Murach’s HTML5 and CSS3 by Zak Ruvalcaba and Anne Boehm
The Murach books have a style that I like (and tend to mention in each review): you see description on the left page, and the associated code on the right page. This makes it easy both to learn the material (since you get to see it twice, from two directions, while you’re learning) and to look things up later (since you can ignore the descriptions and just scan the code). This book starts out with an introductory chapter for people who know nothing whatsoever about websites, then the rest of the first section teaches basic HTML skills. The rest of the book is designed for jumping around to whatever you’re interested in; you don’t need to read through it in order. Section two is straight HTML and CSS, while section three introduces JavaScript (which you’ll need for some HTML5 elements like Canvas). Section four isn’t actually about coding; rather, it covers designing and publishing a website. For me personally, I tend to work with a lot of different technologies (as an example, in the last week or so I’ve used ASP.NET, CSS, C#, HTML, JavaScript, Intersystems Cache, Visual Basic…and that’s just for work) and I often forget minor details when I’m switching languages; for HTML/CSS, this is the book I usually reach for.

HTML & CSS: Design and Build Websites by Jon Duckett
This is the most unique of the HTML books I’ve seen, because it’s aimed at graphic designers and other visually inclined people rather than programmers. This is a full-color book with lots of pictures that covers just one concept on each page and attempts to visually show you how each element works. It’s a great choice for people who have trouble with traditional programming books, or just want to try something a little different.

Learning HTML5 Step by Step from Microsoft Press
Whereas the Murach book mentioned above is designed for both new and experienced coders, this offering from Microsoft is aimed squarely at people who know nothing about building websites. Those who are used to using computers may want to pull their hair out from topics like how to save a .html file, and it doesn’t cover advanced topics, but if you’re new to web development and want a step by step guide (thus the name) to how it all works, this could be the book for you.

HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow’s Standards Today by Brian Hogan
Doing a 180 from the Microsoft book, this one assumes that you already have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS; it’s designed simply to introduce you to the new features in the latest versions. If you’ve been coding websites for a few years, you probably don’t need to hear about how fixed positioning works, but you need to know about the new semantic elements (if nothing else, so your clients can brag that their websites are “in HTML5″). In particular, you can now do a number of things with HTML that previously required JavaScript, which makes your pages faster, and the new pseudoclasses make it easy to target your CSS very precisely without adding additional markup. This is the best book I’ve read so far that focuses on the new stuff in HTML5.

HTML5: Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim
The oldest book on this list, this title is starting to show its age (it came out way back in 2010!) Like the Hogan book, it focuses entirely on the new features of HTML5, rather than trying to teach you to build sites from scratch. This was one of the first HTML5 books on the market, and as such a few things have changed since it released (most other HTML5 books had their release dates pushed back due to all the changes taking place at that time) but it’s still a good book. The reason I prefer the Hogan book to this one is that it’s more comprehensive: this is a short book that’s intended to quickly introduce you to the new features in HTML. If you already know HTML and just want to quickly learn what’s new, that’s what you’ll get from this book. If you want more about how to actually use the new stuff, though, there are now better options available. On the bright side, if you think this might be interesting (and I did enjoy reading it, back in 2010!), it’s actually available for free online at diveintohtml5.info.

Overall, I’d say that HTML5 and CSS3: Develop with Tomorrow’s Standards Today is my first choice for readability (I actually devoured most of this book on a plane ride from Denver to Madison), while Murach’s HTML5 and CSS3 gets the most use as a reference. I highly recommend these two books.

Although I do a lot of HTML and CSS, I’ve never really had much interest in JavaScript. That changed a few months ago when web programming was added to my list of job responsibilities, so I picked up a couple of books to get me started quickly. It seems as if most JavaScript books these days are largely about JQuery, which we don’t use, so it took a little poking around to find some good ones on plain vanilla JavaScript.

The nice thing about this book is that chapters are short and sweet; each one is just a few pages plus exercises, focusing on the main ideas for each concept. As a result, it’s easy to sit down and read a chapter without feeling that you have to have a half hour free to work through it. Naturally, the short chapters mean that the main reading doesn’t have much in the way of extra examples – for that, you need to do the sample problems. While I haven’t used it, the book also comes with a DVD containing video lessons over the same material.

Speaking of the sample problems – they’re straightforward and to the point, but I do have two complaints. One is that every problem set starts the same way: with instructions to use a text editor (with several suggested) and a modern web browser (again, with several suggested). Secondly, each chapter has you create a new folder, which will often hold only one or two files. Seems a bit silly when the exercises only take a few minutes anyway! If you follow the instructions, you’ll also end up retyping stuff that carries over from chapter to chapter rather than continuing to work on the same file (or copying it to the new folder), although I suppose that can be excused on the grounds of making it easy to jump to any chapter.

