Author hampered by VQS design
929679
There are several reasons I couldn't bring myself to give this book five stars, although I would have liked to. The author writes well and covers a lot of ground, but the pace is uneven and I feel it comes up short on the treatment of some important topics.

I first learned (X)HTML by studying the fourth edition of Thomas Powell's "HTML & XHTML: The Complete Reference"&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/HTML-CSS-The-Complete-Reference-Fifth-Edition-Complete-Reference-Series/dp/0071496297/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">HTML & CSS: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition (Complete Reference Series)</a>." That book was more than twice the size of Castro's book and a much more thorough and better illustrated treatment of the markup languages. However, Powell's volume was copyright 2003, and the theory and practice of "proper" web design are fast moving targets, especially considering the evolution and increasing adoption of CSS, DHTML, JavaScript and the DOM over the last decade, as well as the growing emphasis on standards and the separation of structure and presentation. I bought and read Castro's book primarily as a refresher course. I'm glad I already had a good background in the subject.

I suspect the author was handicapped by the publishing style used in the "Visual Quickstart Guide" titles. That style divides each page into two columns. The outside column is used for the main explanatory text, while the gutter column displays examples--typically screen captures and/or code snippets--that illustrate the concepts discussed in the accompanying text. When I first encountered this format in one of their books on XML, I rather liked it, but the enchantment quickly faded. Structuring content such that each topic should fit in the limited space of a single column on a page just doesn't work for me. Some topics in Castro's book deserved more space; e.g., divs, forms, float, position. Limiting the code to snippets short and small enough to fit in a narrow gutter column also restricts the author's ability to properly display relevant code. The Murach books use a similar design, but it works much better; their books are a larger format and they use facing pages instead of hamstringing the authors by dividing each page into two narrow columns.

I was also disappointed in not being able to find any way to post errata on the book's website; there were several I found that were not listed in the official posted errata. I enjoyed the treatment of podcasts and rss feeds at the end of the book, although those subjects seemed a bit off-topic. The last quarter of the book is devoted to a reasonably good HTML reference but, since that kind of information is readily available online, I think the space could have been used more profitably by expanding the coverage of HTML core concepts.

Because of the uneven pace of instruction, the cramped presentation, and limited coverage of important layout techniques, I think this book would not be one I would recommend to someone new to HTML markup. However, I attribute the shortcomings more to the publisher than the author.
313043
My comments are not about the author's work, but of the printer's.  I found the text very difficult to read, so much so I am trying another publisher.  The text looked like  multi-generation xerox that lost bits of letters along the way or maybe got damp and wrinkled - and then copied.  I hope this isn't what the future of publishing looks like.
2550660
A previous review says that this book is about the "human heart trying to understand itself", but I found it daunting for my human heart to understand this book.  I was assigned this text book in college, and I suspect in that in academia there is a "Emperor Has No Clothes" phenomenon, where people are averse to criticising badly written books for fear of appearing intellectually deficient.  While I do not doubt Ms. Nussbaum's intellectual capabilities, she needs to adopt a more clear writing style.
4655833
While the hard case has protected my palm from a couple of falls onto hard pavement, it obviously wasn't designed by the same folks who designed the cradle. Moreover it has a fundamental design flaw that I find extremely frustrating: you can only put the palm in one way -- so that it opens in typical book fashion. In other words, the slider on the hard case will only go into the slot on the left edge of the palm. This is caused by two features of the front face: it is slightly deeper, and it has milled areas for the buttons. How hard would it have been to make the case symmetric so you could mount the palm the other way?
Why I would like to mount the palm the other way? Well, the obvious way to mount it is the way the case is designed for: book style. The less obvious but *superior* way for a right-handed person is to have the case mounted in the right edge slot. This makes it much easier to hold the palm with your left hand, and in addition it allows you to operate the palm with your right hand solo by holding the open face of the case against your knee. If you are right-handed and don't believe me, try putting the palm in the hard case slider into the right slot so it opens from the back. (You can install it this way; it just won't close properly because of the flawed design.) Now open it, grab the stylus in your right hand, put the right flap of the case on your knee, and put your hand down on it to hold it. You'll see how much easier it is to operate. Now try holding the palm in your left hand and you'll see that it's easier to operate in this fashion also.
Now don't misunderstand me to be saying the case should be designed for right-handed people. I'm saying it should be designed so that you can mount the palm from either side so that both right- and left-handed people can use it comfortably. The current design is better for southpaws. I guess there's some sort of poetic justice there.
170235
I thought this was fascinating and comprehensive overview of Braun and Dieter Rams contribution to the success of the company though I think it has a quite a serious editorial flaw.

