John Wang

Over the past couple weeks, I have been testing out the new Amazon Kindle2 for reference use on Web Design and Development. I went through the Amazon.com Kindle Store to see what books were available to get on the Kindle. I also looked at all the books to see if eBook PDF versions were available so that I could convert them to the Kindle. I was able to find a few Print books to compare with the Kindle and also some PDF books too. Here are some pictures comparing the same section of the books.

Kindle vs Print

I used 2 separate books for comparing Print to Kindle formatted books. Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards and Andy Budd’s CSS Mastery. They are both available on the Kindle Store and in Print format. The Kindle version of the book compared very well to the Print version. The only real difference I noticed was the loss of color pages if the Print version had them. Other than that, reading was very easy and comfortable. Images were the only concern, and Amazon managed to do a pretty good job at having it scale properly. You can change the size of the images that show up throughout the book if you want to see it bigger. The text formatting was interesting, as it’s fixed-width font and center-aligned. So every now and then you may only see 3-4 words per line depending on your font size choice. Overall, I am enjoying the experience so far.

Print vs PDF Converted

The book used for this comparison is Jason Baird’s The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. The book is published by Sitepoint and available in Print and PDF eBook format. I converted the PDF version of the book using Mobipocket Creator 4.2 Publisher Edition. It’s a free Windows ONLY application. The process is quite simple. Select the PDF, import it, fill out the required metadata, build the PRC file and copy it over to the Kindle via the USB cable. Once that’s done, you can begin reading your book.
Comparing the 2. The converted PDF did have some issues with images and their sizes. Not really all too surprising. The main part where it seemed to have issues, was with text inside of a box. The converted software takes the text out of the text box and creates an image for the text box. As for regular images. It’s mostly random. The screenshot of the Website in the book converted fairly well. However, as you will see in the next section, some images were not resized as expected. It doesn’t cause too much of a problem for reading the actual text though.

Kindle vs PDF Converted

For this comparison, I chose to use Jeff Croft’s Pro CSS Techniques book. It’s published by Apress and available on the Amazon.com Kindle Store. The Converted PDF actually reads very well. As I said before, the images sometimes tend to have resizing/scaling issues. One thing that the converted PDF does have issues with, is sidebar-type quotes or text. It tends to incorporate them into the book based on it’s location on the page instead of keeping them separate. So, that does take some getting used to. For standard plain text PDF books, it works wonderfully. I have not yet tried sending Amazon a PDF to convert and see if their results match up. I also haven’t tested other means of converting the PDF such as using Stanza. For the Apress books, since every one that I’ve gotten from them are all in grayscale anyways, there isn’t any issue of loss of color. For Sitepoint books though, I can see loss of color as an issue. If there is color-coded code in the books, I can see it become an issue. Since most of the Web Development books I found available are Apress books, I haven’t run into that issue.

iPhone App

The Kindle iPhone App is freely available on the Apple iTunes App Store. You can only read the books you purchase through the Kindle Store. As of right now, converting PDF files to Kindle format cannot be read on the iPhone. Here are some screenshots of CSS Mastery and Designing with Web Standards on the Kindle iPhone App.

A Small sampling of books available in the Kindle Store

• CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions (Kindle Edition) by Andy Budd
• Designing the Obvious (Kindle Edition) by Robert Hoekman
• Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning (Kindle Edition) by Dan Brow
• Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional (Kindle Edition) by Simon Collison
• Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax: From Novice to Professional (Kindle Edition)
  by Michael Purvis (Author), Jeffrey Sambells (Author), Cameron Turner (Author)
• Pro CSS Techniques (Kindle Edition) by Jeff Croft (Author), Ian Lloyd (Author), Dan Rubin (Author)
• Pro JavaScript Techniques (Kindle Edition) by John Resig (Author)
• Bulletproof Ajax (Kindle Edition) by Jeremy Keith
• Designing with Web Standards, Second Edition (Kindle Edition) by Jeffrey Zeldman

Conclusion

Overall, I am enjoying using the Kindle as a reference material for Web Design books and Web Development books. I have converted all of the Sitepoint PDF eBooks that I have bought and also the vast majority of the Apress eBooks as well. Having them all readily available and search-able is really convenient. Also, the note-taking and highlighting capabilities of the Kindle are very easy-to-use and helpful.

Your Thoughts and Comments?

What do you think of the Kindle as a viable replacement for Print books, Textbooks or reference books?

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Having been doing some iPhone App development lately, I’ve run into one of the little issues abound. In order to test your application on an iPhone and also deploy it to the Apple iTunes App Store, you need to properly configure your application’s Bundle Identifier in your Info.plist file. All the books tell you this. And Apple makes it a point to tell you how to do this before you try to deploy on the App Store.

After creating App after App though, it becomes a very tedious task. I’ve searched far and wide online and couldn’t find anything that pointed me to how to change it. I did manage to find information on how to change it for developing Mac Desktop Applications. Didn’t really help my case too much.

In any case, what you’re looking for is in the directory path:
/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project Templates/Application

In there, you’ll find directories for each type of iPhone Application template that you can create from Xcode.

• Navigation-Based Application
• OpenGL ES Application
• Tab Bar Application
• Utility Application
• View-Based Application
• Window-Based Application

In each directory, there is a file called: Info.plist
Here you can change your default Bundle Identifier by finding the Key String pair.

	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string>com.yourcompany.${PRODUCT_NAME:identifier}</string>

Simply change yourcompany to your new default save. Once you’ve done that. Any new iPhone App you create from Xcode’s iPhone Application templates will be pre-filled with your new identifier.

