a bit of information is crammed into the book's slim 288 pages however don't expect to start out with elementary JavaScript. Hadlock wrote this book with the web developer in mind, not the person who thinks they might want to be one someday. While most books would have a lengthy introductory chapter, Chapter 1, "Introduction to Ajax" is exactly two pages long. Not much time for a first meeting but perhaps enough for a reunion with someone you are already acquainted with.

Most books have a website that adds value to the original text publication. "HTML Dog: The Best-Practice Guide to XHTML and CSS" is the text that adds value to the original website. To quote from the site's "about" page: "HTML Dog has been dishing out healthy code treats since 2003, and currently serves up around 1,500,000 page views a month. The idea is to take the somewhat convoluted official specs for XHTML and CSS and present them in a much more readable fashion". Since this is a book review and not a website review, I will endeavour to read HTML Dog as a single entity (for the moment, anyway) and see how it stands up on its own (four) legs.

What can I say? The first edition of this book was a best seller. Linus Torvalds wrote the Foreward to the first edition. Most authors would give their eye teeth to have such a successful book on their publications list. Ok, ok...that doesn't mean the second edition absolutely must stack up to the first, but after all, that's what we're here to find out.

This book is not what you might expect from a Cisco Press title. If you are looking for the config register setting in a password recovery procedure or want to find out what happens to a data-link frame when its received on a router interface, don't bother with this book. This is not a prep guide for the CCNA, CCNP, or any other Cisco certification. If you don't know what show startup-config or show ip ospf database router mean, find another book. Alexander Clemm's text has nothing to do with those details.

I've been seeing a lot of Eric Meyer lately...well, at least his books and other references. About a week and a half ago, I reviewed his book CSS Web Site Design: Hands-On Training (Peachpit Press). A few days later, during my review of Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition - New Riders), I noticed that he was credited as the technical editor of the book's first edition. When I picked up my copy of O'Reilly's "CSS: The Definitive Guide" and saw that Meyer was the author I thought, "This guy gets around".

From the author's post on Amazon: My first book, "ppk on JavaScript", is about basic JavaScript. Not basic as in "simple scripts for simple sites", but basic as in "performing basic tasks", such as registering an event handler while making sure the this keyword continues to work, or knowing under which circumstances a string is converted to a number (or vice versa). All JavaScripters need such knowledge. If you're a standards-aware CSS wizard, this book is definitely for you. I wrote it with you specifically in mind..."

This book is not meant to be used alone. It is the 'companion guide' to the Cisco Networking Academy Network Security curriculum, courses 1 and 2. If you've ever taken any courses through the Academy, you know that much of the work is done online as well as 'hands on' with Cisco hardware and software. Books such as this one supplement the 'in-class' experience.

I'd never reviewed an O'Reilly 'Hacks' book before but the series comes highly recommended so I was looking forward to an enjoyable experience. Having time on my hands while waiting for Thanksgiving dinner (the turkey is slowly smoking on the barbecue as I write this), I pulled 'Network Security Hacks' from the stack and went to work.

Ever want to set up your own wireless hot spot? Eric Geier's new book professes to teach you how...the Cisco way. According to the introduction, this book is equally useful to the IT Professional or the average computer user who wants to construct a wi-fi accessable environment. This was the first Cisco Press book I'd seen that wasn't heavily laden with a large number of arcane acronyms such as OSPF, IGRP and BGP. I wanted to see if it met the standards for clear writing and accuracy I'd come to expect from this publisher.

This morning, I accidentally put my contact lenses in wrong (left in right eye, right in left eye) and when I got in my car to drive to work, I thought I was going blind. I quickly realized my mistake and fixed it when I got to my destination. My little misadventure is relevant because I got a similar feeling when I tried to read "JavaScript and Ajax for the Web". It's probably a consequence of the series format (and so the writers can hardly be faulted...blame the publishers instead) and as a result, I found it pretty hard to read this book let alone learn from it.

From the author's first paragraph in Before You Begin: "This book is for designers, developers, owners, and managers who want their sites to cost less, work better, and reach more people - not only in today's browsers, screen readers, and wireless devices, but in tomorrow's, next year's, and beyond..." Notice Zeldman didn't say the book is for people who want to build their first website and need to learn html, css, xml, and javascrpt. Please keep that in mind before considering buying this book.

Not trying to tip my hand or anything, but WOW! This is a very slick book. The text and graphics are very visually appealing and even the feel of the pages gave me the impression that I was in possession of a truly high quality book. Of course, if the content doesn't stack up, all that other stuff really doesn't matter unless you just buy books because of the "eye candy" factor. Does Meyer's book stack up? You're about to find out.

Having recently reviewed JavaScript Phrasebook by Christian Wenz for the Linux Tutorial site and Wesley Chun's Core Python Programming for Linux Magazine (due out in next month's issue), I was excited to get the opportunity to review the brand-new Python Phrasebook. Apparently Brad Dayley was also excited about writing this book as he states in the Introduction: 'I was excited when my editor asked me to write a phrasebook on the Python language. The phrasebook is one of the smallest books I have ever written; however, it was one of the hardest.'

SUSE Linux 10.1 Kick Start is part of SAMS new Shortcut Series. To bring you up to speed, here's a quote from the source: "Short Cuts are short, concise, PDF documents designed specifically for busy technical professionals like you. Each Short Cut is tightly focused on a specific technology or technical problem. This may be a cutting-edge new technology that shows great promise, or it may be an existing technology that has reached the "tipping point" and is about to take off." Visit the Shortcut Home Page for more information on this series.

One of the reviews in the front of this book states in part: "Dear PHP, It's over between us. You can keep the kitchen sink, but I want my MVC..."

It's sad to see a relationship break up but apparently something better came along. While I've already been sold on Python, I wanted to know how TurboGears stacked up as a Python framework and how well the Ramm/Dangoor/Sayfan book presents it. Since Kevin Dangoor created TurboGears, I imagined that "Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears" wouldn't lack for technical accuracy (of course, you never know) but would it really help me to "...get productive with TurboGears - fast"? Let's find out.

If you've never studied JavaScript before, don't buy this book...yet! Christian Wenz's JavaScript Phrasebook is not written for the "drop dead newbie" to JavaScript. You might learn a few things from this book if it's your first introduction to JavaScript but more than likely, you'll also end up confused.

I've just finished two reviews on Ubuntu related books (The Official Ubuntu Book published by Prentice Hall, August 2006 for The Linux Tutorial site and Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks published by No Starch Press, August 2006 for Linux Magazine...appearing in the October 2006 edition) so I wasn't really interested in chapters titled "What is Ubuntu", "Installing Ubuntu" or "The X Window System". To some degree, all Linux distro instructional texts must cover the basic information about what Linux is and how it works so I'm not trying to be cynical. However, when you've read the same material in book after book, it tends to get old after awhile. I was more interested at what made this book different. What makes Ubuntu "unleashed"?

I have to confess, I was looking forward to reviewing this book for a personal reason...I recently installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop. I took a rather secret thrill in deleting Windows XP Professional and replacing it with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu can be configured and managed from the desktop for the most part but occasionally, you may still have to open a terminal session to get some work done.