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About Face (The Essentials of User Interface Design) by Alan Cooper [Recommended]

Steve Davies writes:
The verdict then, is buy/borrow and read this book if you design software.

Bandits on the Information Superhighway by Daniel Barrett [Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
If you have an Internet account, are a parent or teacher read this book.

C++ Complete by Anthony Rudd [Recommended]

James Gordon writes:
For the price this is a good reference book which I will use from now on.

C++ Windows NT Programming by Mark Andrews [Recommended]

Ian Cargill writes:
In summary, I think C++ Windows NT Programming is well written and contains a lot of useful material.

Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot by Allen I Holub [Highly Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
From time to time he had me bouncing up and down with fury shouting 'idiot, you cannot do it like that' but at other times I found myself purring to find someone who agreed with me.

Essential Distributed Objects Survival Guide, The by Robert Orfali [Recommended]

Alec Ross writes:
Overall then, the book was considered a good read, and an excellent introduction to the subject.

ISO and ANSI Ergonomic Standards for Computer Products by Wanda J Smith [Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
To those that need it, worth every penny (think of the advantage of marketing your wordprocessor as ISO 9241 compliant.

Managing A Programming Project (3rd ed) by Philip Metzger & John Brodie [Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
If you are struggling as an inexperienced manager or aspire to moving to management this is undoubtedly one of the books that you should read.

Object Solutions - Managing the Object-Oriented Project by Grady Booch [Recommended]

Chris Simons writes:
Nevertheless, this book represents the capture of a wealth of experience of an expert in the field which makes worthwhile and rewarding study.

Portable C++ by Patricia Giencke [Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
...If you can do this and need to write applications either for many platforms or for a long lifetime reading this book will quickly repay the cost in time and money.

Ray Tracing for the Macintosh CD (uses POV-Ray) by Eduard Schwan [Recommended]

Peter Tillier writes:
The book itself is easy to read and informative and is reasonably priced. I would probably have bought this if I had discovered it amongst the welter of PC Web and Internet books in most stores.

Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer by Edward Yourdon [Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
If you want to stand back and take a look at a broader view of the software industry this book is well worth your attention.

STL Tutorial and Reference Guide by David Musser & Atul Saini [Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
If you are serious about your C++you need to work through the first part of this book and have a compiler that provides you both the STL and proper support for it.

Software Design, Automated Testing and Maintenance by Hoffman & P Strooper [Recommended]

Rob Henley writes:
I'd recommend this book if you are looking for ways of tightening up the development process, without necessarily resorting to a fully formal specification.

Software Maintenance Concepts and Practice by Armstrong Takang & Penny Grubb [Highly Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
The only excuse for not reading a book such as Software Maintenance Concepts and Practice is that you already have a sound understanding of maintenance and how it effects your work from the moment you start doing the design (or even before that).

Standard C, A Reference (new version) by P J Plauger & Jim Brodie [Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
If you program in C (even if you use a C++ compiler) do yourself a favour and get a copy of this book for your reference shelf (don't forget to read it, you may be surprised by what you find out).

Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API by Dan Appleman [Recommended]

Roger N Lever writes:
If understanding the Windows API from a VB programmer's perspective is important then this is the book to have.

Windows 95 Bug Collection by Bruce Brown [Recommended]

Francis Glassborow writes:
If your employer insists on putting Windows 95 on your work machine buy this book and demand that your employer subscribe to BugNet.

Please note that opinions are those of the individual reviewers.

Book Pricing

One of the few things I lost when I had a hard disk go bad ealier in the year was an interesting email from a publisher explaining why there was such a disparity between US dollar prcas and UK stirling ones. If he ever gets a moment to rewrite it I would like to publish his rationale.

The test of many of his claims would be to examine the prices of non-computing books in the two oountries. Anyone got the time to do such a comparison? A range of technical, non-technical and fiction categories might throw up some interesting contrasts.

There is another aspect of pricing that is a cause for concern. Many buyers seem to judge quality by price. They have an idea what they think a particular product should cost and immediately ignore anything that is significantly below that price. An example of this is 'C&C++ Multimedia Cyber Classroom.' Blackwell's in Oxford ordered 20 copies of this product when it was released based on the quality of the product and the quality/popularity of the authors' printed books. They recently returned all twenty copies because they had not sold any.

There seems to have been three problems. The title (though fully descriptive of the product) put off serious readers, problems with being able to examine the product (by the way, do you get as annoyed as I do by shrink wrapped books? It is fine if there is a display copy but there often isn't) and the price. No one would believe that an audio-visual product at £35 could possibly be any good. In my opinion the product was better than any of the video courses an offer at five times the price.

Unless customers buy on merit rather than perceived value we are going to continue to pay through the nose for junk.

Francis Glassborow
Editor, C Vu