So what’s the verdict? I don’t really see using this as a reference book – it’s a “get started quickly” book rather than a “show everything you might need” book. That said, getting started quickly is exactly what I needed to do, and for that, this book serves its purpose. If you’re looking to jump in quickly, I’d say this book is a good buy.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this book, but I was in the mood for something different after all the web programming books I’ve been reading lately. As I start feeling the aches and pains of old age (I turned 32 this year), I’m also becoming more aware of the need to start taking care of my body.

The first chapter of this book is essentially an argument for living more like our ancestors: spend more time outdoors, be more physical, eat less processed food. Chapter two starts out the geeky stuff: toys! Here we see assorted gadgets that you can use for tracking your exercise, sleep habits, and more. Rather than take someone’s word for what you should do to get a good night’s sleep, for example, you can actually pick up a device to measure how well you’re sleeping.

Chapters three and four talk about food chemistry: micronutrients, proteins, fats, carbs, etc. It’s good information, but I honestly found these chapters a bit boring – there’s a lot of “vitamin C does this, vitamin D does that.” Chemistry geeks, on the other hand, should love it.

In chapter five, we finally get to recommendations for how you can improve your eating habits. This ranges from advice like “eat local” to instructions on reading food labels and how to eat healthy without spending a lot of money. Naturally, apps that can help you make healthier eating choices are mentioned as well.

Chapter six talks about fasting for health. Now personally, I hate being hungry (I believe in early lunches!), but the intermittent fasting described in the book isn’t that bad – it’s a partial day fast that can essentially be not eating between dinner and lunch. Since I rarely have time for breakfast anyway, for me this just means giving up on snacks and only drinking water before lunchtime. According to the author, fasting causes insulin levels to do down, which reduces fat storage. (Obviously, diabetics already know to be careful about this sort of thing!) More extreme fasts are also discussed, such as the 20/4 fast (eat as much as you want for four hours a day, fast the other 20) and 24-hour fasts. The nice thing about these fasts is that you still eat as much as you want to eat, you just restrict your eating to certain times of the day.

As a computer geek, I mostly see the outdoors through my office window (or I did, anyway, before I got moved to a different office!) Chapter seven discusses our need for sunlight, as well as a number of exercises that can best be done outdoors. It also covers ways to use GPS to track your exercise. I’ve been meaning to get into weightlifting, so I was pretty interested in chapter eight, about things you can do at a gym. Aside from basic exercises and equipment, it covers notation for weightlifting, and assorted sites and apps you can use to track and organize your workout.

Chapter nine covers varying your workout and keeping it interesting, as well as the need for sleep. We all know about the importance of REM sleep, but do you know the role that melatonin plays in your health, and how it’s affected by your sleep habits. Once you’ve read this chapter, you will. Chapter ten covers a variety of other topics for keeping your body working well: adequate hydration (and how to check it), nutritional supplements, etc. The theme continues in chapter eleven, which covers things like the health benefits of a cold shower and a sports massage.

One oddity is that, although the text refers to colors in the pictures, the book isn’t really printed in color – it’s black and red with black and white photos. In order see see the full color version, you’ll need to pick up the ebook. Still, except for a few charts where you can’t really read the information in the printed version, it doesn’t make a big difference. Overall, except for chapters three and four, I enjoyed reading this book.

Disclosure: I recieved a free review copy of this book.

By this point, I had no intention of reading, let alone reviewing, another HTML book; I’ve seen too many of them in the last year. However, I’ve been a fan of the Murach books since I picked up Murach’s C# 2010 and Murach’s SQL Server last summer, so when they offered me a copy of their new title, I couldn’t resist. Like the other books, it follows the facing page format where the left page describes what’s going on and the right page has the actual code, and is designed to be accessible to someone with no experience whatsoever, without annoying more experienced users with too much handholding and repetition.

The book is divided into four sections. Section one is the stuff that anyone building a website needs to know. It opens with an introductory chapter for people who know nothing about web development and a chapter explaining how to code and test a webpage; anyone with a little web experience can safely skip these. Chapters 3-6 then show how to build a basic website with HTML and CSS; while much of this is stuff that anyone who’s built a site or two will know, these chapters do cover some of the new things from HTML5 and CSS3.

