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Murach's HTML5 and CSS3: How is this book different from other HTML5/CSS books?

 
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Hello Anne and Zak,

Congratulations on your new book!  I just scanned the table of contents on Amazon and noticed the book comprises 736 pages.  That's a very large tome of information on this subject.  I typically try to pick up books in the 250 page range because they are a little easier to digest so may I ask…

1.)  What is your expectation for developers reading this book?  Do you see them reading from cover to cover or as separate, individual chapters that focus on a particular topic?

2.)  How is your book different from other HTML/CSS books?  Do you have a different approach to teaching the information?

3.)  At 736 pages, that's a lot of words, do you still consider the content to be on-topic?

4.)  Is there a reason a Kindle version wasn't released first?  With the size of this book, it will take up a lot of room on a developer's desk and with the trend in the industry to reduce our personal office desk space, the digital references seem to be more popular.  

Thanks for sharing with the Code Ranch community and also for providing information to help developers,
Dale
 
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Dale Moore wrote:Hello Anne and Zak,

Congratulations on your new book!  I just scanned the table of contents on Amazon and noticed the book comprises 736 pages.  That's a very large tome of information on this subject.  I typically try to pick up books in the 250 page range because they are a little easier to digest so may I ask…

1.)  What is your expectation for developers reading this book?  Do you see them reading from cover to cover or as separate, individual chapters that focus on a particular topic?

2.)  How is your book different from other HTML/CSS books?  Do you have a different approach to teaching the information?

3.)  At 736 pages, that's a lot of words, do you still consider the content to be on-topic?

4.)  Is there a reason a Kindle version wasn't released first?  With the size of this book, it will take up a lot of room on a developer's desk and with the trend in the industry to reduce our personal office desk space, the digital references seem to be more popular.  

Thanks for sharing with the Code Ranch community and also for providing information to help developers,
Dale



Hi Dale, thanks for the questions. I'll attempt to answer these as best as I can and perhaps Anne who is a staff writer for Murach, can shed some light on your last question.

1,) All Murach books are written so that you can turn to any page within the book and learn a skill. Very rarely does a chapter require a skill from a previous chapter in order to get something done. So to answer your question, no, the expectation is not that the reader will read the book from cover to cover but instead, draw references from particular chapters to help work through a problem the reader might be facing in a real world project. Of course, we would love it if you read it cover to cover considering that we've put so much time and effort into every page throughout the almost decade of this books existence but that's certainly not necessary given the way this book is structured.

2.) All Murach books use the paired-page approach. It's a unique way of presenting topics that Murach uses in all of their books. For more information on what sets Murach books apart from the competition, please see this page here: https://www.murach.com/about-us/what-we-do-differently

3.) As I'm sure you know, the role of the modern front-end web developer has changed in the last decade or so. Gone are the days when you could just learn HTML and CSS and be able to compete for well paying jobs. The modern front-end web developer now has to understand the myriad of concepts, tools, and languages that are required by industry in order to be competitive. This includes HTML5, CSS3, the role of semantic markup, structuring techniques (classic floats vs. flex box vs. grid layout), task automation tools, CSS preprocessing, client-side scripting, third-party frameworks, third-party plugins, etc. So to answer your question...yes and no. The core of the book is HTML5 and CSS3 and we focus primarily on those two languages. But we also make sure to touch on other topics that we would want the user to also evaluate in their learning like Bootstrap, Font Awesome, a little JavaScript, Git/GitHub, Gulp, Node, SASS, Brackets, etc.
 
Zak Ruvalcaba
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Dale, after checking with Murach, here's an answer to your final question:

Murach now uses VitalSource as their eBook delivery system. I know some like Kindle but that wasn’t in the cards. With VitalSource you can view your eBooks from the online version of Bookshelf or you can download the offline app which is ideal for paired pages. You can get more info here https://www.murach.com/about-our-ebooks/ebooks-overview
 
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