Book review : Learning WCF

For future challenges, I’ll have to learn WCF in deep, so I decided to start with this book. Next one will be Lowy’s Programming WCF services book, which covers WCF even more in depth. But let’s talk about the book I’ve just read (written by Michele Leroux Bustamante, Chief Architect of IDesign and colleague of Juval Lowy). I found it was a perfect book to start with WCF : introduction to SOA and its tenets, teaching of the key concepts of WCF such as contracts, bindings, hosting, instancing & concurrency, reliability, security and exceptions & faults. And to help you master these concepts, each chapter contains several labs where you can put into practice what you’ve just learnt. A very effective approach. Just note that this book doesn’t cover peer-to-peer protocols (which is done in Lowy’s book).

Pros

• Great book, covers a lot of ground of WCF
• The labs really help in mastering all the concepts

Cons

• No cons for me. Just keep in mind that this book doesn’t cover peer-to-peer protocols

Conclusion

I recommend this book which will give you a strong knowledge of WCF on which you can build upon with Lowy’s book if you want to go even further.

[FR] Livre : Visibilité sur le web

Visibilité sur le Web (dans sa version anglaise Search Engine Visibility) est un ouvrage de Shari Thurow, reconnue mondialement comme une experte du SEO. Au travers de celui-ci, elle nous enseigne les bonnes pratiques à suivre pour optimiser le référencement naturel d’un site web. Les sujets couverts vont du fonctionnement des robots d’indexation des moteurs de recherche à l’optimisation des pages web, en passant par l’optimisation des images, des fichiers multimédia, etc. Bon nombre de mythes sont également discutés et démystifiés. Pour finir, un chapitre traîte des mauvaises pratiques et les pièges à éviter dans le cadre d’une campagne de référencement.

Les +

• Un livre écrit par une personne de référence dans le domaine
• Très instructif et très bien construit
• Couvre bon nombre de sujets du SEO

Les -

• Pas un inconvénient mais plutôt une remarque : ce livre ne rentre pas profondément dans les détails techniques (pas de chapitres traitant d’alternatives d’implémentation, absence de bouts de code)

Conclusion

Un très bon livre qui constitue une excellente entrée en la matière. Cependant, le domaine du SEO étant très vaste, d’autres lectures plus techniques seront nécessaires à ceux désirant approfondir le sujet.

Book review : DOM Scripting

This excellent book, which primarily targets a web designer audience, teaches you how to manipulate the DOM effectively but also other essential topics used in web development. Prior to reading this book, I already had a good knowledge of the DOM, so the technical aspect wasn’t what I learned the most from this book. And it’s also because the book won’t dig deep into technical aspects as the targetted audience is web designers (and not necessarily developers). An interesting consequence of this is that the author did an outstanding teaching work to make it easily understandable. But what you’ll learn is, according to me, way more useful than pure technical stuff : mastering concepts such as usable javascript, unobtrusive javascript and graceful degradation.

Pros

• Very well written and explained : technical concepts are vulgarised and examples are very relevant (mini websites using all the concepts that were teached).
• Excellent course about the DOM and web development practices using Javascript.

Cons

• As the book was written primarily for web designers, it might leave some developers thirsty for more. But anyway, the more important stuff is in the book so that makes the deal. Just keep in mind that you won’t go in deep technical details in this book.

Conclusion

Another instant-classic book that will not only teach you the DOM very well, but also essential concepts such as usable javascript, unobtrusive javascript and graceful degradation. If you’re working in the web and those concepts are not familiar to you, this book is a must-have on your bookshelf ! But if you already have an advanced knowledge of these things, you might prefer to pick up another, more advanced book.

Book review : Guidelines for Online Success

Written by industry experts, this book is a collection of best practices for web application and website development. Divided into 6 chapters (Interface & design, Marketing & Communication, Technology & Programming, Technical advice, Content/Content management and E-commerce) and widely illustrated, “do” & “don’t” are discussed about many notions of web development. Anyway, this book doesn’t assumes his title at all as it’s more a collection of pictures of nice websites than practices to follow. Even worse, among the few practices we’re given, many of them are completely unuseful and even redundant.

