Recommended books about javascript

A good web development framework anticipates what you need to do and makes those tasks easier and more efficient; jQuery practically reads your mind. Developers of every stripe-hobbyists and professionals alike-fall in love with jQuery the minute they've reduced 20 lines of clunky JavaScript into three lines of elegant, readable code. This new, concise JavaScript library radically simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages.

jQuery in Action, like jQuery itself, is a concise tool designed to make you a more efficient and effective web developer. In a short 300 pages, this book introduces you to the jQuery programming model and guides you through the major features and techniques you'll need to be productive immediately. The book anchors each new concept in the tasks you'll tackle in day-to-day web development and offers unique lab pages where you immediately put your jQuery knowledge to work.

There are dozens of JavaScript libraries available now, with major companies like Google, Yahoo and AOL open-sourcing their in-house tools. This book shows you how jQuery stacks up against other libraries and helps you navigate interaction with other tools and frameworks.

jQuery in Action offers a rich investigation of the up-and-coming jQuery library for client-side JavaScript. This book covers all major features and capabilities in a manner focused on getting the reader up and running with jQuery from the very first sections. Web Developers reading this book will gain a deep understanding of how to use jQuery to simplify their pages and lives, as well as learn the philosophy behind writing jQuery-enhanced pages.

This book provided me the needed information to be able to use JQuery practically and efficiently.

I have committed myself to using jquery exclusively for my javascript applications but not much is written about it so it is difficult to solve problems. This book answered a lot of my questions and cleared up many difficulties. I use it as a reference whenever I am stuck. Thank you for writing it.

This is a really nice book on jquery. I've been using jQuery on a few projects, but this really helped point me to several things I could be doing better. All too often you find yourself following a tutorial blindly, without full understanding. This book set a few of my "tutorial assumptions" straight.

I only wish it had a little more meat to it. I think it's just a matter of a few things I'd hoped to find not being there though. Definitely suggest this book if you're serious about messing with jQuery in a real project.

reading this book will assist you when working with jquery. it is very well written. short and to the point. worth buying

I really have tattered the edges of this book. Normally, I would read a technical book like this, extract all of the information I needed, and then set it back on the book shelf. Not with jQuery in Action! I bring it to work, and then I take it back home in the evening. It is an outstanding book for any programmer who is really serious about keeping all of the user events at the browser level; instead of always going back to the server for something. This book has raised my level of awareness of all of the DOM-level programming available with the use of simple jQuery scripting. Thanks Bear and Yehuda for all of your hard work. Please keep on writing and authoring!!

Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and released in a hurry before it could be refined. This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole-a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code. Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables. When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including: Syntax Objects Functions Inheritance Arrays Regular expressions Methods Style Beautiful features

The real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book. With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highlyexpressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

I was very disapppointed in this book. For the price of the book there was very little content. I am returning this book and buying something with more substance.

This is an excellent book, as it concisely illustrates a number of details that would be impossible to find in other books. Moderate/advanced JavaScript programmers will gain the most from this book, it is not particularly geared towards the beginner.

The book has a very specific focus, so do not be deceived into thinking this book covers the entire language. For information like that, Flanagan's JavaScript The Definitive Guide will be better. This book, however, is an excellent discussion of the important features of the language. Highly recommended.

This is a book that you can easily read in one sitting. It will run you through parts of JavaScript commonly considered "advanced" and help you become a better JavaScript programmer. Unlike other books on JavaScript which seem interested on pretending JavaScript is a weak and dysfunctional cousin of Java, it embraces the JavaScript object model and teaches you to use it correctly.

I would strongly recommend anyone who intends to write JavaScript code read this book.

The content in this book is simply incredible, and it should be read by anyone seriously interested in JavaScript. Many of the other reviews have described the content, but I was shocked to see not one mention of the glaring errors in the code examples.

O'Reilly provides a good errata resource, but every other code example in this book has either a missing semicolon that you have to hunt for (most common) or code that is completely wrong. Perhaps none of this has been mentioned due to the strong merits of the content -- but it appears nobody even did a quick review over the code in this book! If you are going to buy this to have on your desk for years to come, buy it on PDF now and wait for the second edition print for the errata corrections.

With that said, I'm not trying to troll on this great book. I want to give a heads up to people so they don't have to work part-time as a copy-editor.

I decided to pick up this book because I had been using Javascript for years as a "garnish" on top of my web development, but usually only in the form of a few hacked-together utility functions and edited scripts. In truth, I was afraid of the language - it appeared to be a very inconsistent, buggy system that took arcane knowledge to master across browsers. After starting to work with a number of JS frameworks, I knew I needed to confront the language and learn it properly.

This book is possibly one of the best technical/programming related books I have had the pleasure of reading. It doesn't try to be a massive encyclopedic volume like most of my other technical books, so I didn't have to devote countless hours and days pushing through lengthy filler. Every section contains brief information about the most critical parts of Javascript you need to begin coding what you need right away in a tidy object-oriented fashion. If you have experience with any other C-based language and understand general OOP concepts, this book will make you fluent in Javascript with the least amount of time and effort on your part!

This Fifth Edition is completely revised and expanded to cover JavaScript as it is used in today's Web 2.0 applications. This book is both an example-driven programmer's guide and a keep-on-your-desk reference, with new chapters that explain everything you need to know to get the most out of JavaScript, including: Scripted HTTP and Ajax XML processing Client-side graphics using the canvas tag Namespaces in JavaScript--essential when writing complex programs Classes, closures, persistence, Flash, and JavaScript embedded in Java applications

Part I explains the core JavaScript language in detail. If you are new to JavaScript, it will teach you the language. If you are already a JavaScript programmer, Part I will sharpen your skills and deepen your understanding of the language.

Part II explains the scripting environment provided by web browsers, with a focus on DOM scripting with unobtrusive JavaScript. The broad and deep coverage of client-side JavaScript is illustrated with many sophisticated examples that demonstrate how to: Generate a table of contents for an HTML document Display DHTML animations Automate form validation Draw dynamic pie charts Make HTML elements draggable Define keyboard shortcuts for web applications Create Ajax-enabled tool tips Use XPath and XSLT on XML documents loaded with Ajax And much more

Part III is a complete reference for core JavaScript. It documents every class, object, constructor, method, function, property, and constant defined by JavaScript 1.5 and ECMAScript Version 3.

