Today’s a great day to save on books! O’Reilly has a deal on the top 25 Microsoft Press ebooks, and Manning’s got a deal on the just-released SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action. Enter the code dotd0126 in the Promotional Code box when you check out and both the paper and ebook are yours for USD$25!
For only today (Wednesday, January 26th), you can purchase any or all of the top 25 Microsoft Press ebooks, pictured above) from O’Reilly for half price! Just use the discount code DDM25 when you check out at Oreilly.com.
The books are:
O’Reilly ebooks give you lifetime access, free updates and multiple DRM-free formats (PDF, ePub, Mobi, APK and DAISY).
This deal’s only available today, so if you want one or more of these books, buy now!
Here’s a video of David Kadavy, freelance web designer and author of the upcoming book Design for Hackers, spoke at Ignite Chicago back in November about the font everyone loves to hate: Comic Sans. He calls it “the most hated font in the world,” and it probably is – at least among typographers, designers, UX specialists and anyone who works with computers and has a modicum of taste.
He talks about Comic Sans by comparing it to one of the world’s most beloved typefaces (well, at least among design geeks, anyway), Helvetica, explains its origins as a font meant to be used for the word bubble in Microsoft Bob and how it was created in the time before antialiased onscreen text was common and how back then, he’d rather have read something set in Comic Sans than something set in Garamond, which has considerably more designer approval.
You can find out more about what David thinks about Comic Sans by checking out his latest blog post.
Keep an eye on David: he’s currently working on Design for Hackers, a book to be published by Wiley and Sons. Here’s how he describes this project:
My goal for Design for Hackers is to help Software Developers and Entrepreneurs (Hackers) – who are interested in design – see the world the way a designer does. Hackers are used to teaching themselves whatever is necessary to achieve their vision; and for most things this is relatively straightforward. If they are learning to program, and come across an error, they can do a quick Google search. If they want to know how to do their own bookkeeping, they can learn about this easily with a book or by looking around on the web. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix found when you Google “my design sucks.”
The problem with most advice given by designers is that it usually consists of rules (“use no more than two fonts”) that are often conflicting and easy to forget. Naturally, the decisions made by designers are difficult to put into words, and many designers are better with images than words. Rather than teaching you to fish, they give you a fish. When you’re still confused, they may shrug their virtual shoulders and explain that its just their natural talent that makes them able to design. This is usually true, but I believe natural talent is not a requirement for understanding design – especially not for naturally curious people who can teach themselves nearly anything, given the right information.
There are some very consistent principles behind what makes a design visually compelling, and these principles are as important on the screen of your iPad as they were on the streets of ancient Rome. My goal is to weave these principles into your brain using examples from today, as well as from the history of art, architecture, and design. I will tell stories and present examples that will infect your brain, make you look smart when you retell them at parties, and change the way you see the world around you. I’ve been telling my friends, “it’s like Freakonomics, for Design.”
Freakonomics, but for design? I could get into that.
If you’re looking for a nice, readable, non-stuffy, example-rich book to help you get started with HTML 5, I suggest checking out Bruce Lawton’s and Remy Sharp’s Introducing HTML 5. Covered in its chapters are:
I picked up the book this past weekend and have been enjoying it, as have the reviewers on Amazon, who’ve given it an average rating of four and a half stars.
There’s a group at Microsoft called Patterns and Practices whose job is to provide developers with guidance and advice on the best ways to write software for our platforms. If you visit their site, you’ll find material to help you make better software design and technology selection decisions, understand important concepts that will help you get the job done and even get some “best practices” code to get you started.
If you’re developing for Windows Phone 7, you’ll want to check out Patterns and Practices’ Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide, which covers recommended ways to build WP7 apps with Silverlight and how to take advantage of of web- and cloud-based services. It’s the perfect follow-up to any of the “Intro to Windows Phone 7” books – Charles Petzold’s WP7 book is a good start, and it’s free, too – once you’ve got a handle on the basics, you’ll want to read it. It builds on a scenario in which Tailspin, a fictitious company building a WP7 client for an existing cloud-based application and covers building a mobile client, using services on the phone, connecting with services and interacting with Windows Marketplace.
Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide is available in a couple of forms:
Manning Publications’ book deal of the day is for ASP.NET 4.0 in Practice. For today only (Tuesday, January 25th), you can get the ebook version for a mere USD$15 if you enter dotd0125 in the Promotional Code box when you check out. It’s one of their MEAP (Manning Early Access Program) books, which means it’s still a work in progress; buying it means you get the latest revision as well as the final version once it’s done.
Here’s the description of the book:
ASP.NET is an established technology to build web applications using Microsoft products. It drives a number of enterprise-level web sites around the world, but it can be scaled for projects of any size. The new version 4.0 is an evolutionary step: you will find a lot of new features that you will be able to leverage to build better web applications with minimal effort.
ASP.NET 4.0 in Practice contains real world techniques from well-known professionals who have been using ASP.NET since the first previews. Using a practical Problem-Solution-Discussion format, it will guide you through the most common scenarios you will face in a typical ASP.NET application, and provide solutions and suggestions to take your applications to another level.
Microsoft’s MIX conference, which typically takes place early in the spring, bills itself as being about “The Next Web”. I prefer to refer to it as Microsoft’s most right-brained conference, the one for the creatives, the design-oriented and the late-night hackers who love to tinker and experiment. It’s also where big announcements are made: last year, MIX was where we all found out about Silverlight 4, Internet Explorer 9 and Windows Phone 7.
This year’s MIX conference – MIX11 – takes place from April 12th through 14th in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. It promises to be an interesting one, with lots of informative sessions, great people in attendance and there’s always the chance that they’ll make one or two announcements that might take you by surprise. As one of the people on the developer evangelism team who’s “The MIX type”, I’ll be going, attending lots of sessions (especially the phone ones), taking copious notes and posting them here.
Of course, you can always cut me out of the middleman role and go attend MIX yourself! If you’re into web and mobile development or looking to get into them, MIX is a great conference to attend. There are the sessions and boot camps, of course, but a good chunk of what makes MIX special is the opportunity to catch up with the people at Microsoft who help make the web and phone technologies as well as developers, designers, UX pros and suits who are behind some of the biggest and best web sites and phone apps out there.
If you register before February 11th, you can save a lot of money. The early bird discount is amazing – early registrants will:
Want to find out more? Visit MIX11’s Registration page.
Canada made a strong showing at MIX last year. Onstage, we had Microsoft Principal Research Bill Buxton, who gave a great metaphor-rich keynote about designing technology to fit humans, and Albert Shum, who talked about the great UI he designed for Windows Phone 7. We also had a great group of Canadians come along with us, including RedBit Development’s Mark Arteaga and Barranger Ridler, Nascent’s Shawn Konopinsky, Nitobi’s Filip Maj, Laurent Duveau, Louis-Philippe Pinsonneault and the guys from RunAtServer, Barry Gervin and Bruce Johnson from ObjectSharp and Ace of Cloud’s Colin Melia, to name a few.
This year, Canada’s already making a strong showing in the open call for sessions. A number of Canadian developers – many of whom you might have seen at TechDays – have submitted presentations for MIX11 and it’s now time to vote for the one you’d like to see at MIX. I’d love to see a strong showing from Canada onstage this year – after all, we’ve been punching above our weight class in the tech arena ever since Alexander Graham Bell.
Here are the presentations for the open call that were submitted by Canadian geeks, a number of whom have more than one submission in the pile:
(Did I miss any Canadian submissions? If I did, please drop me a line and let me know!)
Vote for these Canadian submissions in the MIX11 Open Call! I’d love to see Canada make its mark on MIX11 and give these hard-working Canadian developers a boost. Vote now – the call for open voting for sessions ends at midnight Pacific (3 a.m. Eastern) on Friday, February 4th.