O'Reilly's Best of 2003

With 2003 rapidly coming to a close, it's a good time to look back on the past year and reflect upon, review, and in our case, revisit the best that O'Reilly book authors have to offer. Over the year, we published nearly 100 feature-length articles by our book authors. These articles have run the technology gamut from Apache to XML and most everywhere in between. We won't showcase them all here; instead, based on visitor statistics, we've come up with the year's top ten most popular articles. But wait, there's more. Our book authors also like to give advice (otherwise, they wouldn't go to the trouble of writing their books), so we've gathered our favorite tips pieces of the year. And where would we be without the books themselves? So we've also compiled a list of our top-selling books of the year. Now, before I really start to sound like a Ronco commercial, let's get started.

Top Ten Articles of 2003

RSS, Flash, PHP, XP, Python, iPhoto, Mozilla, Dreamweaver, Regexp, and Mac OS X. Hard to find a common thread in that list. Yet these ten technologies are represented in our top ten most popular articles of the year, reflecting the diversity of technologies covered by O'Reilly books. Without further ado, from the home offices of O'Reilly & Associates in Sebastopol, California, here is our top ten list:

10. "The Subtleties of Mac OS X"

Jason McIntosh, coauthor of Mac OS X in a Nutshell, provides a rundown in this article of some of his favorite, lesser-known Mac OS X features, from developer tools to network services to Unix text-editing tools:

www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/03/04/macosxian.html

9. "Five Habits for Successful Regular Expressions"

Tony Stubblebine, author of Regular Expression Pocket Reference, says programmers can avoid a lot of trial and error by adopting these five habits for regular expression development. The code examples in this article use Perl, PHP, and Python, but the advice Tony espouses is applicable to nearly any regex implementation.

www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/08/21/regexp.html

8. "Getting Dreamweaver MX Up to Speed with PHP"

Thanks to the hard work of developers, there are plenty of free and commercial add-ons available for using PHP with Dreamweaver. In this article, David McFarland, author of Dreamweaver MX: The Missing Manual, points you to several extensions that will bring powerful and useful enhancements to Dreamweaver's PHP features.

www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2003/02/07/dreamweaver.html

7. "Remote Application Development with Mozilla, Part 2"

In their first article, Brian King, coauthor of Creating Applications with Mozilla, and Myk Melez looked at the benefits of remote application development using Mozilla technologies such as XUL and web services support. In this article, they present a case study of one such application, the Mozilla Amazon Browser, a tool for searching Amazon's catalogs.

www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mozilla/2003/05/02/casestudy2.html

6. "How to Manage Large Image Libraries with iPhoto 2"

You don't have hundreds, you have thousands of pictures that you want to move to iPhoto 2. How do you set up iPhoto to handle all of this data without bogging down? This tutorial by Derrick Story, coauthor of iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual, shows you how to import, organize, and archive vast image collections in iPhoto 2.

www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/06/17/iphoto2.html

5. "What's New in Python 2.3?"

Will the forthcoming Python 2.3 invalidate what you learn from O'Reilly's Python in a Nutshell? Is it worth upgrading to 2.3, or should you stick to 2.2 as long as possible? This article by Alex Martelli, the author of Python in a Nutshell, answers these questions with a look at the changes and improvements in the new version, including reviews of the new modules 2.3 has to offer.

www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2003/03/27/pythonian.html

4. "Five Lessons You Should Learn from Extreme Programming"

Extreme Programming (XP) is yet another popular idea gaining press. It adapts the best ideas from the past decades of software development. Whether or not you adopt XP, it's worth considering what XP teaches. chromatic, author of Extreme Programming Pocket Guide, offers five lessons you should learn from Extreme Programming.

www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/07/31/extremeprogramming.html

3. "PHP 4.3 and Mac OS X"

Version 4.3 of PHP lets you customize it with your favorite configuration. Adam Trachtenberg, coauthor of PHP Cookbook, shows you how to download, configure, and install your very own PHP on Mac OS X.

www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/01/17/phpcookbook.html

2. "What Is a Flash MX Component?"