While that first section should be read in sequence, the rest of the book is designed for skipping around. Section two is called “More HTML and CSS skills as you need them”. It covers links and lists, images, tables, forms, audio and video, and printing. While this is an HTML/CSS book, modern websites often use JavaScript for the page behavior (while HTML provides content and CSS covers presentation), so section 3 introduces JavaScript and jQuery, then talks about the new elements in HTML5, such as Canvas and Geolocation, that depend on JavaScript. Finally, the short section four covers designing the site (before you start coding it) and publishing it to the internet.

I like this book for the same reason I liked the Murach books I bought last year: the proofreading is good, it’s easy to read, and it’s easy to look things up. I haven’t tried the examples (which have you build a site throughout the book, adding the things you learn in each chapter) but they look pretty straightforward. I’ve already found myself referring to the book several times when I needed to do something using JavaScript, which I’m not particularly familiar with; the jQuery chapter turned out to be exactly what I needed. I recommend this book.

How does it compare to HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites, which I also reviewed recently? It really depends on where you’re coming from; as a programmer, I preferred this book, but my wife (a graphic designer) likes the other one. I do think this one is more comprehensive (and of course, it covers a bit of JavaScript as well as the main topics), while the Duckett book is a quicker read.

Disclosure: I recieved a free review copy of this book.

My wife and I are in the process of designing our first iPad game; while we have plenty of books on coding the app (some of which will be reviewed here), we were looking for something on how to design good apps: how do you do the layout to make it easy to use? Unfortunately, this is not the book we’re looking for.

First off, the good stuff: this is a pretty easy book to read, and interesting. We picked it up after dinner yesterday and I finished reading it this morning. The author, Chris Stevens, was the designer of an interactive storybook for the iPad that apparently sold hundreds of thousands of copies, at $9 apiece. I purchased the app (Alice for the iPad) as well, and honestly, wasn’t that impressed; I suspect much of its success (the author says it had the #1 spot in the app store for books for nearly a month) was due to the novelty factor as the first interactive storybook for the iPad, and the extensive media coverage it generated. The book is very colorful, interesting to read, and even has a few shots of my favorite puzzle app (Cut the Rope).

So what didn’t I like about it? The retail price ($40) seems a bit expensive for what you get, which can pretty much be summed up as “keep it simple, make sure it has a point, design for the hand (not the mouse), and start with a marketing plan (that includes youtube)”. (I doubt that appearing on Oprah hurt, either!) In many cases, there are a lot of pretty pictures of different apps that don’t really add much to the topic under discussion.

I don’t regret spending the $40 for this book, because it reinforced a couple of important ideas that I want to keep in mind in designing my own app and it was an entertaining read; just be aware that it’s more about marketing your app (and choosing an app to build that will be easy to market) than anything else.

I’ve reviewed a number of HTML and CSS books before, but this one is fairly unique. Most of the programming books I read are aimed at programmers, and they tend to have a similar look (aside from the facing-page layout in the Murach books, anyway). This one, on the other hand, is aimed more at visually inclined people; the pages are colorful, with big print and lots of pictures. Each page just covers one concept (for example, see the image of the page on paragraph tags, below), so chapters fly by pretty quickly; at the same time, the author manages to be fairly comprehensive (and the book runs nearly 500 pages). The author says that he tried to cover the 90% of HTML and CSS that people will actually use, and I think he does a pretty good job; he doesn’t mention the little-used :last-child pseudoclass, for example, but does have each of the other concepts I tried searching for.  I tried flipping through to random pages in the book, and I never landed anywhere that I couldn’t just start reading and have everything make sense. (Granted, I’m familiar with the material the book covers already, but I was still impressed). While the emphasis is on learning HTML and CSS as a whole – not specifically HTML5 and CSS3 – the author does point out when something may lack browser support (for example, the HTML5 layout elements in versions of IE prior to IE9) and explains deprecated code that designers shouldn’t be using, but are likely to run across in older websites (such as the align attribute for images) and explains what coders should be doing instead.

While I’m not the target audience for the book, my wife (a graphic designer) is, so I asked her to take a look at the book as well. She said that she liked it because it was clean, simple, and easy to understand. It addresses people who may not have any experience with web design (or who know how to code sites but aren’t up to date on best practices from the HTML5 era) without being dumbed down.

I was impressed by the chapters on layout; I felt that this book has the best explanation of layout I’ve seen so far, including both a good description of how floats and positioning work, and an introduction to grids and frameworks, which I haven’t really seen introduced in other books I’ve read. Another thing I liked is the appendixes: there’s a troubleshooting section that lists common problems and causes (with a reference to the appropriate page), and there are separate indexes for HTML elements, HTML attributes, and CSS properties. I feel like the book is a good all-around introduction to HTML and CSS, but particularly for the people they’re going for: visual learners who may not have a lot of experience (or any experience) building websites. For that group in particular, this book comes highly recommended.

