This was a helpful book to learn PHP with. It focused primarily on Wed programming (which is appropriate) and even threw in some database interfacing and XML stuff for good measure. While intended as a beginner’s guide, I found this book organized enough and complete enough to use as a reference when I need one. The complete function appendix at the end is a nice touch as well, I wish more “intro” language books did the same.

I don’t know about “definitive” (I was hoping for more CSS but I suppose I should have just bought a CSS book), but this is certainly a useful book. Coming from someone who learned HTML 3.2 and then completely stayed away from web programming until recently. This book helped me migrate a lot of old code from HTML 3.2 (which means tables, tables, tables) into XHTML and CSS. Just about everything I needed was included here, the examples were useful, and the organization of the books makes sense. Overall I am quite pleased with it.