Really Old Books

Almost all of these books are out of print, though some of them are still available for ordering.

	JavaScript for the World Wide Web Visual QuickStart Guide, Fourth Edition Peachpit Press, 2001 The Fourth Edition adds about 150 new pages to our bestselling JavaScript book. Thanks to the fine folks at Peachpit, we were also able to add a cool reference section with color-coded guides to which JavaScript objects work with what browsers. Like the previous editions, this book is the standard textbook for many beginning and intermediate JavaScript and DHTML classes at the college and university level. It's been translated into German, French, Japanese, Dutch, Hebrew, Portuguese, Swedish, Bulgarian, Polish, and Chinese. And we've gotten one or two copies in languages we can't identify. Once again, we've revised our companion Web site for this edition.

	Quicken 2001 for Macintosh, Visual QuickStart Guide Peachpit Press, 2000 This revision covered the changes in Quicken for Mac since last year. One odd thing is that based on sales, we decided not to revise the Windows version of this book this time around. It turns out that the Mac version sells better, even though there are nine times as many Quicken for Windows users as Quicken for Mac users. Weird, huh?

	Microsoft Office 2001 for Macs for Dummies IDG Books, 2000 Covering the last version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS 9, this book required extensive revision of the previous edition (see below). I tore out a whole section, and replaced it with a new section covering the new program in Office 2001, Entourage, which is a combination email client and personal information manager.

	Quicken 2000 for Windows, Visual QuickStart Guide Peachpit Press, 1999 This is the current revision of the Quicken for Windows VQS, updated to cover the program's latest features.

	Quicken 2000 for Macintosh, Visual QuickStart Guide Peachpit Press, 1999 This revision covered the changes in Quicken for Mac, which hadn't had an update in almost two years.

	JavaScript for the World Wide Web Visual QuickStart Guide, Third Edition Peachpit Press, 1999 Though the Second Edition of this book was very successful, we knew that we wanted to make it even better. The Third Edition is about 50% new material, with about 100 new pages. Like the previous edition, this book has become the standard textbook for many beginning and intermediate JavaScript and DHTML classes at the college and university level. It's been translated into German, Japanese, Dutch, Hebrew, Portuguese, Swedish, and Chinese. We revised our companion Web site for this edition. It still contains all the scripts in the book. Check it out.

	Quicken 99 for Windows, Visual QuickStart Guide Peachpit Press, 1999 This is basically a rewrite of my Mac Quicken book below, but it ended up having quite a bit more material than the Mac version. The Windows version includes more features, and Intuit bundles the product in several different ways, requiring an expanded approach. I also cover a version of Quicken not available on the Mac, called Quicken Home & Business. This gives the small business owner easy-to-use invoicing, payables, and receivables. I liked it so much I started using it for my personal and business finances.

	Quicken 98 for Macintosh, Visual QuickStart Guide Peachpit Press, 1998 I tried to get this project going for about eight months. When Quicken 98 was released, I was working on the JavaScript VQS (see below). I pitched the idea of a Quicken Visual QuickStart then, but the Peachpit folks preferred that I actually finish up the book I was then working on before thinking about other books (the nerve!). I jumped right into my Office 98 book after JavaScript was done, but I still wanted to do a Quicken book. Then Apple announced the iMac, bundled with a copy of Quicken Deluxe 98. Finally, the book's time had come. I got the go-ahead in late June, but with one small condition; they wanted the book to be published before the end of August. That gave me about a month to write the book (it takes at least a month for layout and printing). Many sleepless nights ensued. This book was also available as part of The iMac Bundle from Peachpit, which includes two other iMac-related books: Mac OS 8.5: Visual QuickStart Guide and AppleWorks 5: Visual QuickStart Guide.

	Microsoft Office 98 for Macs for Dummies IDG Books, 1998 This book covers the latest version of Microsoft Office 98, the first revision of the Office suite for the Mac in three years. I talk about how to use Word 98, Excel 98, PowerPoint 98, Internet Explorer 4.0, and Outlook Express 4.0. The book has been translated into French, and is doing well.

