So Mark Boulton decided to release his book, A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web, online and without cost. It’s not the only web design book available for free on the web, which this list and a previous encounter with two other online books prove, but all of them make me wonder, again, about the electronic book format.
In the examples above, said “books” don’t adapt official e-book formats, but stick with plain old semantic HTML and PDFs. Joe Clark, in an A List Apart article, explains that both standard and proprietary e-book formats are just more specialized versions of HTML/XHTML, so is there anything gravely wrong with creating webpages instead of actual e-book files?
As one who knows her way around HTML, taking an extra step into e-books (e.g. ePub) feels clunky and unnecessary. However, that is hasty judgment without first considering factors like audience. For web design books, perhaps it makes more sense to not bother with anything else and keep them as webpages because web designers work on sites all day long. That’s not to say they wouldn’t enjoy reading web design books in their e-book readers, but they may mind less having a book in one tab alongside other web design resources in other tabs.
Using proper formats also seems like a natural extension of web standards philosophy. If one were to publish a book online, why not go for the suitable format? There are scripts, extensions, and converters available. And with the ePub Zen Garden following in the steps of the CSS one, it may become the next worthy cause to root for.
Two cutting-edge web technologies, two water-related metaphors, two print and electronic book guides. HTML5 and Google Wave seem to have a lot in common these days.
HTML5
The Dive Into HTML5 site is the hub of Mark Pilgrim’s drafts for his book of the same name. He’s uploaded 4 chapters so far, and lays the foundation for building HTML5 pages from the ground up.
Aside from the excellent typesetting—feels wondrous to read it like a classic book, complete with old style illustrations and drop caps from public domain images—web designers and developers will definitely appreciate how the text will remain under a shareable, remixable Creative Commons license even when the dead-tree version comes out.
Google Wave
The Complete Guide to Google Wave site is also an unofficial guide to new Google product Wave. It’s created by Lifehacker editors Gina Trapani and Adam Pash, with 8 chapters and two appendices on maximizing the power of this real-time tool.
It’s published on a wiki, and true to its collaborative spirit and Wave’s, everyone is encouraged to contribute to the Guide. The DRM-free PDF comes out this month; the book version in January 2010.
Grab your copy
Publishing the contents of an entire book online is not new, and it is akin to artists give their music away digitally but charge for the physical version. But it garners attention because it’s not the same format as the constantly-updated blogs that pop up when hot, profitable topics do. You can rent these books online at textbook rental sites.
So compared to blogs, does the “online book” metaphor work? The wiki format does seem like a good way to go, but I would think the convenience of blogs both in the front and back ends wins out.
The more important questions however: will others follow in the footsteps of Mark Pilgrim, Gina Trapani, and Adam Pash? Which types of books should have an all-access web counterpart? When is it profitable enough to do so? As a consumer and a lover of all things free, it’s an attractive and admirably fearless choice.
Here’s a great deal you don’t see everyday: SitePoint is letting you purchase 5 e-books for the price of 1 (that’s $29.95) and one hundred percent of the proceeds will be donated to the victims of the bushfires in Australia.
So we’re taking one day, working around the clock to plan, package, and execute our best book deal ever in order to raise funds for the Red Cross as soon as possible. Our ambitious plan is to raise over US$50,000. Every single cent generated from this promotion will go directly to the bushfire relief effort—so if you spend $29.95 purchasing 5 books from SitePoint, the whole $29.95 will go directly to supporting this cause. We feel that’s the least we can do.
The bushfires have already taken hundreds of lives just these past few days. But admirably enough, the SitePoint folks have come up with this selfless deed and at the same time managed to reward others who contribute to it. All in record time—this promo launched only a few hours ago.
It helps that digital products like e-books (and other downloadbles like songs and movies) cost practically nothing to distrbute. Of course one would rather leaf through real paper in a book, but getting hold of the information contained in the book matters more.
More importantly you’re donating to charity and getting rewarded for it. And unlike other products, all of the proceeds go straight to the victims. Not just a fraction. Which means you don’t even have to be interested in the books they’re selling; you can always find someone else who is.
So the customers get books, the victims get help, and SitePoint gets what, exactly? The satisfaction that it’s helping people in deep trouble. And, eventually, the reputation that it’s that kind of company. And knowing that, wouldn’t you want to do business with them again?
The offer ends on February 13. Buy now!
(Disclaimer: I’m not being paid by SitePoint to write this.)
All the hoopla over Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong!, a book by Rachel Andrew and Kevin Yank (see also the Digital Web article) is making me feel uneasy.
We’re not wrong; the title is wrong
I detest the title of the book. No, I don’t think “everything” I know about CSS is wrong. I “know” about the display:table technique for months now (thanks to Sitepoint, again).
Neither do I think it’s a good idea to go around belittling people by telling them they are wrong, whether in printed book or online article format. It’s harsh and misleading.
We’ve got issues
As for the CSS Tables technique presented in the book, these are some of the issues plaguing it:
- tag soup
- lack of source order control
- the question of semantics and presentation vs. content: is making
<div>s behave like tables/table cells any different from using tables as layouts?
- IE6 and IE7 incompatibility (no surprise there!)
And not too long after the uproar, the authors have addressed the above problems:
Andrew Tetlaw responds to #1 and #3:
No one is negatively affected by the overuse of structural div tags. The same can’t be said for the use of HTML tables for layout.
And here’s an interesting quip which points out the very valid woe of web developers, who have had to adjust to all these changes in coding conventions because of our “flakiness”:
Congratulations on years of punishing web devs for using common sense. Finally the circle turns, but somehow you think that you were ‘right all along.
Matthew Pennell of Digital Web has this to say about those who question semantics and standards:
I must say that I’m surprised that an audience of (presumably) conscientious, standards-aware developers are almost all declaring that they will not use new features of CSS when they are available and supported. Are you all so short-sighted that you cannot see any application for the techniques discussed here beyond wholesale replacement of site layouts?
And Rachel has written this regarding #4:
Some commentators have suggested that we shouldn’t have put a book out about a technique that can’t be used immediately, that will require workarounds to still provide support for older versions of Internet Explorer. I disagree. Something I point back to in the book is how the web community began to use CSS for layout even though support in Netscape 4 was limited and buggy. If those of us who were building CSS layouts right in those early days had said, “nah, it doesn’t work in Netscape, can’t do it”, then our recent history would look very different.
Are we hesitant about change and innovation?
In a sense, browser usage does “cripple” our ability to look towards a future of web design innovation (and bliss) when IE6 is finally disappears. But are things right now are exactly the same as when Netscape Navigator 4 was the stumbling block?
More importantly, will the CSS Tables technique actually push our level of innovation by a significant degree? The past few months of new websites tell me innovation is not too hard to come by still.
And what about next-generation HTML5, which will have new structural tags like <header>, <section>, <article>, <footer>? Can one not feel guilty using all those <div>s in the midst of these elegant new tags? Perhaps that’s another debate for another day—in 2022.
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