With the release of Flash MX, Macromedia added an extensible library of user interface widgets, known as the Flash UI Components. Colin Moock, author of ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition, explains what these components are, and he includes several resources for creating and using them.

www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2003/01/28/actionscript.html

And the number one most popular book author article of 2003 is . . .

1. "Making Feature-Rich, Movable Type RSS Files"

RSS feeds, especially RSS 1.0 ones, are made much more valuable with every extra piece of information you can put inside. Ben Hammersley, author of Content Syndication with RSS, walks you through how to create a feed that contains all of the data you can possibly pull out of a standard Movable Type installation.

www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2003/02/28/rss.html

Tiptop Tips of 2003

Well, there you have it--our best feature-length articles of 2003. Now it's bonus time. Our authors also offer some of the best tips you can find about the technologies they write about. If you missed any of them, here's your chance to catch up:

5. "Top Ten Digital Video Tips"

Unless the guy next door happens to be Steven Soderbergh, you'll probably have a hard time getting good advice about how to master your DV camcorder. Yes, you can pore over each dryly composed paragraph in your multilanguage owner's manual, but chances are all that will improve is your French. Instead, check out these ten handy tips that will transform your ho-hum footage into compelling video.

www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/06/13/dv_tips.html

4. "Top 12 Reasons to Write Unit Tests"

Most programmers do not write tests. This is unfortunate, because testing improves software quality and design, reduces bugs, and provides accurate documentation. But if those reasons don't sway you, here are 12 more on the importance of writing tests, brought to you by Eric M. Burke and Brian M. Coyner, coauthors of Java Extreme Programming Cookbook.

www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/04/02/javaxpckbk.html

3. "Top Mac OS X Hints, Part 1 and Part 2"

Rob Griffiths took 550 or so of the best tips from his web site to create Mac OS X Hints. He's pared that number down to 16 hints (one from each chapter) that he finds particularly useful or fun. We published the first eight in part one, followed one week later by round two. (Yes, believe it or not, our page-view statistics show part 1 came in just ahead of part 2 in number of visitors. Since their numbers were back to back, we included them together here.)

Part 1: www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/05/30/macosxhints.html

Part 2: www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/06/03/macosxhints.html

2. "Top Five Open Source Packages for System Administrators"

Æleen Frisch, author of the best-selling Essential System Administration, 3rd Edition, offered the final installment midway through 2003 to her five-part series on the most useful and widely applicable open source administrative tools. Her number one utility? Cfengine. You'll also find links in this article to the other four top tools on Æleen's list.

www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/05/29/essentialsysadmin.html

And our most often visited tips piece of the year is . . .

1. "Top Ten Tomcat Configuration Tips"

How can you configure Tomcat to do what you want it to do? Jason Brittain, coauthor of Tomcat: The Definitive Guide, provides tips and configuration examples that cover frequently asked questions from newbies about configuring Jakarta Tomcat.

www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/06/25/tomcat_tips.html

Top Ten O'Reilly Books of 2003

We wouldn't have had all these quality articles without the books, so we couldn't call this compilation complete without paying proper due to our top-selling books of the year. This list is based on units sold as of December 20, 2003. Notable is the just-released Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition, coming in at the number three spot; its sister volume, Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition, holds the number one spot. Also worthy of a nod is the number two book on the list, Google Hacks, one of the first books released this year in O'Reilly's new Hacks series. Here now are our most popular books of 2003:

10. Programming Jakarta Struts

9. Linux in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

8. JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition

7. Head First Java

6. Windows XP Pro: The Missing Manual

5. Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

4. ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

3. Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

2. Google Hacks

1. Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Here's to many more books in 2004 on the technologies we use, can't live without, or want to learn more about. And let us know if you have an idea for a technology book you'd like to see O'Reilly publish.