The publishers have been quite clever in accommodating the huge amount of text and graphic material in a book of just over eight hundred pages.  The text, German on left-hand pages and English on the right, has been printed on very thin paper (known as bible stock in the trade) which has a certain amount of show-through.  The excellent product shots (314 pages) have been printed on a good matt art with another paper used for the remaining photo essays.  Incidentally the color work in the book is printed with an impressive 300 screen, most art books run to 175 to 250.

Eleven of the nineteen chapters are text (on the thin paper) and explore in as much detail as you could want about German and middle European design in the first decades of the last century and how it influenced Rams, particularly the Bauhaus and Ulm design laboratories.  A fascinating sixty-five page chapter: 'Dieter Rams, Braun, Vitsoe and the shrinking world' explores the reasons for the companies success and Rams contribution with brilliant product design.  Another chapter: 'Graphic design: Braun and Vitsoe' delves, in part, into the typeface used on the products, always in lower-case and originally Akzidenz-Grotesk but after the sixties switching to Helvetica.

Between the essays and possibly the main strength of the book are the photo product pages, basically electrical products for the home.  Each item gets a spread of lovely close-up photos butted together and then a spread with a head on shot on the left and each right-hand page having relevant profile photos.  Here, unfortunately, I think the book falls down (and why I've given it four stars) because these photos are just too small and made more noticeable because the rest of each page is blank.  Matt black was a design element for many of the audio products and to see them basically as small silhouettes with the detail of the fascia, side and backs near invisible seems a nonsense.  To have all these product shots this small is just a book designer's whimsy and doesn't do the reader any favors.  There are other photos essays of Braun products (including fourteen pages of ones that didn't make it) brochures, packaging, Dieter Rams home.

'Less and more' is an impressive book (apart from the small product photos) and could well become the standard work on the company for design students and those who appreciate good product design and want to know about a man and company that created such high standards.  There is another book about the company that might interest you:&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/BRAUN-Fifty-Years-of-Design-and-Innovation/dp/393668135X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">BRAUN--Fifty Years of Design and Innovation</a>&nbsp;basically product shots with a very comprehensive listing of these in the back pages.

###LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.
3282959
While it is difficult to complain about this work given the price the poor way in which the mathematics is rendered means that the the work is very difficult to follow. Sometimes the mathematics is not separated from the text, like thisx=2. I think I will need to obtain a book version from a library to see if there is any connection between some of the displays and the original text at all!
4278642
It appears from the very first page that the author of this work worships Gengis Khan. He often just comes out promising that the motives for certain attack or certain killing was justified in the atmosphere in which the great Khan grew up. Everything the Khan did is justified and this isn't acceptable to a common reader like me. But when you read the entire text, cover to cover, you realize that all cultural implications of all actions of Khan and later his sons have been provided in detail, keeping in mind the prevalent cultures.

I think the text is too small which makes it difficult to concentrate. And that is a very negative point of this paperback edition. Another off setting point of this book although not connected to research work, is its very useless cover design. I love looking at covers of the books but its cover is just so bad and childlike.

Nevertheless, the research and the writing is just good. If there is one book I must recommend on the great Khan, his life and his relations with Muslims and Christians, this would be it.
4193400
[...]

About the design of the book.
" Hot to Cold " presents an attractive design that is displayed , suddenly , in its combination of colors (gradient from red to blue), which are arranged on its cover and in its leaves (edges ). Their pages extension (700) is more than can be expected due to its price ($ 30, Amazon ) relatively modest for specialized books on architecture; another important mention his very suitable for reading dimensions deserves. Content structure refers to the name of the book, for that reason, BIG projects are ordered from those located in the hottest parts of the globe (Persian Gulf) to the coldest (northwest Europe). However, when reviewing this becomes a -as it says his subttulo- odyssey, as countless renderings and diagrams become cloying on the passing of the pages. It takes intermediate between each tranche of projects such as descriptive texts, which would only enrich the design description. BIG continues with the Archicomic format, raised from its predecessor - and bestseller - " Yes is More " with the significant improvement in the readability of the texts. The great debt to this format (archicomic) is that in most projects renderings lose communication that should be due to saturation of these. Yes, Yes is More, but "Less is enough" when presenting renderings is.

