ISBN:1565928504Book Description
Computer professionals increasingly rely on the Web, online help, and other online information sources to ease information pain. Now The Java Enterprise CD Bookshelf gives you convenient online access to your favorite books from your CD-ROM drive.
The Java Enterprise CD Bookshelf is a power-packed collection of books from O'Reilly: both electronic and print versions of Java Enterprise in a Nutshell, plus electronic versions of Java in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition; Java Foundation Classes in a Nutshell;Enterprise JavaBeans, 2nd Edition; Java Servlet Programming;Java Security; and Java Distributed Computing.
Never has it been easier to learn, or look up, what you need to know online. Formatted in HTML, The Java Enterprise CD Bookshelf can be read using any Web browser. The books are fully searchable and cross-referenced. In addition to individual indexes for each book, there's a master index for the entire library./p>
Reviews From AMAZON.COM
Pay attention!
Nearly every book on this CD is one (or two!) versions old. I'm still finding them very useful, but I knew what I was getting.
Lots of content, but could be so much better
Initially, I thought getting seven books worth of content for the price of two was too good to pass up. They even throw in one of the books contained on the CD in hardcopy as well, making it more like getting the other six books on CD for the price of one. Why would you want to buy the books instead? Because they're much easier to reference.
The nature of the Java language really lends itself to hyperlinking. One class might extend another unfamiliar one, so ideally the original class would have a link to it's definition. The Java documentation in HTML from Sun does this frequently. Sadly, there are no such links to be found on the CD. It's mostly a straight transfer from the books. That makes using it as a reference much harder than I had anticipated.
The material on the CD is searchable if your browser runs Java applets. This somewhat makes up for its shortcoming, but it would be 10 times more usable with the links.
Reference uses aside, it's a decent collection. The chapters themselves are well-converted to HTML, and the diagrams are crisp and clear. I have no problem reading these tutorial chapters in my browser. But when it comes time to reference things, stick to Sun's hyperlinked documentation or buy the hardcopy books instead.