Several weeks ago I recieved a copy of Pro PHP GTK by Scott Mattocks in the mail. The first surprise, upon opening the package, is that the book is a hardback – a first for me (at least, for a tech book). I assume this is the norm for all APress books these days, which is very cool as the cover price didn’t seem to be inflated because of it.
The book starts with a simple introduction to PHP-GTK and moves on to installation instructions. Unfortunately, it didn’t include any for OS X, however, the windows and linux ones are very complete.
One thing I feel I ought to mention, that wasn’t readily apparent to me, is that this book covers PHP-GTK2.
From these humble beginnings the book then takes you on a wild ride through PHP-GTK2; coverings the basics including the PHP-GTK M.O., the basics and signals and widget types, Scott then takes you throught he creation of an complex (somewhat) example application showcasing all of the awesomeness that PHP-GTK2 is.
This book is not a fast reader, its quite a mental shift from web to application programming if you’ve never really done it before, especially with PHP. However, the book is first-rate and highly recommended.
One of the biggest things I’ve taken away from this book is just how adept PHP is at just about any situation you can throw at it. I would highly recommend the use of PHP-GTK2 at least for prototyping of new applications, with no need to recompile to make modifications as you go, PHP-GTK2 is an expedient route to perfection.
As the PHP-GTK2 installers/compilers mature, the deployability of PHP-GTK2 applications grows rapidly, and reading this book will take your exisitng knowledge of PHP and allow you to apply it to yet another situation, advancing the weapons in your development arsenal by huge proportions.
Pro PHP-GTK is highly recommended, a better PHP-GTK2 reference cannot be found.
– Davey