About the book 's content.
"Hot to Cold" not looking to become a book of theory and criticism of architecture, but in a graphic catalog architectural operations and results around the world. The reflection of the opening pages is extremely necessary for the purposes of BIG, showing that the great problem of the international architecture is its indifference to context; That is evident when contrasted with graphics- -through vernacular architecture. Bjarke Ingels summarizes this in a simple question: If these buildings (International Style) are located in different places, why all are equal? In turn, the philosophy of the Danish study, the "hedonistic sustainability" is reinforced with reflection "Engineering without engineers" which describes that by design can capitalize on natural ventilation, sun exposure, and pedestrian mobility; creating increasingly less dependent on "machinery" buildings. The highlight of the projects presented to us BIG are their processes or morphological operations (torsion, orientation, extraction, extrusion, etc.) very well explained in his plots, which deserve special qualification to be as explicit and logical. Despite the remarkable design processes, the debt is in the final product, which are difficult to analyze because the book -in the planes are fuzzy and blurred. If you want a good book for reflection architectural possibly "Hot to Cold" is not the most adequate, however, if you are willing to visually train your graphic expression to represent a design process, "Hot to Cold" is a -o reading rather, review- highly recommended.
3744696
The fact that George Barna is the co-author should be an indicator that this book is going to have problems. He was the one who wrote the book (as I remember it) "Marketing the Church". He seems to flip-flop his views quite often. He's a statistician, so his views are often more shaped by polls and statistics than Scripture.

Viola's view is that virtually the entire way that church is done is both secular and pagan and fights against church fellowship. He does bring about a few points worth looking at, but mixed in with that are proof-texts out of context to prove his points (interesting that he devotes a section of the book to the danger of prooftexting).

All in all, although a few points worth meditation were brought out, I was very turned off by the way Scriptures were poorly quoted, for example, Viola quotes 1Co 14:26 as proof that a church meeting should be everyone teaching each other, everyone getting to lead in song (this person leads this song, that person that one), everyone speaking in a tongue. But the obvious context of the passage is Paul is rebuking the church for functioning in this way and so it actually works against his point rather than prove it, but taken out of context, it becomes a proof-text. That says to me that there is greater concern in making a point than keeping the full integrity of Scripture.

Would I recommend this book? No. Although it did make me think about some things and ask myself why I do certain things, for the most part my conclusions about body life are pretty much the same as before. I appreciate the fact that Viola wants to see the church engage more as a body than an event, and I don't mind him doing church the way he does, but he suggests Scripture is on his side (which again I cannot see any real support for this) and that if we don't see the church functioning the way he does church, we are caught up in Greek/Roman thought and paganism.
2070221
The book is not easy to follow, especially in the Case Problem section.  Maybe authors can provide a figure to show the result.
4692464
A great idea in concept, but in practice it fell short.  I found the writing style so awkward and troubled that I wonder if the author is a native English speaker.  The book contains one passive sentence after another and it contains endless odd word usage.  That being said, I would like to mention the book's merits.  The author chose a very readable font: a pleasure for the eyes.  I found the analysis of lead generation techniques thorough yet concise.  I enjoyed the thoughtful listings of each technique's pros and cons.  Given the book's low price, I consider it a great value.
3894383
I downloaded this Kindle book two hours ago and finished it in one sitting. I am grateful to Mr. Connelly for many new ideas about ways to become a better reader. Readers will find some of these tips and techniques invaluable.

Despite these words of praise, I rated the book at two stars. Why? It was not because the book was self-published, but because the author did not employ a copy editor before publishing. The result is insufficient punctuation to make sense of the author's complete sentences, incomplete sentences, and run-on quasi-sentences. Typos and/or misspellings abound.

If this sloppiness is not offensive to readers, it should be. If this is the future of publishing, we're all in trouble.
3994571
First of all, I really like the two-layer system, the adjustable ventilation, the bottom lid for drainage and to keep the berries from sitting in pooled water. The problem with this container is the design execution. Let me enumerate:

1. The lids (top & bottom) - For some reason they are different sizes. While you will almost always use both lids, and it's easy to tell which is the top and which the bottom, it seemed odd to me that the two lids were different. Anyhow, this was a very trivial point and I was fine with it. My real issue is with the thumb tabs on the top lid. There are two hard plastic tabs on the container itself and two "stylish" tabs on the lid that overlap those hard plastic tabs. The problem is that the overlap is so extreme that it's tricky to get any purchase on the lid to remove it. This was a really bad design execution.

