Saint_Michael

In volume two of the Smashing book series, we are introduce to ten more chapters from the boys and girls of the Smashing Magazine Network. Here the web designers tool set is greatly expanded in which topics of graphic design, mobile design, wireframing, psychology, and even e-commerce are discussed. At a comfortable 335 pages this book will show you how difficult a web designers life really is due to the fact that there are a lot areas a web designer needs to cover from the first meeting to the client to going live. Like volume #1, Smashing Book #2 condenses a lot of information you would find on their website and the various they have published as well. This is due to the fact that each chapter presented in this book can be a book in itself and once again they provide a great starting point for their readers and of course provide fresh prespective on what to think about when it comes to designing website. This book is only a year old, so the information presented is not totally outdate and so you can breath a sigh of relief because of it. Obviously, the point of the book is get you thinking and go out and research mroe about the topics and thus really build up your experience on the various ideas and concepts that are presented in here. Of course, one thing I do like about this book, is that the information is easy to read and understand and can be reference back to. Of course, once you log into their website, the information they bring daily will quickly dwarf the book by hundreds of pages. As they continually talk about those topics and thus if they were to add that information into the book, it could easily triple in size. Another great aspect of this book I like is the artwork for each chapter as they really pop with the use of vivd colors and great design. On top of that, at the beginning of the book you find almost 3000 names of people who have bought this book and those pages are all designed in a large S. I would defintely pick up this book to add to your collection of great web design information, especially if you have Smashing Book #1 and I will point out that Smashing Book #3 is coming out soon so you should defintely add that to your collection when it comes out later this year.

When it comes to putting books together into a collective works, you will find a lot of them out there, from comics to art to images to even fonts. Usually this is done after months or years of them being put out at an individual level and so when these collection books are put together, all that information is condensed into a few volumns. Now take that collectors concept and https://www.smashingmagazine.com/ and you have one of three volumns of the best content from their website in book form. This book is co-authored by 13 individuals at various levels of experience in the web design world and at 315 pages broken down into ten chapters, Smashing Book #1 consists of a lot of information for one to take in. Like in most first volumn books, I think, This book covers covers a lot of introductory/beginner topics such as CSS layouts, typography, usability, color, optimization to name a few. Like I said, this is a condense volumn of hundreds of articles posted on their website, but on top of that each chapter by itself can be considered a book due to the fact there are litterally hundreds of books out there that cover every angle you can think of about color, typography, usuability and so on. However, the one thing I will point out is that most of the information is outdated by three years, but with a lot of the concepts presented in this book I doubt much has changed. Therefor, the book is worth getting to help give you a start on the hundreds of ideas and concepts that are presented in this book and obviously push you to find out more and see what current information is out there about what you have read. Another thing I like about this book is the writing from these various authors, its simplsitic in nature but they go into a lot of detail in explaining everything. Obviously if go to their website, most of the information you find in this book you will find there. However, I don't think you want to stare at the screen for hours on end, but I know most do. Because it is a great collection of information about the web and obviously the more you know the better you get at becoming a great web designer. Of course, I would recommend getting volume two of this book as it introduces you to even more topics, and if you have both of them, then go ahead and order volumn #3 as well since it will be the most updated book out of the three.

In the seven years since I have been back in the web design gig, one name has become synonymous to web design and web programming books and that is Larry Ullman. He is mostly known for his Visual Quick Pro books such as PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual Quick Pro Guide (4th Edition), MySQL, C++, PHP and so on. Therefore, it does not surprise me when I won his newest book Modern JavaScript: Develop and Design at the Adobe User Group. That it would be loaded with a lot of information that you need to know in order to program in JavaScript. At 15 chapters and a whopping 595 pages, expect to take your time with this book because you will be learning JavaScript from scratch and I mean that literally. As you start from the basics of JavaScript to creating little JavaScript programs. While this book is technical in nature, the one thing I notice right away about this book, is that it doesn't feel like that. He breaks everything down and provides great visuals and color in this book. Usually, I never talk about that in my book reviews. You could say it provides the minimalist design and hits that big pop once you start looking at the book and reading along. While a lot of the information is known, he really sticks to word modern as he talks about the Big 5 web browsers, JavaScript Frameworks, tools that he uses and or recommends and so on. As I said earlier, with his many years writing Visual Quick Pro books, it definitely prepped him in preparing this book as it provides that same kind of flow. At $54.99 (Amazon $34.64), that price is well worth picking up this book, granted I am not calling it the JavaScript Bible, but once you get into it, you think it was. Thus, the reason I cannot really pick a chapter out of this book because this caters to everyone who ready to get out of HTML and into a web programming like JavaScript. So to Larry Ullman, I better see a PHP/MySQL book of the same caliber or tackle a challenging language like JSON or Ruby to make it interesting.

