Struts Kick Start

Struts Kick Start now generally available

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 19:46:45 GMT

After much anticipation, the book is now available, both from SAMS (with $8 overnight shipping!!), and Amazon. Readers are already beginning to comment:

From: Ron Day [mailto:ronday@ronday.cc]
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 10:55 AM
To: Struts Users Mailing List
Subject: RE: [ANNOUNCE] Shameless Plug: Struts Kick Start now available for shipping at Amazon

I'd like to second what Kevin has said.

I have bought and read every book on Struts, in the order that they were published. I got Kick Start this Wednesday. (Sams sent it overnight for $8.). My three favorite books are Chuck's, Ted's and Kick Start. All three are different, have the personalities and interests of the authors, and offer three perspectives on Struts development and best practices. I would be very hard-pressed to choose just one, but since I love tech books that isn't an issue for me. All three are intermediate to advanced texts (for more intro material, look at "Mastering Struts" ). If I had to give one reason for buying Kick Start, I would say "for the excellent chapters on Struts Tags". The other books do not dwell on the Tags, while KickStart has a detailed chapter on each library.

Ron

Kevin blogs on Open Source

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 17:57:44 GMT

Kevin's posted a weblog entry on the O'Reilly site on "Selling Open Source to Management" - here's the URL:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/2287

Sample Chapter on DynaForms and the Validator now available

Sat, 09 Nov 2002 00:23:29 GMT

A sample chapter from our upcoming book is now available here. It covers DynaForms and the Struts Validator Framwork. It is both a very handy reference to a fairly new technology, and a good sample of what you can expect to see if you go buy the whole thing.

Remember, it's never too early to pre-buy the book on Amazon! They make great stock stuffers. Hours of fun for the whole family. Batteries not included. Some assembly required. Not appropriate for those under the age of 7.

Struts PowerPoint presentation available

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 14:06:33 GMT

Kevin's PowerPoint presentation on selling Struts to "suits" is now available here: http://www.strutskickstart.com/struts.ppt

See you at COMDEX or ApacheCon?

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 04:38:29 GMT

Hi, James here...

Are you going to COMDEX or ApacheCon in Las Vegas later this month? Well, so will I! There are two definite places you can find me if you want to chat.

First, on Sunday, I'll be teaching a JSP Bootcamp Tutorial at COMDEX from 9am to 4pm. However, I'll obviously be kinda busy with my students, so unless you want to sign up for the tutorial (click here if you want to), it's probably not the best place.

I'll also be moderating a panel on Monday the 18th at COMDEX, entitled Beyond JSP: Struts, Turbine, Velocity and other JSP Extensions. In addition to seeing me, Craig McClanahan of Sun (and creator of Struts) will also be on the panel. The panel is from 1PM to 2:15 at the Las Vegas Convention center, you will need to be a registered member of COMDEX to attend.

I'll also be attending Craig's talk, What's New in Struts 1.1, over at ApacheCon on Tuesday from 1:30 to 2:30, you can catch me in the audience there.

Welcome, all you Gamelan readers!

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 02:53:46 GMT

Kevin's article tonight on Struts today is kind of our "coming out" party for this web site. However, it went live a little faster than we anticipated, which means that the PowerPoint presentation mentioned by Kevin in the article isn't quite ready yet. So be patient, it should be available later tonight or tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the book itself is complete and going to the printers, the expected "warehouse" date is the second week of December, which means that you should be able to start ordering it from online booksellers like Amazon then (of course, you can always pre-order it now so you don't forget...

We're also putting the last touches on the companion CD-ROM which will be included with the book. We think that this will be a real added value for readers, as it will contain literally everything you'd need to start developing Struts applications on a desert island, including the JDK, Struts itself, Ant, MySQL, JBoss, Cactus, Torque, JUnit and Axis. As far as we know, this is the only Struts book shipping with a CD-ROM, a real bonus!

It's also going to be the most up-to-date book on Struts 1.1. As late as two weeks ago, we were updating content to reflect changes in the 1.1 release (specifically, the new Validator functionality that James shepharded through in late October.) Unlike certain Struts books that don't mention DynaForms or the Validator at all, we were able to include all the breaking features (although time marches on, and we'll have to wait until the second edition to include the Struts-EL taglib, which just snuck into 1.1)

While you're waiting for Struts: Kick Start to ship, you might also want to check out James' previous book, MySQL and JSP Web Applications: Data Driven Programming Using Tomcat and MySQL, which makes a nice companion to Struts: Kick Start. Amazon readers rate it 4 stars (it would rate 5, except there was a problem getting the errata site up.)

This is a test

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 20:27:34 GMT

Testing testing, 1... 2... 3...