I got this book because I was researching some non-textile paracas ritual items. I found that 98% of this book details the beautiful and complex textiles of the Paracas. It had little of what I actually wanted, but it does give an excellent background to surviving Paracas textile (and textile related) artifacts.

It filled in background blanks for me and this book would be excellent for anybody who is researching, or who wants to know more about these textiles. In parts it is quite technical and detailed. There is a colour section illustrating various textiles in the centre of the book, but the emphasis in on scholary interpretation and not light reading.

This is a well rounded book to help anyone learn the basics of html to the more advanced tools available. This is the second book I have purchased by Paul H. Zimmerman and both have been very useful. Each section contains a discussion of the topic/process, good design tips and a step by step guide to walk you through the mechanics of the process. This books provides a good foundation so that you have the confidence to explore other parts of FrontPage 2000. In addition, it serves as a good reference guide when working on html pages (including frames).

As a basic get-going this Dummies issue isn't too bad, in that it explains the menu options and some rudiments. That said, I found it to be rather disappointing in the way it approached matters; it tending to start a subject, dive off somewhere else, returning to what you started with someplace else - maybe chapters later.

The opening chapters were rambling and repetitive with useful details mentioned in passing, For example, shift+enter is a line break and the enter key is a paragraph break. I missed this the first time around and, after finding the function by accident, spotted it in the book's text by chance.

The way in which table-sizing was handled was also clumsy: all you have to do is use the mouse and click and drag the sizing handles like in other programmes instead of always going through the property inspector.

Too much space was spent in giving examples of other peoples' work which wasn't particularly poignant (18oz being a remarkable piece of nonsense) and, more often than not, a contradiction to the better practices preached.

Okay, the book covers a lot: Dreamweaver 3, Fireworks 3, and Flash 4. But in rather an unnecessarily schematic way within the space provided to avoid the feeling that I should be reading something more advanced and which still covered the opening basics.

Nevertheless it's reasonable value at the price.

Simply Outstanding! Everything you NEED to know without all the stuff you don't need to know. Well written and easy to read. PLUS, and this is great, it covers the basics for using Fireworks 3.0 and an intro to Flash 4.0, you must have this book if you want to learn Dreamweaver 3.0.

I had to use dreamweaver 3 in a hurry to start implementing for a project. I was able to get through this book in a few days and was able to start producing right away. The section on Fireworks was brief but gave a good overview to get started. I would recommend this book!

This book is definitely recommended for those that are just starting Visual InterDev and aren't sure where to go first. The book is fairly thin and has many graphics so you will get through this book pretty quick.

I rate it a 9 simply because of the size. Many more examples could have been covered. Don't pass up this book though if you are looking for an introductory level book. The author is very clear and concise and the code samples work.

Mr. Thurrott did an outstanding job with this book. It's one of the few techno books I've picked up in years and easily read from cover to cover. The book provides an excellent start for any one looking to use Visual InterDev to create dynamic web sites. I've always wanted to use Access and SQL databases to create dynamic web sites, and this book did an excellent job of explaining the fundaments. Mr. Thurrott's examples are clear and informative. I've looked at Microsoft's documentation numerous times and found using all of it very confusing and hard to understand. Implementing Microsoft Visual filled the gap left by Microsoft. This book proved that anyone could use Visual InterDev to create simply to complex dynamic websites. I strongly recommend this book

I have been very pleased with this book. I have just about worn out the cover from referencing it all the time. It is not terribly detailed, but it defintely gives you enough information to set up a site and start really harnassing the power of ASP. It's tutorial on SQL Server 6.5 is pretty good too. I highly recommend this book for intermediate web developers.

I have to agree with previous reviewers, this book DOES cover quite a bit. From DHTML to IIS Applications, but it has to be considered a beginner to intermediate book on Web programming in VB6. Even though the long-term viability of Web Classes is under question, the utter lack of any quality material on the ONE thing Microsoft touts as "Web" enabled in VB6 is extremely disappointing for a book so expensive. You can debug problems with your objects in VB6 with WebClasses that you can't perform with an ASP page and a compiled dll. Do they even mention this? No.

For the interested, you can find most of the material discussed in this book by simply looking on MSDN or other web sites for articles on the subjects you're interested in. With multiple authors, that's all you will get out of this book, anyway.

I rated this 5 stars because it has the most useful writeup on writing Server Components in VB for use with ASP - chapters 9-11. I wanted to do this and had trouble getting working samples and explanations. I feel that industrial strength ASP is very ugly and unweildy if you don't encapsulate the code into components. MSDN has lots of reference material about this but little, if any, useful "how to" stuff that i could find.

