Last weekend, I FINALLY had a chance to clean my room, and I’m pleased with the results. Really, though, this post is just an excuse to do one of those “this is my desk, this is my bookshelf” posts that everyone seems to do. 🙂
Top of bookshelf #1
My favorite books are mostly at the top (actually, there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it). Just looking, I realize that there are a bunch of Ruby books that I almost never look at. The orange book behind the wire on the top shelf is a really good Dover book on Graph Theory.
My Desk
My monitor setup. I’ve got 3 computers, the laptop, my ‘frankenmac’ desktop, and a pc. The frankenmac is dying, so I am probably going to have to shift things around. I don’t have a plan for which computer will go with which monitor, but the desk is now set, and won’t change. I’ve got my new Griffin Elevator sitting there. I’m happy with it, keeps the bottom of the laptop really cool.
Anyway, it’s been a week… let’s see how clean I can keep it.
Cover, Learning Website Development with DjangoOver the past few weeks, I’ve been playing around with Django. Because of that, I’ve been looking at a few different books on the subject. I first started out with the Django Book, which took me a few days to read. I can’t say I absorbed it all, but I got the general idea. Then I decided to look into other books and found Learning Website Development with Django, by Ayman Hourieh. I started right away.
The book’s subtitle, “A beginner’s tutorial to building web applications, quickly and cleanly, with the Django application framework,” frames the book perfectly. Its target audience is programmers (moderately) familiar with Python, but who are, at the same time, new to Django. The book is really focused towards this audience. The other key word in the subtitle is “quickly.” This book moves along in a hurry while creating the demonstration app. I was quite comfortable (and pleased) by the pace, however, I can imagine that a more novice programmer may have a harder time dealing with the information flying by.
The book centers on building one app, a social bookmarking website similar to del.icio.us, or ma.gnolia. I think type of site was a good choice, since it provides the author with a varying degree of complexity to play around with. It allowed Mr. Hourieh to start with the basics. This book succeeds in starting simple and getting harder as it goes along. I also thought it was good to focus on creating just one website, rather than a bunch of mini-projects or examples, since it models a more real-life situation. The idea of a social bookmarking website, as well, is very useful because its features are currently en vogue, and can be found on many current sites.
Chapters One and Two are the obligatory “what is Django” and “how to install” chapters. The meat of the book starts in Chapter Three when the project is introduced. By the end of this third chapter, we’ve already quickly written three database models (Links, Users, and Bookmarks) and the main page. Chapter Four introduces Django’s built-in user authentication system (django.contrib.auth), and describes how to write login, logout, and registration pages. Chapter Five instructs us to write an additional database model (tags), which is more complex than the models we wrote previously. Here we also write pages to display the list of bookmarks, bookmarks by tags, and a tag cloud. [To illustrate how fast we’re moving, Chapter Five ends on page 91]
When I came across High Performance Web Sites CoverHigh Performance Web Sites; Essential Knowledge for Frontend Engineers on Amazon, I was excited. I’ve been actively using the Yslow plugin for Firebug, and was interested in finding out more. At the day job I can’t implement each of the 14 rules myself, however the plugin is useful none-the-less. It’s terrific to have a checklist to work off of when entering QA mode, that way you’re sure not to forget anything.
For those who are not familiar with Yslow, it is (again) a plugin for the firebug, the addon for Firefox. It tests a website based on 14 varying rules, from server settings to page construction. There are a few on the list that most people haven’t heard of, yet are rather important (I had never heard of an ETag much less known what to do with one). When Yslow came out, I took a peek at the best practices document which briefly explained each of the rules. I wanted to find out more, so I ordered the book. Unfortunately, High Performance Web Sites let me down for just that reason. I didn’t find out much more.
High Performance Web Sites starts off with a table listing alexa’s top 10 U.S. websites (substituting AOL.com for craigslist.org). Then, 14 chapters (one for each rule) are devoted to explaining the rule, and showing how many of the top 10 are implementing it. The final chapter steps through the 10 websites and shows what they do to reduce the load time of their websites.
My problem was that the book really didn’t offer any new information. Basically, the best practices document was explained in slightly greater depth…but only slightly. I was disappointed to find out that there were very few additional ideas in the book… apparently the 14 rules cover the possibilities of writing faster-loading websites (ahem). The chapter analyzing the ten major websites had a ton of room for furthering ideas, but offered a limited few.
I was most disappointed in the book because I had looked forward to more. The plugin itself, and the list of rules are both terrific. Having a concise set of tests to walk through is extremely valuable. I can not say the same for the book. I hope my money went towards further work, yet I wonder how that’s being filtered through O’Reilly (the publisher) and Yahoo (the official creator of Yslow). I recommend reading the Yslow best practices, and taking a look at the Yslow user guide instead.
Started reading through Advanced DOM Scripting by Jeffrey Sambells. Normally would wait to comment until I got to the end, but I am excited that he mentioned both the scope chain and closures in the first chapter! As my sister would say, “Sweet Lovin!”
I created a fresh installation and played around with it for a little while. Upon moving these WordPress posts over, it broke. Since I still had all of my pieces lined up, I removed everything and did a second fresh install. Posting broke that one too. I guess that I am going to have to actually watch the videos on the website to figure out what is going on. (I hate having to read the manual! I’d much rather just start playing with it.)
That being said, it did seem pretty nice. Looks like little pieces of html/css can be specified for each component you are placing on the page. True to their what I have heard, you can customize everything this way. The downside is it takes a lot of work and planning to customize EVERYTHING. Add to that the {template syntax} and it looks like quite a bit of work. We’ll see how much time I have given all of the other stuff I am working on.
I placed an order today and should receive $200 worth of books from amazon sometime soon. Programming, OOP, design, and typography, and that Microformats book. Those, and the other books sitting on my shelves waiting to be read should be more than enough light reading for a while.
