Customer Reviews

FrontPage 2000 Developer's Guide

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a really good book on FrontPage 2000 that goes beyond the basics. The author wastes no time in presenting many useful things one can do with FP 2000. The sections on database connectivity and ASP are very helpful. The word "developer" in the title is a little misleading, IMHO, although I guess in the web design world anybody can be a developer, unlike in the programming world. My favorite FP 2000 reference remains "FrontPage 2000: The Complete Reference," though, but again this "developer" title is a very good one to get for the avid FP 2000 developer.

This book will remain by my side whenever I work in FrontPage 2000. Truly a great book. The sections on database access and usage was worth the money in itself. The book goes into detail as to how to utilize the FP wizards and modify code to enhance their capabilities, i.e. like providing data editing capabilities. If you are not an ASP guru and still want to create great database driven websites with FrontPage 2000 you really should buy this book. I read it in 2 days, just couldn't put it down. Plenty of examples to explain what is going on behind the scenes.

I purchased this book mostly for it's coverage of Database driven webs and ASP. On first glance it appears there is excellent coverage. Unfortunately when it comes to actually following the examples and using the included code, the book and the disk are riddled with errors. None of the scripts work, and none of the scripts are included in their entirety on the disk. I searched the Osborne website for updates or downloads but nothing can be found. I eventually had to start looking for another book to buy.

I like this book very much. Sections get right to the point; more often then not covering intermediate to advanced concepts and ideas.

One of the reasons I purchased the book was the coverage of database driven webs. As a college teacher looking for a textbook for a Fall 1999 class, I dug right in and tried your step-by-step dB exercises. The Chapter 10 stuff went well. Being familiar with ASPs, I read through Chapter 11 so I could get to what I was really interested in, Chapter 12 ('Integrating ASP into Your Webs'). Here I encountered much frustration.

It seems that the pain, and gain, is in the details. While I learned a lot fixing the errors in Chapter 12, I wonder if your readership might not benefit from an errata sheet, possibly Web based. I did search the Web for one, but found none.

I wish I could inform the author of the Chapter 12 (pgs. 467-473) errors, but I can't find an Email address for him, not even at his own company.

The author appears to have a wide-ranging grasp of FrontPage, Web database technology, ASP scripts, and other advanced components. Unfortunately, the book was apparently not technically edited with much attention to detail. I, like others have wasted a lot of time attempting to reproduce exercises that are flawed in their presentation.

After finishing Chapter 2, I knew I got the right book. For sure, five stars for it from my point of view. I found very very little verbage in the book. The author gets to the point right away. This book covers many important core topics and it provides ample techniques with very thorough demonstrations. The book is easy to follow when I sit by my PC running Frontpage 2000. Both novices and professionals will enjoy the book.

Don't expect too much from this book. The author does a good job of describing many of the features of Frontpage, but the coverage is not in depth. The step-by-step examples are a half-hearted attempt at implementing some of the features, but are incomplete and not well thought out.

Overall the book is not bad for getting familiar with Frontpage but be prepared to go elsewhere for additional information to implement the features that were *just described* in the book.

I gave the book 2 stars because of what I already wrote, but also because I expect much more from a book that has "Professional Developer's Library", "Master advanced scripting...", and "Developer's Guide" on the cover, should aim higher than XXX in 24hours title, this book does little better.

Really a great book, even though there's a funny error on page 482 where it says "You are viewing this site with version 4.00 of the Netscape Browser" but the title bar says IE :-)

It's a great book, well written, and in the jungle of books this was a lucky choice for me, because of the ASP part of the book that I needed.

I bought this book as FrontPage is our main internal development tool for our Intranet system. I have recently moved from DreamWeaver to FrontPage and needed a book that would get past the basics of HTML. This book has been a great reference for converting from DreamWeaver to FrontPage because it skips the fluff and showed me how to use the features that I needed to use. We now have a few copies of this book floating around the office for people who know the Web and how to develop, but need that extra help with FrontPage.

What I liked most about this book was that it talked about all the things FrontPage was doing behind the scenes. With this book in hand I have been able to take those pesky webbots and make them do what I want them to do, not the other way around.