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Online! The Book
If only John C. Dvorak and Chris Pirillo (with Wendy Taylor) had been able to deliver. If only they had not strewn the book with error, verbiage and irrelavancy. Ah, well.
This volume in its 700 pages (divided into 28 chapters) tries to cover everything from hardware basics to voice over IP, in between touching on e-commerce, security, web programming, networking, content management and business websites, to name just six of the topics perhaps each better suited to a volume of their own.
This book skims, and skims fast, over a number of important and vital topics while dwelling on others that many will find useless. Chris Pirillo seems to be an expert on marketing, so that gets thirty pages, while web programming languages get ten. We get forty pages of 'Hardware Basics,' which cover information vital to getting online such as operating systems, varieties of Intel chips, video cards and gaming audio drivers. I know that if I wanted to find the perfect spot to put breakout boxes about Babbage and von Neumann (essential to any book about getting online) I'd put them in the chapter on viruses. It seems as if the three authors said "we're contracted to seven hundred pages so let's just throw in topics we know a lot about until we get to seven hundred pages -- then stop."
Then there are the errors. We get editing errors like the text that tells us a 'geostationary satellite' orbits at 'about 22,300 miles,' next to a diagram showing the number 20,300 miles. We get errors in logic like the breakout box that has "DNS servers may run Apache, which is an open source Web server program" and goes on to imply that all DNS servers will run a web server. We get errors in grammar. We get paragraphs like "Although there are dynamic Web page URLs (meaning they change, or at least part of it does), most are static (stay the same). These can be dynamic by use of a programming error or dynamic because someone named the URL extension without adding a link elsewhere on the web site." With sentence construction like that I'm still not sure if the claim intended is true or not.
Did I like anything about this book? Sure, the chapter on 'How A Modem (Really) Works' was full of good solid information. Other chapters were similar, particularly the two following on networking and handhelds, phones and PDAs. Others did contain some good information, just surrounded by dross.
You can go to the book's website, which is basically just a single page with yet more hyperbole ("Everything is here. Well-written. Comprehensive.") or visit the Prentice Hall page, which actually gives you a table of contents and a sample chapter. Just don't go straight to the Prentice Hall PTR home page and search for books with "Online" in the title, as that won't find it. Instead search for books with "Book" in the title.
I'd only recommend this book to those who want to spend a lot of time finding the good bits, a few minutes chuckling over some of the errors, and thirty dollars on a paperweight. If you're really looking for a 'perfect gift' for people new new to the net, then find something cheaper covering just the essentials, and for those more expert, find a volume that actually covers a topic of interest well.
You can purchase Online! The Book from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
It's Dvorak we're talking about here. The guy's too busy writing his Trolltech columns to actually learn anything new. I mean, thanks for explaining how a modem (really) works, guys. The 90's called -- they want their chapter back.
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
Junk, all in one books like this have always been quite common. It seems that computers have been around long enough that even the completely uninitiated know that computing is reasonably complicated. Do they try to sell "the only book you'll ever need" style books for business? Construction? Medicine? Maybe they don't feel there are quite enough fearful dupes to be had in those topics.
... who's been predicting the imminent death of Apple for 20+ years.
And now he claims "...no more junk email"
OK. That's quite simply not possible, and he must know it.
"Packed with secrets never before revealed"
You're telling me there's a lot (wnough to "pack" a book this size) important useful things about the internet that only these three people knew until now?
Hogwash.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"Slack" is good. I think you meant to say "flack." Slashdot gets flack for posting too many positive reviews.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
This book is as perfect for every computer user as the 'Internet Yellow Pages' are. HMM, lets make a BOOK out of PAPER that lists all the websites we can find. Brilliant. These books are for people who always say,
'One of these days, you are going to have to teach me how to use computers'.
No, I won't.
Teach yourself or find something else to do. Writing a book like this is obviously going to make the authors and publishers some money, which is the point. This book was written by 'internet experts', the kind of people who get fired as soon as their companies find out how useless they really are. Then they get hired to write about what they barely know.
TallGreen CMS hosting
I mean really, there should be a competition to find a book which sets new lows.
What's the point of having a scale of 1 to 10 if nobody has a 1?
If Dvorak put out a book with so little value that it's not worth reading, will mislead anyone who doesn't know any better, would corrupt young minds if given to a library, would shame you to admit to have read it, much less purchased it, invokes sadness to look upon -- knowing that trees died to print it, leads you to question the sanity of the publisher or the motives of the author, then by all means, give it a 1!