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Safari Bookshelf Review

By Clint Gilders

 

In the most basic sense, O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf is an online library where you (in exchange for a subscription charge) have access to hundreds of IT and computer programming related titles.

Even without a paid subscription you have at your fingertips quite a library. Without an account a user is limited to preview mode, but can still search all the titles, and view abridged versions of them.

Oreilly's catalog is obviously well represented at Safari, but so too is that of Pearson Technology Group and other publishers such as Microsoft Press. Under the Pearson umbrella are publishers such as New Riders, Sams, and QUE among others.

Beginning my journey through Safari consisted of nothing more than logging in with my username and password. I was presented with My Safari, a page which details the books I currently have in my library, previous searches, and bookmarks. All quite clear and easy to understand.

I thought I would first select a real world (if slightly contrived) problem and see how quickly and easily I could find a solution using Safari's search functions. This search was done in Preview mode which allows the user to view smaller portions of the titles which are not on their Bookshelf.

The problem

I need to write a CGI script that will run on an NT server and is required to send an email containing the contents of a form. I can use either PHP or Perl. There isn't any sendmail, blat, etc. The sys admin is willing to install perl modules for me, but is not willing to recompile PHP.

Simply searching Mail NT yielded too many results to be efficient. I then tried Perl mail NT which yeilded two results neither of which were relevent. Perl Mail windows was better. The results pointed me to excerpts from 7 books (4 O'Reilly, 2 Sams, and 1 New Riders). Several of the results were relevent and an experienced programmer would have been able to write the necessary script with little more than what was presented in the previews!

Substituting PHP for Perl in my search query again returned 7 results. This time 2 O'Reilly books were represented alongside 3 Sams, 1 Prentice Hall PTR, and 1 New Riders Title. The excerpts showed me that as long as the sysadmin has properly configured PHP (in the php.ini file) I can send mail as easily as I would from a Unix system. Cool!

A few other scenarios yeilded similarly useful results. All in all, the search functionality of Safari is very good but, in order to avoid an avalanche of results, does require you to be fairly specific.

The basic bookshelf functionality of Safari is also easy to use. Once you find a book that you would like in your library (the only way to view the full text of a title) you simply click the Add to Library link and the book becomes available. A title must remain on your bookshelf for 30 days before being removed or replaced by another. Most books occupy one slot in your bookshelf while the occasional title may require more space. Accounts are offered with from 5 - 30 slots and pricing ranges from $9.99 to $29.99 per month.

I am a tech bookworm, so I wondered how well I could do with access to only (roughly) 10 books at a time. In any given day, I will often reference five or more non-virtual books, but they are often the same books day after day.

With this in mind I tried to build my bookshelf with my most commonly used books (Programming Perl, Core PHP, MySQL and the Perl Cookbook) and also added some titles that are of interest to me right now: Linux Clustering, Apache, Embedded Linux, OS X.

If planned well, it seems quite easy to augment an existing (non-virtual) tech book library with a 10-slot bookshelf. Those who do not have an existing collection of tech books would likely find a 10-slot bookshelf sufficient for their needs.

Overall, Safari is a novel (no pun intended) idea that has the potential for widespread acceptance. Those purists who like the feel of a book in their hands may not warm to an electronic bookshelf, but O'Reilly's target audience is not that type of person. Their target audience is those who spend a lot of time in front of a computer trying to solve problems.

These are the people who embrace new technologies and like to be on the leading edge. They want solutions fast and safari makes that possible.

Geeks will love Safari.

Clint is Technical Services Director for Online Hobbyist Inc., and maintains several hobbyist-related webservers such as Kingsnake.com.

 

 

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