Part IV is a reference for client-side JavaScript, covering legacy web browser APIs, the standard Level 2 DOM API, and emerging standards such as the XMLHttpRequestobject and the canvas tag.

More than 300,000 JavaScript programmers around the world have made this their indispensable reference book for building JavaScript applications.

""A must-have reference for expert JavaScript programmers...well-organized and detailed."" -- Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript

Since the earliest days of Internet scripting, Web developers have considered JavaScript: The Definitive Guide an essential resource. David Flanagan's approach, which combines tutorials and examples with easy-to-use syntax guides and object references, suits the typical programmer's requirements nicely. The brand-new fourth edition of Flanagan's "Rhino Book" includes coverage of JavaScript 1.5, JScript 5.5, ECMAScript 3, and the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 standard from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Interestingly, the author has shifted away from specifying--as he did in earlier editions--what browsers support each bit of the language. Rather than say Netscape 3.0 supports the Image object while Internet Explorer 3.0 does not, he specifies that JavaScript 1.1 and JScript 3.0 support Image. More usefully, he specifies the contents of independent standards like ECMAScript, which encourages scripters to write applications for these standards and browser vendors to support them. As Flanagan says, JavaScript and its related subjects are very complex in their pure forms. It's impossible to keep track of the differences among half a dozen vendors' generally similar implementations. Nonetheless, a lot of examples make reference to specific browsers' capabilities.

Though he does not cover server-side APIs, Flanagan has chosen to separate coverage of core JavaScript (all the keywords, general syntax, and utility objects like Array) from coverage of client-side JavaScript (which includes objects, like History and Event, that have to do with Web browsers and users' interactions with them. This approach makes this book useful to people using JavaScript for applications other than Web pages. By the way, the other classic JavaScript text--Danny Goodman's JavaScript Bible--isn't as current as this book, but it's still a fantastic (and perhaps somewhat more novice-friendly) guide to the JavaScript language and its capabilities. --David Wall

Topics covered: The JavaScript language (version 1.0 through version 1.5) and its relatives, JScript and ECMAScript, as well as the W3C DOM standards they're often used to manipulate. Tutorial sections show how to program in JavaScript, while reference sections summarize syntax and options while providing copious code examples.

This is I believe the best book about basic Javascript on the market right now.

Pros: Technically complete, solid writing style, understandable examples, no better intro books on the market.

Cons: Authors repeatedly show that they prefer class-based object systems, which Javascript is not. Authors do not effectively teach advanced Javascript prototype-based object usage and in fact seem to view it as a nuisance to be avoided. Authors don't regularly use closures except in section on closures.

I would recommend following this book up with "Javascript: The Good Parts" and making sure you fully grok how to use closures to avoid namespace pollution.

I've learned a lot of tech in my time, and this book does the best job explaining the fundamentals of a language that I've ever come across. Flanagan basically builds the whole language piece by piece, explaining the fundamentals of every aspect.

There are some more esoteric techniques he doesn't cover, but I hardly consider that a shortcoming; aside from those, he basically covers the entire breadth of JavaScript, both in its core design and in practical browser-based applications. This really is the definitive book on JavaScript, even if it is two years old (which is ages in Internet time).

This book is downright comprehensive and thoroughly deserves its "definitive guide" title.

But, the example scripts the author gives are long and deadly boring, which is why I won't give it five stars.

To "get" JavaScript, you need shorter scripts which are easier to learn from.

My recommendation is to use this book in conjunction with the w3schools website.

This is the book all the JS rockstars out there tend to recommend to people. I don't think it's for everybody personally. It's very thorough and explains JS and its various incarnations at a high level of intricacy that I wouldn't recommend to beginners who are easily distracted (i.e. more heavily creative-brained designers). I'm fairly evenly brained myself and I occasionally found myself zombie-reading as exciting as some of the specifics are too me.

On the other hand, if you want to know just about everything there is to possibly know about JS, this is the book. And that's worth five stars to me.

A good place to get a start with JS if you've never programmed is a decent class or self-teaching the basics online. Then I recommend Jeremy Keith's DOM scripting. Then the Complete Reference. Then this bruiser when you really want get in deep.

Great book, easy read, well formated and very instrutive. You will find everything that you need about JavaScript (covering standard ECMAScript v3). From the basics to the most advance about the language.

ActionScript 3.0 is a huge upgrade to Flash's programming language. The enhancements to ActionScript's performance, feature set, ease of use, cleanliness, and sophistication are considerable. Essential ActionScript 3.0 focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, along with the Flash Player API. Essential ActionScript has become the #1 resource for the Flash and ActionScript development community, and the reason is the author, Colin Moock. Many people even refer to it simply as "The Colin Moock book." And for good reason: No one is better at turning ActionScript inside out, learning its nuances and capabilities, and then explaining everything in such an accessible way. Colin Moock is not just a talented programmer and technologist; he's also a gifted teacher. Essential ActionScript 3.0 is a radically overhauled update to Essential ActionScript 2.0. True to its roots, the book once again focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, but also adds a deep look at the centerpiece of Flash Player's new API: display programming. Enjoy hundreds of brand new pages covering exciting new language features, such as the DOM-based event architecture, E4X, and namespaces--all brimming with real-world sample code. The ActionScript 3.0 revolution is here, and Essential ActionScript 3.0's steady hand is waiting to guide you through it.

I really liked Mr.Moock's book, as it goes from the fundamentals to crystal clear object oriented programming. As an AS2 programmer I filled gaps to make a succesfull switch to ActionScript3.0, and got a good grip in Flex also. Recommended!

I don't really like this book. Its way too descriptive and the result is that the subject matter is made to seem over-complicated. If you have some familiarity with OOP programming, you'll have to sort through lots of reading to get a few needed bits of information. If you're new to programming, the first 137 pages have no working code and so you'll have to understand deep and detailed programming basics without putting any theory into practice or having any working experience with the content. 'Not what I would want if I were a beginner.

