A programmer's tale

eZ Publish 4 – Enterprise Web Sites Step-by-Step

November 7th, 2009

Yesterday morning I received a review copy of the new book eZ Publish 4 – Enterprise Web Sites Step-by-Step from Packt Publishing. About two weeks ago, fellow eZ community member Bruce Morrison posted  an early review of this book, which was overall not very positive.

Curious as I was, I’ve read the introductory parts and the first chapter, called “Installing eZ Publish”.  Certain mistakes against some basics are really bothering me. For example, Packt is once referred to as “Pack”, with the trailing t stripped off. eZ Systems – the company behind eZ Publish – is so far always referred to as “eZ System”, without the necessary trailing s. Another mistake, is that eZ Components, with an uppercase leading C in Components, is sometimes referred to as “eZ components” with lowercase leading c in Components. This reminds me of a physics teacher at secondary school, who always called me with a wrong family name similar to mine. I think nobody likes to have their name spelled wrong.

Only in the section “Unpacking the installation”, it became clear to me that this book covers eZ Publish 4.0. Everybody familiar with eZ Publish knows that a major release is distinguished by the 2 leading numbers of its version, and not only the first number. If the old rules still apply, only the last 2 major versions of eZ Publish are being actively maintained by eZ Systems, which at the time of writing are 4.1 and 4.2. So version 4.0, which is the target of the book, is actually an unmaintained version (except for those who have a maintenance agreement) and it’s highly recommended to upgrade.

Although it is true that many things that apply to version 4.0 will still be the same for 4.1, 4.2 and so on, still I feel it would have been worth mentioning the 2nd number of the major version in the title, or at the back of the book where it would be easy to spot before buying the book. Often, certain details – important or less important – change in major releases, so it’s good to know which exact version of eZ Publish the book covers.

That’s all for now. More following as I progress with reading through the book.

Cover of the book eZ Publish 4: Enterprise Web Sites Step-by-Step

Entry Filed under: eZ Publish