Review: The Smashing Book #3 1/3: The Extension

Review: The Smashing Book #3 1/3: The Extension

September 4, 2012

Ryan’s Rating:  ★★★★★

If you read The Smashing Book #3 and found yourself longing for more website redesign goodness, you are in luck!  The Smashing Book 3 1/3: The Extension provides four more chapters of best practices and innovative design techniques for your reading pleasure.

This book is only 155 pages, but packs a lot in:

  • The Missing Element of Redesign: Story
  • Rethinking Navigation: Techniques and Design Patterns
  • Rework Your Content So It Works For You
  • Responsive Smashing Redesign: A Case Study

Anyone embarking on a website redesign will find the last chapter very insightful (my favorite of the handful in this extension). In fact, I think this chapter alone makes the work worth purchasing. It details redesign process of the Smashing Magazine website from planning to execution. Whether you have numerous redesigns already under your belt or it’s your first one, there’s something here for everyone to learn from. Having experimented with responsive design off and on for the last six-plus months (not to mention anticipating a not-too-distant future redesign of my employer’s website), the timing could not have been more perfect for this to fall in my hands.

As per usual, numerous experts made contributions to the book: Iris Ljesnjanin, Denise Jacobs, Christian Holst, Jamie Appleseed, Colleen Jones, Vitaly Friedman, and Elliot Jay Stocks.

Buy it.

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Review: The Smashing Book #3: Redesign the Web

The Smashing Book #3: Redesign the Web

August 7, 2012

Ryan’s  Rating: ★★★★★

A few months ago, Smashing Magazine released The Smashing Book #3: Redesign the Web, packed with fresh content for web designer and developers. Having read and loved its predecessors: The Smashing Book and The Smashing Book #2,  I had high expectations for the latest in the anthology. Suffice it to say, it met and surpassed my expectations.

The latest book deviates from the previous two in that it focuses on a central theme: redesigning websites. Each chapter covers a different aspect of a redesign, from the business side to technical considerations, and even discusses techniques for improving user experiences. There are three chapters carved out specifically for HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript respectively, and one covering mobile design.

Here is how the book breaks down:

    • The Business Side of Redesign
    • Selecting a Platform: Technical Considerations for Your Redesign
    • Jumping Into HTML5
    • Restyle, Recode, Reimagine With CSS3
    • JavaScript Rediscovered: Tricks to Replace Complex jQuery
    • Techniques for Building Better User Experiences
    • Designing for the Future, Using Photoshop
    • Redesigning With Personality (download for FREE!)
    • Mobile Considerations in User Experience Design: Web or Native?
    • Workflow Redesigned: A Future-Friendly Approach
    • Becoming Fabulously Flexible: Designing Atoms and Elements

As is the case with the previous two books, many talented experts contribute to The Smashing Book #3: Redesign the Web: Elliot Jay Stocks, Paul Boag, Rachel Andrew, Ben Schwarz, David Storey, Lea Verou, Christian Heilmann, Dmitry Fadeyev, Marc Edwards, Aarron Walter, Aral Balkan, Stephen Hay, and Andy Clarke.

This is my favorite of the Smashing Books thus far. I think it in part, had to do with the strength of the writing and because everything was tied together by the central theme. This is a must-have for any designer or developer’s bookshelf.

Grab yourself a copy today! (336 pages)

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Review: Decoding HTML5 by Jeffrey Way [ebook]

Decoding HTML5 by Jeffrey Way

May 14, 2012

Ryan’s  Rating:  ★★★★★

I found Decoding HTML5 by Jeffrey Way to be one of, if not the most thorough (e)books on HTML5 that I’ve read thus far. It is an easy to follow, not overly technical, informal guide to HTML5. So as not to give the wrong impression, I’ll include Way’s disclaimer at the beginning of the book:

“if you’re expecting a massive, all-encompassing analysis of the HTML5 spec, then you’re reading the wrong book”.

What it is however, is a practical guide to understanding HTML5, its new tags, form elements and JavaScript APIs. Way begins by giving some background on the origins of HTML5, some of the issues that have arisen during its development, and the current state of HTML5. From there, he dives right into the juicy stuff.

One thing I really like about this book are the plethora of useful code snippets that Way has included throughout. For someone like me, this makes it easier to understand and apply to an in-context application. I also like the inclusion of graphics illustrating the browser (and version) support for various HTML5 features.

This ebook is a great HTML5 reference and one that I know I will be referring to frequently. As such, I went ahead and printed it out (yep, all ~350 pages!). I’m not sure why this book was not printed, but I would buy a hard-copy if they ever did go forward with printing it. Most, if not all of my favorite references are in hard-copy format, so it’s definitely complement!

Table of Contents

Introduction

The History of HTML5

The State of HTML5

Semantic Markup

Easy Queries with the Selectors API

Custom Data Attributes

Fun Fun Forms

The Essentials of Feature Detection

Finally… Native Media

Track that Sucka with Geolocation

The Basics of Painting with Canvas

Don’t Irritate Visitors – Use Web Storage

The History API

The File && Drag and Drop APIs

Web Workers are Ants

Tools, Folks and Blogs

Sample pages for download here.

The ebook will set you back $19.

Buy it now!

 

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Review: Web Design Confidential by Amanda Hackwith

Web Design Confidential by Amanda Hackwith

May 6, 2012

Ryan’s  Rating: ★★★★★★

Web Design Confidential by Amanda Hackwith is a snapshot of the web design industry based on a survey of 5,000+ web designers from all over the world and interviews with industry insiders. I’m always interested in keeping my finger on the “pulse of the industry”; I had a vested interest in reviewing it having participated in the survey some months ago.

The meat of the book explores the survey results and what insights they provide. Sprinkled throughout is practical advice from numerous web professionals. The full survey results (which are worth the price alone) only make up the last 10 or so pages of the 100 page book, so you are getting a lot for your money. It’s both a great read for students looking to get into the field and for veterans like myself who just want to gauge the state of the web design industry.

You can check out the first few pages over on Amazon (click on the cover image where it says “click to look inside”).

Table of Contents

Web Design Confidential: The Whole Truth on the State of Web Design.

Introduction

Expert Interviews

Who’s Designing Websites Anyway?

Getting Started Right?

Your Say: What Web Designers Think About Web Design

Making It Work: Reported Happiness in Web Design Careers

Conclusion

I opted to purchase the ebook ($19)  directly from Rockable Press, but a hard copy is also available for $26 on Amazon.

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Review: HTML5 & CSS3 For the Real World by Alex Goldstein, Louis Lazaris, Estelle Weyl

HTML5 & CSS3 For the Real World by Alex Goldstein, Louis Lazaris, Estelle Weyl

May 2, 2012

Ryan’s Rating: ★★★★★

If you are looking for a good, easy-to-follow introduction to HTML5 and CSS3, this is a great book to get.  At around 325 pages, it covers a hefty amount of material on both HTML5 and CSS3. My only slight is that it doesn’t provide enough real examples/code snippets. That said, it does a good job of covering the new HTML5 semantics and CSS3 features and demonstrating how you can use them now.

Table of Contents

Introducing HTML5 and CSS3

Markup, HTML5 Style

More HTML5 Semantics

HTML5 Forms

HTML5 Audio and Video

Introducing CSS3

CSS3 Gradients and Multiple Backgrounds

CSS3 Transforms and Transitions

Embedded Fonts and Multicolumn Layouts

Geolocation, Offline Web Apps, and Web Storage

Canvas, SVG, and Drag and Drop

Get a copy for yourself!

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