Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript: With jQuery, CSS & HTML5 5th Edition

As a hobbyist programmer and aspiring professional, I give this book a provisional 5 stars. 1 year ago, knew nothing about programming. Absolutely nothing. I then began my membership at teamtreehouse.com and have been using faithfully since then for anywhere between 2-5 hours a day. I am now conversational in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL and can use each with intermediate proficiency. All of that before reading this book.Note first of all that every learning environment has its positives and negatives. Many will read this book and think it's the greatest of all time. Others will not. As well, books like this become obsolete virtually upon publication. That does not render all of its contents useless or out of date. The edition I read was revised in May 2018, so it was as up to date as can be expected.REVIEW:The book touches virtually everything you need to begin creating web pages. Front-end (client-side) programming and back-end (server side) programming are covered in enough detail and with enough examples for you to be able at least to copy the examples, understand them, and reproduce them on your own machine.The book begins with PHP fundamentals. If you have previous programming knowledge (of any true programming language), this part will be quite rudimentary (the same goes when you make it to JavaScript). Then the author transitions to MySQL and how PHP interacts with databases. From the beginning the author supposes that you are going to follow along as a means of internalizing the material. If you are already familiar with the material and are just strengthening your foundation, there is probably no reason for you to do every example. I only did one or two examples the book. The end of the book covers front-end development (JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3). Along with these, the author includes jQuery and jQuery mobile. Because so many tools are taught in this book, each one is necessarily limited in its scope. However, each topic is covered with a surprising amount of detail and clarity.After doing PHP at teamtreehouse.com, I knew the basics of the language but was more confused than ever on how to apply this knowledge to building an actual program. This book helped me to get the wheels turning and build a web app that handles and manipulates databases, handles login credentials, and displays data to a webpage. It helped me solidify what I had learned. The fundaments were repetitive, yes. But the examples and explanations went far beyond what I had previously learned.READ THIS CAREFULLY: You will not master any web language after reading this book. You will not get a web dev job simply because you read this book. You will not be able to design a web ready application after reading this book.ALSO READ THIS CAREFULLY: You will definitely have the skills you need to progress to the next level and *begin* writing simple web apps. You will know the fundamental of handling data, you'll be able to use JavaScript to manipulate web pages, and you'll be able to style pages according to your liking.A WORD OF ADVICE: If you're new to web and web design, start in the back with HTML and CSS. Learn to build static pages with simple designs before you attempt JavaScript and PHP.All in all , this book is not for everyone, but if you use it well, it can be a great resource.

With 3 less pages than 800, the author carefully instructs his readers in perhaps one of the most thorough manners I have ever seen in a software how-to-book. I had MYSql connected and inserted values in simply the time it took to write the code with the book open in y lap (my database was already up on my server). Now that I have code templates, I am ready for show time.For me, the book is extremely clear and provides massive amounts of information in a genuinely logical step-by-step navigation through the subject matter. All the code for this jewel is up on GitHub for those who are as lazy as I am when it comes to typing code without a code generator.This will become my primary reference for PHP and SQL. I haven't checked out the JavaScript portion, but am looking forward to implementing it in my PHP. I hope those who are new to PHP and who have reasons to leave or not use ASP will purchase this book, as this sort of text makes it fun to learn a language, which will instill more respect for it.

I'm just starting out with programming. I'm not stupid, but most programming books made me *feel* stupid. Not this one. This book assumes you know *nothing* about programming. You will benefit more if you know at least a little HTML and CSS (I did).It ties together a lot of basic programming concepts that I had seen in passing but not really understood.This book, although invaluable to me, will probably be beneath a person who already knows how to program. If that is the case, jump directly to a book that focuses solely on the language you want to learn. If you're like me, dig in and watch all those concepts come together. It's very exciting!It's like the first time I learned HTML...

Title says it all. It's a solid, comprehensive book, but the material is starting to get dated, even with updated editions. If you specifically need PHP, this is still a solid choice

Filled with examples and thorough and easy to understand explanations, this book will help any beginner to the Web development world. If you are already familiar with basic computer science elements, you may find that you pick up the concepts quickly and easily. This book will guide you through the most important aspects of web development and, in the end, gives you a simple, yet meaningful, app to build that applies everything you learned throughout your readings and practice. I highly recommend this book.

This is a very complete book with configuration information for Mac OS X, Linux, and windows. It is an easy to understand format that is also comprehensive. There are links to a web site with all of the code examples, so you do not have to type up any of the code examples.

I have nothing but great things to say about this book. I have been learning web development for about 6 months using just HTML/CSS/Javascript, and I wanted to dive into PHP. Not only is this book completely comprehensive with all things PHP, it also has meaty sections about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/jQuery. That makes this not only a great book for beginners, but an amazing reference for experienced developers who need a quick lookup/refresher. All examples are clear and relevant to what developers do on a daily basis. A great book, I highly recommend it.

As a PHP beginner I found this book to be very informative. HOWEVER, as someone who has worked with JavaScript, the JS in this book does not follow standards (omitting semicolons) and I found that to be very distracting.