Blogging And All That Malarkey

The Book of Taliesyn

Ambling around a five storey bookstore in the Jinbocho area of Tokyo today, in the computer section I stumbled across a Japanese translation of my Transcending CSS and CSS Best Practice by Miki Ofuji.

CSS Best Practice made me smile because it features (on page 54) a tutorial about how I made text wrap around both sides of an image on my Stuff an Nonsense site home page, as well as work by Dan Cederholm, Cameron Moll, Veerle Pieters and my design for the Web Standards Project.

I still use the same technique on Stuff and Nonsense (although I have never written my own tutorial) but the screenshot shows a version of the design from last year. The examples of Dan and Cameron's work are out of date too and anyone visiting the URLs listed will find a different design from those illustrated.

This is a common problem for books that feature web sites. Jeff Croft launched a new design of his site the month after Transcending CSS was published in 2006. Jeffrey Zeldman and Ethan Marcotte's Designing With Web Standards (3rd Edition) and Dan Cederholm's Handcrafted CSS (both excellent, you should buy them) feature my For A Beautiful Web prior to this month's relaunch.

Bummer.

What's an author to do that will be in the best interests of his or her readers?

Accept that web sites change and books may quickly become of date?
Link to a screenshot of the site as it appears in their book?
Make and host a copy of a page, complete with its HTML, CSS, scripts and images?
Rely on the Wayback Machine?
Something else entirely

I'm going to write a second book next year. So if you are an author, publisher or reader of books about web sites, design and development, I would love to hear your thoughts on how you think it best solve this problem.

Leave your comment

Damien Buckley

November 10 2009 @ 06:56pm #

I’d set aside a site for each book with copies of these examples rather than providing links to live sites - I recently tried to go back and take a look at dirtyprettythings from Web Standards Creativity to see how the images were put together and its gone…

By the way, did you use the standard expression engine email form for this and if so, how did you set up the validation, or did you use Solspace Freeform or something else? Interested because I’m building my first EE site and working on the contact form…

Tom Bryan

November 10 2009 @ 06:58pm #

Of course option 1 would be the easiest solution and in fairness, realistic.

With that said, I’m thinking option 3, an archive of the page in question. I’m not sure on the logistics of this option though as this relies on other authors of books and articles linking back to the correct URL for that archive.

chris

November 10 2009 @ 06:59pm #

hello. I think you should save a copy of the page complete with html and images (i imagine if you ask its creator and say you’re putting it in a lovely book then they will send it through thus ridding you of too much work)

But rather than just host it right out - you should say in the book that there is a companion download area for them to get the files and if things do change go there to get it. Just provide it as a zip file if needed.

Thats what i think anyway - might be totally wrong of course ;o)

Clive Walker

November 10 2009 @ 06:59pm #

Linking to a screenshot sounds like an easy and practical option. However, surely hosting a copy of the page could be arranged by the author, featured website, and publisher?

Steve Rydz

November 10 2009 @ 07:01pm #

As a reader of web design/development books I accept that they are quickly out of date. In most cases you can still get value from the books, for example I think the original CSS Mastery and Colly’s Beginning CSS are still great books for learning CSS, OK theres no CSS3 in there but newcomers will still find value.

I’m sure here you are thinking of more advanced titles such as your own Transcending CSS, which again in my opinion still holds value as it was quite a forward thinking book.

As far as linking to sites goes, they do change frequently and unfortunately that is something we have to accept. I’m sure recreating a site would lead to copyright issues of some kind and would certainly take up a fair amount of server space and time.

From your list I would say that linking to a screenshot is your best bet. At least that way the reader can see a high res image of what the tutorial is about, and the code will be in the book.

Alan Hogan

November 10 2009 @ 07:06pm #

Screenshot + your own mirror = success

Alan Hogan

November 10 2009 @ 07:07pm #

And naturally, you will want to exclude robots from those mirrored pages—stealing traffic from the original page is to be avoided.

