Review of Responsive Design: Patterns & Principles
06 Dec 2015
It’s been awhile since I’ve read a technical book but I felt I had to make an exception for Ethan Marcotte, who recently released Responsive Design: Patterns & Principles. Marcotte is, of course, most well known for his prior book, Responsive Web Design, which helped bring the concepts of media query oriented fluid design to the forefront of our industry. This recent A Book Ap...
Book review: Making it Right
28 Jul 2014
A new book on product management just came out, published by Smashing Magazine, called Making it Right: Product Management for a Startup World. I lucked out and noticed that it was available for $1. Yay me! The book is still a reasonably priced $9, though and TL;DR: it's worth the $9. At 170 kindle pages, the book makes for a quick read and has plenty of linked up resources to get you on your w...
Book Review: Content Everywhere
19 Jun 2013
After seeing the book mentioned in a Karen McGrane keynote, I decided to pick up Content Everywhere: Strategy and Structure for the Future-Ready Content by Sara Wachter-Boettcher. It's a somewhat lengthy but easy read with great examples and helped me gain a better perspective on the work that I do. What is the book about? As you can probably surmise from the title, Content Everywhere lo...
Book Review: The Elements of Content Strategy
05 Mar 2011
The third book from A Book Apart, The Elements of Content Strategy, is a "brief guide [that] explores content strategy's roots, and quickly and expertly demonstrates not only how it's done, but how you can do it well." That's an accurate description, although this book, unlike the previous two, does not feel brief. This book focuses on content and is all content. There are few diagrams and no co...
Book Review: CSS3 for Web Designers
17 Nov 2010
CSS3 for Web Designers is the latest release from A Book Apart which also recently released HTML5 for Web Designers. Having received a copy of this lightweight book in electronic format, I promptly loaded it onto my iPad in preparation for a flight. The book proved to be so brief and easy-to-read, in fact, that I was through its 130 pages before I even boarded my plane. Therefore, I took some ti...
Book Review: CakePHP Application Development
19 Sep 2008
CakePHP has been around for awhile with the final 1.2 just around the corner. Despite that, we hadn't seen any books come out focused on the framework. Thankfully, not one but two books came out recently including CakePHP Application Development by Packt Publishing. The folks at Packt were kind enough to send me a copy and it turned out to be a fairly quick read. It's 300 pages of good starting k...
Book Review: Practical Prototype and Script.aculo.us
05 Sep 2008
In this next installment of Review Fridays, we have a new book from Apress titled, Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us by Andrew Dupont. Andrew is one of the core developers of the Prototype library. Prototype is the library that helped open up a new world of techniques for me and, likely, many other JavaScript developers with its Ruby-inspired approach. Prototype is automatically bundled wit...
Building Findable Websites
31 Mar 2008
Often times, the term SEO is mentioned in derogatory terms. With many of the poor techniques people use to garner site traffic, it's not hard to see why. However, Aaron Walter has recently finished a book entitled Building Findable Websites which casts a wide net on the concept of building a quality web site that goes well beyond just the mere topic of SEO. The concept of "findable websites&...
Review: Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns
25 Jan 2008
Michael Bowers takes an interesting approach with his book, Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns, by having created what I'd consider an encyclopedia approach. A number of different layout and design patterns are presented with their HTML and CSS solutions. Because the book is very referential, it's unlikely that you'll pick it up and read it from beginning to end. It is, however, a great book to h...
Review: Web Development Solutions
13 Jul 2007
There is a recent book out by Friends of Ed called Web Development Solutions: Ajax, APIs, libraries and Hosted Services Made Easy. Web Development Solutions is a good book for those looking to learn how to build their own web site. It covers the popular stuff going into blogs these days. This book, by Yahoo employees Christian Heilmann and Mark 'Norm!' Norman Francis, covered a...
Review: PHP Solutions
28 Jan 2007
The folks at Friend of Ed were kind enough to send me a copy of PHP Solutions, by David Powers. This book is solely intended for someone who hasn't used PHP before but approaches it in a way that is different than most books I've seen. The cover describes itself as a way to "create dynamic websites with PHP and MySQL, quickly and painlessly" and presents itself like a recipe book for ...
Review: Pro CSS Techniques
07 Jan 2007
I have to say, I was looking forward to getting this book. Pro CSS Techniques is as the tagline says, "real-world CSS techniques for real-world CSS professionals." It contains very practical approaches to the issues and considerations we run into every day. The book is well structured for the most part, starting off with a bit of a refresher on introductory CSS topics and then moving i...
Review: Beginning JavaScript
22 Dec 2006
Looking for a last minute Christmas gift? Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax by Christian Heilmann may just be it. I got this book awhile back but it has taken me awhile to get through it. I realized that JavaScript is just more involved to absorb than a CSS book. On the flip side, writing a book on JavaScript can be a complicated matter in its own right (as I've been discovering). ...
Review: Transcending CSS
16 Dec 2006
After discovering that a screenshot of my site appeared in Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke, I decided to order this book. That may seem vain but family is easily impressed by it. Who am I to disappoint? When the book arrived a couple days later, though, I was amazed by the pure style. It's the only book in my entire geeky collection that had my wife give it a second glance. That alone meant it w...
Review: Beginning CSS Web Development
15 Nov 2006
I get asked quite often which book I'd recommend for learning about CSS and up until now I've been recommending CSS Mastery by Andy Budd, et al. However, after reading Simon Collison's latest, Beginning CSS Web Development, I think I have a new default. The book is — as it described — intended for those looking to go from novice to professional. It is split into two parts with the f...
Review: Blog Design Solutions
13 May 2006
Blog Design Solutions is a book by Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Chris J Davis, Michael Heilemann, John Oxton, David Powers, Richard Rutter, and Phil Sherry. Each one contributes a chunk of the book in covering Movable Type, WordPress, Expression Engine, TextPattern and a custom CMS. The book starts off with a nice introduction to the concept of a blog and then dives into setting up Apache,...