Aravind K (web development manager) said
Agreed that Marty Hall knows how to write and produces great books. Knowing this, I can heartily recommend his more recent "More Servlets and JSPs" as it provides more relevant up to date information. For the Java side of things, this offers the most bang for your buck.
When this book first came out, it was attempting to cover the gamut of web development technology, and tried to go from CGI up through JSPs and the coverage was ultimately spotty. For a more focused approach to servlets and JSPs, read Hall's later books. For a better historical perspective on the evolution of web programming, look at "Web Application Architecture - Principles, Protocols and Practices" by Leon Shklar and Richard Rosen.
Pace Ripley said
I would be the first person to say that Marty Hall is a gifted writer. His books on Servlets and JSP are my favorite computer books, but this book is far from great. The style is cold, the material delivered too fast with too little explanations and all in all, the attempt to cover everything in one fell swoop fails. I was using the book in a class that tried to cover the material the book does, and as a learning resource it is way too shallow for thorough knowledge, more as an 'In a Nutshell' style instead.
If you want a good Javascript book, get 'Practical JavaScript for the Usable Web'; if you want a good Java book, well, look someplace else.
Spare yourself a book you will not enjoy reading (and get Marty Hall's 'Core Servlets' instead!).
Anonymous said
This was used in an MBA-level course on "Development of Web-Based Applications." The course centered on the management of application development, and the actual web-development component of the course was pretty light. However, I've used this book as a resource before and if you use Java this is a must-have.
Anonymous said
This book is great for a beginner. It covers the basic of HTML, Java 2, JSP's, Servelts, and some javascript. Examples are clear and easy to understand.
Petar Banicevic said
Before I bought this book: I knew about html basic elements such as head, body, p, and a few more. I had to use tools to create web pages and I never knew how it really works, and I didn't use any advanced elements. Now I can do web pages much better, use CSS and many other cool things.
This book is so well organized it has good approach, from easy elements to harder elements. It covers very interesting topics starting with text elements (for beginning), frames, css, java introduction, java programming, basic 2d & 3d graphics, mouse and keyb. events, layout managers, awt components, swing, threads, network programming (excellent one), and finally server side stuff (java server pages, servlets,jdbc...).
My wish would be to remove java programming sections, since java programming is too big and to complex to show it in 2 or 3 sections, also there are plenty java programming books around. However this is just my opinion.
*All* of the examples are SHORT and INDEPENDENT: you don't have to read all chapters in a row to be able to understand the example. Each topic has it's own nice and small example which exactly points out the essential things. I really hate reading a book from beginning to the end, therefore I hate when whole book is based on one example which grows as you go further - THIS BOOK IS NOT LIKE THAT, althow more examples would be even better.
Finally, this is one of the best books I own, the only negative mark is that java programming should be removed, as well as awt, and instead more java script should be present, however this problem is easy to overcome by buying one of numerous java script books (recomended: JavaScript Bible by Danny Goodman).
Sorry for typos, good luck to all, bye !
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