Re: A good book for a perspective programer.

Yes, you are 100% correct David Powers, I did not include enough information to get the advice I was asking for. I really need to learn to ask better questions, so I can get the help I seek... there a book for that lol No really, I would like to take the time to clarify my question as you suggested. I am rather new to php, I'm learning the basics from the php manual, as well as the tutorials at the w3schools web site and whatever I can find online. I am capable of writing w3c valid xhtml and css ducumants. My goals is to become php certified threw the zend program, most importantly I wish to use php as my primary server scripting language to use in all web sites I design, storing and managing data with MySQL and flat files where required. It's my goal to get certified for both php and MySQL. I am in the process of learning web design on my own, that is with use of online tutorials and books as I mentioned. To make this my profession, and have a type of paper declaring that I'm not just a hack ; ). Your books also look very good, I will probably be a future costumer! Thanks, once again! Sean-Michael "David Powers" <david@jpni.co.uk> wrote in message news:AA.18.05112.353BA874@pb1.pair.com... > Sean-Michael wrote: >> What I want to ask is if anyone can recommend a good/best text book to >> learn from, I like to have a good book on hand! > > It's very difficult to recommend "the best" book to learn from (although > I'm tempted to suggest my own). Different people learn in different ways. > Also, people want to use PHP in different ways, not to mention the fact > that you don't say what your current skill level is. > > My advice would be to go to Amazon, and browse the books on PHP. Read the > reviews. See which are the best sellers. > > I have a lot of PHP books on my shelf. The two that are the most > well-thumbed as "PHP Programming" by Rasmus Lerdorf and Kevin Tatroe, and > "Upgrading to PHP 5" by Adam Trachtenberg. > > The book by Matt Zandstra that you mention is very good, but it's very > specialized. If you're already at an intermediate-advanced level, and want > to learn about design patterns with PHP, it might be a good choice. If > you're at a less advanced level, maybe not. > > -- > David Powers