Much easier than fixing it for each new iPhone App you make. Hope this helps!

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Yesterday I introduced the idea of using Amazon.com‘s newly released Kindle 2 as a tool for the Personal MBA program. We saw that there was a large number of the Personal MBA’s 77 Recommended Books List available in Kindle format.

Price Comparisons

For the 77 Core Books the total savings if you buy all the Kindle versions instead of the Print version is $135.57. As for the Supplemental books, your savings would be $19.51. It is important to note that there is actually one book currently available in Kindle format which would be cheaper to purchase the Print version. That book is Judgment by Noel Tichy & Warren Bennis.

Below you will find the same list found on The Personal MBA Book list page, but with the additions of whether or not the book is available in Kindle format and if so, the corresponding prices in Print and Kindle formats.

Disclaimer: Prices subject to change per Amazon.com decisions and book list subject to change per The Personal MBA’s decision.

Getting Started

Productivity & Effectiveness

Psychology & Communication

Design & Production

Marketing, Sales, & Negotiation

Entrepreneurship

Management & Leadership

Strategy & Innovation

Finance & Analysis

Personal Finance

SUPPLEMENT: Business History

SUPPLEMENT: Business Reference

What are you thoughts?

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First of all, let’s get the disclaimer out. I am in not saying in any way shape or form that The Personal MBA is a replacement for an accredited MBA University program. Ok. Now with that out of the way, I pre-ordered the Amazon Kindle 2 shortly after it was announced on February 9th. I did receive it on February 24th and was able to queue up books to be delivered on first activation of the Kindle. I’m not going to review the Kindle 2 itself. For that you can read Engadget’s review or Gizmodo’s review.

The Personal MBA

The Personal MBA has a list of 77 recommended books. And that’s what I am going to go through. As a freelancer and entrepreneur, Business Management is something of extreme value to me. And going to Business School for an MBA right now is not an option. Even so, I am one of those people who like to consistently be learning something new. And with the Personal MBA, I am learning how to better run my Freelance business.

A Kindle?

I originally wanted to get the Kindle for a few other reasons. These reasons are:

• Being “green” or “environmentally friendly”
• Ability to carry multiple books without the added weight.
• Taking notes and wireless downloading

 When researching if the Kindle would be a good fit for the Personal MBA, the main concept was the availability of the 77 Books in Kindle format. After going through the list, I found that 39 of the 77 books are available in Kindle format. Which means that 38 books are not. That’s 1 book over half. 2 if you count that one of the books is 37 Signals’ Getting Real, which is available for free reading online.

Cost

The cost of the Kindle vesrion of the books are not considerably cheaper than the paperback versions. If you are looking at hardcover books though, then it is a pretty penny. While, the cost is a pretty big deal for me as a freelancer, space was more of an issue. I have a fairly small office and having 77 books in addition to Web Design and Development books can get a bit out of control. It is important to remember that the Kindle itself costs $359 alone.

Conclusion

Overall, I am very happy to see that a large portion of the Personal MBA’s recommended books are available in Kindle format and have found reading on the Kindle to be very comfortable and easy use. I have also managed to convert a few PDF books to Kindle format and will discuss those in a future entry related to using the Kindle 2 as a Web Designer and Developer’s research tool.

What are your thoughts on the Kindle as a Freelance tool? 

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Flickr photo from kimberlyfaye

Environmentally Friendly thinking can apply to Programming. We’re not talking about your programming environments here. What we are talking about is using the 3 R’s, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle as part of your Coding Practices. These principles are taught at most schools. At least it was at mine. However, when you start off on your own with no formal education, you can run into some problems. Let’s take a look at these basic principles.

Reduce

Reducing code is fairly simple. Quite frequently used as part of defining “Beautiful Code,” using the least amount of code to accomplish the task at hand. Since that’s the case, it’s also usually the hardest to accomplish. Minimizing processing time and file loading size. You can do even some small things to reduce your coding efforts. Such as using CMS plugins already written instead of writing your own, or even modifying existing plugins to do your bidding. Here’s a very simple C example in reducing lines of code via initialization.

void foo() {
    Complex c;
    c = (Complex)5;
}

void foo_optimized() {
    Complex c = 5;
}

Reuse

How do we reuse code? Very simply, we use functions. Instead of copying the same code in various places, functions allow us to reuse the same code again. Similarly, using a global Debug boolean to turn on/off debugging is another way to save some time. Here is a small piece of code not performing reuse.

unsigned int random_number1;
unsigned int random_number2;
rand_seed = rand_seed * 1103515245 +12345;
random_number1 = (unsigned int)(rand_seed / 65536) % 32768;

And the same performing reuse.

int rand()
{
rand_seed = rand_seed * 1103515245 +12345;
return (unsigned int)(rand_seed / 65536) % 32768;
}
int main() {
random_number1 = rand();
random_number2 = rand();
return 0;
}

Simple and elegant. This also allows us to make changes to the function and having it take effect in all the places the function is called. Whereas, the opposite, would require us to go and make the changes in all of the places we used the same code.

Recycle

Recycling code can be fairly easy. Creating code clips/snippets that you frequently use and having them readily accessible is a great way to recycle code. Panic’s Coda helps you do this via their “Clips” tool. Another way is to create general use codes such as reset.css, typography.css, etc. A sandbox starter theme for your CMS of choice is yet another way to recycle code. Recycling can cut down on the development time you need to do things significantly.

How do you use the 3R’s in your programming practices?

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