I’m very excited to be holding a copy of my new book, The Modern Web, in my hands, and nervous to see what everyone else thinks when it goes on sale next week. If you’d like a copy you can get a whopping 40% off when you pre-order through the publisher in the next week — plus every print copy comes with a FREE eBook. I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering, and look forward (guardedly!) to hearing what you think.

My new book, The Modern Web, will be released at the end of this month, and if you’re interested in reading a sample you can download a PDF of Chapter 6: Device APIs. Readers in North America can now pre-order a copy from the Barnes & Noble website, or drop in to a B&N store in a few weeks.

I am delighted and very proud to announce my new book, The Modern Web. It’s about the modern open web technologies — HTML5, CSS3, SVG, JavaScript, DOM APIs, et al — that are required to build websites and applications in the new multi-device era. Basically, it’s about the Web Platform, but my publishers didn’t think the word “platform” was sexy enough so I had to drop it.

It’s not quite finished yet — I’m still in a final round of edits — but is planned for release in April. I’ll be further promoting it nearer that time (of course), but if you’re interested in pre-ordering you can get good prices from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Or, if you prefer, you can pre-order “The Modern Web” directly from No Starch Press and get a 30 percent discount and a free eBook copy. It’s a great deal.

I’m equally delighted to announce that I’ll be speaking at Future of Web Design in London, in May of this year, along with a great line-up of excellent speakers. I’ll also be giving a one-day CSS3 Masterclass before the conference. Tickets are on sale now, and if you book before 1^st March you’ll get £100 off the total price. Another great deal.

My article Adventures in the Third Dimension, published by Smashing Magazine earlier this year, is now available in one of the collected Smashing eBooks; buy Mastering CSS3 for $4.99, or get the whole Coding Bundle of five eBooks for $21.90.

There are a lot of books on web development, and even more writing available for free online. You have to have something special to stand out in this market, and the latest to try is Smashing Book #3: Redesign The Web. Smashing Magazine used to be known for their ‘Top 50 Whatever’ lists, but in the last few years, as clones and competitors sprung up around them, they’ve carved out their own space online with quality practical writing, so I was keen to see what was in their latest book of original content.

Read the full article

There are many who believe that the internet will make us stupid, so it may come as a relief to know that some 2,400 years ago Socrates believed* that the same would happen because of the new art of writing:

This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.

And misunderstanding the capabilities of computers is not a recent invention either; in the mid-19^th Century the mathematician Charles Babbage, theoretical inventor of the first mechanical computer, complained:

On two occasions I have been asked, — “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

I found both of these quotes in James Gleick’s The Information, which despite my being only four chapters in, and the fact that it’s only March, is a candidate for book of the year.

* According to Plato.