Customer Reviews

ColdFusion 4 for Dummies

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I have no idea how someone without prior knowledge of ColdFusion could make any sense of this book; it is poorly organized and constantly introduces terms and concepts without explaining them. Almost everyone would be better off downloading ColdFusion Express from the Allaire Web site and working through the free tutorial that comes with it.

I am now using "The Coldfusion web application construction kit" by Que. MUCH better product. I would also suggest the Skill Builder CD from Allaire. It is VERY, VERY good.

Enclosed is my letter to IDG:

Monday, August 28, 2000

To whom it may concern, I purchased this book at Barns and Noble. I am VERY dissatisfied with this product. I spent two days trying to install ColdFusion per the instructions in this book. Part of the reason I spent two days struggling with the install was due to the VERY poorly written instructions. I had to literally jump from chapter to chapter to install and configure CF Studio, Server and Personal Web Server. You did not include Personal Web server like you stated in your book. The book is written for CF 4 and you include CF 4.5 on your CD. The chapters are not laid out in an organized and logical fashion. This can be demonstrated by the following: The author reviews configuring the development environment before the software is even installed. Furthermore there is a note about setting a property for Personal Web server yet there is no reference to Web Server until chapter 4! Who edited this book? There is also a contradiction between installation instructions and a graphic you have supporting it. I'm sure there are plenty of other errors, but I gave up after chapter 2.

I am sorry I purchased this book and had to recommend to the local ColdFusion community to avoid this product. Furthermore, I will be very cautious to purchase this author again. I do not know if it is the fault of editor or writer for such a poorly laid out book, but I feel compelled to say I am very skeptical of a consultant involved in such a project. I can't help but question their consulting skills based on this book.

Stephen J. McClure

This is the worst possible book you can buy if you want to learn ColdFusion. They introduce unexplained, confusing code, throwing in comments that seemed to have "suddenly occured" to them as they were writing something else. It's impossible to start at a low level and build up your knowledge. It is instant confusion. I'm a fan of Dummies Books - most are valuable. This one is awful. I hate it.

There is some valuable information presented in this book, but plan on spending at least half your time extracting it. It many compliment your other CF resources.

If this were the only CF resource available, I'm sure there would not be many developers thriving today. Even if you're a Dummy, look around for something else.

This book is terrible. More often than not it is telling you to do something without telling you why. The tutorials are inconsistant. The document names it refers to are constantly changing. Worst of all, it will tell you it is going to teach you how to perform a task with a nice graphic and then drop the subject and move on without another mention of the subject. I wish I had never purchased this book.

There's an old saying: "You get what you pay for." Well, in this case the saying holds true: I purchased this book because it was the least expensive book on Coldfusion. Unfortunately, its also one of the worst.

This book gets 1 star for successfully writing the book with correct grammer and spelling. However, there is little else on the positive side worth mentioning.

In terms of it's low points, the book is a confusing mess that has little to do with sound instructional design. To begin, the instructions for configuring Coldfusion are so disorganized, it will likely take you hours, if not days, to actually get Coldfusion up and running. In fact, the configuration instructions are so poorly sequenced that you will need to jump back and forth between chapters in order to make any sense of the process.

Should you be fortunate enough to decipher the installation instructions, the actual examples are so poorly described and documented that they are vitually worthless. I managed to get through the examples, but only after hours of taking notes and experimentation through trial and error.

I strongly recommend that you try to find another book, either the Ben Forte or Sams books.

I am quite pleased with this "Dummies" book, actually. I am already an expert-level HTML and DHTML coder, so perhaps that's why I am finding Gutzman and Ashenfelter's work to be right on par with my needs as someone green to ColdFusion. I picked up the book the day after being assigned the task of building an interactive Web-based program to track customer support, and this "Dummies" book was perfect - not only as an introduction, but got me a few levels above "beginner." And isn't that why we BUY "Dummies" books? Surely not to achieve elite status. This book gave me exactly what it was supposed to. Nothing more, nothing less.

The problem is, ColdFusion is NOT for dummies. I usually fault "Dummies" books for taking too much time explaining elementary concepts and not enough time on more complex topics. Not here. Right from page 1 the reader is dumped into a confusing set of new terms and concepts, with little in the way of examples. Billed as "Your easy guide to developing interactive Web pages", the text never mentions that there are a lot of much easier-to-use products for "developing interactive Web pages" -- ColdFusion's forte is large, complex, high-end database applications that no "dummy" is ever going to build. Anyone who picks this up as a quick way to increase their Web page interactivity will be sorely disappointed.

This dummies book is one of the worst I've seen. Compared to other CF resources this is my least valuable one. Even if you are a beginner the examples are mediocre. Not to mention several valuable tags like CFHTTP and CFFTP are not even listed in the book. The organization of the book is also confusing as it is put into the "dummies" format. Instead of trying to write a "funny" resource they should have focused a little more on the contents.

I have many dummies books and they have all been 100% useful in getting me started until now. This book is a good into to Cold Fusion but only touches the surface. If you need to jump in and develope I sugest the Cold Fusion web application construction kit by Ben Forta. This is a great reference book as well as learning. So, if your just curious about Cold Fusion the dummies book is good, but if you'll be working with it get Forta's book.