Excel 2007 Bible

By John Walkenbach

• John Walkenbach has written many books on the subject of Excel. As such, this book is comprised of summaries of several of his other, more specific publications.
  
  Part 1 of the book goes over spreadsheet basics. This includes working with tables, which is a new Excel feature in 2007. You'll find most information pertinent to basic Excel usage in this section, and will be well on your way.
  
  Part 2 is a summary of J.Walk's Excel 2007 formulas book. It includes the same basic chapters - Text, Date/Time, Count/Sum, Lookup, Financial, and two chapters on Array Formulas. If you already have the formulas book, this is completely useless; if you do not, this is a good overview without the extra details.
  
  Part 3 is a short summary of the Excel 2003 charts and graphs, updated for Excel 2007. It also includes a section on working with graphics and the new conditional formatting features of Excel 2007. The information here is not terribly deep, but gives the basics of working with charts and provides some tips for advanced manipulation that is possible. The chapter on conditional is quite short, considering the number of improvements to this feature that has come about with Excel 2007.
  
  Part 4 is a "miscellaneous" section, encompassing various features such as custom number formats, sharing Excel data, and a number of tips/tricks. Again, many of the features described are given an overview rather than an in-depth treatment, but I found that the essential features are all present and accounted for. There is also some information for working in a networked environment and with the Internet.
  
  Part V deals with data analysis, for operations contained on the Data tab of the Excel 2007 ribbon. Most notably, there is a chapter on using MS Query, and two chapters about pivot tables. Part V also covers Goal Seek and Solver, and provides an overview of the tools included with the Analysis ToolPak. This exposes the reader to the features, but does not provide a whole lot of examples, although J.Walk's examples do tend to showcase just how far you can take some of the Excel features.
  
  Finally, Part VI is a (very brief) summary of Excel 2007 Power Programming. It covers custom user-defined worksheet functions, user forms, and workbook events. There is also a number of examples of code that's readily useable in your own projects and Excel-based solutions. This section is enough to get you started, particularly if you have some programming experience, but if you want to get serious with VBA, this will only get your foot in the door.
  
  Overall, this book is perfect for beginners and intermediate users who do not have a lifetime to devote to Excel. Granted, this book is pretty long, but as I mentioned throughout, it's to the point and not excessively verbose. I think of it as an extended tutorial walkthrough of the different Excel functionality. It does not include case studies or exhaustive spreadsheet solution examples. For advanced users, a vast majority of chapters will be unnecessary.

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition (Voices That Matter)

By Steve Krug

• As a web designer that owns my own domain, I had purchased Jakob Nielsens Wed Design Usability book and loved it. I thought nothing could top it, but then I was in a book store and picked Don't Make Me Think up. It had some high-power reviews of the book on that back cover. When I opened this book up, I understood why. This book talks about Web Design as and ways to understand why a site needs to be design to the specific user the designer has in mind.

• A practical Web design usability guide, "Don't Make Me Think!" is based on empirical observation not exhaustive statistics. Steve Krug's five years of usability consulting and testing are distilled down to this thin yet gem-filled how-to. Krug observed how people actually use the Web rather than how we *think* they use it, gleaning key usability guidelines. This book shows you how to conduct your own usability tests on the cheap. What follows is a summary of the book's major rules and observations:

  1. Don't Make Me Think!

  The number one usability rule, most often expresed by users. Web pages should be self-evident, obvious, and self-explanatory. Buttons should have short text and look clickable. The default search for your site should be simple.

  2. Design for scanning not reading

  By observing users Krug found that people glance, scan some text, and click on the first reasonable option (called "satisficing"). People scan Web pages, they don't read them. We don't make optimal choices, we satisfice.

  Here are some things you can do to make sure users understand as much of your site as possible:

  a. Create a clear visual hierarchy to show relative importance of content (H1/H2 etc.)
  b. Take advantage of conventions
  c. Break pages up into clearly defined areas
  d. Make it obvious what's clickable
  e. Minimize noise

  3. Users like mindless choices

  Make each click an unambiguous orthogonal alternative.

  4. Omit needless words

  Get rid of half of the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left. This is especially important on home pages and
  gateway pages.

  5. Navigation: Use street signs and breadcrumbs

  Factoid: The back button accounts for 30 to 40 percent of all Web clicks. Persistent navigation appears on every page of the site and should include the following five elements:

  a. Site ID
  b. A way home
  c. Search
  d. Sections
  e. Utilities

  Your navigation should answer these questions:

  a. What site is this?
  b. What page am I on?
  c. What are the major sections of this site?
  d. What are my options at this level?
  e. Where am my in the scheme of things?
  f. How can I search?

