Today I am going to recommend 2 new books that have just become available for pre-orders.

The first is called Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals. Their first book, Getting Real, is a great read for any Software Development team. It will be out on March 9, 2010, and is only $14.96 for the hardcover version. According to the authors “Everything we know about business is in Rework.” If you’ve ever read or heard Jason Fried speak, that means it will definitely contain a lot of great information.

Second, if you read Smashing Magazine, you probably know their long awaited design book, The Smashing Book is also available for pre-order. Right now they are offering their book for 20% off ($23.90 USD), with free shipping. It will be available sooner that Rework (late September 2009). The early reviews are great, and if its anything like their regular posts, it too be be informative, and a must read.

Give these a try. If you happen to have a pre-release copy, or have some other reading recommendations, I’d love to hear in the comments.

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It’s been another 2 weeks (plus holiday weekend), so here is another wrap up of the tools, links, and other sites that came across my various readers, etc… It could be a good resource, an interesting blog post, or anything I found useful since the last Web Tools Tips and Talk, #8.

NOTE: If you find these useful please note this is not my full list of links, tools and news. As I come across links for use, I add them all to my Effective Development Delicious.com page.
Sometimes I come across a quick link that I don’t want to wait for the Wrap-Up. Those links I send out as I find them on my Twitter account.
Finally, you can always follow my RSS Feed and check out the Tools Tips and Talk Archive.

Feel free to suggest other links in the comments.

Web Tools

• Colabolo Team Collaboration – I do not use this product but I believe strongly in collaboration software, and I also believe in having choices, so here is one you might want to check out.
• ICSI Netalyzr – Having trouble with your internet connection? This tool will help you deduce if you are having a firewall problem, or blocked port, etc…
• pingdom – This site was famous for pinging a site of your choice, and emailing you if it was down. Now they have opened their full site monitoring for free for one site. Great feature at a great deal.

Web Talk/Blogs

• Google changes PageRank flow: Why you should use an iframe in blog comments – Short discussion about Google’s new PageRank algorithm, and how it may affect your comments and nofollow code. If you have comments that allow users to post links, research this and see if it affects you.
• 10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To – Guide to common User Interface design patterns and a discussion about why they should be important to you. Usability is very important, and this is a pretty detailed read.
• 5 things I wish some people wouldn’t install on their PCs – Fun rant about some of the extras people install on their PCs ultimately slowing them down, or making them unusable. You must know someone who has 20 toolbars installed on their web browser?… or maybe you!
• How to adapt Basecamp to an agile methodology – Case study of an actual development shop using BaseCamp for their SCRUM/Agile team.
• CSS Image Replacement, what’s up Matt? – Article and video discussing using CSS to replace text with images. Discusses why you would want to try this, including SEO benefits.

Web Tips/Resources

• 10+ useful jQuery Plugins for web development – Exactly what it says. A good list for jQuery, tips demos, and code. Always good to have in your code toolbox.
• 7 Firefox Add-ons that make Web Development Easier – I’ve posted similar lists before, but if you don’t have these tools installed, you should. /li>
• 50 Fresh JavaScript Tools That Will Improve Your Workflow – More tools for your toolbox if you are a JavaScript programmer.
• LESS – Leaner CSS – Tutorial and examples for producing cleaner CSS code.
• 35 CSS-Lifesavers For Efficient Web Design – Much more in the lines of CSS tips and tricks.

Enjoy, and have a good week.
Post any good resources or links you use in the comments.

image by seanbonner

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It’s been another 2 weeks, so here is another wrap up of the tools, links, and other sites that came across my various readers, etc… It could be a good resource, an interesting blog post, or anything I found useful since the last Web Tools Tips and Talk, #7.

NOTE: If you find these useful please note this is not my full list of links, tools and news. As I come across links for use, I add them all to my Effective Development Delicious.com page.
Sometimes I come across a quick throw away link that I don’t want to wait for the Wrap-Up. Those links I send out as I find them on my Twitter account.
Finally, you can always follow my RSS Feed and check out the Tools Tips and Talk Archive.

Feel free to suggest other links in the comments.

