Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Programming Internet Email by David Wood, Mark Stone ISBN: 1-56592-479-7 Publisher: O'Reilly Pub. Date: 01 August, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.11 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good book for beginners...
Comment: Bought this book to learn more about how email works so I could fight all the spam I am receiving. I did learn a lot about headers and how email works in general, but it didn't answer all my questions. Still, if you're looking for a general overview on email, this is a good book for the money.
Rating: 2
Summary: Far from great
Comment: I thought (and still think) that it is a good idea to write such books. Well written standard specifications (in terms of readability and immediate applicability) are rare, too often they are too dry or "academic" for immediate use in all-day programming practice (best example is the MIME specification, which stretches across several complex RFCs, which constantly reference to each other).
This is where "companion" books like this come in, providing the reader with guideance, with information about real life situations and examples. They point out pitfalls, emphasize parts of the specs that are "more important" than others, or are (or can be) implemented differently in reality.
Alas, in my opinion the book falls short of achieving this goal. It barely does more than picking (sometimes random) parts of the specs and retelling them in the author's own words.
I have yet to find a book about email that doesn't confuse its reader with acronyms. It seems there is an internal competition between authors of these books to squeeze MTA, MUA, MDA and MRA in one sentence as often as possible.
Another example of the author confusing the reader is that the text keeps mentioning gateways to other (proprietary, non-internet) mail systems, and that/how messages must be converted between these different mail systems. While it's OK to mention this *once* in the introduction, this is clearly not the focus of this book, as it is geared towards folks who write software that handles INTERNET MAIL messages, and not gateway implementors (at least this is how I interpret the book's title).
Also, quite often there is bad coverage of the real world. For example, two chapters are devoted to understanding and implementing MIME, including a lenghtly explanation of "interesting" message types like message/external-body and message/partial (both of which I knew of, but have never ever encountered in my work that includes a fair amount of mail
programming). On the other hand, the "multipart/alternative" type (which is very common in today's email world - ever got a message from Amazon.com?) is barely mentioned at the very end of the MIME discussion.
All in all, it's a good idea from O'Reilly to have such a book, but the execution definitely needs polishing.
Rating: 5
Summary: What a technical book should be.
Comment: This book is an excellent introduction to e-mail programming and protocols. It is as easy to read as any novel, explains everything neatly and concisely, and provides excellent examples.
This covers what a mail server does and how it works, but really concentrates on mail client-server interaction. It goes into SMTP, ESMTP, MIME, POP3, IMAP, and vCard format. The examples are clear and concise, and it includes actual code in Perl and Java. This provides the reader with excellent, platform independent ways to do what they need to do.
The writing style is excellent. One of the most fluid technical books I've ever read. In fact, all I needed was one Sunday to read the book from front to back.
The code provided is superb. It's easy to use, easy to understand, and aides in the learning process. For me, the code is invaluable. It has personally saved me countless hours of work.
Finally, this book doesn't delve in tremendous detail. It tells the reader how to program for e-mail, but doesn't go into the RFC's as much as many people would like it to. I think, however, that this is a real strength. Many technical books bog the reader down with irrelevant information. This books avoids this, but still gives the user information on how to retrieve any additional information if needed.
Though there are not many e-mail programming books out there, this is by far the best one. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
 |
Title: Programmer's Guide to Internet Mail by John Rhoton ISBN: 1555582125 Publisher: Digital Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $57.95 |
 |
Title: Managing IMAP by Kevin Mullet, Dianna Mullet ISBN: 059600012X Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
 |
Title: sendmail, 3rd Edition by Bryan Costales, Eric Allman ISBN: 1565928393 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $59.95 |
 |
Title: Internet e-mail: Protocols, Standards, and Implementation by Lawrence Hughes ISBN: 0890069395 Publisher: Artech House Pub. Date: 15 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $105.00 |
 |
Title: Internet Email Protocols: A Developer's Guide by Kevin Johnson ISBN: 0201432889 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
