I’m just after ordering 3 books from amazon. The irony is i hate books – hate them with a passion. With a book, you can’t filter out all the crap like you can in a newspaper or online ebook…. there’s no linking structure as such – no colour or beauty in the design of a book. If i watch a film, i lose 2 hours of my time. If i read the book the film was based on i might lose 10 times that. Is it worth it? No as the film gives me the general plot. That’s all i need. I don’t need the description ‘showboating’ that pads out books.
- PHP and MySQL Web Development All-in-one Desk Reference for Dummies
- Sams Teach Yourself Ajax, JavaScript, and PHP All in One
- Photoshop CS4 for Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))
The reason i’ve ordered these 3 is because i’m interested in them all and i know they’ll pay for themselves easily over time (provided i read them all). They’ll also act as a productive time filler when wireless goes down at college or when i’m on a bus or something…
PHP and MySQL knowledge is essential and i’m a complete newbie when it comes to those two. I can edit code and just about understand what’s happening but i’m not comfortable with them. I’m fairly well up on xhtml and css. I know a bit of javascript but not enough to develop anything of use in real life situations.
AJAX is a step up from javascript and again i’ve a rough understanding of it but can’t deliver anything myself. I’ve mentioned before that i’ve never really sat down and learned how to use photoshop. Hopefully this book will guide me through photoshop cs4 and i’ll be in a position to design and tweak designs myself.
So generally, i’m trying to strengthen my skills in javascript and design whilst learning php, mysql and AJAX from scratch. I’m an extremely fast learner (and reader) if i’m interested in something so i’ll expect to have these books read by the end of march 🙂
Anyway, these books should arrive next week and i’ll dive straight in to them.