A Little Light Reading
Welcome to our virtual library – offered in conjunction with the Amazon.com Associates program and Take Control Ebooks. What does that mean? It means that if you buy any of the books listed here, including those from Amazon.com, by clicking on the cover image, you’ll be supporting us too. Most of the books we list here relate to things you can do with BBEdit — but not all of them! We’ve included some titles we think you’ll find interesting or useful:
Patrick says: “If you are a serious grep user, or want to be one, don’t walk but run! and get Jeffrey Friedl’s excellent Mastering Regular Expressions.” This book covers the basics of regular-expression syntax, then delves into the mechanics of expression-processing, common pitfalls, performance issues, and implementation-specific differences. Written in an engaging style and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions offers a wealth of information that you can put to immediate use.
HTML, XML, and CSS by Elizabeth Castro (sixth edition) is the latest revision of a classic resource that works both as a tutorial and a reference. This version is updated with discussions of structural markup, document types, and plenty of CSS goodness.
HTML5 Now: A Step-by-Step Video Tutorial for Getting Started Today by Tantek Çelik is a must-watch introduction to the essentials of HTML5, presented by one of the leading lights of the Web standards community.
Now in its third version, PHP 5 Fast & Easy Web Development is an excellent primer for coders new to PHP. Kerri built her first LAMP-powered web project using the original printing of this book, and the updated version is just as concise.
MySQL (Third Edition) by Paul DuBois is an excellent reference, all the more so if you’re moving to MySQL from another relational database system.
Sal Soghoian (who you all know) is the godfather of AppleScript and Automator. His (relatively) recently released book AppleScript 1-2-3 (co-authored with Bill Cheeseman), is the crowning and definitive guide to everything anyone could possibly want to know about AppleScript, while providing a highly approachable learning experience to those who haven’t yet learned its wonders.
Given Hanaan’s previous work and obvious scripting chops, the second edition of AppleScript: The Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on Mac OS X promises to be an excellent follow-on. Plus, its heft without bulk makes it excellent for use in hand-to-hand combat.
Down to the bare metal: Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach by Amit Singh told Dave Nanian everything he never wanted to know (but just had to ask) about the inner workings of Mac OS X.
Julia Flanders : XML in a Nutshell (Third Edition) by Elliotte Rusty Harold and W. Scott Means is a comprehensive, lucid guide for the technical reader."
O’Reilly’s Learning Perl by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen (with a Forward by Larry Wall) comes heartily recommended by Chris. He reports, "When I started out, I didn’t know enough Perl to write “Hello World”. With the help of Learning Perl, I now know enough Perl to be well and truly dangerous!"
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan. Seth highly recommends this book for anyone setting out to learn JavaScript, and for experts who want to make the most of it. “I’ve used it for many years, its pretty much the perfect reference.”
Four out of five professional C++ programmers recommend Addison-Wesley’s C++ Primer by Stanley Lippman, Josee Lajoie, and Barbara Moo. The fifth was incapacitated trying to lift the book, and will render an opinion when he’s fully recovered from his injuries.