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.

A few years back, I picked up the second book in this series, Burden of Proof; it didn’t take long before I went looking for the other books in the series.  At the time, they were out of print, but have since been reprinted under Hemry’s nom de plume, Jack Campbell, and are also available to purchase from Baen EBooks.

As the series name implies, this is a collection of legal thrillers that happen to be set in space. The books more or less follow a set formula: the first half details day to day life for ship’s legal office Paul Sinclair aboard the warship USS Michaelson, during which something happens which will have legal consequences. The second half follows the legal case; Paul isn’t a lawyer, but as legal officer (and someone with an inability to leave well enough alone) he inevitably ends up intimately involved.

In the first book, A Just Determination, Paul has just graduated from the naval academy; having had a month free before he could meet up with his new ship, he was assigned to take a legal course, which is how he ends up as ship’s legal officer once he comes aboard. The Michaelson is assigned to protect the US claim to a particular area of space; in doing so, they mistakenly destroy a civilian ship. Although Paul doesn’t particularly like Captain Wakeman, he feels that the charges are overly severe and, even though he’s scheduled to testify for the prosecution, ends up as a witness for the defense…

In book two, Burden of Proof, Paul has been promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade, and he also has a serious girlfriend. A mysterious accident destroys a significant amount of the ship, however, and his girlfriend’s father – who happens to hate Paul – is brought in to investigate. No fault is found, but Paul eventually uncovers evidence of a cover-up…

Book three, Rule of Evidence, contains the funniest scene I’ve ever read; I was getting strange looks from my wife because I couldn’t stop laughing. Things quickly turn serious, however, when a US warship is nearly destroyed by a series of mysterious explosions, and Paul’s girlfriend is implicated.  Paul struggles to find an alternative explanation before the woman he loves is convicted of murder…

The fourth book, Against All Enemies, covers the end of Paul’s service aboard the Michaelson. The stakes are high: treason! Someone is passing classified information regarding military orders to the enemy, and Paul is reluctantly drafted to help find the culprit. A court martial occurs, but even Paul isn’t sure if they’ve found the right suspect… This is probably the weakest book of the series, but it’s still worth reading (as are the short stories about the same characters, if you can find them).

The author of the series is a retired naval officer, and apparently it shows; while I don’t have military experience myself, I gave the books to my dad (a retired air force major who doesn’t normally read science fiction); he told me he loved how realistic the books are in their portrayal of military matters. Even if you’re not a sci-fi fan, this series is worth a look for what it is: a collection of exciting legal dramas.

In this post-apocalyptic future, humanity has been reduced to the nation of Panem: a capitol city and twelve districts. Some seventy years before, there were thirteen districts, which rebelled against the Capitol; district 13 was destroyed in the fighting. As a penalty for their rebellion, and a reminder of the Capitol’s power, the remaining districts are forced to compete in the hunger games, an annual competition in which 2 children from each district, chosen by lot, are thrust into an arena and forced to fight to the death for the Capitol’s amusement.

Katniss Everdeen has done everything she can to protect her little sister, Prim. When her sister is selected as the female tribute from district 12, she volunteers to take Prim’s place, fully expecting to die in the arena. Unexpectedly, she finds romance in the Capitol, makes good use of her (illegally developed) hunting skills, and is able to make it out alive and safe..or so she thinks.

In her victory, she has defied the wishes of the Capitol, and the evil president Snow fears that she may become the symbol of a new rebellion. Unrest is rising in the districts; with Katniss’ family and friends threatened, she follows the president’s instructions, only to find the rules have changed and she is again thrust into the arena….but this time, with allies.

After a direct act of defiance that triggers the long-simmering rebellion, Katniss is rescued from the arena by the hovercraft of district 13, which, it turns out, was not destroyed after all. She eventually agrees to continue in her role as the symbol of the rebellion, in exchange for certain concessions from the leaders of district 13. One of those is that when the rebellion succeeds, she will be allowed to kill President Snow, the man responsible for killing so many people she cares for.

On the whole, I enjoyed reading the series, but not enough to actually buy it (as of this writing, all three books are available for free checkout on the Amazon Kindle). The first book is good (but not great); the second is interesting but exists largely to set up the third, and the third feels the weakest of the three. Since book one is fairly self-contained, I recommend reading it and stopping there; it’s an entertaining story.

The nice thing about this series (or at least the first book) is that, like Harry Potter, it’s something that can be easily enjoyed by both teens and adults, and I found it to have been worth reading.