With HTML5 well into power, its biggest competitor, though gaining a lot of ground to it, is still Flash, HTMl5 applications are slowly becoming the norm in the online and mobile worlds.. At a measly 121 pages, Programming HTML5 Applications gives you a beginning to were you should concentrate your programming skills in order to build both Desktop and mobile apps. This book is heavy in JavaScript coding and that is understandable as you will need a powerful language like JavaScript in order to produce many of the functions in your applications and so the question is this, what does the book cover. Interestingly enough, we already know much of what is covered through various websites and books. Such as file uploading, drag and drop, offline storage, creating databases, web sockets and more. However, the one thing that intrigues me the most that you can create a simple but stable database with HTML5 and JavaScript and so that is the chapter I will talk about in this review. Called IndexedDB, it is a non-SQL based database platform. Microsoft IE, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome support this database. One feature that seems to stand out for me is that it has its own built-in security measure in which no other pages or web hosts can access that database unless they are actually on that page to which the database is connected too. Another nifty security measure is the fact that IndexedDB cannot be attacked with SQL injections and thus provides a way to hack into the database and destroy or steal data. Of course, the bad part is that it is still susceptible to XSS attacks which use JavaScript as a form of that attack. The other part that I like about this, and I am only assuming based on the example giving in the book, but if you been coding in JSON the structure in the below example almost looks the same IndexedDB Example { "title":"Real World Haskell", "price": 49.95, "price_can":49.95, "authors" [ "Bryan O'Sullivan", "John Goerzen", "Don Stewart" ], "cover_animal": "Rhinocerus Beetle", "cover_url": "http://...", "topics": ["Haskell"]}JSON Example { "Book": [ {"title": "Real World Haskell"}, {"price": "49.95"}, {"price_can": "49.95"}, {"authors": "Bryan O'Sullivan"}, {"authors": "John Goerzen"}, {"authors": "Don Stewart"}, {"cover_animal": "Rhinocerus Beetle"}, {"cover_url": "http://..."}, {"topics": "Haskell"} ]} I will point out, that the JSON example could be more optimized, but you will notice that both use a lot of the same structure and so if you got JSON licked, then you will have no problems working in IndexedDB. However, creating the database in the first part and for the next few pages the author goes through the process of connecting, creating, adding, updating, recieving and of course deleting the data. Which comes to my next point in which if you got strong database skills, all you have to do is learn the languages specific to IndexedDB and you will be good to go on creating sophisticated databases that you can use for your HTML5 based application. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of the information is old and or updating to something current, but I regress that if you’re starting out in HTML5 and want to get into the advance side of things. Then this book will be a nice little starter to get you going.

I have been getting into business card design and I had quickly thought of them mushroom eating, goomba stomping Mario Brothers.

I had designed this last month, after a long time out of the graphic design business and after an hour of working different angles and going through various Photoshop tools, I produce this.

Coming off their success "Professional Web Design Vol. 1" Smashing Magazine comes out with Volumn 2 of this series, and while most part 2 books cover the same topics and provide little updates, but not these boys and girls. Professional Web Design Volumn 2, covers 20 new topics at a whopping 283 pages, may not seem much. However, when your talking about 2011, well lets just say after reading each topic, you will Google your brains out and try to catch up. This book covers CSS3, HTML5, Responsive web design, UX, latest trends (2011), naviggation, more concepts and items, and what the heck they threw in some working with clients as well. Of course, what makes this book great is this, most of the information you read can be found on the smashing website and so the comments you read there are just as insightful, but here it is more focus driven and easier to find (lol). As for my usal chapter review, I am having a real difficult time, but I think I found a topic that hits home for thousands of freelance web designers and it is titled "Web Designers, Don’t Do It Alone" by Paul Boag and right away in this topic he drives it home in just his first sentence. "Whether freelancers, small agency founders or website owners, too many of us work alone." That is very true indeed, but he really gets to the heart of the matter when you even work in teams you feel that isolation and I find that a very interesting thought, because I wouldn't think it be possible to be isolated even while on a team. Nonetheless, he provide six common traps for web designers that would categorize them as isolated; they include Dry up creatively, Lose confidence, Become over-confident, Reach the limit of your knowledge, Have a blinkered perspective, and Feel overwhelmed. Reading at how he describes these traps I would have to say I have #1, #2, #5, and #6. Though in the case of #6 I am more overwhelmed at all the things you can do in web design and so you really have to spread yourself thin in order to learn as much as you can. Of course, this reflects upon #5 of being in a comfort zone and trying to limit myself. Of course, he goes on to say that you need a partner to get yourself out of these traps, but some are easier said then done. Such as an external consultant, a mentor or someone outside of the business. To help you get your thoughts and ideas out there and realize your potential. On the other hand, I see the potential of adding sub-groups into that partner list and so it is a matter of just putting them in the right spot. So, just like this chapter, the rest of the book provides very insightful information as helps expand what it means to be a web designer. Of course, it also opens up a lot ideas for you to explore and in some cases, opens some wounds in which you have to realize that it is time to get out there and expand your knowledge base in order to be a more effective designer/developer. To end, I would like to point out that the book isn't on individual sale, except for Kindle, but you can get it with a bundle package from the Smashing Magazine store at the following address. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ In this bundle it includes this book, and volume 2, and another book titled "Getting the Hang of Web Typograph" so check the bundle out and the rest of the Smashing book series.