I'm a huge fan of O'Reilly books, but this book should be avoided.

Good book as a code reference but in my opinion we need more real exercises for a better understand.

This book is brilliant. It's encyclopedic. It is a must-have to better understand AS 3 and to hopefully lower your frustration when coding. I am a designer fairly new to AS 3 and found this book gave clear, detailed explanations on every aspect of AS 3. Like an encyclopedia, each chapter breaks down specific core concepts, from Arrays and XML, into their basics. Information is laid out well and can be found quickly simply by looking at the book's table of contents. As a reference book, it fills in the "why" that other books on Flash or on-line tutorials don't have time or space to cover in easy to understand detail. Colin Moock avoids confusing jargon and de-mystifies ActionScipt.

I learned a good bit from this book; however I came into this with over 6 years for programming experience.

Part 1:

I found that this moved to slow for me. Much of it I already knew. So from an experienced perspective it was it was way to much info.

From a "I never programmed" it could be a good reference, but ultimately it would leave such a person with a shallow understanding of what is going on. I think he should have broke this book down into pieces. A good beginner would have been the first part of this book with some expansion on callback and closure theory combined with another book; Object Oriented ActionScript 3.0.

Part II:

The second part of the book was decent but had quite a few errors. For example in Screen Updates; his code for an optimized ellipse. In removedFromStageListener he adds the listener instead of removing it. He also never clears the redraw variable so it will always redraw when Event.RENDER is called.

This was so obvious to me that it was none issue. But for the intended audience I could see as being completely confusing and frustrating.

The good news is he does address both these issues in the Errata (but in two separate updates).

Part III:

They are there to support some concepts discussed in the book; they should have been before Part II and they are like a scholastic version of the content covered (not a bad thing; it is just what it is).

Extra Content:
His source download is one of the most horribly organized "extra" content downloads I've ever ran into. He lists everything by name not chapter. Some code is included some is not. Both combined I find my self spending extra time trying to find content never knowing if is just labeled funny or just not documented at all. Over all your best bet it to purchase this as a pdf book so you can just copy and paste the examples.

Bottom line:
These writers need to stop trying to create these "everything covered" books. Ultimately they are rushed, shallow and alienate their intended audience.

I would still recommend this book as really I've found no other resource except for the language reference that goes over the material that is discussed in this book. Just be sure that you have the Errata handy!

Portable, powerful, and a breeze to use, Python is ideal for both standalone programs and scripting applications. With this hands-on book, you can master the fundamentals of the core Python language quickly and efficiently, whether you're new to programming or just new to Python. Once you finish, you will know enough about the language to use it in any application domain you choose. Learning Python is based on material from author Mark Lutz's popular training courses, which he's taught over the past decade. Each chapter is a self-contained lesson that helps you thoroughly understand a key component of Python before you continue. Along with plenty of annotated examples, illustrations, and chapter summaries, every chapter also contains Brain Builder, a unique section with practical exercises and review quizzes that let you practice new skills and test your understanding as you go. This book covers: Types and Operations -- Python's major built-in object types in depth: numbers, lists, dictionaries, and more Statements and Syntax -- the code you type to create and process objects in Python, along with Python's general syntax model Functions -- Python's basic procedural tool for structuring and reusing code Modules -- packages of statements, functions, and other tools organized into larger components Classes and OOP -- Python's optional object-oriented programming tool for structuring code for customization and reuse Exceptions and Tools -- exception handling model and statements, plus a look at development tools for writing larger programs. Learning Python gives you a deep and complete understanding of the language that will help you comprehend any application-level examples of Python that you later encounter. If you're ready to discover what Google and YouTube see in Python, this book is the best way to get started.

The authors of Learning Python show you enough essentials of the Python scripting language to enable you to begin solving problems right away, then reveal more powerful aspects of the language one at a time. This approach is sure to appeal to programmers and system administrators who have urgent problems and a preference for learning by semi-guided experimentation.

First off, Learning Python shows the relationships among Python scripts and their interpreter (in a mostly platform-neutral way). Then, the authors address the mechanics of the language itself, providing illustrations of how Python conceives of numbers, strings, and other objects as well as the operators you use to work with them. Dictionaries, lists, tuples, and other data structures specific to Python receive plenty of attention including complete examples.

Authors Mark Lutz and David Ascher build on that fundamental information in their discussions of functions and modules, which evolve into coverage of namespaces, classes, and the object-oriented aspects of Python programming. There's also information on creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for Python applications with Tkinter.

In addition to its careful expository prose, Learning Python includes exercises that both test your Python skills and help reveal more elusive truths about the language.

I just spent a few days going through this book and learned a lot. I've been working with PHP for years, but never did much complicated code. I studied Java about 8 years ago also and learned a lot about OOP from that. But never did any programming in Java. So it was all concept, no experience.

My reason for reading this book was to start using Python with Django. I wanted to learn Python first so I would understand the framework better.

This book covers in excruciating detail many of the finer qualities of just about everything you can imagine being in the language. I'm sure it doesn't cover everything the language can do. But somehow it spends 600 plus pages going over details that I wouldn't expect to find even if I was reading a 300 page book called "What I was thinking when I wrote this particular function on July 3rd 1991"

If something can be explained by 2 lines of example code and a three sentence paragraph about what's going on, the author does that -after 2 pages of explanation of how this code you are about to see might be a little like C, but it's a little different too, and how what you are going to learn is really powerful, and how some students might notice that the code is similar in structure to the code that you will see on page 400 later in the book.

If you think my review is way too verbose, read the book.

I give it 3 stars because it was in fact clear and well communicated information. It was just often hard to keep reading past all the unnecessary words to get to the useful content.

As a newcomer to Python, I find this book educational but somewhat inadequate for getting one's feet wet with a new programming language. Essentially all the sample code in the book is in the form of very short snippets run from the command line. There is almost nothing in the way of a full-blown sample Python program showing the reader what it's all supposed to look like in the end.

Python's strengths as a programming language are ostensibly its readability and ease of use, but you get no sense of that reading this book. All you get is bits and pieces that you have to glue together somehow. It's neither a complete technical manual nor a good introductory book for the novice programmer. The book is useful, but I would hope that there are better titles out there.