For the most part, reviews fall into one of two types. There are the more objective reviews, where the reviewer attempts to cover both the advantages and disadvantages of the product. There are also advertising or enthusiast reviews, which tell you how great a product is. This site (and my board game review site) are intended to be the first type, although the reviews tend to the positive side as I usually don’t bother writing reviews for things I don’t like. The Cool Tools site, on the other hand, posts a review each day that’s an enthusaist telling you why he loves something.

The Cool Tools book (currently available only as an ebook in epub format) is a collection of 81 reviews from the website, for the most useful things to have in your kitchen. There’s a variety of items here, from single-purpose tools to top of the line knives and comprehensive cookbooks. I’m a lousy – and infrequent – cook, but I like kitchen stuff anyway, so I was interested to see what types of suggestions were on offer.

Make no mistake – this is a light read, only about 100 pages (and priced correspondingly at $5.99) that I read through in a couple of evenings. Many of the items I found interesting even if I had no intention of getting one (for example, an apron with built in oven mitts); other items made me want to head to Amazon to get one immediately. Each item has a picture, a description of why you’d want it, and details on price and availability.

Now I need to get me one of those cutting gloves…

1. I hadn’t used C in years, and I never did much with memory management.
2. I knew absolutely nothing about Cocoa or Objective-C, and very little about hardware programming.
3. I can’t stand Apple computers.

Still, we have a mac mini (my wife, a dedicated Apple fangirl, talked me into it with the perfectly reasonable argument that as a web designer, she needed to be able to test her sites on a mac as well as a PC) and I do occasionally end up with a few minutes of free time, so I decided to learn. I’ve been using these four books:

• Hacking: The Art of Exploitation
• Cocoa and Objective-C
• Head First iPhone & iPad Development
• iOS 4 Programming Cookbook

(Why the hacking book? I’ll cover that in a later review)

The primary books here are the Head First guide (the first book I’ve read in that series, incidentally) and the Cocoa book. The goal of the Head First guide is simple: it walks you through building simple apps without overwhelming you with too much detail so you can get experience programming and have the satisfaction of building something that works. As someone with programming experience, though, I wanted more technical details on the code, which is where the Cocoa book comes in.

My learning method was simple: I’d work through the Head First guide for a while, then when I got tired of being annoyed at the mac I’d switch to reading the Cocoa book. (As with most computer books it’s really meant to be read in front of a computer, typing in code, but it’s also written to be accessible to people without programming experience). Here’s how the book works:

Chapter one is an introduction: here’s how you download and set up Xcode, Apple’s development environment, and create an extremely simple app with it. The next section is an introduction to C, which can be skipped by anyone who’s already familiar with C and object-oriented programming: it covers basic C, memory and pointers, and using objects. Chapters five and six then introduce Objective-C, which has been described as ‘C with objects’; it is a superset of C that adds in object-oriented features from Smalltalk. Although Objective-C was created nearly 30 years ago, its primary use now is as the main language used with Cocoa, Apple’s API for Mac and iOS applications.

In chapter 7, we start learning about classes used in Cocoa; while not as efficient as C types, they offer safeguards and abstraction, making it easier to write your program and keep it secure. Here we learn about those classes and how to decide which ones to use. All of this comes from the Foundation framework, one of the three frameworks imported by Cocoa.h.

So far, we could have been writing any kind of program; there’s nothing that deals specifically with apps. In chapter 8, we get into the Appkit user interface, which provides built-in controls (and ways to build custom controls) that provide the look and feel of your app. Finally, in chapter 9 we get to the mindset behind mac and iPhone programming: the Model-View-Controller layout, or MVC. The MVC tells you how your classes will talk to each other; every app uses it to pass data around.

If there’s one thing that Apple is known for, it’s graphics; artistic people tend to like Macs. Chapter 10 discusses the main graphics and animation frameworks that you’ll use to make sure your app looks good, then walks you through making custom views with the AppKit classes.

That pretty much wraps up the book; chapter 11 is just a few pages of tips on becoming an app programmer and links to useful Cocoa sites. This book will get you started with Cocoa programming, but it obviously won’t make you an expert; this can help you find where to go next.

Overall, I found the book to be quite readable; I got through one of the early chapters while on a plane to New Orleans. If you’re already familiar with C, the structure makes it easy to jump right to where you need to be, while those who haven’t used it before or need a refresher can get one by reading through the beginning. On the other hand, if you already understand Objective-C, this probably isn’t the book you want to learn Cocoa, as you’ll end up skipping nearly half of it to get to the Cocoa sections.

Overall? I’ve actually enjoyed reading from a programming book, and if you think that sounds like a recommendation, you’re right.

So what kind of app did I build? Stay tuned for part two..

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.