2. The layered insert - I was really excited about this feature, but the major flaw with it that I discovered is that when wet, it will not budge. Pulling it out requires turning the entire container upside down and getting it wet, or smacking it on the bottom. The problem is that when it's just a little wet, it creates a very strong seal and you just can't pull the insert out. A simple air groove would have corrected this major design flaw.

3. Sieve holes. for whatever reason, the holes just don't clear enough water out and I still wound up with standing water around my berries. As a result, I always left the vent fully open, even though the picture tells me it should be closed for berries.

I would not buy another of these, but I will use this one until it irritates me further. I do appreciate the size of it (I can put about 2 pints of raspberries in it) and I like all of its features conceptually. I just wish the designer had actually ever used it for a week to discover the very blatant flaws it has. Maybe there will be a redesign at some point that will be better.
3166654
Not only are the books cheaply bound, but too much has been crammed into two volumes. The result is that the typeface is much to small and the margins much too narrow for comfortable reading. Adding to the discomfort thus created is the oversized and heavy nature of the books. These factors are especially important when one looks to comfortably enjoy an important reading experience that this biography would have otherwise offered. The next edition should be a "triple decker" or perhaps even a four volume set, with a fine cloth or leather binding.

As to content, it is good to be presented with the facts of Lincoln's life in the writing style characteristic of the author. However, the author's insistence on offering his personal interpretation of those facts and his psychological analysis throughout the story he tells is an unwanted distraction. Those who are interested enough in Lincoln to be willing to invest the time necessary to read this comprehensive and informative biography presumably are also ready, willing and quite able, and interested enough in the subject, to take the facts and the story and figure out for themselves what to make of it all. The author of a book such as this should be invisible, and silent, as the book is being read. This reader, at least, would have preferred that the author not insist so often upon interjecting and chatting out loud, so to speak, in a manner that only serves to interfere with remaining absorbed in and undistracted from this fine Lincoln biography. Perhaps the next addition could address this concern as well.
548850
This is a daring, ambitious, complex, thought-provoking book. My reaction is mixed. On the positive side, I admire the author's largely successful attempt to look at the character of "God" from a fresh perspective, that of a complex character as revealed only in the pages of the Bible, rather than the God of an often uncritical religious dogma. On the negative side, Miles:
* Makes a lot of assumptions and conclusions that do not seem warranted. For example, in Chapter 2, "Generation," Miles says about God's command "Let there be light" that "One does not speak commandingly to oneself. It is rather as if a carpenter reaching for a hammer were to speak the word 'hammer' aloud." What is the author's point? If a witch or wizard speaks a spell or incantation to summon magical or natural forces, the spell caster speaks not to herself but rather to the source of the forces being summoned. I was especially uneasy with Miles' assumptions about details of God's existence that are based not only on what is explicitly stated in the Bible, but also on what is left unsaid. In the life of any significant literary character, can we automatically assume that anything about the character that is not explicitly stated does not exist? For me, the answer is "No." As I continued through the book, I found myself repeatedly in disagreement with the validity of the assumptions upon which many of the author's conclusions were based.
* Is often needlessly verbose.
* Writes in a stilted style that I often found irritating. I particularly did not enjoy his often pedantic tone, his seemingly gratuitous use of needlessly esoteric verbiage, and his use of the "royal `we.'" The frequent use of "we" would not have bothered me so much if I had felt that it implied a sort of partnership between author and reader, but too often that seemed not to be the case.
My recommendation: If you are open-minded and are interested in theology, religious history, and literary analysis, then read this book and arrive at your own conclusions.
This review is based on the paperback version of the book.
589193
by the same author, with the far right alt conservative views once saw on back their religious views an in this climate could not open cover, Amazon needs a warning in this climate on authors who are so far alt right conservatives which is not a tolerable climate make for costly burning material or emer. ttp for the outhouse
1380716
The author seems to be so concerned with the opinions of his peers (other researchers) who might read and criticize the book, that he forgets to write in an engaging way for the general public.