Author: Dan Cederholm
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What a wonderfully easy book to read, 2008-10-02
This is an excellent book. Dan writes in a style (get it! CSS) that is easy to read, consistant in all chapters, and the content is just excellent. Clearly he isnt just a web designer, and knows how to write. This book is excellent for beginners' like me. I would suggest a read of something like Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML(which is excellent to get you started) beforehand, as I did, then move onto this book. This is one of those web books that is a must have, as although it is slim, it is packed with easy to learn goodies.
He has another book, which although I havent read looks in a similar style and quality (skimmed through it). Read this book early on, and it will help you a great deal (dont wait till you develop bad habits).A must buy for the web designer.

Author: Simon Collison, Andy Budd, Cameron Moll
By FRIENDS OF ED

A good book if you know basic CSS!, 2010-02-09
I like this book because it explains exactly the things I always wondered how to manage them like round corners, shadows, and much more other more advanced CSS styling!

A recommandations for everybody who would like to improve their CSS skills!

Christophe

Author: David Powers
By friends of ED

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best php oop book out there, 2009-07-13
read several of the various php oop books arround and can honestly recommend this one as the best arround.

Well written, nice examples and understandable - what more do you need

Author: Jeremy Keith
By FRIENDS OF ED

The most lucid book on DOM scripting yet!, 2010-03-17
This is simply the most lucid book on DOM scripting yet! I am not an Anorak and I don't normally read textbooks from cover to cover but this book was an exception. If only more programming books were written like this. Well laid out, a gentle pace, lots of examples of what to do and what not to do. I read the first 120 pages in one sitting and created the examples as I went along! The section on unobtrusive JavaScript is particularly well explained and made me rethink much of what I have gleaned from other JavaScript manuals. Others have criticised the fact that code is repeated as the author develops the final code. I found this a useful device as it allowed me to develop the code at the same pace as the author explained it's evolution.
If you are already well versed in using JavaScript with the DOM this is probably not the book for you but if you have been using JavaScript and parts of the DOM but need to progress to using the full power of both I think this book is an excellent starting point.

Author: Jonathan Lane, Steve Smith
By FRIENDS OF ED

Great book, tells you everything you need!!, 2010-06-07
Great book, tells you everything about website design and the history of the internet that you could ever need to know! Very easy to read.

Author: Jeff Fulton, Steve Fulton
By FRIENDS OF ED

My favourite book on Flash and ActionScript for games., 2010-06-23
I finished reading the whole book a couple of weekends ago, and I finally feel ready to code something on my own. I wanted to wait until I'd read it all to give a review of the whole book, and not just the general feeling I got from the beginning.

Essential Flash Games is a really well structured book! The authors show you how to iterate and build your game up in stages, and write re-usable frameworks and code, but also how to keep things simple and meet deadlines -- which is quite a hard balance. It's a good example of using object oriented code without labouring the point, and even better -- not doing things in an overly oop approach for the sake of it (all the code is object oriented, but there's no mention of design patterns or anything too academic). Their code doesn't try to be too clever or show off, it's clear and simple.

It's quite a practical book, I feel like I've been given some tools and been shown how to use them to build something of my own, and not just what they showed in the book. They never preach, and instead will guide you through different phases of learning, showing you different approaches as you learn that achieve the same things in alternative and often better ways, and encouraging you to experiment and go back to re-implement things the way you prefer them.

It's about 600 pages long, but I managed to get through it in a couple of months reading it in spare time in evenings and on the weekend -- typing out all the code and fixing mistakes I made myself as a learning exercise. It's not for absolute beginners though, it's not going to hold your hand and tell you what a for loop is, or explain what a class is -- everything is taught by example, which I found works really well. With some initiative you can patch up any gaps in your knowledge from other sources.

The pace of the book ramps up quickly in a way that didn't leave me feeling left behind. There's a lot of ground they cover, like mouse and keyboard controlled games, Vector art created in Flash, tile based bitmap and non tile based vector art drawn in code and rendered as bitmaps for performance. A couple of games also cover enemy AI, which I found a tantalising introduction that has encouraged me to look further in those areas. I found that the chapters got better and stronger as the book went on. The absolute best game was the Neo-Retro Asteroid/Geometry Wars style game they have which has particle effects, and a mini map -- which was surprisingly easy to add!

The other chapter I really liked a lot was the overhead driving maze game they wrote -- the stuff I learned here to scroll the tile based world will really come in handy when I try my hand at other games by myself -- like a 2D scrolling platformer. I feel I have learned enough to go out and discover what I need on my own now to make a genre they didn't cover in the book.

They also show you how to profile your games for performance, and adjust your game's special effects accordingly to help keep gameplay smooth on computers of varying performance.

There's a lot of good advice on other aspects of game creation along side the ActionScript, such as considerations on copyright, and ways to create and distribute viral games with Mochi Ads in. Also, they suggest ways of making/sourcing art for your games if you're not good at graphics yourself.

I've got about 30 book on Flash/ActionScript, and this is probably the first book I'd go out and buy again.

Author: Rob Bateman, Richard Olsson
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Author: Keith Peters
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Very helpful and informative, 2010-07-13
I needed quite a lot of help with ActionScript 3 as I'm not much of a programmer, but I love animation, and have to keep up with technology as it gets developed. I found this book to be an enormous help. I highly recommend it to those who are at "entry level" regarding ActionScript 3.

Author: Rex van der Spuy
By FRIENDS OF ED

Excellent book, 2010-04-16
This book is everything you need to get started with programming games.
Thourough description of techniques and workarounds for different problems.

If you are slightly impatient this book will give you answers in no time.

Author: Craig Grannell
By FRIENDS OF ED

The Essential Guide to CSS & HTML Web Design (Essentials), 2010-03-07
Having done some web design using DW4 I thought I knew something about web page construction. Now having read only the first few chapters I realise how little I understood. This book is an excellent reference covering the historical aspects of visual text presentation all the way to
the complex aspects of CSS. I certainly recommend this as a must read and good value. The Essential Guide to CSS & HTML Web Design (Essentials)