Web Tools

• mobify – There are a few tools out there that do this, but this site creates a slimmed down mobile compatible version of your site. They have free and paid options, but it look like a good place to get your feet wet in the mobile market.
• Notify Mee – Ever have a site you frequent often go down? (ahem…Twitter, Google) When a site you own or use is down, and you want to know when it comes back, simply go here, enter the url, and the email where you’d like to be notified, and they will send you a status when its safe to go back.
• Convert PDF to Word – Upload a PDF, click convert, and you will receive a word Doc (DOC). Simple, free, useful. Sometimes that’s all you need.
• Iconza – Customizable icons for your web site. – Create custom icons to use for free on your site. Tweak the style, size, and color.

Web Talk/Blogs

• DeepTrawl Helps Webmasters Find & Fix Site Errors Quickly, Simply – Quick review of a pretty good tool that traverses/spiders your site looking for typos, broken images and links. You can even schedule it to run at set times and get a report.
• Google Wave: A Complete Guide – I realize Google Wave was announced a few weeks ago, but if you want to weed through the hype, or just missed the discussion Mashable has put together a great guide.
• Monitor Content Copying On Your Site Using Tynt Tracer – Good article discussing a tool that you can setup to check if others are plagiarizing your content. If you are paranoid, or even if you share your content openly and are curious, check out this tool.
• Google Docs gets x’ier with .docx and .xlsx support – Google now supports the x extension that is common in the newest versions of Office. docx, xlsx, etc…
• Adobe service puts browsers side by side – Interesting tool from Adobe called BrowserLab to help you view your site across multiple browsers simultaneously. There are a few ways to do this already, and as a developer/designer, you may already have your favorite. but, Adobe makes good products, so its worth checking out before they start charging for it.

Web Tips/Resources

• EntityCode – A Clear and Quick Reference to HTML Symbol Entities Codes – Simple HTML reference for those quirky HTML codes you sometimes need. Like registered trademark, copyright, dollar and currency signs, etc… Bookmark this one, you’ll need it someday.
• 10 HTML Tag Crimes You Really Shouldn’t Commit – Tutorial I found from twitter.com/KISSmetrics reviewing some simple HTML best practices. Or rather bad practices to avoid.
• OOPhoto – Another Attempt At Learning Object Oriented Programming (OOP) In ColdFusion – Ben nadel writes great instructional programming series. This one focuses on writing a photo gallery on ColdFusion, with a focus on Object Oriented Design. If any of these facts interest you, check it out.
• Useful checks to test for XSS attacks on your ColdFusion site – Quick post that discusses how to check if your ColdFusion site is vulnerable to XSS (Cross Site Scripting Attacks)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers – Want to view browser source in Notepad, or notepad++? This quick tutorial tells you how to change the default viewer for various popular browsers.
• Effective Strategy To Estimate Time For Your Design Projects – I wrote a post about estimating resources and projects this week. Coincidently Smashing Magazine also ran a really good article about this topic. Its a very good read, with a lot of details.

Enjoy, and have a good weekend.
Post any good resources or links you use in the comments.

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You may have noticed the new addition to the site recently. I have added an Amazon Bookstore to my header navigation and to the right column of the site. While I do make a small percentage off of any sales, this is also an opportunity to showcase books I have read and found useful to my coding and management style. I have read most of the books here, and if i didn’t they are in my Amazon Wishlist for future reading.

A lot of the ideas for my blog are formulated from my experiences and findings. Many are based on things I have read and various discussions with peers. Like i said in my early posts, I do read and keep up to date with many of the latest methodologies, but I adapt and try to fit them into the reality of working in a corporate environment. I do not blindly chase and accept all the latest trends.

I would like to briefly discuss some of the books I’ve chosen to showcase in my store and why they would be of use to you. I do not read a lot of code books, many of them are out of date before they are published. The web is the perfect resource for changing data. But for timeless concepts, book are still important to have on hand. And if you are truly anti print, get a Kindle.

