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I am trying to decide whether to buy "PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (4th Edition)s" or "PHP for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide (4th Edition)". From the reviews I've read, these books look reasonably up to date while others do not say anything (or very little) that explains the new features and syntax in MySQLi. About 2 years ago I got a basic grasp of how to create a MySQL database and print query results on web pages, then completed a project using a phpMyAdmin web interface. I've now embarked on a similar project; however the phpMyAdmin at the current host uses a much more recent version of MySql Server and a version of PHP which uses MySQLi. It's not too hard to write MySQLi queries which produce the results I want. The big problem is that often I cannot get the results to display on a web page! Actually, the syntax in online examples has worked in the case of a simple query -- a GROUP BY and COUNT involving just one table, for example. A LEFT JOIN which pulled columns from 2 tables, for another example. But a more complex query with A LEFT JOIN plus a GROUP BY column from one table and a COUNT from a column in the second table -- nothing worked to print the results on a page! Looking at error codes, I'm pretty sure of the problem. The results I'm getting are objects and the syntax is meant to echo (or print) only procedural results. Or vice versa. I went back to www.w3schools.com and re-did their PHP tutorial which now has some updated information covering MySQLi. That was good but did not get me to the point that I could look at my results and figure out the correct syntax to display the rows on a page. I have a fair amount of experience with CSS and HTML plus a little Javascript. (These days I mainly use Jquery.) So which book should I buy? Or to get from where I am to where I want to go do I need to start with the "QuickStart Guide" and continue on with the more complete book? I'll appreciate any advice you can give me.