friends of ED are one of the coolest book companies out there for geeks and I’ve been a Technical Reviewer for them for a few years. I’ve also been lucky enough to have two books published by them:
I’d been working as a Technical Reviewer for friends of ED couple of years when I got a phone call from one of their editors, asking me if I’d write a book about Mac OS X web development for them. Naturally, as soon as I started writing, my machines kept acting weird and it seemed the entire planet was conspiring against my deadlines, but I finished it and I’m still proud of the end result. These days, you can find several such books on the shelf.
Maybe the trick is seeing a gap in the market and filling it, rather than just rehashing the same old things? My publishers approached me about writing Foundation Mac OS X Web Development because no such book existed. My editor at the time, Gavin Wray, did an amazing job of helping me through that first book, and I’m eternally grateful. It’s still selling because it’s a great book and they even sell it at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.
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Foundation Mac OS X Web Development
- Published: July 18th, 2004
- Publisher: friends of ED
- Editor: Gavin Wray
- ISBN: 1-59059-336-7
Why did I write this book?
In short: they asked me to!
Who’s it for?
The Foundation series of books is for people who want to dip a toe into the waters of web technologies, without getting their head blown off with jargon. You get to build the fundamentals with clear language and a designers approach. Building on that, my approach was simple: write it like I’d tell it. That means a few jokes along the way, and plain English terms which aren’t going to confuse the reader. The reader gets familiar with enough skills to create a working web page, but isn’t bombarded with too much to take in.
Phil has written the ultimate guide to using a Mac for web development.
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What does it cover?
In the book, I take you through some basics, starting with a brief introduction to Mac OS X, and graphic design issues. You get some basic XHTML skills, coupled with CSS layout techniques, and a rundown of how browsers break things, so that you can make sites which work the same in every browser, on every platform – and break gracefully in older browsers. Mac OS X is a fully functioning UNIX box, so a large chunk of the book concentrates on server-side functionality, including PHP, MySQL, Apache, Perl, and JSP. Finally, you learn how to setup Darwin Streaming Server, so you can use your Mac to stream audio and video on t’internet, before finishing with some streaming Flash video
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Table of contents
- Foreword by Brendan Dawes
- Introduction to Mac OS X Panther: The New Features
- Mac Graphics and Design Issues
- Developing Static Websites
- Browser Issues
- Dynamic Web Page Development
- Mac UNIX Essentials
- Apache Modules
- Databases
- Server-Side Language Environments
- Multimedia
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The aim
By the time you have finished reading, you should be able to make some decisions. Maybe that crush you’ve had from a distance on Perl has disappeared into thin air since you met PHP. Maybe you will finally understand what a dynamic site involves, and how simple it can be to create one. The idea behind this book isn’t to churn out a crack squad of professional web developers across the world; it’s to provide people with a foundation from which they can build on and decide which technologies are right for them.
Blog Design Solutions
- Published: February 20th, 2006
- Publisher: friends of ED
- Editor: Chris Mills
- ISBN: 1-59059-581-5
Why did I write this book?
I came up with the idea of Blog Design Solutions after a quick phone call from Andy Clarke one afternoon while I was taking some time off work after a couple of my best friends had died. I was feeling pretty low and needed to get back on track. Refreshed by Andy’s enthusiasm, I had a brainwave while reading some of my favourite blogs – most notably the blog of Richard Rutter (Clagnut), whom I found it hard to believe had never been in print to date, and I thought should be.
I wanted to kick myself back into action, but I also wanted to know more about different blog engines, so I came up with the idea for the book and started asking people to write a chapter each.
I sold the idea to the extremely beardy Chris Mills — who went for it straight away — and then set about contacting the various authors I had in mind. A few were too busy from the start, and another had to be replaced along the way, but we got there in the end. I think the end result is pretty damn good, and we have a Flickr group to help promote it, which you’re welcome to join.
Table of contents & authors
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After a few changes due to time constraints (I was due to write chapter two, but was too busy with Trig; Andy Clarke, Jon Hicks, and Drew McLellan were all too busy), I think that final line–up is pretty sweet.
I for one am thankful that Phil Sherry decided to follow through on this book idea, and that he rounded up such knowledgeable people to help him with the task.
What Does It Cover?
In this book, a team of renowned web designers take you through the ins and outs of putting together great blogs. They waste no time harking on about the philosophy of blogs, or the community behind them. Instead, they get straight to the practical details, showing how to set up a basic blog in some of the world’s most popular blogging engines – Movable Type, ExpressionEngine, WordPress, and Textpattern. With your blog set up, they then show you how to build great looking, usable layouts for your blog. The last chapter even shows you how to build your very own PHP/MySQL-based blog engine!
This article is copyright © 2012 Phil Sherry.