Web Design and Development

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. This is one of the best all around web design books. Steve is a fan of simple usability techniques. He wants to keep things easy and clean. He is a huge advocate of usability testing. He makes it clear how useful usability tests are and how easy and cheap they are to conduct. Since passing this around my group we conduct usability tests on a regular basis. The book is a very fast read, and if you read one book on my list, make it this one.

Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design By Robert Hoekman Jr. This book makes a good companion to Don’t Make Me Think. It also talks about simple, clean design and how the user experience should be the most important factor when creating web apps. A lot of my Knowing your users will help make effective decisions post, is based on some of these ideas.

Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer By Bryan Eisenberg, John Quarto-vonTivadar A good intro the A/B and multivariate testing. It focuses on Google Website Analyzer specifically but many of the concepts can be applied to any testing tool such as Omniture Offermatica. My first 2 books talk a lot about the importance of testing but does not go into specifics on how to achieve this. This book fills in a lot of the gaps.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day By Avinash Kaushik Avinash is widely considered one of the top web analytics gurus and he focuses on Google Analytics. If you use Google Anlytics, then this book is very practical. Google makes setting up their analytics package so easy, but sometimes it is hard to extract exactly what you need from their tool. Avenish explains concepts like conversions and also explains their importance. Google Analytics help is so hard to come by, this book really provides a strong basis for working with the tool.

Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application By 37signals. This book is really a composite of essays written by 37Signals. It gives you a window into their world of Getting Real, the philosophy upon which their company runs. I’ve often said my feelings of effective development are basically a practical spin on a lot of Getting Real. Getting Real is sometimes too ideal, but you can’t formulate what works for you without first reading the original

Team Management

Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace By Ricardo Semler This is a wonderful, cheap and fast read. This book is very entertaining, and the story is very unique. It explains a lot of groundbreaking management techniques that Ricardo Semler began in his company in Brazil years ago. Many management techniques have since been adapted from his still unique ideas. Even if you do not run your company you will benefit from this read. I have found many little areas where I try to work in adaptions of his leadership techniques.

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke–the Simple Change That Can Make Your Job Terrific By Cali Ressler, Jody Thompson
Similiar to Maverick, it applies groundbreaking but extremely practical ideas for workplace management. Once again, read it and formulate what is effective for you. These are not bibles, rather they are written to get you thinking of how it is applicable to your unique workplace.

Those are the books i have read recently and felt inspired to share with you. I have added other groups in my Amazon store that I have either placed in my wishlist or feel passionate about.

The project management group consists of books written for project management in an agile environment. traditional project management is dying. I plan to write a post shortly about how we are able to manage projects in a pseudo agile workplace.

The business and marketing section consists of 2 book I plan to read soon. I have read good reviews of both. Basic marketing is a necessary skill for today’s developers and managers. Traditionally it is not taught in computer science curriculum. More often we are put in positions where we need to market our teams and the products we build. As projects get more agile, and do not come with hundred page accompanying docs, management needs to be sold on features and iterative changes. This is where marketing yourself and your group comes into play.

The web books from Amazon is simply a window into Amazon’s web development genre. It is broad but you may find it useful for finding some good tech books.

Finally I am becoming a huge fan of netbooks. They will not replace you primary computer, but now that specialized devices like the Kindle and iPhone are becoming so popular, I suggest you look to a netbook instead. Rather than getting a device that is just like a computer, why not actually buy an actual computer. They are small, relatively powerful, and cheap. I have a Dell Mini 9, and love it.

Photo by IntDev

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It’s been another 2 weeks, so here is another wrap up of the tools, links, and other sites that came across my various readers, etc… It could be a good resource, an interesting blog post, or anything I found useful since the last Web Tools Tips and Talk, #6. Feel free to suggest other links in the comments.

Web Tools

• coloRotate – Cool 3-D looking tool that enables you to find color matches and develop palettes for design.
• Chartle.net – interactive charts online! – Easy tool to build charts and graphs online to embed on your website. Early Beta.

Web Talk/Blogs

• 10 WordPress Plugins Every New Blogger Should Install – This is an article I wrote for The 2.0 Life, if you are new to WordPress, you might find it useful.
• Web 3.0 or Not, There’s Something Different About 2009 – Short article about some new trends that are emerging in the web.
• Google: Web and browsers will lead app development – At Google I/O 2009 in San Francisco Google execs spent time showing developers how future web apps will mimic many features of current desktop applications.
• Online Publishers: Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow – Brief summary of one of the talks at the Web 3.0 conference about web publishing and content.

