Customer Reviews

Building Dynamic HTML GUIs

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I seldom read "doorstop" techology books -- you know, the 600-1000 page works focused on exhaustive reference and tutorials into some technology. The good ones sit on my desk like a dictionary, waiting for me to look up a particular syntax for something. The bad ones prop up my monitor.

This book, however, does neither. Champeon does great job doing what it's advertised as doing: You can use his work to step you through the daunting task of building interfaces to Web applications that work in both browsers. With a supporting Web site for downloading the code he refers to in the book, you'll have a complete package for taking the next step in dynamic development for the Web.

But he doesn't stop there. While so many technical books give you the nuts and bolts to build your projects, so few give you anything else. Champeon realizes that this is only the end of a long process of understanding the reasons WHY you should build sites the way he suggests. To drive home his point, he digs into the history of interface theory: from the early command-line interfaces, to modern GUIs, and now the advent of powerful tools displayed through hypertext interfaces.

Without this understanding of the fundamentals of good, user-centered design, any interface you build will fail. This book will give you that understanding, plus to tools to put that knowledge into practice.

If only all technical authors understood this...

the Web would be a better place.

It's clear that the authors have thought about what makes a better Web site, and not just about the code. Too many 'dynamic HTML' sites are ugly creatures designed to show off the developer's programming skills rather than help people get actual work done. This book doesn't let you do the damage until it's had a chance to explain that there are better things to do with dynamic HTML, things that will keep users coming back.

Technically, I thought this was excellent. There were a lot of fine points about both the Netscape and Microsoft models that had slipped by, and excellent notes on ways to make other parts of the Web infrastructure, like HTTP, do some of your work for you. It's a bit long, but I enjoy coming back to it regularly. And heck, magnetic poetry is fun!

There is on thing I like about this book. It got me to think about web sites as applications rather than online brochures, and to design interfaces based on user goals. Otherwise, it reminds me of a really bad college text book, like one that's only being used because the professor wrote it.

The first half of the book contains endless rambling with occasional insightful points. I found this especially annoying because I'm familiar enough with user-interface theory to know it can be presented in a very interesting way, but the authors manage to make it very boring, and to keep this up for a couple hundred pages.

They go on and on about how server connection waits destroy the user experience, and the importance of connecting with the server only when absolutely necessary. I waisted a lot of time trying to put this theory into practice, only to discovered that server connection delays are just one point to consider, along with download times, site manageabiliy, compatibility with older browsers, etc.

I was happy to reach the second half of the book, thinking that finally I would get to the meat and potatoes. I was very disappointed to find out that all the remaining chapters were based on using their javascript wrapper. When I went to their web site to download it, I spent some time trying out the sample applications. They took way to long to load, and crashed when I tried to use them (in MSIE 5, Win98). There was some comment about "hoping" the wrapper works. I downloaded the wrapper to try it, but it added too much overhead to consider using it. I gave up on the book at this point.

With a title like this, I was expecting a book full of cut'n'paste mission-tested cross-browser code - real meat. Not so, sadly. Most of it is way back down the knowledge chain, with around half the book being a resume of interfaces, CGI, DOM etc. This part is written as if being explained to a newbie web author - much more a history than a coder's reference (explanations of what ASP and SSI is, for example). Nice read, but mostly old news to anyone technical.

The second part of the book moves into the code. Sadly, I found the demos neither particularly useful (much is made of a DHTML fridge-magnet game) nor particularly reliable cross-browser. The acid test is this: have I used any of the code in real-life projects, and do I regularly pick up the book to glean good stuff? The answer to both is no. This is not an O'Reilly-style bible that ends up dog-eared from use. It's got some nice ideas in the cross-browser code libraries, but nothing you couldn't download yourself from siteexperts.com, bratta.com or the usual resources. Sorry, guys, you've put a lot of work into this, but you don't seem to know who your audience is.

This book covers a lot of nice material. I find myself referencing it all the time. Just about anything you'd want to do with javascript / HTML is here.

However, this book is not for the javascript novice. It also, is NOT a javascript tutorial by any means. In addition, a complaint I had is that the code isn't on a Cd, you have to download it from their site. Also, the routines they use to manipulate objects are wrapped in their javascript code and it appears what they are calling, is native javascript code. This was unnverving until I figured out you had to include a 30K include file. I also found some of the examples didn't run nicely on all browsers (not surprising with DHTML).

However, this book does cover a lot of ground and prepares the developer for the arduous task of creating DHTML pages. They do some very cool things with it and it is worth checking out.

This book reveals the history of GUIs and places the choices you are about to make on your job within the context of past mistakes, current ignorance and foreshadowing of the future. This book provides code examples that are immediately applicable and justifies every decision within a historical and a practical context. The authors treat the developer as a well educated, motivated developer who truly wishes to develop interfaces that are human empowering. This book should be required reading before being allowed to purchase a domain name!!!

This book is a good place to start for beginners or non-programmers. The coding examples are good only if you are going to use their wrapper code to build your DHTML. Being a programmer myself, I need to know how things work and just can't rely on someone else's code to magically do it for me. So, if you're looking for a quick way to get into DHTML this is the way to go. If you're looking for the "guts", this isn't the place.

All I can say is that this book is a breath of fresh air to professionals who are tired of the remedial skill-review, 'for dummies' approach to Internet books. We finally have a DHTML book written by programmers for programmers!

I guess there aren't different editions to this book. i can see why. I bought this book in 1999, thinking it would be great along with my javascript:The definitive guide and HTML:The complete reference, because i thought that DHTML would take me a step further and I would find something new and different than either HTML or Javascript, and I got a little bit of a sense of it, but but only every 100 pages or so. The book is divided into countless titled sections, in which you could skip entirely because what the author tries to tell you could be said in a lot less space. If you are absolutely brand new to any kind of web developer, or programmer, or anything other than just a computer end-user and you would like a first book ever to give you some kind of foundation to base your new endeavors into learning about computers from a programmer's viewpoint, this book may be for you. There is something to learn from it, but it definitely could tell a lot more. My copy is old and falling apart and I think today I'm just gonna throw it out. The little sense i got was that it's geared towards making you a creative thinker rather than just showing you how to code. I'll buy a CSS book next to replace this one.

Be wary of any DHTML book that starts off with a chapter called "what is a user interface?" or one that starts off with 15 pages of descriptions & screenshots of UNIX commands. While the authors might have some qualified insight into GUI design with DHTML, most of it is hidden behind pages and pages of irrelevent filler. - It makes a great paperweight, but I'd hate to have to read it!