Its an average book as I said. Got me generating web pages in an afternoon.

I eagerly picked up this book after attending a very impressive demo of Curl's capacities. Only skimming the two chapters on Object Oriented Programming, I concentrated on the other chapters most relevant to GUI developers of Web-based applications.

Being an ardent practitioner of the W3C's Cascading Style Sheets technology, I was a bit disappointed in Curl's implementation of styles, which seems clumsy and very limited, even considering the differences in syntax. The authors were very knowledgeable on HTML and CSS issues -- which made their reliance on tables for layout a bit disturbing. Does this indicate that Curl lacks equivalents for CSS positioning and layout properties -- or merely that the authors did not happen to see this as important enough to include in examples?

I was dissatisfied with the paucity of examples and the fact that these examples were not of the type of depth to glue the various parts of Curl together. There were some good examples involving 2-D and 3-D graphics which showed the technology to advantage. However, if your primary interest is in form-based Web applications, the examples were sketchy.

The book really needs to have context. Criticism of Java, HTML, JavaScript, etc. is not enough.
The authors must speak more directly to the questions:
{}Does the Web world need another proprietary, Java-like browser plug-in?
{}Does the Curl organization have what it takes to go against Microsoft's .NET, which has a similar architecture and revenue model?

Answer these questions and you not only have a good book, but a real cool winning tool.

This is currently the BEST Curl book on the market. Ok, it's currently the ONLY Curl book on the market, which makes it Good News/Bad News.

Good News: This book does a great job of providing Curl information and "how to" examples in more depth than the Curl manuals. All the major topics are covered, which makes this a good overall reference book. The graphics architecture section is particularly helpful, where the authors describe the overall graphics framework of Curl. This info would save any new user time when learning Curl.

Bad News: by targeting the early adopter, the book is timely, but shows some warts. Some sections still show and describe the last beta version of Curl. The last beta was mostly similar to the current version of Curl, but the small differences are occasionally distracting. The book also has a number of typos and the class descriptions in one table were copied directly from the (free) Curl manual. As most of the authors are from Curl Corporation, this is not plagiarism, but it is not new information either.

Overall, this book serves its purpose by being the first overall book on Curl. The book itself is a great way to learn Curl in conjunction with the Curl manuals. Despite its warts, it is well worth owning.

[Bruce Mount worked as one of the Technical Reviewers for this book. No, he didn't review the section with typos. :-)]

They call this book an early adopter book, but, since I think Curl is most likely going to go the way of Microsoft Agent, it is more a Bleeding Edge book. Unlike Microsoft Agent, however, I do think this technology is very useful.

So, what is Curl? Curl is a new OO technology for web UI development. In many ways, it is what Java promised, with applets, in its early days. The main difference here is Curl is designed to create dynamic, awe inspiring presentations (ala Flash) without a lot of work (once you learn the language, that is).

The book deals with Curl primarily as a UI development language. Through the chapters you will learn to work with 2d and 3d environments, multimedia and even dynamic client interaction. As with all Wrox books, there are plenty of code examples (all downloadable from the Wrox site).

I really love this book, although I wonder if the technology will ever really take off (Curl engine download is huge if you have a dialup).

I like the fact that every chapter has something interesting to do. Instead of saying that you can do data reporting, the author shows how to perform this task. Another chapter shows how to create your own controls and components, and then add them to the Web Matrix toolbox. The Web services information was interesting, but it's not something I'm using today. Even so, it was nice to know that it's there.

My favorite chapter has been mobile application development. It's something I hadn't thought you could do with Web Matrix until this book showed me.

The bottom line is that the author chose not to follow Microsoft's lead. This book tells you what you can really do with Web Matrix, which is actually a lot. The author also doesn't pull any punches. If something is broken or doesn't work quite right, he tells you about it and often provides a fix to boot.

I found the author's writing very clear and understandable. He covers everything from simple Web pages to Web services. This book is a wealth of information about new and existing technologies including both XML and SOAP. The author also includes tips on how to modify the IDE for your specific needs, such as adding new controls to the Toolbox.

The inclusion of MSDE Query was a big perk because MSDE doesn't include any user interface. Using MSDE Query has saved me considerable time and expense.

The only thing that I don't understand is why you have to download Appendix B from the Apress Web site. This is actually one of the best additions to the book because the author shows how to extend Web Matrix to perform other tasks. The author told me about the appendix when I contacted him for additional information. The bottom line is that this book can save you both time and money.

The first two chapter are just a general introduction.

The actual comparisons are not in depth and the biggest surprise - Oracle gets just one mention!

The book also has a companion website which is intended to keep the content up to date - a great idea but regrettably does not deliver on this promise.

All in all a worthwhile book and very valuable first resource for anyone needing direction in adding database functionality to their websites. Well worth the time and money.

The best part is that the author builds the same two projects in every tool covered in the book (Filemaker, ASP, ColdFusion) to provide a good comparison for how the individual tools work.

As usually, I first looked at the physical form of the book. I'm interesting with its full color design. I'm quite sure that this book is expensive enough. And I'm true, it's $49.99. I hoped that the content will equal with the price.

From the user level category at the back cover, I know that this book for New until Casual user. I wonder how it will explain about great web design for new user. After I read and passed chapter to chapter, I have plus mark for this book. It teaches the user how to layout the position of every object in the web page for nice looking purpose. With its full color figures, will make user enjoy their trip to great web design.

But, I have found one big minus mark for this book. It doesn't explain the syntax of HTML itself deeply. It just explains a few of HTML tags, and shows great figure of each example. If new user buy this book, he will be disappointed with the lack of HTML tag explained here.

Finally, for new user that had previous knowledge of HTML syntax or had the HTML Reference Book, buying this book is good for improving the knowledge of web page great design with nice looking. But for the truly new, it's not recommended to buy this book because its lacking of HTML syntax especially frame syntax. For $49.99 it's equal for full color examples and full loaded shareware programs for this book, but not for referencing HTML deeply.

The later chapters that get into the actual workings of the tool are well done and cover a good deal of information. I can agree somewhat with the other reviewers who say they would have liked to have seen a bit more on generation, but the Designer Generation book specifically does that. I definitely recommend the book--it's been quite helpful to me.