Web Tips/Resources

• Apps Status Dashboard – Google Apps Status Dashboard enables users and businesses to monitor the status of individual Google Apps services. Users of Google Apps can now view the status of individual services such as Gmail/Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Video for businesses.
• 120+ Javascript, Ajax, jQuery Mega Toolbox – Huge sampling of code tips, tricks, tutorials etc… For Ajax, CSS, jQuery, you name it.
• Use jQuery to “turn off the lights” while watching videos – jQuery code to mimic the close the lights feature on YouTube.

Misc. ‘Fun’ Stuff

• MonaTweeta II on Flickr – This person has created a rough estimation of the Mona Lisa using 1 Tweet.

Enjoy, and have a good weekend.
Post any good resources or links you use in the comments.

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A few weeks ago I wrote that good design is a dying but important art. While I do believe that is true, there is also too much of a good thing. Sometimes you can get too caught up in the ‘ideal’, worrying and designing things to be perfect. Deciding what is the right blend of ideal and pragmatic is also an art, and in my opinion one of the most important tasks of a developer or manager.

I have worked on many web projects in many roles. I have been a junior developer, senior developer, and the technical architect where I was not going to do any of the actual coding. Whether developing or designing you are constantly faced with a challenge. Developing the ideal or textbook vs a real or pragmatic approach. My philosophy is to lean towards pragmatic. I believe you should be versed in the textbook methodologies as they are very useful and it is wasteful to reinvent the wheel. You need them in your arsenal to apply when necessary. In the end if we have a production quality piece of code that runs with minimal issues, and can be updated, do I really care if my developers used the ‘correct’ factory or design methodologies for the project? I do not. The correct methodology for me is the one that works and gets the job done on time. Again I want to re-iterate that does not mean I believe in sloppy, spaghetti code. I certainly do not. But I definitely value function over form.

A lot of these development styles are fads. Yes things are constantly being improved, but just because something is new, its not always better. Extreme programming leads the way to another style. Configuration and initialization files were all the rage for years, now abandoned in favor of self describing code. Developers could sit and debate the correct factory to use for a job in the same time I could code the whole project.

We are builders, we take a tool (programming language) and we create product. So
just like there are many ways to build a house, the same holds true for web development. Sure some methods are better than others, but if your team is talented enough most of the decisions they make will be good enough for the job.

You need to build the product for as long as its lifespan. Not every house is built to stand 500 years, and neither is code. Just like a builder in Montana does not build a house to be hurricane proof you should not build for problems you don’t have. You should build code in a way that it can be modified and extended should the need arise. But if you are building a niche craft site with only a handful of users and 5 products to sell, do not waste time designing to be the next Amazon.com. When you add more products you can worry if your shopping cart class has the extendability to grow, just get the code live.

My advice is if you are a senior tech lead or manager you should keep up with the new methodologies that are making a wave. But don’t chase them all, and don’t distract your development team with all of them. They have a lot of code to write and having them chase the next development fad is not in anyone’s best interest. As a manager you should know when to push your developers towards a certain technology, and where to adapt it to fit your team’s and company’s needs. You may spend 2 years designing the perfect framework for a job but that is just not practical, and in most companies it will not be tolerated. Most senior managers do not care about how it’s done, just that it was completed under budget and on time. As a tech manager your role is to find the most effective blend of ideal and practical to keep management happy and your developers skill set ready to tackle the next project.

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As usual, a semi-weekly wrap up of links, tidbits, and other sites that came across my plate. Code, development, management, anything I found interesting since the last post. Feel free to suggest other links in the comments.

Web Tools

• No new ‘tools’ caught my eye this week. Anyone have anything cool they have been using?

