In FileMaker Pro 5 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide, Nolan Hester holds forth on a fantastic database tool. Covering the Windows and Mac OS versions of FileMaker in equal measure, Hester shows you what you need to know in order to solve database problems large and small. He's particularly careful to show how to use FileMaker's networking features (which allow you to share a database among Windows and Mac users) and Web Companion, which you can use to run the back end of dynamic, searchable Web resources (such as catalogues and directories). Scripting and templates get coverage, too, and the author's tone is clear throughout.

In case you haven't experienced the Visual QuickStart Guide presentation style, you're in for a treat. It's highly graphical, but the designers take care to present many tightly focused images, rather than lots of big full-screen pictures. The idea is that you can read along with Hester's procedures and see the steps illustrated nearby. If you're told to choose options in a dialog box, for example, a picture of the relevant box appears adjacent to the text. It's therefore easy to avoid getting lost. --David Wall, amazon.com

Topics covered: Using FileMaker Pro 5 for Windows and Mac OS, including entering data, searching, sorting, reporting, and printing. Database design gets coverage, including field types, validation, formulas, and relational structures. Networking and Web integration get attention, too.