	JavaScript for the World Wide Web Visual QuickStart Guide, Second Edition Peachpit Press, 1998 I wrote this one with Dori Smith, a terrific JavaScript programmer (and the gal of my dreams). This book is quite different from most other JavaScript books, which tend to be these huge tomes designed to be read by people who already understand programming. Our approach is that we wrote a JavaScript book for the person who knows HTML, and is looking to take the next step, but who doesn't think of themself as a programmer. Our working name for this one was "Just Enough JavaScript." I'm happy to say that the JavaScript VQS is a bestseller, and it's been selected as a textbook for many college classes. It's also been translated into Japanese, Hebrew, and Dutch. Be sure to check out our companion Web site for this book. It's got all of the scripts in the book, as well as addenda and updates.

	Macs for Kids and Parents IDG Books, 1997 I wrote this book with Wendy Sharp, the former reviews coordinator at Macworld magazine. It was one of the books in Dummies Press' Family series. I wrote most of the hardware stuff, and all of the parts about the Internet and ClarisWorks, as well as a chapter on how kids with disabilities can use the Mac. Wendy did a great job writing about kid's software, multimedia, drawing, and photo editing. It was a pretty darn good book, if I do say so myself. Sadly, it did poorly in the marketplace, partly because the publisher decided to pull the plug on the entire series not too long after the book was released.

	Macworld Web Essentials IDG Books, 1996 Charles Seiter, another of Macworld's contributing editors, brought me in on this project for Macworld Press. We cranked out a pretty decent basic Internet book in a couple of months, just in time to be released in the teeth of the first round of the Apple/Sun takeover rumors, and the downfall of Apple CEO Michael Spindler amid a huge quarterly loss. Oy. As you might guess, sales suffered. This book is out of print.

	Yahoo! Unplugged IDG Books, 1995 This was an interesting project. A bunch of people, including me, Charles Seiter, Karen Heyman, Paul Hoffman, and others, were hired to browse through all of the sites listed in the Yahoo! index as of the summer of 1995, and write up short blurbs on the coolest things we found. Yes, we were actually being paid to surf the Web. But it ain't as much fun as it sounds. First, it takes a long time to check out hundreds of sites, with zillions of mouse clicks, so it was a big contributor towards my first bout with repetitive strain injury in my right arm. Ouch. Secondly, you have no idea how many horrible Web sites there are out there in the world. By the time we finished this book, we figured that we were making the equivalent of about $6/hour, not exactly a princely sum. Doing this book led me to install an ISDN line in my office, which was a serious high-speed solution at the time. I also had a heart attack during this project, which still rates as my most creative way to miss a deadline. Yahoo! Unplugged won a 1996 Computer Book Publishing award. Since the book was obsolete before it ever saw the light of day, it's no surprise that it is now out of print.

	Upgrading Your Mac Illustrated Que, 1994 This was the first book that I wrote by myself. It was mainly a book of pictures, with step-by-step instructions on how to do various upgrades on your Mac. It's a bit dated, but still works for things like adding RAM. If you have an older Mac, it's great, because we used four models of Macintoshes in the photographs describing the upgrade procedures. We illustrated upgrading the Mac Classic II, a Mac LC II, a Centris 650, and a Quadra 800AV. Since there were several Macs that used each of these case types (even including some Power Macintoshes), you can still get some use from this book. Now out of print, but Amazon still thinks that they can get it for you, after a bit of a wait. Almost a year after this book was published, I got an unexpected FedEx package from Que, containing four copies of Aggiornare il Macintosh, the Italian translation of the book. My family is Italian, so I showed the translation to my 92 year old grandmother. She got tears in her eyes and told me that my grandfather, who passed away years ago, would be very proud of me. It was pretty cool.