The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group For the bookshelf Major Keary

Digital Photography

Books on digital photography have tended to concentrate on the digital side: file formats, equipment comparisons, using software for editing pictures, and-of course-using your pictures on the Web, or sending them by e-mail. A recent title, How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera caters for a generation that is stepping straight into digital photography and needs advice on photographic techniques as well as what to do with digital images. 

The first third of the book contains an overview of the business of taking pictures. Topics discussed include understanding exposure, essentials of composition, flash and lighting, close-up photography, and taking time-lapse photos. The level of technical depth is well-suited to the needs of digital photographers who want to achieve better than average skills. This part of the book also contains good advice on choice of equipment. 

Part 2, Transferring Images, explains file formats, working with 'digital film', turning prints into digital images (scanning), and managing a collection of digital images. 

Part 3, Editing Images, discusses software and techniques for improving images. The coverage is very good, including contrast control, cleaning up photographs, covering up unwanted detail, creating special effects, panoramic photos, and adding text to a picture. 

Part 4, Using Your Images, is about printing digital photographs, sending them as e-mail or on-disk, publishing them on a Web site, or organising a collection into a slide show. 

This is a well presented text that serves as a reference and general resource for novice and more experienced digital photographers. A good read, and good value. 

Dave Johnson: How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera ISBN 0-07-212772-4  Published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill,  394 pp.,  RRP $42.95 incl. GST

Learning Web Design 

A new title in O'Reilly's Web Studio series, this title offers beginners an outstanding tutorial that is equally useful for both Mac and Windows users. I was surprised by the absence of any reference to XHTML and the problem posed by deprecated tags, and the fact that XML is barely mentioned. It could be argued that a tutorial designed for beginners is better confined to HTML practice that has been established over the past few years, and that budding designers who master the lessons presented here will find it easy to move up to XHTML and other XML-related Web tools. 

What this text does present is an excellent tutorial for Web design beginners. It is thorough, has good technical depth, and lays out processes step-by-step. The text is supported by good, and plentiful, illustrations. The subject coverage is not limited to simple, static pages, but includes frames, tables, forms, graphics, animation, and design techniques. The book is in parts. 

Part 1, Getting Started, provides an overview of software used for page creation, an introduction to the mechanics of the Web, using ftp to upload files, and an introduction to Web design. 

Part 2, Learning HTML, is a tutorial on HTML and includes text formatting, links, graphic elements, tables, frames, and colour. 

Part 3, Creating Web Graphics, is not just about the creation process, but includes sound advice on the suitability of different file formats for particular purposes, and techniques for achieving results with smaller files. It is one of the best discussions I have seen of optimising image files. 

Part 4, Form and Function, is about design techniques, building functional Web sites, some design do's and don'ts, and explanations of advanced techniques, such as Web audio. 

For many users this will be the only text they will need; for those who want to go on to more advanced applications it will provide a very good foundation for further learning. It will also help readers decide on which software is best for their respective needs. A well-designed book, from quality of content, through typographic design, to the convenient lay-flat binding.

Jennifer Niederst: Learning Web Design  ISBN 0-596-00036-7  Published by O'Reilly,  388 pp.,  RRP $99.95 incl. GST

Delphi 

Delphi has, since it first appeared some seven years ago, been a stable and powerful raid application development (RAD) tool for the Windows platform. Releases since version 3 have added new features without making changes to the core of the program, Object Pascal, which remains constant. For that reason much of the current literature deals with the 'benchmark' version 3 and is fully relevant to later versions. 

An example is Delphi 3 Example Book, which-as the title indicates-is a resource that provides information about each and every object and component, listing their respective properties, methods, events, syntax, and example code. 

Delphi 3 Example Book does not follow the narrative style of conventional texts, but lists each item in a common format. The organisation of the chapters, the comprehensive index, and good cross referencing makes information easy to find. The descriptive material is concise, and each chapter opens with a brief explanatory section. 

This is not a tool for learning from scratch; it is intended for programmers who are using Delphi and who need a ready reference to specific information. The provision of example code makes it all the more useful for that purpose.

 Wireless Markup Language 

The acronym, WAP has become something of a buzz-word and a label for something that encourages great-and sometimes unreasonable-expectations. The reality is that WAP is a valuable tool, but the technology is unlikely to deliver the kind of results implied by some in the media. Nevertheless, the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an important addition to communication technology. By itself WAP represents just so many words; implementation requires something more. To that end the Wireless Markup Language (WML) has been developed with a scripting language, WMLScript. Programs and documents written in WML will look very much like HTML code with some new tags; however, users have to be aware that many HTML tags do not operate within the WAP environment. The scripting language, WMLScript, is "loosely based on JavaScript but is much simpler", the reason being the limited resources available to the receiving device. 

Learning WML & WMLScript is a comprehensive tutorial. The author, Martin Post, is the head of WAP technology at Digital Mobility Ltd. (an English company) and has written a WAP browser and designed a WAP gateway. He is also a good technical communicator; familiarity with HTML is all you need to learn WML from this book, although some understanding of programming principles is required to get the full benefit. There is a very good explanation of the mysterious card tag. Users, on first encountering it, may form an association with the cards used in mobile phones. In fact card in the WML context is similar to paging. In HTML content can be a stream of data, but in WML there is a limit. The author describes cards thus: "[A WML file represents a deck of cards. Only one card is displayed at a time, but you can link from one card to another and store several in a deck in the same file. Each individual card . [behaves] . like an HTML page, so you can think of a WML deck as being similar to a number of HTML pages all grouped together. . Cards in a deck are downloaded at the same time, so the user has to wait only once, and the others can be accessed almost instantly." 

There is a downside. Overuse of cards can slow things down in a WAP environment. The attraction of this book is the author's ability to illustrate WAP/WML concepts and the problems peculiar to them. Just as in HTML/XHTML, there are levels of application; simple, static content does not require much programming skill, but for serious use that involves content that is interactive, dynamic, or requires database connectivity, there is a need for an appropriate degree of programming expertise. Wherever you might be on the WAP/WML user scale-from beginner to professional-this title should satisfy your needs. Speaking WML and WMLScript requires knowledge of the significant dialectal differences between WML and HTML. 

The book includes two complete examples, one a calculator and the other a game, that demonstrate the application of WML and WMLScript. A thorough, well-written tutorial that will serve as an ongoing reference to WML and WMLScript.

Martin Frost: Learning WML & WMLScript  ISBN 1-56592-947-0  Published by O'Reilly,  179 pp.,  RRP $85.00 incl. GST

Reprinted from the July 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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