The Web Programming CD Bookshelf

honestpuck writes " I am a big fan of the written word on dead trees, but sometimes I like to have the written word where I can easily search it, or cut and paste from it. That's why I like PHP.net and why I decided to get a copy of O'Reilly's Web Programming CD Bookshelf. And I am pleased with it, though not ecstatic." Read on to see what honestpuck liked about this collection, and what drawbacks it may have for you. The Web Programming CD Bookshelf author [Various] pages 540 paper, 1189 HTML publisher O'Reilly rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005105 summary A good resource for PHP developers, overpriced for others

The Good The Web Programming CD Bookshelf (WPCB) consists of a CD and a paper copy of Webmaster in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition. The CD contains an HTML version of that, as well as Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference, 2nd Edition, Programming PHP, PHP Cookbook, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition and Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL. There is an excellent combined index of the six volumes and a nice Java search engine, QuestAgent Pro version 4.0.9. from JObjects. According to the documentation for the engine on the CD, "It has problems running with Mozilla 0.9 and 1.0 and Netscape 7 on Mac OS 9, and occasionally on Linux"; I had no problems running it on Mac OS X in Mozilla 1.3, Safari or Internet Explorer apart from a small visual problem with another tab in Mozilla (separate windows was fine, only another tab in the same window caused a problem).

All the contents pages and indices of the volumes are of course hyperlinked. Once you are on the pages of a 'book' the top of each page has a link to the contents page, next page, previous page and the search form. The bottom of each page has next and previous buttons (with the relevant page titles), a link to the books contents page and index and below them all a row of links to the Bookshelf home and each of the books. Taken together this makes moving through the books and finding the information you want easy, for the most part.

Once you start using the collection there are some great benefits. The ability to just cut and paste the example code right out of the text you are reading cannot be underestimated.

The books themselves are the quality you expect from O'Reilly - well-written, well-edited and containing the information you need on a given subject. The one you get on paper, Webmaster in a Nutshell is a good overview of HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, CGI and Perl, PHP and Apache that I find a good desktop reference. The others provide a good depth and perspective on their respective subjects.

The Bad

Obviously a great deal of the work of converting the books to HTML must be done by automated software, and sometimes you wish a little more had hand-work had been done. For example, Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference has an alphabetical list of all HTML and XHTML tags and their attributes -- as one page of 23,000 lines of HTML. The only way into this mammoth list is via the book index, there is no quick list of tags with links on a separate page or other fast way.

My other complaint about that content is that the selection of books is PHP heavy. If you are involved in using PHP to build websites this volume would be a great help; others may feel they would have been better served by a collection that dropped at least one of the PHP books in favour of, perhaps, The Perl Cookbook. Webmaster in a Nutshell is not as useful in this collection as you might think, some of what it contains is covered by other volumes in the set. That's not to say that it isn't an excellent book and a good choice as the one that comes in paper with the CD, just that once again I'm not sure it really needed to be in the collection.

That brings me to my final complaint, cost. Sure, 6 books for $130 U.S. seems like a bargain, but unless you are interested in all 6 books (which means principally developing for the web in PHP) it starts to be less of a bargain. If you think of it as more expensive than a six-month subscription to O'Reilly's online book service, Safari (which allows you ten books, changeable when you want) then this is less than a bargain.

Conclusion

If you are developing for PHP then this might be a good resource at a fair price; you'll find it almost indispensable and (unlike Safari) you can use it when you're offline. If you develop in some other environment, it is an overpriced way of getting a few books as electronic text. If you develop for the web in Perl, then have a serious look at The Perl CD Bookshelf instead, or perhaps consider a Safari subscription.

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