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PHP Team Development by Samisa Abeysinghe covers technical topics like designing to divide complexity, conquering complex problems, choosing the right process, improving and monitoring the process and helps in keeping things as simple as they could be. There are also non technical topics covered like ensuring effective collaboration and keeping the process and product quality.

For me the most important aspects of team work in software projects covered in the book are dealing with the complexity of software, dividing project problems among team members and solving them. The book also explains the relationship between the process and the product and helps to move from no process to having a process. It also explains why a process is so important in delivering a successful outcome.

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“Papervision3D Essentials” is a great book to learn how to work with 3D world in Flash environment. It is based on knowledge of Jeff Winder and Paul Tondeur, people who have a huge expirence in working with 3D technologies for big amount of companies.

Book is dedicated for beginers in PV3D, but more advenced users can treat it as invaluable reference to this amazing library.

First chapters of book cover basics of work with 3D environment, including primitives, materials and cameras. All subjects are very well presented and introduced with a lot of samples, images and source codes.

In next chapters you can find more advanced information. There is very good overview of PV3D external model support, including trip through well known 3D modeling applications like 3D Studio Max or Blender. The huge potential of PV3D can be seen in chapters covering Filters and Particles. Last chapter entitled “Optimalization Performance” is a very good ending of the book. It covers very important and not so common information about optimalization of 3D world what is extremely important due to current Flash Player performance.

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Flash Lite is theme of my interests from a few years. I have been waiting for the book “Flash on devices, Flash Lite and Flash 10″ for a long time. I was wondering about the form of the book. This book can both delight and disappoint. The target group for the book are technologists. It gives understanding about existing technologies and suitability for the creation of mobile applications. This book is a collection of solutions, which are published on blogs and forums. I think certainly people who are programmers will not be satisfied with this book. The book also attempts to systematize knowledge about mobile phones with different platforms.

In Chapter I and II, we have information about the mobile market, and general information about Flash Lite. In Chapter III, we can find more specific information about Flash Lite 3.0. There are also presented forms of distribution of Flash Player.

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Papervision3D Essentials is a book about a powerful real-time 3D engine for Flash. It serves as a comprehensive guide for beginners as well as an invaluable reference for Papervision3D developers. The book is readable and source code examples are easy to follow. After reading any reader should be able to build her own applications using Papervision3D from scratch. It took me only three evenings to build my new 3D ePortfolio web page based on Papervision3D. I had no idea it would be so simple to achieve. There are configuration details descriptions for different IDEs at the beginning of the book, so it does not matter if the reader uses Flash IDE, Flex Builder or Flash Builder. Concised summaries at the end of every chapter helps the reader to repeat and remeber the most important things covered in the chapter. Examples and demos are practical. This book is really a real time saver. I definitely recommend this book.

There are not many books and resources covering Adobe AIR subject on market and that was the reason why I decided to read “Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook”. It turned out to be ideal to have this book with you when you are doing any AIR application because it thoroughly describes every nuance of the issue. The Cookbook starts with instructions on development environment and setting information about a new application. Then covers the fundamentals of AIR with detailed explanations of every problem. At the end we can learn how to distribute our application in various ways. I can definitely recommend this book to every Flash Platform Developer.

The book Flex 3 Programming does not focus only on Flex Framework programming. It also presents how to configure Flex Builder to Flex. The book contains 22 chapters, which take in a very professional way through the whole process of creating applications. The book is compendium of knowledge about the framework. The Flex 3 Programming explains very well the basics, as well as professional diagrams and helps to fill up the gaps on issues. The issues are prepared very carefully. The chapter 12 Managing State is a good example.. In the book there are only micro examples, it does not focus on the process of building a specific applications, because it was not the intention of authors. In my opinion only Chapter 11 of this book perhaps should be more developed. Przeczytaj całość »

As you all probably know results matter. If you are a development manager in a small, growing company, you will be judged by the work and results of your development team. Your team must deliver quality software on time on budget and that software will have to please your customers.

At first this book seems to be like other management books but one thing makes it really different. Growing Software is written for managers working in small companies. In fact it is about managing software engineers in a small firm. Luis Testa shows many interesting aspects of working in small environments as oppossed to corporate ones. In small companies development managers have more influence on processes and workflows and as a result in a product definition. In small companies approaches must be systematic, simple and relatively straighforward. This book is about how to start and avoid common pitfals. Przeczytaj całość »

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know is a book about things which are obvious and every software architect should know, remember and employ. The problem is that most things you can find inside the book are easily forgotten, underestimated and usually not implemented during day-to-day work.

The book consists of 97 short essays. Each of them deals with a vital problem software architects often have to face. Although there are great number of brilliant stories in the book I especially like the one titled: You’re Negotiating More Often Than You Think, which is about a project sponsor wanting to cut down expenses. Does it sound familiar to you? Do you know what to do when it happens? The book is a collective work which makes it even more valuable.

Every day in the morning I start my work reading 1-3 essays to keep good practices in my memory and not forget management pitfalls lying in wait for me round the corner. I believe it helps me to become a better software architect. This book is a great and rare opportunity to learn from real experts in the field.

The Art of Agile Development written by James Shore and Shane Warden is about managing a successful eXtreme Programming (XP) team. It reveals many possible ways of leading an agile team through a software project. The book is full of examples, explanations, tips and good practices.

Great deal of issues covered in this book would make it hard to read but the authors made a tremendous work organizing the book’s contents. There are cross-links between chapters and topics which help to find solutions to problems. [więcej]

As we know Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook includes recipes from David Tucker, Rich Tretola, Marco Casario and Koen De Weggheleire. This book is for intermediate developers who already have a good working knowledge of the Flex tool and ActionScript or JavaScript. Definetely this book helps us to solve many problems because the whole book is full of very useful examples [więcej].