I am one guy who reads a lot of computer programming books. I have read on how to program using this or that tool and how to use framework this and that however, most of the time I like to go straight to writing code than reading long introductions with lots of tech jargon and confusing English. Before I write long introductions too :), let me tell you how excited I was, when I was invited to review the book Instant Primefaces Starter by Ian Hlavats. The book is short, fast and focused on developing a Primefaces applications. The author does not waste the reader's time explaining why, what and who Primefaces is but he makes short relevant introduction to the technology that is Primefaces.
From page 6 of this book the author goes straight to show you how to install the necessary tools for one to build state of the art Primefaces desktop and mobile applications. It shows you how to setup the development environment using Eclipse, Glassfish, Maven and MySQL. You will be guided on how to add Primefaces and related tools too.
The book teaches how to use Primefaces and other tools to build a website called "Show Time Guru" where people can meet and find fun and interesting things to do in their city. The author showed how to use some of the rich Primefaces components in building a modern social website. I have been a Primefaces developer for sometime but I had not used "PrimePush" and neither had I used "Primefaces mobile". After reading this book, Ian has opened my eyes to a lot of new possibilities I had never bothered to try using Primefaces.
This book has something for a new Primefaces developer as well as tons of nuggets of code for the experienced Primefaces developer. The step by step approach to building a functional website using such a powerful framework makes this book a great read. The foreword was penned by Çağatay Çivici the author of Primefaces. Oh and did I mention the book is short. I know reading 250+ pages can intimidate anyone but this packs all the fun of learning and developing a functional website in just about 90 pages. Save for some code samples with bad indentation, I think this is a small rich oasis of Primefaces knowledge.