This book showed me how to do exactly what i wanted to do.

Other than that, it is a good introduction into a good number of web concepts, old and new. The first 3 chapters were a good overview of Microsoft web concepts and techniques. The writeup on web classes, if you like them, is good. I really liked the CGI case study including how to implement standard input/output via the win32 API.

The relatively free use of various win32 API functions in VB help overcome a general fear of mixing VB and CC++ functionality.

The book was a bit large but was well organized. In general it gave me a much higher opinion of Wrox books.

Having purchased many other WROX books, I was eagerly awaiting this one for a current project. When it arrived I read through it like a mad man. Soaking up everything I possibly could. The examples are very clear and there are plenty of them! It covers everything from IIS, ASP and ADO to RDS, SQL, DHTML, MTS and WebClasses. All in one book! Plenty of examples with detailed descriptions and tables explaining the various methods for each function. I definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about using VB6 for web development.

This book covers everything too fast. If you already have a good knowlege of Java this book, you will be able to apply your knowledge and learn JSP. Unfortunately I don't know much Java and this book covers the examples so fast, that I have no idea how to apply to my own work. I think I'll wait till the JSP Fast and Easy Web Development book comes out. I have the Coldfusion and PHP books in this series. Both are quite good.

This book is great for anyone wanting a quick understanding of Java and JavaServer Pages. I came away from the book with a great start creating JSPs and a good idea on setting up the Tomcat web server.

I kind of agree other reviewers. This book is really for those who has the experience of JAVA and knowledge of related topics. I read this book for the running project of e-commerce course, in which the mentor assign group project to do a website to sell shoes. I know nothing about JSP before. But with this book, page by page, I got a big picture of how it works. Some coding can be used instantly to my project. I have a feeling, each time if embitious to buy a big book, it usually ends up with quit half on the way. Why not start with a easy one? If you have time and intrest, some nuts-and-bolts book could be for advanced phase. In a nutshell, this one is nice for the first glance of JSP.

Don't buy this book in the yera 2000... buy VBScript Programmer's Reference instead, by Wrox Press. It covers the latest and greatest, VBScript 5.0, instead of Lomax's rinky-dink 1.0 and a bit of 2.0 coverage. I gave this book 3 stars, though, because the quality of Lomax's "lessons" and explanations are great if you are new to VB or a scripting language. Indeed, Lomax demonstrates how VBScript is much easier to learn than JavaScript.

Overall, it is better to buy a book that is more updated. This is a dinosaur in today's lightning-speed techno market, and it needs to be put in the museum (c'mon, 1997? )

This was the first book I bought on VBScript and since then I have read and seen many books on VBScript, this is by far the very best there is, O'Reilly style quality comes out of every page, this isn't an idiots guide or a teach you in 10 minutes tutorial, it's serious stuff - but at a fast enough pace. So if I've already got a copy why am I here? well I just bought ten copies for my developers, I saw the comment below and I felt compelled to write here... perhaps our friend from Silicon Valley has a downer on VB/VBS/AnythingMicrosoft? OK the MSIE object model is showing its age but you'll not find a better introduction to the language anywhere.

I won't be long and all i will say is that I knew almost nothing about vbscript before I read this book and by the time I finished it I had enough knowledge and tools to program rather complicated codes! The only bad point is that the book is quite old and covers only versions 1.0 and 2.0 and requires some updating from the msn web site. But in the end of the day Paul Lomax is realy amazing and the book is really really good.

This book teaches Dreamweaver MX by using actual examples, by providing step by step instructions and finished code.

Unfortunately, there are tools (third party extensions) that are recommended and used in the tutorials but are not available for use. They are either available at additional cost or are just not compatible with this version of Dreamweaver.

This leads to nothing but frustration as key concepts cannot be explored. I am referring to concepts such as file uploads and adding records to table (with identity key). I purchased this book to bring me up to speed so that I could implement a project I'm currently working on and due to it's shortcomings I feel inclined to return it as I cannot follow the examples that I really need.

In an attempt to be fare I'll continue by saying that the author does state that the book is not for novices and that it's shortcomings can probably be worked around by reviewing the finished code. But that, I think, defeats Dreamweaver Mx's main purpose of providing server side behaviours without (much) coding. Also the code generated by MX is not the easiest thing to make sense of.

