Customer Reviews

Pro Wicket (Expert's Voice in Java)

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

 

 

I bought this book several months ago and walked through the chapters. The authors did a poor job of explaining items and rushed into printed code examples without describing citing what was going on. The book's sentences all make sense but don't fit well together.
The Wicket framework itself is good, but this book is not. I've read an early access copy of Wicket in Action which does a much better job. Buy that instead.

It is good to be the first book about Wicket, that in itself helps readers who seek more comprehensive information than the online doc. However, the book is too deeply bound (almost obsessed) with working through the example code. It does not do a good job to explain the architecture view of Wicket and how it differs from traditional frameworks, nor does it provide much description to the many components with wicket or its extension. For the experienced developers, the wicket Wiki on [...] is more helpful. For the novice, this isn't a well organized to learn from.

Hope the Wicket in Action will do a better job.

Update 10/04 - The source code for the book is now available for downloading and a second edition of the on-line version of the book has been posted that corrects many of the first printed edition's errors.

Pro Wicket is the first book to be published about a promising web framework called Wicket. While I typically have nothing but praise for Apress books, the editing of this book is severely lacking. The majority of the source code in the book's first printing is incorrect in some manner or another. The book indicates that the source code for the book can be downloaded from the Apress website but as of this writing, the source code is not available. Unfortunately, the errata pages on the Apress site are of limited help because they are incorrect in many cases as well leaving one to figure out the intent of the author through trial and error.

That said, if you are willing to learn through trial and error and are comfortable perusing the Wicket API documentation, this book will give you a reasonable, albeit frustrating, introduction to the Wicket web framework.

This book and is very difficult to follow at times. The editing was very obviously rushed (or done by an amateur) and the result is a huge errata that recently had to be published, due to mounting complaints. There are no step-by-step code examples reflecting the progress from chapter to chapter - all that has been provided is a full web application with the completed code - not very helpful as this book takes an approach of using a progressing web application as its flow. Also, one can clearly distinguish which author wrote which sections - some of the chapters are clearly written and understandable, others are a complete train wreck, with blatant omissions and badly worded explanations of complex subjects. On a scale of 1-10 I give this book a 4 at best - I would recommend a new edition of this book, perhaps also reflecting the profound changes of Wicket 1.2 and 1.3.

This is the WORST written book i have ever seen. There are SO MANY mistakes in here it is not even funny. I would not recommend this book to ANYONE.

Before this book there was only the Wicket API, and a varigated collection of wiki pages. The all-important overview and introduction to core concepts was something that you had to assemble on your own, more or less.

This book fill the gap perfectly. It lays a thorough foundation on Wickets concepts and how to get started. The book takes a step-by-step approach and I could read most of it without having to do a "hack-a-long" to keep up with the argumentation.

The book suited me very well, and gave me the overall knowledge needed to use the API effectively. I recommend it to all beginners of Wicket.

I liked Pro Wicket because:

* finally newcomers have a way to learn how to get productive with Wicket
* it is compact, and doesn't waste a lot of time talking around the issues
* still it is more than just a how-to, as Karthik sometimes explains multiple ways of achieving something and has a chapter on custom components.

It is unfortunate that some errors crept in, but then again, readers will get the idea.

This book is good, but I recommend having worked a little bit with Wicket before using this book. The beginning of the book is not basic enough for dummies.

The book had the information I was seeking, there is another due out in June I will also buy, very handy, helpful tool.