  6. Your home page should convey the big picture

  What is the site about? Use a good short tag line and welcome blurb. Rotate site promotions. Remove everything nonessential.

  7. Most Web design usability arguments are waste of time

  These "religious debates" consist of people expressing strongly held personal beliefs about things that can't be proven. All Web users are unique. There are no average users. There are no simple "right" answers for most Web design questions. What works is good integrated design that fills a need, that's carefully thought out, well executed, and tested.

  The antidote for religious debate is to ask specific questions and test with real users. The last three chapters of the book show how to perform testing on the cheap with three or four users. I really enjoyed this book, especially Krug's easy humor.

Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual

By David McFarland

• I bought this because I have no experience with Adobe products AND I have never made a website. I am 67 pages in, and already made a website. I am sure I will learn a lot of neat tricks as I continue with the remaining 1,000 pages.

• Dreamweaver CS4 is the latest version of the popular web editing software from Adobe. There are lots of new features in this version (compared to CS3) such as Live View: a better way to see how your page works without having to open it up in a separate browser, better integration for JavaScript and Ajax, easier interface for finding and updating source and include files attached to your web pages, cleaner CSS code created and much more.
  
  For the newbie or existing user of Dreamweaver, there is lots to learn in this new version and the book Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual is a great way to get started on learning Dreamweaver or get quick updates on the new things CS4 has to offer.
  
  Of course this book is big (over 1000 pages) but it is going to be a complete learning reference for newbie's and well as good reference for existing users of the tool.
  
  Compared to other Dreamweaver books I have, it makes it really easy to find exactly what you want with the clear and concise headings and subheading at the top of each page. I hate books that make you hunt around for pages trying to find what area of the book you are in.
  
  The book is divided into 6 main sections:
  
  1. A Guided Tour: This is for the newbie who want to learn the basics of the new CS4 interface and how to use some of the basic tools for creating web pages.
  
  2. Building a Better Web Page: This takes in depth of advanced CSS layout and design (liquid layouts, fixed layouts, elastic layouts, positioning of elements, navigation, etc.) This section alone is more information than any Dreamweaver book I've read before on layout design.
  
  3. Bringing Your Pages to Life: This teaches you how to create web forms (HTML) and add the new Spry (JavaScript library) components to your page. Spry was added to the CS3 version of Dreamweaver (you can get it separately if you want), and was vastly improved in this version of Dreamweaver. Having Spry integrated with Dreamweaver makes it 100x easier to use as opposed to adding it manually by yourself.
  
  4. Building a Web Site: This section deals with the file and site management of Dreamweaver. Not only do you have to design and code your web pages, but you need a site management tool to keep track of all you files (.html, gif, .css, etc) and track all the updates other people may make to them as well if your working in a group. Even if you working alone on a web site, it really is important to manage your files efficiently.
  
  5. Dreamweaver CS4 Power: This section explains the unique tools that it has to offer like libraries and templates. Dreamweaver (with most previous versions) allows you to create snipets of code and store them as a code library to be used later. These pieces of code can be used anywhere on your website and are controlled and organized by Dreamweaver automatically. Templates are just what they sound like...You can create templates in Dreamweaver and reuse them for any website you create. It eliminates you having to re-write or re-copy-and-paste your code each time you have the same section on multiple pages. It have be HTML or CSS or both that can be re-used. A great feature and improved in CS4.
  
  6. Dynamic Dreamweaver: This section is very important and explained very well from a coding/programming standpoint. Websites today are usually using some sort of database for retrieving lots of the website's content. With Dreamweaver you can link to a database (MySQL, MS Access, Cold Fusion --- not SQL Server) and use Dreamweaver's wizards to help you create dynamic web sites. It makes it easier than having you to know lots code/programming concepts. Dreamweaver can help you create sessions (tracking visitors from multiple pages) cookies (remember visitors from each visit) and much more. The author explains these more advanced techniques very nicely and without too much "techno jargon".
  
  The last chapter is focused on another advanced topic with XSLT and XML. This is how you can style and design your web pages from data transferred from any kind of datasource and format with XML and XSLT. Many websites today are using XML/XSLT no matter what back-end they are using. A very unique and helpful addition to a Dreamweaver book.
  
  This book should be in everybody's library no matter what the skill level. It covers all the basics for the beginner and many advanced topics for the seasoned veteran of Dreamweaver.
  
  A great book.