Web Talk/Blogs

• 10 skills developers will need in the next five years – Good article about skills needed by developers to prepare for the future of web development.
• Experiences deploying a large-scale infrastructure in Amazon EC2 – Technical article about a real life deployment onto the Amazon EC2 cloud

Web Tips/Resources

• 27 Must Read Tips and Tutorials for Bloggers [Day 6 - 31DBBB] – Great set of articles for bloggers, and even for anyone who runs a website. Lots of good info and links. Part of an ongoing series.
• 15 Firefox add-ons for Web developers – This is an often repeated list but if you are not using these, or at least familiar with them you should be.
• The Online Collaboration Tools Guide – This is a list for people who need to collaborate with others when using docs, spreadsheets, etc… Google docs does a great job a this, but there are other options out there.
• 10 Cool Things We’ll Be Able To Do Once IE6 Is Dead – The developer’s dream of not having to code for IE6 quirks is getting closer…

Enjoy, and have a good weekend.
Post any good resources or links you use in the comments.

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Semi-weekly wrap up of links, tidbits, and other sites that came across my plate. Code, development, management, anything I found interesting since the last post. Feel free to suggest other links in the comments.

Web Tools

• CoTweet™ – How business does Twitter – Very cool business app for twitter. Allows multiple people to use and manage a twitter account. Still in Beta, grab an invite.
• HostMonk – Compare hosting packages – Dedicated hosting, VPS hosting, Shared hosting – Good site to compare prices and features if you are looking for a new hosting environment.

Web Talk/Blogs

• O’Reilly: The Web is still learning, but it can teach, too – Web 2.0 conference is going on in San Fran this week. Despite the lame name and bad economy hurting attendance, I’ve seen a few good articles coming out of here. Tim O’Reilly usually has something interesting to say, and here he talks about how Web 2.0 is not a version number but rather a chance for rebirth after the dot-com bust.
• Continuous deployment in 5 easy steps – I’m still reading this one, my verdict is not in, but I’m always interested in development and deployment techniques. There are things to be learned from all styles.

Web Tips/Resources

• 14 Blog comments design considerations – Good design article about how to display comments on your site.

That’s all I really got this week. You may recall, I did get discouraged weeding through April Fool’s content this year.
Enjoy, and have a good weekend.
Post any good resources or links you use in the comments.

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Semi-weekly wrap up of links, tidbits, and other sites that came across my plate.   Code, development, management, anything I found interesting since the last post.  Feel free to suggest other links in the comments.

Web Tools

• 15 Helpful In-Browser Web Development Tools – Most people are going to be familiar with these tools, especially if you found this blog, but nonetheless, its a good list to keep handy. Even if you keep the list to help new junior developers setup their browsers for development.
• Free Web Resources – I only recently bookmarked this site, and follow it briefly. So far what i’ve seen has been borderline. I will add it to my RSS reader and give it a few weeks. Does anyone read this site?

Web Talk/Blogs

• The Most Powerful Word is No – Short message from 37Signals about saying NO.
• How to Be a Program Manager – Good article about a program manager and why good software teams need one. I would refer to this role as a Product Manager, and I plan to post my thoughts on Product Vs Project Managers roles in Web Development soon.
• Web Development is Moving On – Are you? – I really like this article. Talks about the changes in Web Development, and how we need to change with it to remain relevant. I recommend reading this article.

Web Tips/Resources

• Top 5 Sites To Learn Some CSS Programming – Good list of some intro sites for beginner CSS.
• 9 Common Usability Blunders – Anyone developing web software should keep these basics in mind when designing UIs.

Post any good resources or links you use in the comments.

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Today, I am going to post a little weekly wrap up of links, tidbits, and other sites that came across my plate. Anything that I found useful, and aids web development and/or team management.  This will not be a huge list of links, it will be tools I actually find to be practical and useful as a web developer and manager.  Sometimes it may be a blog post, sometimes a full featured web app.  I will post more as I accumulate them from week to week. Since this is my first of these, I am digging into my arsenal of delicious bookmarks to grab some old favorites of mine.  So you may have seen some before (possibly awhile ago), but others may be new to you.  Feel free to suggest other links in the comments.

Web Tools

Web Talk/Blogs

Web Tips/Resources

Post any good resources or links you use in the comments.

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