I wanted to like this book. As a general rule, I give the benefit of a doubt to O'Reilly books, and rarely am I mistaken. But this was one of the rare exceptions. In my experience, there are two trains of thought when it comes to learning a programming language:
1) Start right in with a book, using it to familiarize yourself with the language while you use the language to start fleshing out stuff that you learn in the book -- let's call this the "synergistic" or maybe "complementary" approach: using the book complements the coding you try, which, in turn, lets you put stuff you're learning into a workable framework.
2) Read the whole book through, and then apply what you've learned.

Personally, I don't know anyone with a good enough memory to really be able to pull off #2. But, honestly, it's more about patience than memory: people get excited about a language, and want to start using it. Having to (pretty much) read a whole book before you can start digging in is a bit of an anti-climax. The problem is that that's what you have to do with _Learning Python_. For example, one of the fundamentals of almost all programming languages is how looping is accomplished. In _Learning Python_, looping isn't discussed in detail until you're almost *250* pages into the book. Instead, the very, very fundamentals of the language are gone over in excruciating detail. Honestly, if you'd never programmed before, this might actually be a helpful, good thing. If, on the other hand, you've had pretty much any other programming experience, the pace is slow and tedious. I found myself yearning to be *doing* something, and instead was just plodding along.

If you have had previous programming experience, and are relatively well-versed with how languages work, I have to recommend _Python Essential Reference_ by David M. Beazley. Just read its first chapter in the bookstore, and you'll find yourself becoming quickly enlightened.

Like my title suggests, if you have programming experience and you do not mind or have little trouble reading the Python documentation in a online fashion then its probably not absolutely necessary that you have to buy the book.

However, the author is very good in instilling the nature of Python programming and he's good at getting you to think about the concepts but this book is definitely not a cookbook. Last thing is that it doesn't concentrate on the GUI nor library usage etc as it's mission is simply to teach you about the core of Python

This book is great! Good writing, good exercises. Good for people who have some experience in programming. If you have never had any contact to other languages or logic, consider studying some introdutory topics before reading this book.

Regular expressions are an extremely powerful tool for manipulating text and data. They are now standard features in a wide range of languages and popular tools, including Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, VB.NET and C# (and any language using the .NET Framework), PHP, and MySQL.

If you don't use regular expressions yet, you will discover in this book a whole new world of mastery over your data. If you already use them, you'll appreciate this book's unprecedented detail and breadth of coverage. If you think you know all you need to know about regular expressions, this book is a stunning eye-opener.

As this book shows, a command of regular expressions is an invaluable skill. Regular expressions allow you to code complex and subtle text processing that you never imagined could be automated. Regular expressions can save you time and aggravation. They can be used to craft elegant solutions to a wide range of problems. Once you've mastered regular expressions, they'll become an invaluable part of your toolkit. You will wonder how you ever got by without them.

Yet despite their wide availability, flexibility, and unparalleled power, regular expressions are frequently underutilized. Yet what is power in the hands of an expert can be fraught with peril for the unwary. Mastering Regular Expressions will help you navigate the minefield to becoming an expert and help you optimize your use of regular expressions.

Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, now includes a full chapter devoted to PHP and its powerful and expressive suite of regular expression functions, in addition to enhanced PHP coverage in the central "core" chapters. Furthermore, this edition has been updated throughout to reflect advances in other languages, including expanded in-depth coverage of Sun's java.util.regex package, which has emerged as the standard Java regex implementation.Topics include:

• A comparison of features among different versions of many languages and tools
• How the regular expression engine works
• Optimization (major savings available here!)
• Matching just what you want, but not what you don't want
• Sections and chapters on individual languages

Written in the lucid, entertaining tone that makes a complex, dry topic become crystal-clear to programmers, and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.

Reviews of this new edition and the second edition:

"There isn't a better (or more useful) book available on regular expressions."
--Zak Greant, Managing Director, eZ Systems

"A real tour-de-force of a book which not only covers the mechanics of regexes in extraordinary detail but also talks about efficiency and the use of regexes in Perl, Java, and .NET...If you use regular expressions as part of your professional work (even if you already have a good book on whatever language you're programming in) I would strongly recommend this book to you."
--Dr. Chris Brown, Linux Format

"The author does an outstanding job leading the reader from regex novice to master. The book is extremely easy to read and chock full of useful and relevant examples...Regular expressions are valuable tools that every developer should have in their toolbox. Mastering Regular Expressions is the definitive guide to the subject, and an outstanding resource that belongs on every programmer's bookshelf. Ten out of Ten Horseshoes."
--Jason Menard, Java Ranch

Regular expressions are a central element of UNIX utilities like egrep and programming languages such as Perl. But whether you're a UNIX user or not, you can benefit from a better understanding of regular expressions since they work with applications ranging from validating data-entry fields to manipulating information in multimegabyte text files. Mastering Regular Expressions quickly covers the basics of regular-expression syntax, then delves into the mechanics of expression-processing, common pitfalls, performance issues, and implementation-specific differences. Written in an engaging style and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.

This book is great if you want to learn about what you can do with regex, how they work, how you can improve them (efficiency & accuracy) and what kind of pitfalls there are.

My only gripe is about the Ruby reference on the cover. In the top right corner it says: "For Perl, PHP, Java, .NET, Ruby and more!" Perl, Java, .NET and PHP each get their own chapters (together 200 pages). Ruby, however, only participates in feature comparisons and benchmarks. If I had checked the ToC I would've known this, so I won't hold it against the book that much.

The Ruby thing is a bummer, but since the book is great, it will get all five stars.

The book is robust and goes into alot detail. I liked the comparing and contrasting between the various RegEx implementations. I had a difficult time digesting some of the detail. In particular, the analogies confused me and I felt the author went overboard with them. Many times, I had to backtrack to understand what was being discussed. However, regular expressions is a complex topic and the author did a good job easing into the concepts. An additional plus was with inline page citation - this helped to find the page corresponding to the topic being discussed.
I would have liked shorter chapters with chapter summaries and more diagrams in place of analogies. Ultimately, Mastering Regular Expressions is a good book referencing a complex topic.