Pros

• Full-color book
• Very well crafted, original divisions into “tabbed” chapters with color schemes for each one of them

Cons

• Absolutely not a collection of “guidelines”, too few text and way too many pictures
• Some “guidelines” are completely dumb, such as “don’t make ugly layouts” and “don’t hide your navigation”
• Because the book is written by many people, some “guidelines” are redundant. I was told at least 5 times in the book that “my website should not take too long to load”

Conclusion

Absolutely not interesting about the “guidelines” aspect, but the book stills remains valuable if you’re using it like a “Web Design Index” for inspiration of best web productions.

Book review : The Zen of CSS Design

Almost every Web Developer knows the famous CSS Zen Garden, a project created by Web Designer Dave Shea aimed to encourage the use of standards-compliant CSS for a better web. Raw HTML was available to Web Designers who had to create some CSS that can completely change the layout of the website, thus underlying the power of semantical XHTML and best use of CSS. This full-color book, released following the CSS Zen Garden project success, is divided into 7 chapters : View Source, Design, Layout, Imagery, Typography, Special Effects and Reconstruction. Each of these ones teaches you best practices to CSS development (including cross-browser concerns in the details) but also to good Web Design in general.

Pros

• Awesome book, very instructive
• A very interesting approach, based on the best submissions (Zen Garden project) to teach best practices and tricks of expert Web Designers
• Cross-browser concerns are explained very well, into the details and an overview of the alternatives to cope with ‘em is given.
• A very instructive course about Web Design (imagery, typography, layout, …)
• All chapters based on real world projects and not on academical examples
• The best and more complete book about Web Design I’ve read to date

Cons

• Not really a con, but this book is “medium to advanced” level, so good understanding of CSS is required before starting. Basics of CSS aren’t covered as the book immediately digs into the details, exceptions and advanced use of CSS

Conclusion

An instant-classic, awesome and very instructive book that every Web Designer must have on his/her bookshelf ! Finally note that you should have a good understanding of CSS prior to reading this book and have an interest in Web Design as some chapters such as “imagery” and “typography” are purely dedicated to this field.

Book review : Silverlight 3

I’ve just finished reading Silverlight 3 - Programmer’s reference book, which is written by 5 people of Infragistics, one of the world leaders in user interface development tools. Among the authors, we can find Jason Beres who came at Visug talking about user experience (see related post here). This full-color book gives us an overview of what can be achieved using Silverlight 3. Interesting and very well crafted, this book targets as well a graphists audience as the developers one. Silverlight is very much about User Experience so if you’re not interested by the UI part of an app, you might want to pick up another, purely technical book. Also note that there are a lot of chapters, so various things are covered but not as deeply as you would wish sometimes.

Pros

• Written by a buch of experts in the field (guys from Infragistics)
• Many aspects of Silverlight are covered, getting you started for writing nice apps
• Not too long to read (460 pg, appendices excluded) which is a change compared to the ASP.NET book for example (almost 2 000 pg)
• Full-color, which suits very well to the UI context of the book

Cons

• As many things are covered, you won’t have a comprehensive book on Silverlight here (there’s a chapter which is only 15 pg long)
• Title of the book says Programmer’s reference but it ain’t because of its lack of depth

Conclusion

A nice book I enjoyed reading and that I would recommend if you’re not looking for the absolute bible for Silverlight 3. As I already said before on this blog, so many technologies are being released in a fast-paced fashion that it’s interesting to read some books with a “medium-depth” approach, making best use of your time.

Don’t make me think

There are several kinds of books. Steve Kurg’s Don’t make me think is one of these books written by top industry experts renowed worldwide, whose book became an instant classic by the time of its release. And myself being a web passionate, having this book on my bookshelf was just straightforward. As the title suggests, Steve Krug teaches us web usability, that is, the art of making websites not only good looking or technically correct but also usable by remembering us his master rule : “don’t make me think”. All over the book, a common sense approach is conducted to demonstrate and teach us that we make websites for users first and how to build websites that are easy and simple to use in order for the project to reach its goal. Don’t be mistaken : you’ve got loads to learn about this apparently simple, but in fact complex and essential topic.