Anthon Clark

November 10 2009 @ 07:09pm #

I agree with Damien, knowing a book has a stand alone site for resources is somewhat comforting, especially if the book has been out for a while.

John Holdun

November 10 2009 @ 07:12pm #

Definitely a fan of the idea of hosting a separate web-based companion to the book that would include copies of the pages in question as well as any other material that might be required—perhaps a PDF of the book?

Another way is how it’s done in Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design: Filling In The Blanks—it uses flickr URLs in the captions to allow for a more accurate representation of the example. Of course this only works for a design book where the markup and style techniques are not important.

Hugh Guiney

November 10 2009 @ 07:12pm #

I agree with Damien. Any page that’s published should be archived, either on the originating site under a dedicated section, and/or on the publisher’s site, as supplementary material often is. Both URIs could be specified in the text so that it could be seen in its original context if available, or via the mirror if not, the latter essentially acting as a “permalink”.

Screenshots and Wayback links could be low-maintenance emergency fallbacks.

Hugh Guiney

November 10 2009 @ 07:15pm #

Addendum: do it up ‘90s style and provide a CD with the book that has the relevant resources included.

Darren Azzopardi

November 10 2009 @ 07:24pm #

For me it makes sense to host it. That way your not relying on publishers such as Peachpit or Friends of ED site to keep it alive, accidents may happen and code examples could get lost.

What is the additional cost of supplying the book along with a CD/dvd with all the examples used?

When Handcrafted CSS came out I opted to buy the DVD version and the same for yours, I bought Transcending CSS and the dvd, you know the boxset, CSS Artistry. This way I know I have all the files here and ready to be looked at.

Another reason, personally is that its like owning a piece of time encapsulated on a disc.

Paul Timney

November 10 2009 @ 08:02pm #

I definitely wouldn’t use a supporting site or download examples so as long as I have a decent screen shot to refer back to, I am happy.

Just an idea, and probably a stupid one!, but how about ‘tear out postcard’ screen shots of the sites that the reader could annotate the back of?

I would definitely use them and display them for inspriation.

Nicholas Scheurich

November 11 2009 @ 01:47am #

I love the way that Jason Santa Maria and Erskine Design archive previous designs as subdomains, e.g. http://v1.jasonsantamaria.com, http://v1.erskinedesign.com.

Andy Clarke

November 11 2009 @ 02:20am #

Nicholas Scheurich: I love the way that Jason Santa Maria and Erskine Design archive previous designs as subdomains.

— I do too, and I should really do that myself with my own redesigns, so not everyone does. This idea also leaves the onus on the site owner to archive and maintain the files, rather than the book author.

Paul Timney: Just an idea, and probably a stupid one!, but how about ‘tear out postcard’ screen shots of the sites that the reader could annotate the back off? I would definitely use them and display them for inspriation.

— Actually that is a cool idea for a book (makes notes), but sometimes the reason for a link from a book is to show HTML, CSS or a complete implementation, as well as design inspiration. For example a reader wouldn’t get the effect of CSS transitions on my For A Beautiful Web site from a printed image.

Alan Hogan: And naturally, you will want to exclude robots from those mirrored pages—stealing traffic from the original page is to be avoided.

— Ooooh, good point (makes more notes).

shaun hare

November 14 2009 @ 06:56am #

Practical examples that you can get to scrutinise are invaluable in my humble opinion but yes these are a burden on the owner and or the author to maintain.

like others I agree the excellent versioning of previous sites by erskine (good work colly et al) and others is an ideal. As most of the sites used as examples are created by these web proffesionals who do so much for the industry they maybe could be persuaded. Another option is to do a grab (with the owners permission of course) i.e. download a version of the site at that time - with tools like HTTrack and then upload that to somewhere like github or google code so people can get it.

Be really interested as others would I guess to know more about the new book and if you are going to adopt the open policies you have with designs of late.

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The Book of Taliesyn

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Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke