Slashdot Review of David Mercer's "Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6"

Here's the URL for the review.

http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/30/1346258&from=rss

The meat of the review is at the end--the first part is a summary of the content.

I have the book, and at my stage of development, it is quite useful, though for an experienced developer it's likely one step above a Dick and Jane reader, I suspect. The reviewer takes the author to task for excessive wordiness, sloppy proofreading, and too much cutesy-ness in general, all of which are pretty much right on.

But I think this book is a Godsend for the beginner.

My main criticism is that he completely ignores anything but Windows. Good directions about how to get a local site up on your Windows machine, yet nothing, not even something like: "It's different on Macs, go to this URL to find out more." No mention of Linux or Unix.

I would put this failing, as well as that of the abysmal index, at the door of the publishers. Isn't that what the publishers/editors get paid for? I know they needed to get the book out the door in a timely manner, but they are charging money for it.

Packt publishing is doing a great job making their texts available in hard copy, and then for a nominal fee supplying the PDF. http://www.packtpub.com/drupal-6-create-powerful-websites/book. I had the pdf at once to use, and then the hard copy came a week later. By buying directly from them, rather than from bookpool.com, and adding another book, I saved a good deal over other sources.

Now if we could just get more of their titles on Safari...

Steve Carter