I went through several books and online tutorials and never found anything that did a good comprehensive job of explaining regular expressions. This book does. If you are having trouble "getting it", I highly encourage reading this book. You will be extremely enlightened even after the first few chapters.

Quite a comprehensive guide to regular expressions. Gets very detailed in the areas that it covers. However, definitely not a 'beginner's guide'. I highly recommend that you are already comfortable with the basis of regular expressions before picking up this book. You will get way more out of it if this is not your first introduction to it. Comfort and proficiency with Perl would also be a big help. Title is correct though, this is a guide to 'mastering' regular expressions, not learning them from the beginning.

How deep down the rabbit hole do you really NEED to go? I had a serious need to get on top of regular expressions to solve one particular problem. I looked at several online tutorials which didn't take me where I needed to go, so I ordered Mastering Regular Expressions after reading the Amazon reviews. I always look at the negative reviews first. In spite of the negative reviews I ordered the book with an open mind.
When the book arrived I began reading it with enthusiasm. In the preface there is a small section on "How to Read This Book". I bought into the author's suggestion to read the book's first six chapters first. I was captivated through the first three chapters, and then somewhere in chapter 4 I began to get very weary with information overload. After putting the book down for a couple of days I decided to skip the rest and use what I needed to write the one regular expression I had need of. The book did successfully help me accomplish this, so I gave it 3 stars. Not only did it give me the information I needed that the online tutorials didn't, it also gave me the confidence I needed. For that, which I am grateful, I would have liked to have given it more stars. I think many of those in need of learning about regular expression could be well served by a "lite-edition" of this book. Perhaps someday when I have the time and the need I may try to wade through the rest of the book, but as it is now Mastering Regular Expressions took me far farther down the rabbit hole than I really needed or wanted to go.
If you need to get on top of Regular Expressions, I would recommend this book, however just be ready to be taken far deeper than the average coder probably needs to go.

Creating robust software requires the use of efficient algorithms, but programmers seldom think about them until a problem occurs. Algorithms in a Nutshell describes a large number of existing algorithms for solving a variety of problems, and helps you select and implement the right algorithm for your needs -- with just enough math to let you understand and analyze algorithm performance.

With its focus on application, rather than theory, this book provides efficient code solutions in several programming languages that you can easily adapt to a specific project. Each major algorithm is presented in the style of a design pattern that includes information to help you understand why and when the algorithm is appropriate.

With this book, you will:

• Solve a particular coding problem or improve on the performance of an existing solution
• Quickly locate algorithms that relate to the problems you want to solve, and determine why a particular algorithm is the right one to use
• Get algorithmic solutions in C, C++, Java, and Ruby with implementation tips
• Learn the expected performance of an algorithm, and the conditions it needs to perform at its best
• Discover the impact that similar design decisions have on different algorithms
• Learn advanced data structures to improve the efficiency of algorithms

With Algorithms in a Nutshell, you'll learn how to improve the performance of key algorithms essential for the success of your software applications.

This new book on algorithms from O'Reilly is a breath of fresh air. Most books on the subject fall into two categories: very dense tomes full of math and heavy on sometime unintelligible pseudocode, or books that basically just give you recipes without much understanding. The second category is the "give a man a fish" type, the first type is the "teach a man to fish, but use ALGOL to do it". Even the author, in his preface, recognizes that this is not the one book on algorithms you'd need if you were on a desert island. On a desert island you have plenty of time and you can carefully digest Cormen's Introduction to Algorithms. However, you're not on a desert island, are you? Thus this book is the link between Cormen's careful theoretical approach that takes time, and books that amount to code dumps.

The first six chapters amount to supplements on the basics of Theory of Algorithm courses: mathematics foundations, sorting, searching, and graphing algorithms. The mathematics here is somewhat lacking, but then the author is assuming you have other books on the subject - this is a book for ramping up quickly. The rest of the book is rather specialized, considering specific families of algorithms that are topical in these times such as path finding in AI, computational geometry, and network flow. They fill in the blanks missing in the standard textbooks. Plus there is plenty of code - real code, not pseudocode - that you can put to work quickly. The product description lacks the table of contents, so I list that next:

