PHP for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide [ペーパーバック]

Larry Ullman's PHP for the Web is unsurpassed as a beginner's guide to learning PHP. The book, for instance, covers many essential topics, such as variables, forms, sessions and cookies, numbers, and strings. Ullman furthermore provides excellent screenshots of the code to provide the macro, or `big picture', perspective while providing an explanatory break down of each piece of code for a micro perspective. Ullman also uses relevant examples that are necessary for making a professional Web site, including log-in pages and editing features for administrators. More importantly, Ullman's style of writing is instantly engaging, wondrously eloquent, and grammatically polished, making for a thoroughly enjoyable read of what might otherwise be considered a dry topic.

Prior to reading Larry Ullman's book, I read the entirety of a PHP manual by Kevin Yank, concluding the book with complete confusion and no practical skills. However, it appears that Yank has a new edition that might have some improved features. In addition to reading Yank's manual on PHP, I read Janet Valade's Dummies guide, which was the worst PHP manual imaginable, heavily laden with coding errors and misprints.

As a beginner to PHP and computer programming, the key to my success with Larry Ullman's book included the prior reading of Javascript, A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition by John Pollock. Pollock's book broke down not only Javascript into accessible components, but also explained the basics of computer languages, such as variables, arrays, regular expressions, and other essentials necessary for a solid background in introductory computer programming and PHP. After reading Pollock's book, Ullman's book appeared lucid and friendly-- a logical next step. Also, while reading Larry Ullman's book, I paid for a month-to-month subscription to Lynda.com and watched her video tutorials on PHP and MySQL. These tutorials accompanied with a read of Larry Ullman's book made for an excellent PHP and MySQL learning experience.

Larry Ullman's book is the ultimate guide for learning PHP for beginners. The logical progression from this book is Larry Ullman's PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites coupled with Rick Morelan's Beginning SQL Joes 2 Pros . After I finish reading Larry Ullman's second book in the series, PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites, I plan on tackling one of his subsequent books in the progression on how to make a shopping cart. Ullman also provides a book on advanced PHP, which follows his PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites book. Ullman is the master of providing easy-to-follow, comprehensive learning tools for programming in PHP; the Ullman series is a must for any beginner's library.

I am by no means a novice software developer, but I am in the process of learning PHP, and generally speaking, to modern Web Development (there was a html & javascript 12 years ago...). After purchasing 2 other 4-5 star PHP books, I finally found one I REALLY LIKE. It's coherent, easy to follow, with lots of good tips, given at the exact point where they should be given. The pace of the autor is also the right one (this is no 600+ pages book), and you can also jump ahead to any topic you feel like jumping to and be able to read comprehensible information there.

I recommend it to everyone who wants to learn the basics of PHP, to be able to develop a dynamic website. The rest is to be found in the PHP Doc, on the Net PHP forums, or, if Larry decides to write "Advanced PHP for the Web", who knows ? I might be a customer.

I gave it 4 stars since I have not yet completed the book (one third thru).

I haven't found a lot of great PHP books out there, but the couple of books I've checked out by Lawrence Ullman have been first rate. Ullman writes very clearly, and this book, along with the CSS book in the Visual Quick Start guide series (by Jason Cranford Teague), are clear winners. I'd recommend skipping the VQSG JavaScript book, though.

I don't see how Ullman could make the introduction to PHP clearer or more gentle than this, other than than taking a Sitepoint-like approach and making the book full color with a lot of screen shots.

That being said, if you're not a true beginner, you can probably start with Ullman's PHP and MySql book, which I'm currently reading in the previous edition.