PHP 5 Welcome to the only guidebook series that takes a visual approach to professional-level computer topics. Open the book and you’ll discover step-by-step screen shots that demonstrate over 150 key PHP 5 techniques, including: Setting file and folder permissions Using interfaces Writing object-oriented code Processing data in forms Using cookies to manage visitors Working with databases using MySQLi and SQLite Migrating scripts to PHP 5 Parsing XML files using DOM Transforming XML with XSLT Troubleshooting PHP scripts "Like a lot of other people, I understand things best when I see them visually. Your books really make learning easy and life more fun." John T. Frey (Cadillac, MI)

* Now revised to cover features found in PHP4 and PHP5, this new edition shows Web developers step by step how to create dynamic, data-driven Web applications
* Two-color screen shots accompanied by concise callouts demonstrate how to tackle more than 100 key PHP tasks, including using cookies to monitor the activity of Web site visitors, retrieving information from MySQL or other databases, creating images and Web pages on the fly, and processing XML documents
* Shows how to use PHP with Apache Web server, process data forms, access data files, troubleshoot PHP scripts, and migrate scripts to PHP5
* A companion Web site features a fully searchable e-version of the book, plus all code that appears in the text-ready to plug into users’ Web pages

Makes it easy to learn!
This book may not give every detail of the PHP language, but that’s not the point. The idea is to give many very focused lessons on how to perform various programming techniques with PHP in very clear language and well-designed screenshots walking you through each step.

This title makes for both a great reference for old-timers, and has proven to me to be very helpful for learning even the most basic to some advanced techniques. Myself having a mid-level experience with PHP, it has really helped polish my fundamental skills.

I am waiting for the JavaScript Blueprint book, I hope it’s as good as this one!

Hard to follow
I learned ASP and Mysql with great ease and quick progress with ’the visual blueprint’ books, the delivery were clear and concise.
But things have changed in this new series. The writing style is difficult to understand: instead of explaining the topic first, the writer jumps right into ’you can do this and that’. I have to read each chapter several times in order to grasp what he means. The screen shots are now arranged on top of one another. Which is by itself ok if the text are not reduced even smaller making it more difficult to read.
I am quite disappointed by this ’new’ approach. I hope the publisher has not changed the ’your visual blueprint series’ into
just a reference book instead of being a teaching book which it was so good at.

Excellent Reference Book
I love the layout of the book. It is very practical in the way it is layed out. Very few books actually have code and screen shots let alone a screen shot for every code example. This book will not teach you PHP, but if you have a general or intermediate understanding of the language, this book is an awesome reference.

Stop looking. This is what you need.
So satisfied with their first book - "PHP", I had to see if the second could be as informative and it was. The method of explaination in these books should be the model for all computer books. Nothing is over or under explained. While this book does not cover all that PHP has to offer, it does what it intended - making PHP easy for beginners to learn visually.

Friendly and Practical Reference
Programming books tend to fall into two categories, learn by example and reference books. If you are new to programming, it’s generally easier to start learning by example suspending your knowledge of everything a language can do in favor of examining a few simple scripts to learn the basics. Once you have written a number of small scripts, a good reference book can guide you in writing more complex and functional applications.

On the spectrum of how-to vs. reference, "PHP 5: Your visual blueprint for creating open source, server-side content" falls on the near-side of reference yet is organized in a practical solution based fashion. One of about six PHP books on my bookshelf (and perhaps only second to the php.net website), I find myself referring to this book more than any other reference. It is an excellent reference for things like recalling the syntax of a loop structure to the application of a loop in processing multiple form elements.

Beyond being a solution-based reference, two things I really like about this book is the consistent two-page layout for each concept - a short description followed by code - and code shown in an actual editor window. (I’m not sure what it is about seeing screenshots of code but it seems to sink in better than code formatted in plain text on a page. Hence the Visual approach.)

If you are new to web programming and are looking to buy your first PHP book then you may be better served with a learning through sample projects approach like "Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL" by Kevin Yank. In reviewing this book, expert programmers might scoff and say RTFM. For the rest of us somewhere along the PHP and programming learning curve, I believe this book serves as a friendly and practical reference.