Part I: I
Chapter 1. Algorithms Matter
Section 1.1. Understand the Problem
Section 1.2. Experiment if Necessary
Section 1.3. Side Story
Section 1.4. The Moral of the Story
Section 1.5. References
Chapter 2. The Mathematics of Algorithms
Section 2.1. Size of a Problem Instance
Section 2.2. Rate of Growth of Functions
Section 2.3. Analysis in the Best, Average, and Worst Cases
Section 2.4. Performance Families
Section 2.5. Mix of Operations
Section 2.6. Benchmark Operations
Section 2.7. One Final Point
Section 2.8. References
Chapter 3. Patterns and Domains
Section 3.1. Patterns: A Communication Language
Section 3.2. Algorithm Pattern Format
Section 3.3. Pseudocode Pattern Format
Section 3.4. Design Format
Section 3.5. Empirical Evaluation Format
Section 3.6. Domains and Algorithms
Section 3.7. Floating-Point Computations
Section 3.8. Manual Memory Allocation
Section 3.9. Choosing a Programming Language
Section 3.10. References
Part II: II
Chapter 4. Sorting Algorithms
Section 4.1. Overview
Section 4.2. Insertion Sort
Section 4.3. Median Sort
Section 4.4. Quicksort
Section 4.5. Selection Sort
Section 4.6. Heap Sort
Section 4.7. Counting Sort
Section 4.8. Bucket Sort
Section 4.9. Criteria for Choosing a Sorting Algorithm
Section 4.10. References
Chapter 5. Searching
Section 5.1. Overview
Section 5.2. Sequential Search
Section 5.3. Binary Search
Section 5.4. Hash-based Search
Section 5.5. Binary Tree Search
Chapter 6. Graph Algorithms
Section 6.1. Overview
Section 6.2. Depth-First Search
Section 6.3. Breadth-First Search
Section 6.4. Single-Source Shortest Path
Section 6.5. All Pairs Shortest Path
Section 6.6. Minimum Spanning Tree Algorithms
Section 6.7. References
Chapter 7. Path Finding in AI
Section 7.1. Overview
Section 7.2. Depth-First Search
Section 7.3. Breadth-First Search
Section 7.4. A*Search
Section 7.5. Comparison
Section 7.6. Minimax
Section 7.7. NegMax
Section 7.8. AlphaBeta
Section 7.9. References
Chapter 8. Network Flow Algorithms
Section 8.1. Overview
Section 8.2. Maximum Flow
Section 8.3. Bipartite Matching
Section 8.4. Reflections on Augmenting Paths
Section 8.5. Minimum Cost Flow
Section 8.6. Transshipment
Section 8.7. Transportation
Section 8.8. Assignment
Section 8.9. Linear Programming
Section 8.10. References
Chapter 9. Computational Geometry
Section 9.1. Overview
Section 9.2. Convex Hull Scan
Section 9.3. LineSweep
Section 9.4. Nearest Neighbor Queries
Section 9.5. Range Queries
Section 9.6. References
Part III: III
Chapter 10. When All Else Fails
Section 10.1. Variations on a Theme
Section 10.2. Approximation Algorithms
Section 10.3. Offline Algorithms
Section 10.4. Parallel Algorithms
Section 10.5. Randomized Algorithms
Section 10.6. Algorithms That Can Be Wrong, but with Diminishing Probability
Section 10.7. References
Chapter 11. Epilogue
Section 11.1. Overview
Section 11.2. Principle: Know Your Data
Section 11.3. Principle: Decompose the Problem into Smaller Problems
Section 11.4. Principle: Choose the Right Data Structure
Section 11.5. Principle: Add Storage to Increase Performance
Section 11.6. Principle: If No Solution Is Evident, Construct a Search
Section 11.7. Principle: If No Solution Is Evident, Reduce Your Problem to Another Problem That Has a Solution
Section 11.8. Principle: Writing Algorithms Is Hard--Testing Algorithms Is Harder
Part IV: IV
Appendix A. Benchmarking
Section A.1. Statistical Foundation
Section A.2. Hardware
Section A.3. Reporting
Section A.4. Precision

Perl is a powerful programming language that has grown in popularity since it first appeared in 1988. The first edition of this book, "Programming Perl," hit the shelves in 1990, and was quickly adopted as the undisputed bible of the language. Since then, Perl has grown with the times, and so has this book.

"Programming Perl" is not just a book about Perl. It is also a unique introduction to the language and its culture, as one might expect only from its authors. Larry Wall is the inventor of Perl, and provides a unique perspective on the evolution of Perl and its future direction. Tom Christiansen was one of the first champions of the language, and lives and breathes the complexities of Perl internals as few other mortals do. Jon Orwant is the editor of

"The Perl Journal," which has brought together the Perl community as a common forum for new developments in Perl.

Any Perl book can show the syntax of Perl's functions, but only this one is a comprehensive guide to all the nooks and crannies of the language. Any Perl book can explain typeglobs, pseudohashes, and closures, but only this one shows how they really work. Any Perl book can say that "my" is faster than "local," but only this one explains why. Any Perl book can have a title, but only this book is affectionately known by all Perl programmers as "The Camel."

This third edition of "Programming Perl" has been expanded to cover version 5.6 of this maturing language. New topics include threading, the compiler, Unicode, and other new features that have been added since the previous edition.

Larry Wall wrote Perl and he wrote Programming Perl. Better yet, he writes amusingly and well--all of which comes across in this latest edition of the definitive guide to the language.

Like Topsy, Perl just grew, and as a result the need for a third edition came about. It's now over 1,000 pages, which it needs to be, as it performs several different duties. First, it's an introduction to the Perl language for those who are new to programming; also, it's a guide for those who are coming from other languages; and, finally, it's a Perl language reference.

Among Larry Wall's other pursuits is being a linguist, and it's perhaps for this reason that Perl is a peculiarly flexible language with many routes to achieving the same ends, as the authors ably demonstrate. It's also extensible in several ways, designed to work with many other languages. Also, as it's largely interpreted, programs written in Perl tend to run unmodified on a variety of platforms--although platform-specific Perl modules and programming practices are also discussed.

A major strength of Programming Perl is the way subject areas are approached from several directions. This constant shift of viewpoint eliminates blind spots in the reader's understanding and provides a pleasing echo of the way Perl itself can take many routes from here to there.

Because the Perl community is both knowledgeable and active, the language covers much more ground here than in the previous edition. Even if you have both previous editions, you'll want this latest version--if only for the new jokes. --Steve Patient, amazon.co.uk

If you are programming in Perl, this is a required book to have. It is the definitive manual on the language written by the author of the language, yet is very readable.

It is difficult to study perl using only this book.
Learning perl is the best way to study perl.
This book should be a reference of perl.

And there are many examples on the Net.
You can use these examples to modify for your purpose.
Sometimes, you should study how to debbug perl.

I decided to buy this book because I needed to learn Perl after having programmed in several other languages for my new job.

I was looking for a reference guide that pretty much outlined EVERYTHING that Perl can do. Proper syntax, short cuts, how to properly go about writing code in this language, how do write certain operations... etc

I was also looking for something that could be authoritative and set the STANDARD for how something should and should not be done... and not be written by some sloppy idiot who thinks he knows what he's doing.

And last but not least, I was looking for something that was funny and entertaining to read and not a dry boring textbook.

This book, as others call it "The Camel" or "The Camel Book", meets all those criteria. This is truly the BEST book on Perl out there, written by the inventor himself, Larry Wall, and some of his Perl-guru buddies. If you came to this page wondering if this is the book to get to learn to program in Perl, look no further.

Absolutely 5 stars on this one. And trust me, this book is pretty funny. It's almost as if it's written by your best friend or your roommate who you drink beers with, yet still goes into amazingly tidy and meticulous detail on how to do things properly. I couldn't have asked for a better book.
If you're like me and learning this for work, see if your boss will even buy it for the office. Mine did!