I will not be able to say enough about this book in a single review. Dreamweaver MX is an absolute treasure chest and a developer's dream, but before I bought this book, I had no idea. I have used Dreamweaver for years, but Dreamweaver MX is an altogether different beast. First and foremost, the author has a very engaging writing style. I was not bored or worse yet, overwhelmed by the coverage. Second, he has put together some very cool applications. He walks you through the development and deployment of every application, allowing you to get up and running with Dreamweaver MX in no time. If you know Dreamweaver, you can use this book to take advantage of the new MX functionality. If you don't know Dreamweaver, buy this book, and the author will teach you to build practical web applications. This is a solid 5-stars.

This is the book that I was waiting for during the UltraDev 4 series, which never materialized. Great examples covering many areas rather than the typical, owner's manual type books that are the norm. This book goes beyond the simple stuff and gets you into the nitty gritty. Grab one of the other 'For Dummmies' type books to show you where things are. Get this one to show you how to actually USE the program effectively. One minor gripe which I share with another reviewer...the mish mash of Cold Fusion and ASP. Would have been nice as two separate books.

Although Mr. Sery starts with extremely good intentions, this book was so poorly proofed that it is worse than no help at all. One can find serious typographical errors on almost any page, ranging from misspelled keywords, to sentences that just end in the middle of a thought. Often the text instructs you to do one thing, but the representative screen shot shows completely different information. The only way I would recommend this book would be for students of typesetting to study as an excellent example of how not to practice their art. Based on this one experience, I have no plans to ever buy another book from the publisher, IDG Books, nor the author.

Patrick Krepps

I agree with the reviewer that stated that this book was poorly proofed - if at all. The format of the book is very good, but it is so riddled with errors that you end up going in circles trying to figure out what the author is trying to tell you to do. I ended up using this book as my primary source for getting my Samba network up and running, but only because I couldn't find a better reference. I hope that a revised edition will be coming out for Red Hat Linux 7.0/7.1, and I hope that the myriad errors in the current edition will be addressed.

This book goes from the simple to the complex. It helped me to get started and advance on to more complicated stuff. It's really helped me to create a Linux network.

This book may be fine for producing working web-pages, but it's pretty awful in these days of cross-browser applications.

Furthermore, the introduction of XHTML 1.0 renders almost all the code listings pretty worthless, unless you're familiar with the new standards and how to amend what's already there. As for bad habits, this book supplies them all in spades:

1) HTML pages with no attribute.
2) HTML header tags with no namespace defines.
3) No explanation of DTDs or why pages these days at least follow the minimum necessary guidelines.
4) Unlosed tags.
5) attributes not quoted as string literals - and the book actually *recommends* this practise

and many many more. The actual VBScript/ASP section is relatively okay, but the author needs to pay more attention to the destruction of called objects, and stop using the ScriptLibrary, as it's almost never used commercially and is generally considered unstable and unsafe to run on any IIS server from which a fair degree of uptime is required.

In short, probably the best option for anyone wishing to learn ASP is to get the O'Reilly book on XHTML, make a few pages and get the hang of that side of things first, and then move straight to Wrox's Professional Active Server Pages 3.0

First of all, I know that one shouldn't judge a book by itscover, but the cover is horrible. The book just stares at you untilyou hide it with something. Very lame! This book is a pretty good introduction to the many and various technologies involved in making a professional web site with InterDev 6, except for the parts on JavaScript and VBScript, which will make you search elsewhere to learn how to do the simplest things. It is an excellent reference on InterDev itself. It does a good job of telling you what you want to know in a reasonable number of pages. The book is a lousy reference. Once you have learned to do something in the book, it will no longer help you. If you need this book for your job, you will end up giving it away after two weeks because it will have already outlived its usefulness. As a reference it leans too much on the examples, even considering the scope of the book. The examples are of limited use, because they don't always work, and you can only download the finished article. You can't start using an example in the middle of the book because you can't download the examples chapter by chapter.

I have to agree with the fact that the book is a little vague in places, however, if you are a beginning web programmer who has a little knowledge of the Microsoft development environment (Visual Studio, MS-SQL), then this is a really really good start. I have to give the book five stars when reviewing it in the context of a book for beginners.

Mumford does a thorough job of explaining net programming and Visual InterDev, plus he touches on everything from T-SQL to ASP and XML. What beginner could ask for a more comprehensive glance at web development? Also, the book takes a hands-on approach, so you'll actually build a little business2consumer website solution complete w/database support. If you think you may be a candidate for this book, then there is no question - buy it. If not, buy several books concentrating solely on individual topics.