Customer Reviews

Mastering ColdFusion 4.5

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ben's books tie with this one for #1. ColdFusion can not ask for more. The chapter on XML is weak, but everything else shines greatly. Even hard-core CF experts will find some new insights and answers here. Beginners will be delighted. The style and the contents are unbeatable.

I've gotten through the first six chapters of this book so far, and while I have found it relatively useful, I've been disappointed by the number of incorrect references and other errors. The CD that comes with the book has all the code from the book, but it's not always correct, sometimes a line or two is missing. An example of an incorrect reference is can be found on page 93, where it is discussing functions, and it says:

The very nature of ColdFusion really precludes the need for developers to create their own functions. Instead, this ability can be achieved through the use of custom tags (see Chapter 29, "Building ColdFusion Custom Tags").

The chapter on building ColdFusion Custom Tags is in fact chapter 31, not chapter 29.

I guess what it really comes down to is if you're willing to accept some things that should have been caught in editing, then you'll find this book useful.

For the most part, the information is presented well, and thoroughly. It moves a little slow in my opinion for those already familiar with server-side scripting and other languages.

Loved it got more out of this book then in Fortas although Forta is the so called guru of Cold Fusion which is fine and dandy, but I lean more towards this book for reference and how to's.

I took the Fastrack to Cold Fusion class, learned alot in 3 days and this book goes right along with the class.

Would definetly pick this one first or do what I do read a couple of chapters out of both and make up your own mind.

This is the best Cold Fusion book for both learning and as a reference. As in "Mastering Cold Fusion 4", Danesh and Motlagh give the user important tips critical to writing good code. This book is oriented toward those of us in the real world, writing web applications for dot.coms, corporate intranets and e-commerce, from beginner to expert. If you want a thorough understanding of the latest Cold Fusion this is the book to read.

The book is very well organized and the explanations are clear and concise. In addition, it covers more topics than Ben Forta's excellent book. HOWEVER, the text and examples seem to have an extreme amount of errors.

First, there are unquestionably way too many obvious misstatements. Second, either the "typos" in the examples are in fact errors, or if they are not errors, they are illustrating an esoteric point that is never explained in the text.

I have read and studied the entire book. Many times I examined a code example and did not fully understand some part of the code. Some of these times I eventually did figure out that an interesting point was being presented. But too many times I came to the conclusion that the code was just plain wrong. This had the unfortunate effect of eventually causing me to not pay attention to an example, if it at first appeared wrong.

Very good and concise book - it quickly showed me how to do certain features that weren't easily found with the original ColdFusion manuals/docs. I have developed in LDML (blueworld.com's web app engine) and ASP and was able to quickly move to CFML with this book.

Picked up this title after working with Forta's web app. kit as a guide for the first months of my CF development work. It fills in the gaps very nicely -- where Forta chose to cut corners, or where the example code in the web app kit doesn't quite cut it (great discription of how to do multiple adds to a table from a menu or list with multiple choices allowed).

The index is more thorough that Forta's, and there are nice little goodies like a section on how to use ##s within ##s.

Only criticism is the enclosed CD, which is poorly structured and makes it hard (in some cases impossible) to find the custom tags etc. referred to in the text.

When I first picked up this book, I was no more of an internet application developer than my grandmother. However, after sitting down with CF Studio and reading the first few chapters, I was fully understanding everything that Arman Danesh was trying to convey. Although it does not span the entire CF Universe (if anything can), and there are several trivial points not fully covered, the fundamental building blocks of online application development have been laid for a strong foundation in Cold Fusion Development. After reading this book, you will be able to design everything from a simple shopping cart, to an entire scalable intranet, complete with drillable information. This book goes great with O'Riley's "Designing with JavaScript".

If you are new to cold fusion I would recommend this and Ben Forta's books, if you are familiar with cold fusion but are looking for advanced concepts then this is the book for you, from advanced security to advanced query's this book has everything.

I'd pick Ben Forta's "The ColdFusion web application construction kit" over this horribly written excuse for a cold fusion guide any day.

Beginners will find this book's layout tedious and confusing as it mixes beginning concepts with those far more advanced.

Even the tag and function references are poorly organized and give no examples on their proper usage.

The only use I can possibly fathom for this book is for advanced developers to give this book to beginning developers at their firm as a means to help insure their own job security.