I hope you enjoyed my review. I've gone from knowing NOTHING about Perl to writing some pretty robust scripts in a matter of a few short weeks and I truly LOVE writing stuff in Perl because it is very easy once you get the idea of how the syntax is written in your brain. Anyways, I felt I had to share my experience with you so you can do the same. Enjoy.

PS: There is a correction I've found since there have been a few newer releases than the Perl 5 explained in this book. (As I write this, I'm using Perl 5.8.8).

pg. 513: At the very bottom should tell you that the period character "." will display the current position of the debugger.

pg. 514: The w command no longer lists a window of lines around your position. It is now the "v" as in [v]iew.

I program in C# almost exclusively. However, I needed some serious regex power and this kind of power can only be handled/performed with Perl.

Well, I have been learning Perl now for about 2 months and this book is uber invaluable to my book collection and has made it very easy to pick the syntax up quickly.

-- smerkdaddy

I would not recommend this book upfront if you don't know any Perl. Read up Beginning Perl by Simon Cozens and feel around a bit. Then pick this book up and put in the effort and you WILL appreciate the power, truth and beauty about PERL.

It is not a light read... certainly wasn't for me. But at the end of it, the effort was so worth it. The book will give you several Aha moments and by the end of it, thou shalt be rewarded!!

Want your web site to display more quickly? This book presents 14 specific rules that will cut 25% to 50% off response time when users request a page. Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines. The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process. Each performance rule is supported by specific examples, and code snippets are available on the book's companion web site. The rules include how to: Make Fewer HTTP Requests Use a Content Delivery Network Add an Expires Header Gzip Components Put Stylesheets at the Top Put Scripts at the Bottom Avoid CSS Expressions Make JavaScript and CSS External Reduce DNS Lookups Minify JavaScript Avoid Redirects Remove Duplicates Scripts Configure ETags Make Ajax Cacheable If you're building pages for high traffic destinations and want to optimize the experience of users visiting your site, this book is indispensable. "If everyone would implement just 20% of Steve's guidelines, the Web would be a dramatically better place.Between this book and Steve's YSlow extension, there's really no excuse for having a sluggish web site anymore." -Joe Hewitt, Developer of Firebug debugger and Mozilla's DOM Inspector "Steve Souders has done a fantastic job of distilling a massive, semi-arcane art down to a set of concise, actionable, pragmatic engineering steps that will change the world of web performance." -Eric Lawrence, Developer of the Fiddler Web Debugger, Microsoft Corporation

So you're web site seems slow, users have to wait a long time for pages to render. Is it time to start looking at your database, and webserver configs? Perhaps not, there's a lot to be gained by following a few simple rules in your front end.

This is a well written, well edited book with only a few minor editing issues. That makes it the best of many I've read recently.

So what's in this book.

The first two chapters introduce the problem and give you some background information about HTTP requests and caching which are useful to understand the next 15 chapters.

This book goes through 14 different techniques to improve the amount of time from the first request to the the completion of the page being rendered. Thus improving the perceived responsiveness of the web site.

There's a useful explanation of the difference between HTTP 1.1 and 1.0 with regards to how browsers (IE and Firefox) will limit (based on the standards) the amount of parallel downloads from the server.

The chapters are in order of highest impact to improve performance to least.

Here's the Chapter list:
1. Make Fewer HTTP Requests
2. Use a Content Delivery Network
3. Add an Expires Header
4. Gzip Components
5. Put Stylesheets at the Top
6. Put Scripts at the Bottom
7. Avoid CSS Expressions
8. Make JavaScript and CSS External
9. Reduce DNS Lookups
10. Minify JavaScript
11. Avoid Redirects
12. Remove Duplicates Scripts
13. Configure ETags
14. Make Ajax Cacheable

In each chapter the author introduces the issue, explains the rule and solution, and then provides some example pages to demonstrate the effectiveness of each rule.

Nearly every chapter had an "aha" moment for me.

The author worked on the Yahoo properties analyzing and suggesting improvements. It will come as no surprise that in chapter 15, where he looks at the top 10 US sites and analyzes which rules are and aren't being followed for those sites that Yahoo comes out near the top.

If you work on websites, front end or back end, it would be worth your time to read this book. At only 137 pages of content, it won't eat a hugh amount of time, and I think you'll find that your info/time to read ratio will compare favorably to many many other books.

I remember when I first started using the Internet. Dial ups were extremely slow at the time, so I'd type in a URL, then go make a sandwich. By the time I came back, hopefully the page would be loaded.

Today, we expect more. Often if a page takes more than a few moments to load, I don't bother. I tend to equate professional with quick. If a site doesn't load quickly or if parts of the page are slow, I naturally assume that the information provided might be as shabbily compiled. I simply move onto a different page.

High Performance Web Sites looks at how we can make our own websites load more quickly. I was surprised at how many different little things that can be done beyond optimizing graphics. Most of these things only take a few little nips and tucks and none were beyond my novice level of ability.

So this book is definitely a must-read for any front end folk. It shows how to make sites trim, slick and usable using some simple, sometimes common sense approaches that manage to elude the best of us before we read the book. Not only that, it provides a hierarchy of proven, scientific (maybe not in the traditional sense but certainly field-tested) hard evidence showing why the tricks are in the order they are.

This book and YSlow can definitely help make any site feel more responsive, and maybe shave dollars off bandwidth bills!

This book brings 2 kinds of tricks: the ones that are right under your nose and you never think about it and ones that you possible never would hear about unless you read this book.

This book was very helpful. Applying this rules I made my website about to 90% faster than before.

Great discussion of common web site performance problems (and how to fix them). The author focuses on content serving, which he claims is where 80-90% of the user response time is spent. Is that really true once you go beyond large web sites such as Yahoo! that have already put a lot of effort into optimizing their back-ends? In any case, the book is so well done I can't not recommend it -- even if most of the information can be found on the web (look for talks given by the author, or the YSlow web site). The only criticism is that the book is rather slim: I'm sure there is a lot more to be said (e.g. on browser rendering performance issues). Looking forward to reading part 2!

The post-Ajaxian Web 2.0 world of wikis, folksonomies, and mashups makes well-planned information architecture even more essential. How do you present large volumes of information to people who need to find what they're looking for quickly? This classic primer shows information architects, designers, and web site developers how to build large-scale and maintainable web sites that are appealing and easy to navigate.