Pros

• A very pleasant book to read. It’s fast, fun and very interesting
• The approach which puts the reader at the user’s point of view and literally living the experience
• Teaches you how to optimize lots of things, such as the homepage, searching, forms, testing and many other aspects of a web project
• The great chapter about website testing, where you’ll feel like having assisted to a real experience thanks to an immersive story
• At first I thought I would learn little because things seem obvious. And I’ve learned many useful things about web usability in this book
• You won’t develop websites the same way after reading this. Get ready to start thinking as a user
• If you’re developing/designing websites/apps, this book is a must-have on your bookshelf

Cons

• No really cons. Except the fact that there’s no Volume #2 in order to cover even more in detail this vast and essential topic

Conclusion

As you’ve seen, I truly recommend this reading which is, according to me essential. Because too many people think as a developer for the nice-to-have technical aspects, as a designer for the cool-looking stuff, or as a manager or CEO for things they think would be great to add (and the real disaster it is, like doubling the overall font size), learn to make something for users, allow them to find the information they want easily, don’t make them think and ultimately achieve complete success with your web project.

Javascript - précis & concis

Javascript - précis & concis (in french) is a little, yet very interesting book for the beginner as well as for the expert in javascript. This multi-purpose book enables you to discover or improve your javascript knowledge in a fast and effective way. Covered chapters include the following : Introduction to Javascript (syntax, instructions, object oriented javascript, regular expressions, …) Client-side Javascript (the Document and Window objects) The DOM DHTML Event handling Dealing with security issues A reference of the Javascript API

Pros

• A small book enabling you to cover the main parts of Javascript in a fast way
• Very concise but well explained
• Useful for the beginner (intro to Javascript) as well as for the expert (API reference)
• Variety of the topics, giving you a nice global knowledge
• A reference of the Javascript API, which is very useful for further consultation
• The kind of book I like to read now : concise, fast and great added value. Because technologies are a vast and ever changing domain, we don’t always have time to read bricks of 2.000 pages

Cons

• Might not be easy for the new comers (shows code but won’t explain to them how to create the HTML document to contain it, doesn’t define some abbreviations such as API, …). Ok for the beginners having basic Javascript notions
• Some errors of translation (some Javascript functions or reserved keywords are translated into french)
• Don’t expect from each chapter to dig deep as this is a small book (but not really a con in itself)

Conclusion

Definitely an interesting book from which anyone will learn. Serves as a training book as well as a reference but of course won’t replace a bigger, more complete book, but who will also take much more time to read…

Réussir son site web en 60 fiches

For the french readers out there, Réussir son site web en 60 fiches is a complete checklist filled of very interesting rules and advices that a website or web application must follow. Divided into 6 chapters (marketing, content, navigation, design, interactivity and technical aspects), the book illustrates, through color illustrations, theory, statistics, good and bad examples how the ideal website should be. Definitely one of my best buys about web books !

Pros

• A checklist close to perfection, precise and concise at the same time
• Globality of the approach : marketing, content, navigation, …
• Theory illustrated through statistics, real-case good and bad examples
• Interesting resource URLs given all along the book (reference articles, interesting tools, …)
• A great value-added book at a very fair price (about 25 $)
• Fast to read, straight to the point construction, training book as well as a checklist reference
• Color printed book

Cons

• Could have been interesting to have more technical details about the good practices, but it would have lost its “checklist” philosophy
• Honestly nothing else. As I said, one of my best buys of web books

Books from the Techdays

I’ve bought 3 books from the Techdays as discounts up to 30% were applicable. These books are Code Complete, .NET Architecting - Applications for the Enterprise and Visual Studio Tips. So expect to find reviews of these ones in the Books section later on