O’Reilly

Review: Values, Units, and Colors: Foundational CSS3 Components

Values, Units, and Colors is the third installment of Eric Meyer‘s partwork-style fourth edition of CSS: The Definitive Guide, previous editions of which are considered biblical by many.  O’Reilly seems to be trending towards shorter publications lately – emphasizing timeliness, as technology continues to evolve at an ever-increasing pace – over more definitive tomes like the 1100 page beast I picked up last year (though it is excellent!).  In addition to shorter, more specific publications, many are offered as Early Release eBooks, which give readers access to fragments of books as the author writes them – an effort which I appreciate, yet often curse when I discover for example that the introductory chapters are not yet complete, or that the specific topic that I desperately need information on has not yet been touched on.  The approach taken here is somewhat[1] novel: Meyer is offering final chapters (again, as opposed to Early Release’s often incomplete, buggy, or missing content) in inexpensive installments, with a discount on the final, complete book.  I’ve been a big fan of Eric Meyer since On CSS and More…, so was ecstatic to learn that The Definitive Guide would be receiving a much-needed update to its 2006 Third Edition.  That seems like an awfully long Read More…

Review: Mobile Development with C#: Building Native iOS, Android, and Windows Phone Applications

Mobile Development with C# is yet another book that I was motivated to purchase by one of O’Reilly’s free webcasts.  The title, Cross-Platform Mobile Development with C#, grabbed my attention, and the presentation itself was one of the most impressive I have seen from O’Reilly’s or any other series.  The webcast is no longer available in its original format, but it is available on YouTube, and I have uploaded the companion slideshow here since it does not appear to be available on the author’s site.  Greg Shackles is emphatic about the fact that he is neither employed nor compensated by Xamarin, the developers of MonoTouch and Mono for Android, which are the tools at the heart of the Cross-Platform Mobile Development strategy – but his proponence of these products is so effective that I hope they at least buy him a craft beer at some point!（＾_－)  The book advocates a technique of developing native user interfaces for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7, adhering to each platform’s idioms, yet binding each to a common C# codebase – a codebase which could also be leveraged Read More…

O’Reilly Everywhere: Safari to Go for Android

O’Reilly Everywhere: Safari to Go for Android

My dream of cloud-based reading came a step closer today when availability of the Safari To Go Android app was announced on Safari Books Online’s Official Blog.  The Android app was noticeably absent on the July 18th launch date quoted in their July 2012 newsletter (the online version of which appears to have changed to “Later this month”!); Safari Books Online CEO, Andrew Savikas explained the delay in a comment on our earlier post, saying “we uncovered some nasty regression bugs and just couldn’t put it out without fixing them.”  But the bugs appear to have been fixed, since the app is now available for download!

Safari to go for Android is pleasant to use on both phone and tablet form factors; in each case the amount of data being transmitted and displayed seems appropriate, resulting in a snappy, uncluttered UI.  The reading experience on the phone is vastly improved as compared to the mobile version of the site; movement between pages is fluid, with no scrolling required, though a rather disruptive “Retrieving Content…” message pops up on a regular basis – seemingly between sections – which seems like it could be obviated with a logical pre-fetch given the linear nature of reading…i.e. chances are I’m going to be needing that page soon…especially if progress Read More…

Safari Books Online (and off!): Safari to Go for Android, iPhone and iPad

Safari Books Online (and off!): Safari to Go for Android, iPhone and iPad

I know that this is not the first post that I have opened with a reference to my O’Reilly addiction.  Yet for some reason, I can’t seem to love Safari like it seems that I should – and I’ve tried numerous times.  First I tried reading a book on my phone with the mobile site – because the content was not constrained by browser height, I found myself scrolling down the page, then advancing to the next page, then having to scroll back up – and given how few words can fit on a phone’s diminutive screen, this action had to be repeated so frequently that it took over focus from the book’s content (oh, and if you get your login wrong, it bounces you to the full site to retry, and doesn’t bounce back after, I just discovered).  I downloaded Safari To Go for iPad the moment it was released – I do not think the iPad makes a very good eReader, but it’s easier to lug around than my desktop, so I gave it a shot.  The videos I tried to watch got stuck, and the book I tried to read worked to a certain point, and then caused the app to crash every time I opened it, at which point I gave up and went back to my ePubs on my Nook Color.  Despite owning most titles that I am interested in as eBooks, I still maintain a Safari subscription – mostly as a way to search across titles that are likely also in my own private collection, and maintain wishlists and to-read lists which the main O’Reilly shop Read More…

Review: MintDuino: Building an Arduino-Compatible Breadboard Microcontroller

Review: MintDuino: Building an Arduino-Compatible Breadboard Microcontroller

O’Reilly seems to be publishing a fair number of shorter publications recently, which I really like since it allows you to gain expertise in a specific topic in an evening or weekend vs. the broader-subject books which span many hundreds of pages. I’m pretty comfortable with a number of prototyping platforms, but was curious to learn a little bit more about the guts of Arduino’s hardware instead of it all being nicely abstracted for me. With this in mind, I purchased the Mintronics Bundle from Maker Shed, comprising a Mintronics: MintDuino and Mintronics: Survival Pack, plus picked up an FTDI Friend to handle USB to serial duties in a breadboard-friendly form factor. This blog post, however, Read More…

Review: Making Isometric Social Real-Time Games with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript

I own a lot of O’Reilly books.  It may not even be exaggerating to say that I own most recent O’Reilly releases – my eBook purchases from the past couple of years top three figures.  So, it’s honestly a bit shocking to find a book that was published in August of 2011, and of interest to me, which I’ve not already snapped up in the intervening period.  In this case, it took the attendance of the intriguingly-named webcast Applying Old Video Game Performance Techniques to Modern Web-based Games for me to discover Making Isometric Social Real-Time Games with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.  I was so enthralled by the concepts that presenter/author Mario Andres Pagella shared in his short lecture that I not only Read More…

O’Reilly Media Dropbox Sync! (Beta)

O’Reilly Media Dropbox Sync! (Beta)

I am a massive O’Reilly fan, and a serious consumer of eBooks – but one of the greatest hassles with my ever-burgeoning collection is organizing my library and syncing it to my various devices.  O’Reilly is currently beta testing a feature that allows you to sync any or all of your eBooks with your Dropbox account, in whichever format(s) you prefer; I think they chose me since I own an absurd quantity of their publications (I basically have my own personally Safari!) – so having my purchases automatically downloaded onto my desktop machine, and one click away on my NOOK Color, iPad, or phone, is huge! (♥o♥)  The NOOK Simple Touch, since it lacks a Dropbox app (or any apps, without rooting) is now the only remaining device which will be seeing a USB cable any time soon!

Review: Google Script: Enterprise Application Essentials – Part I

I purchased Google Script: Enterprise Application Essentials By James Ferreira via O’Reilly’s excellent Deals of the Day scheme, whereby they offer an eBook each day at 50% off of their already very reasonable prices.  I often find this an excellent opportunity to pick up books on topics that I’m interested in but might not have been willing to pay full price for.  There were no reviews yet, but it seemed that for $12, even if all I got out of it was a few gmail and doc tricks, it would still be well worth it!

The book is divided into three parts:  Read More…

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