The new edition is thoroughly updated to address emerging technologies -- with recent examples, new scenarios, and information on best practices -- while maintaining its focus on fundamentals. With topics that range from aesthetics to mechanics, "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" explains how to create interfaces that users can understand right away. Inside, you'll find: An overview of information architecture for both newcomers and experienced practitioners The fundamental components of an architecture, illustrating the interconnected nature of these systems. Updated, with updates for tagging, folksonomies, social classification, and guided navigation Tools, techniques, and methods that take you from research to strategy and design to implementation. This edition discusses blueprints, wireframes and the role of diagrams in the design phase A series of short essays that provide practical tips and philosophical advice for those who work on information architecture The business context of practicing and promoting information architecture, including recent lessons on how to handle enterprise architecture Case studies on the evolution of two large and very different information architectures, illustrating best practices along the way

How do you documentthe rich interfaces of web applications? How do you design for multiple platforms and mobile devices? With emphasis on goals and approaches over tactics or technologies, this enormously popular book gives you knowledge about information architecture with a framework that allows you to learn new approaches -- and unlearn outmoded ones.

One thing I found great about this book is the way it backs up its arguments with proper evidence with real-time examples. It would put an explanation (for example about labeling and navigation) then introduce a site and analyze it from that particular perspective.

For someone who wants to know how information architecture works, this is a great book. But be careful. This books focuses heavily on the world wide web part (well it said it would) so make sure you keep that in mind if you were looking for general knowlede about information architecture.

I bought this book shortly before starting my new job as the webmaster for a division of the federal governement. It was invaluable to me in planning our current internet redesign project and helping to explain information architecture to non-web designers/developers. I highly recommend reading this book from cover to cover.

This is a perfectly good resource, if you're looking for the theoretical underpinnings of how IA should work. I was, however, looking for more specifically technical information, along the lines of algorithms and integration techniques. For this I ended up going with Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications, which is more geared in that direction. Again, if IA is your whole intention, then this is a great resource, but if you're looking for technical detail, look elsewhere.

As project manager, I was in a bind when our contract information architect failed to understand the complexities of our matrixed business model and client base. Rosenfeld's book helped me design a IA for our 700 page HTML site that has since been described as simple, intuitive, a no-brainer. What great compliments!

The book describes basic theories of IA in general (i.e. book indexes and tables of contents, libraries, etc.) and the pros and cons of different organization, labeling, and navigation systems. Then Rosenfeld advises on presenting IA to management, etc., managing expectations (yours and others), and gives detailed examples of IA strategies online.

In "Part I - Intro to IA," obviously the basics are covered, like what exactly is IA? What does an Information Architect do? After reading this title, I would define an Information Architect as a glorified content manager. Someone that occupies the realm between UI designer and DB engineer.

Google is pretty good at finding information for us on the vast Internet, but there is a long way to go. I believe these authors make a valid point that IA will become increasingly relevant. In fact, I wouldn't doubt that in the future you will actually be able to obtain a BS in IA. Nonetheless, IA is around us everyday when we use technology no matter what we want call it.

The elements that make up IA are covered in "Part II - Basic Principles of IA." The basis of IA is the interaction or retrieval of information in terms of organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, search systems, thesauri, controlled vocabularies, and metadata. What this basically means is, how do we categorize our data so that it makes sense, is easy to navigate and search, and is relevant or adaptable according to our users' vocabularies.

"Part III - Process and Methodology" helps one plan a path to your IA goals. For instance, developing a research management team to discuss such goals, your target audiences, functionality/deficiencies of your current IA system, and integrating other software, such as your customer management system (CMS).

My favorite topic here is the detailed discussion of "building vocabularies." This is something everybody needs to constantly perfect. An example of this is, two people can search for the same thing using two different criteria. How can can we build a vocabulary system that recognizes that?

Many research tools are discussed. My favorite technique, and it's so simple, is card sorting. Get some blank cards (20-25) and write on them the headings from categories, subcategories, and content within your site. Ask a user to sort this stack of cards into piles that make sense to him and have him label those cards using post-it notes. Make sure to tell them to think-out-loud and be sure to take notes. This will give you an idea of how one would "travel" through your site, what is relevant, and what should not be on your homepage, etc.

The authors take the reader through the process of the IA development cycle, from concept, to getting managers to buy-in, to the implementation and administration of the system; very thorough.

The hands-on aspects of IA are explained in "Part IV - IA in Practice." One thing I found insightful was how one could pursue an official education in the area of IA, albeit there is no such degree. To gain a competitive advantage, the authors suggest obtaining a degree in Library and Information Science (LIS) or Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

At the end of chapter 15, there is a list of position titles making up an ideal IA team.
This list may prove helpful for potential readers to get a better understanding of what IA is comprised of.

1) Strategy Architect - responsible for overall design goals and integration

2) Thesaurus Designer - develops classification schemes, controlled vocabularies, and thesauri

3) Controlled Vocabulary Manager - manages the evolution of controlled vocabularies and coordinates the indexing specialists team

4) Indexing Specialist - tags content and services with controlled vocabulary metadata

5) Interaction Designer - creates navigation schemes and page layouts with a focus on user interaction

6) IA Software Analyst - links the IA and IT teams, focusing on ways to leverage software to create, manage, and drive the user experience

7) IA Usability Engineer - focuses on intersection of usability and IA by conducting studies that isolate IA elements, such as category labels or metadata.

8) Cartographer - converts patterns in content, structure, and usage into maps, guides, indexes, and other useful navigational tools.

9) Search Analyst - leads the design, improvement, and ongoing analysis of search system.


"PART V - IA in the Organization" was a little dry for my tastes and irrelevant to me. May be very helpful for someone in a large bureaucratic organization that wants to implement their IA concepts.

The moral of the story is that "site builders" must employ multiple info retrieval methods and tightly integrate them. Everyone searches, browses, scans, and finds info differently; accommodate them.

This book is very comprehensive and even deals with the politics of IA. To me, the book gets a little long at times, but if your life evolves around information somehow, this is an essential read.