Hallelujah! I have a copy of my book in my hands. The verdict? It makes typing awfully difficult. Maybe I’d better put it down.
I still haven’t received the initial copies I’m supposed to get from the publishers. Luckily, Pete at Friends of ED went ahead and ordered a couple of extra copies for me. Those copies showed up on Wednesday.
I was out of the house for most of Wednesday. I was in London delivering a one-day training course in DOM Scripting (more on that later). Post-training refreshments in Soho ensured that I didn’t get back to Brighton until late evening. The drudgery of the journey home was mitigated by the presence of free WiFi on the train.
The box of books was waiting for me on my return home.
The contents of the book were well known to me of course, but it’s one thing to read the words on a screen and another to leaf through the pages of a book.
I was quite surprised by how lengthy the book turned out to be. I thought I was writing a short book, but this feels like quite a hefty tome.
If I may be quite superficial for a moment, I’m quite pleased with the book cover. I hadn’t done any print design before so I was nervous about how my design might turn out. But the end result looks pretty good. I quite like the glossy finish too. The book title is written with a flavourless, generic font but apart from that, I’m happy with the final result.
Flicking through the book, it does give the impression of being full of code. I hope that doesn’t scare off any potential buyers.
There are pretty pictures too. Or at least some of them are pretty. Most of the screen shots look good (even in black and white) but the full screen ones have something of a pixelated look about them. Clearly something went slightly amiss in the downscaling process.
Apart from those minor quibbles, I’m pleased as punch. I still can’t quite believe that I wrote an honest-to-goodness book. Some form of celebration is called for.
Posted by Jeremy on Saturday, October 8th, 2005 at 3:32pm
Comments
I’ve had mine fir a few days now and am enjoying it very much. I bought it together with Stuart Langridge’s DHTML Utopia which I’ll read after yours.
This is the first JS work I’ve done since the late 90’s so I’m finding it a very enjoyable experience to forget about fluffy mouse trails and onclick attributes. This is definitely a book ‘of the moment’ and I hope it does very well for you.
I picked up a copy last week and think it’s just what I need to learn DOM Scripting. So, a big thanks to you.
One a publishing note, my copy has the entire section from pages 107-155 bound upside down. The bookstore gave me a discount on it. Of course I was going to buy it regardless.
# Posted by Neil Cadsawan on Saturday, October 8th, 2005 at 5:43pm
Looking forward to getting my paws on a copy!
# Posted by Conánn on Saturday, October 8th, 2005 at 11:15pm
Just about to order my copy from Amazon. Looking forward to DOMing up my sites.
# Posted by Rob Winters on Sunday, October 9th, 2005 at 10:44am
Nice one, Jeremy. Mucho congratulationso.
# Posted by Stuart Langridge on Sunday, October 9th, 2005 at 8:11pm
Looks rocking, Jeremy. I’m going to review it when I have a moment, to go alonmgside my review of Stuart’s book.
The only downside to it is the lack of the chapter that you promised me on how to code the script for a scrolling marquee to make up for its inexplicable absence from the css spec.
It’s got to be easy, though, for a DOMcripter of your calibre? Whack through the DOM nodes, work out the width of the parent element and the width of the paragraph marked up as <p class="marquee">, then just loop round moving the characters left until they fall out of the parent width, in which case, forget about that letter.
When, say, the middle character has scrolled out of the container, start scrolling the first character at the rightmost position in the container.
Make it more flexible: <p class="marquee left slow"> to control direction and speed of scroll.
Or maybe .. you’re too chicken, eh????!?
I’ve only made it thru the first hundred pages but so far I’m very pleased with my purchase. This is a very well written and thought out book. I’ll write a review on my blog when I’m done.
# Posted by Ron Green on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 3:43pm
Just finished the book. Absolutely superb. Thank you very much. I’m bursting with ideas now, some based on stealing and modifying your code but also lots of others that I want to start trying out. The book was exactly what I was looking for.
# Posted by chris jopson on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 5:12pm
What’s up Jeremy, Just received it this morning after a long Washington DC vacation. I’ll be diving into your book tonite and will have a review out to you on my site by the end of the week. I’ll also be sure to make it as detailed as possible and let you know of any errata and all the sort and be constructive as possible.
All the best bro and congratulations. Dustin
# Posted by Dustin Diaz on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 6:08pm
Review on Amazon.co.uk submitted. Apparently it can take a day or two to appear. I may have been a wee bit gushing though, so try not to blush if you read it.
# Posted by chris jopson on Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 at 1:22am
" Some form of celebration is called for."
involving tequila and spanish dancing? Cool!
# Posted by Tim Hill on Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 at 7:10am
Jeremy I have a brief list of comments written down on a notepad about your book. I’m only 6 chapters in (I don’t know where the hell you other folks found the time to read this book in a day!), so I’ll hold off on posting about it. But as soon as i do I’ll let you know.
# Posted by Dustin Diaz on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 7:23am
My copy finally arrived this week (I opted for the cheapest shipping, which apparently involves crossing the desert by pack-mule). I’m only a chapter into it so I’ll withhold my review for now (chapter one is fabulous). But I just wanted to comment on the cover design, which I agree turned out nicely. Simple, clean, elegant - very fitting for the subject. And I commend you and the printers for getting such a narrow gradient to stretch so far without banding.
What other cover concepts did you go through and will you share some rejects with us? Was the asterisk-and-brace motif intentional, or a happy accident? And would the character sequence "*}-" ever actually appear in JavaScript?
# Posted by Craig C. on Friday, October 14th, 2005 at 9:57pm
Add another copy with pages 107-154 upside down! (Amazon.com)
Hmm, if I bring it to SXSW and have you autograph it, will the upside down pages make it a collectible?
# Posted by Yvonne Adams on Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at 12:24am
Is the drink a bribe to get me to send it back, eliminating the evidence?
# Posted by Yvonne Adams on Thursday, October 27th, 2005 at 6:25pm
Sorry. Comments are closed.