Learn web design the right way

So, I said that I didn’t know if I ever wanted to write a book again. Apparently I lied.

As the image at the top of this post suggests (assuming that you are looking at the blog version and not a feed), I’ve been working on something new for SitePoint – what they are calling ‘The Ultimate HTML Reference’. I couldn’t possibly use the word ‘ultimate’ without getting all terribly uncomfortable and just so darned British and bashful about it. But hey ho, that’s what it’s called, and it has taken enough evenings for it to be getting close to ultimate – and it’s definitely been an ultimate pain the arse to put together! Please, if anyone ever asks me to write a reference book again – that’s to say one where you have a formula to follow and templates to complete rather than writing free-form as you would with a normal book – be sure to stop me signing on the dotted line

Writing a reference is not an easy task – this has taken about 5 months on and off, mostly late in the evening when my wife is asleep, the dog has (mostly) calmed down and I can concentrate on the task in hand, but only for as long as I can physically stay awake. And you can forget about such frivolities as playing Nintendo Wii! But now that the job is pretty much done, excepting a few minor amendments that may be passed my way to address, it feels pretty good to see the end result on SitePoint.com, all searchable and just waiting for the likes of Google and co to start indexing it. Once the initial rough edges are all smoothed out and all the in-house editing has taken place, it’ll then be printed in (their words) a ‘sexy hardcover’. Yay! A hard-cover author, no more of that second-class ‘trade paperback’ malarkey for me, I tells yer! For the next one I want to gilt edge, embossed and with some kind of fancy lazer-cut emblem on it, no less. Which is fine, because there will be no ‘next one’, or at least not a book of this format (ie, the reference kind).

In recent days, as I’ve been telling people at SXSW Interactive about the work I did on this, I used the analogy of having a child. When a mother has her first child, sure it’s hard work – and for a long time, too – but in most cases once the child arrives, the stresses and hardships get quickly forgotten because the baby is here, so never mind all that. And later, the parents think “Let’s have another child”, conveniently forgetting the hardships they faced before. But before long, the memories come flooding back. And so it was with this book. I’d mentally blanked any of the difficult moments from writing the first book, forgot that it can take over your free time when deadlines come around and technically this was a much more challenging book than the first one. But, like I said, the baby has arrived and I feel a bit like a doting father.

So, please do have a poke around the HTML reference and feel free to add comments (need to be a SitePoint member to add comments to any topic file). But if you feel like leaving a comment here, then that’s all good too.

Now, as I’ve no longer got to write about stuff, I’m going to settle back sown and watch a nice film. And it’s bliss!

Sitepoint have had forums for years now - in fact, it’s pretty much where they started before branching into the publishing world. However, now, after many years of being in the book business, it’s come full circle. Kind of … Basically, they’ve set up a new forum specifically covering their various books. I was delighted to find out that the first post in the forum was relating to my book and even more delighted to learn that it was wholly complimentary. Then another posting appeared - also for my book!

Lastly don’t forget that there are many ‘Website’ books out there which probably shouldn’t be on the shelves still; if you want a fast track to correct and compliant code you couldn’t do better than this beginner’s book.
Oh and just in case you’re not convinced, I’ve been using the excellent HTML-reference appendix ever since.

The full review of the book is here.

It’s been a while since I looked at how my book has been doing. It arrived in printed format just over a year ago, so it’s a little off the radar now, if you catch my drift. Today, though, I had a look on Amazon.com for something and my book came up as a recommendation, and I clicked through out of curiosity to see if there any new reviews. I was pleased to see that the reviews are still coming in. Not quite as thick and fast as they do on Sitepoint’s page for the book (9 pages of mostly positive, 4-5 star reviews), but it’s still selling, and with the reviews on both sites looking good, hopefully it will continue to. But I have to say that I was particularly pleased with the 5-star rating

A little while ago I received the sales figures for the book covering the March-December period. I won’t say what the figures are, as I’m not sure if it’s something I’m allowed to state publicly, but at the time I wasn’t sure if the figure was average/good/excellent (I was later informed by on person that what I’d sold with this book was more than what they had sold with two different books, so that was encouraging). Because the book is a beginner’s book, it comes with a lower retail sale price than others published by SitePoint and as such I just missed out on making enough in sales to cover the advance but we don’t do this for profit, right?

I do actually enjoy the writing process and have since contributed to other books (Pro CSS Techniques and Web Standards Creativity), but there’s still nothing quite like having one all of your own and be able to say “I did that”. I’d definitely be interested in doing another complete book at some point, although right now it’s nice not to have to worry about deadlines and have to put other stuff (general life things) aside when there’s a chapter due!

Just over two years ago, I made a point of calling in to the offices of SitePoint in Melbourne , Australia . I was in town, passing through as part of my year-long world travels, and wanted to meet some of the people there who I’d emailed and written a few articles for in the past. We did lunch. We spoke about writing. And I said that I didn’t think that I was up to writing a book by myself but I’d like the chance to do something.

That something turned out to be a job of tech-editing a book by Shirley Kaiser. I got the offer to do it about a week after we did lunch and thought ‘why not?’. It was a job I could do while on the travels – all I’d need to do was call in at Internet Cafes from time to time to get chapters for review and send back my comments changes.

The travels ended, I got back to the UK , but there was no sign of Shirley’s book. Then, in February last year, I got an email from SitePoint entitled ‘Potential Writing Opportunity’. That was then, and this is now – the potential writing opportunity was fulfilled, but what happened to Shirley’s book?

I have just received my complimentary copy of her book Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists, after my own book which I began writing months after editing hers. It’s strange that it worked out like that, and I feel for Shirley having to wait that long for publication (I was just itching to get my hands on the printed copy of my own book!).

A peremptory scan through the book this morning suggests that it’s not that different a beast from the versions that I originally reviewed, but after a year and a half my mind is a little hazy on the fine details, so I could be wrong!

What this book does really well, if I’m allowed to pass comment on something that I had a hand in, is that it cuts out a lot of the waffle and gets to the point very quickly. I’m a fan of the checklist approach (especially if the person reading knows some background info and is not a total newbie) and with this book you can also download easily printable PDF checklists, rather than scribble on the pages themselves (or break the spine of the book by photocopying pages … which obviously you wouldn’t do for copyright reasons, nudge., nudge, wink?).

I’m looking forward to finding some time to re-read the book from start to finish. Who knows, I might even read it in the van and pretend that I’m somewhere exotic, just to take me back to where I was when I originally worked on it!

The book heads for the printing press the end of next week. Yeehaw!

Update: the book is now available for pre-order on Amazon UK and Amazon.com (thanks for pointing that out, Craig).

In the meantime, here’s what the book might look like if you just happened to have the world’s shiniest table to stand it up on: