Customer Reviews

Instant Java, with CD-ROM (Java Series)

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

 

 

Here's the bottom line: The book has an accompanying CD that delivers pre-developed applets while the book itself merely describes what the applets do. The concept is good. You don't have to spend time developing. However, you can find these applets on the web and you won't learn A SHRED of Java applet programming. You can download an un-jarrer (to decompress the resulting jar files that are created) and a decompiler (to get to the source code of the class files). That doesn't help because you land up with code that's hard to understand (for example, it's hard to find where some of the extended classes come from). The book gives a plug-in that you can use to change SOME of the characteristics, but it's painfully inflexible in general. Therefore, what's the purpose of the book?

In short, this book is useless. The applets don't work all the time. I got those errors like "Applet ABC can't init: NEW", "Applet ABC can't start: ERROR" on my work PC. There is no place to get help: no email addresses from the authors, no mailing list, no nothing. This is frustrating. The applets were just not tested well in all scenarios by the authors. To help your readers, authors, please spend sometime to set up a site with frequently asked questions. Until then, to my dear friends/readers, PLEASE DON'T BUY THIS USELESS BOOK!!!! It just WASTES your $$$ that you work hard for!

It has been 2 years since I bought this book. When I first bought it I thought it taught you the Java language and didn't even bother to look at it. Well, the fact is, is that it comes with a CD with a directory full of applets. Inside the book, it teaches you how to get the applets from the CD and how to get them working on your page by placing the right HTML line in your HTML code and how to pass the applet the right arguments. If you are looking for a book to teach you the basics of Java, this is not that book. This book is not even intended for that. If you want a Java book like that, get Teach Yourself Java 1.1 in 21 Days or something. Now, as I said, I bougfht this book 2 years ago. Of course, after I bought this book I got a real Java book so I would actually learn something. After 2 years of learning Java I have become fairly advanced. Recently I looked in the Instant Java Book for Java devoloper's tips it said it had. The tips, scarce as they are, are useless, dumb little tidbits. The applets themselves are horrible. The most useful one is one that displays series of images as animation, and you could do that easily with an animated GIF creation program. Bottom line: don't get this book...spend it on a book from which you will actually gain knowledge of something.

If you're interested in the actual programming of Java then this book is not for you. I found it to actually be worthless and definately not helpful to me at all. It does include some applets but if you want applets you can find the same things online and not pay a dime. If you're still interested in buying this book E-mail Me, I'm willing to sell it for a reasonable price.

To clarify my previous review, the major problem of the book is practically unusable "customization" with Java plug in. If a user is so ignorant that he doesn't know how to paste html for an applet then it is quite silly to believe that he knows anything about applets at all. I had to say that I was dissapointed with the book, probably because I appreciated the second edition a lot.

This book was well organized and easy to find the solutions to my questions. The many examples that it has, enabled me to understand the ways to customize my animations. I found it very useful in my daily job when I needed the info quick.

Most of those interested in Java are interested because of the types of applets described in the book. Plus you get source code for personnal experiments (if you know something about programming). What else one interested in dynamic web wants. Add here that some companies are selling meager variants of applets described in the book for pretty penny, for example - Sausage. I saw recently AnFX commercial applet that is not a penny more worth than applets here. Some guy over the Internet sells "1 Cool Button" for 29 bucks. Etc, etc... Thus, this book is a bargain. It sells what it says - instant Java. The only little problem about the book is incredible miserable presentation - if you glance through the book there is really nothing to attract one's attention. Don't be deceived - this is a BARGAIN!

Absolutely fascinating! JAVA is a thrilling new technology that is taking the Web literally by storm. An opportunity like JAVA comes along once every three lifetimes! Here is your chance to "get in on the ground floor", no matter whether you are a beginner or an experienced programmer, "Instant JAVA" is for YOU! Not only is the book thorough and fun to read, but the included CD lets you use your new knowledge right away by "trying it out"

I think "Instant Java" is one of the best Java language tutorial, for non-programmer. Is not necessary to know C++ programming langhuage basics, to build very powerfull Applets to animate own Web pages. It learn people only practical solutions in short time, my modest opinion is :"Well done!".

The third edition is not that much of an improvement as the second was. Most of the new things are related to the ticker applets. There is a whole set of those. Book also makes a confusion with different versions of Java. I still think this is a bargain since you get some attractive applets (and some completely unatractive ones that are doing a poor job of replacing animated gifs) that can be used on the web pages. You need to sort them out from the rest of rather irrelevant stuff.