Eric's Blogs

Excellent book about web usability with lots of nice examples

“Don’t Make Me Think” refers to the way people tend to use the web: they don’t read they scan. That means that your site needs to be organized to make identification and navigation as instinctive as possible. Having an efficient navigation system and laying out your content to clearly reveal the embedded hierarchy should go a long way towards achieving this goal. Don’t forget a good search function.

One of the main point the author want’s you to get is that having external users to test your site will give you valuable insights on how you can make it work for them. He walks us through such a test scenario, which is quite useful.

There is also a chapter on accessibility, which is nice and which gives us an easy way to make our site quite accessible to most. My favorite idea is to add a “skip to main content” link to the top of all pages. By styling it with a “display: none” it won’t affect any layout would be very useful for blind people using screen readers. Food for hought.

Classification is one topic on which I disagree with the author though it’s only noted in a footnote. His view is that “things” should live in one place on your site and if necessary use cross-references to bring people there. I think that “things” should live in all the probable places a user might want to look for it. On one side you have a hierarchy on the other you have a tagging system. Given growing popularity and ubiquity of tags, I think that this won’t be much of a stretch for anyone in the near future.

This book was certainly worth reading. I have learnt quite a few things and I recommend it to all web developers.

The Latex Book to Buy

If you are going to buy one book on latex this is the one. It covers all the basics of document typesetting with latex. I actually own the first edition of the book but of course, you should always get the latest one. In the book there are sections to cover the following topics:

• Setting-up single or multi-column layouts
• Typesetting basic headings and text
• Creating tables using either the “tabular” or the “array” packages
• How to have tables span multiple pages
• Working with floating figures
• How to typeset beautiful math formulas
• Handling accented characters
• Basic pictures and graphics import
• Installing new fonts
• Creating indexes
• Adding tables of contents and tables of figures
• Adding good looking bibliographies with Bibtex

Lots of material is covered. Though there is overlap I also think that the book by Leslie Lamport is a good complement to this book. Leslies book is shorter, more to the point and perhaps a better introduction to latex than this one. But on the down side it covers less material. This is why I consider this book to be the one to get if you get only one.

A perfect complement to the Latex Companion

Though less complete, this book is a gentler introduction to latex than the companion book. It covers less terrain but in a form that's easier to assimilate. So if you get only one book get the Compainon book. Otherwise consider this book a better primer on the latex typesetting system.

Advanced Latex Programming

Need to do charts or graphics using latex? Then this is the book for you. It's the most advanced and complete book on Latex graphics that I've seen. If you would like to implement a reporting system that can draw charts using latex then this book is a must. Though I've not used latex in a while, I do remember that this one is not for the faint of heart. I do put it into the one of "must have" latex books. There are others of course, such as "The Latex Guide" but since I don't own them, I'm not posting any recommendations about them here.

Excellent and to the point

This was my first book about design. To the point, the book discusses the four basic principles of design with good/bad examples to make his point: contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. It's an easy read and will provide the nessary foundation to move on to more advanced material.

A Good Second Book on Design

Once you've covered first base with the "Non-Designers Design Book" you are well equipped to start reading this book. Since this book also covers the basics (though not as well I find), you could also decide to skip ahead and go directly to second base.

Here you'll also learn about managing grid systems, white space management, basic text composition and the effective use of fonts and illustration. The last sections of the book applies your new found knowledge to the design of various types of documents. Finally, in the last section is a hoge-poge of trap to avoid (the counter examples if you like).

A book well worth the money (all books are cheap compared to IT books ;-)