Yesterday was an epic day for packages. We got Christmas presents from two different family members as well as a box from Amazon for Mark (that is apparently for me for Christmas). Jaryth was beside himself opening the boxes and putting packages under the tree. But the best box, from my perspective, was the heavy box from Pearson. My book has come out! It has been a long time in the making of this book. Some of the problems were my fault, some were caused by other people, some well, who knows why it took so long. I’m just happy it’s here. I had been tracking Amazon.com and watching as the release date moved inexorably out from late September, to October, to early November, to Thanksgiving, to early December, and the last time I looked it was scheduled to be available on December 26th. “What if people wanted to give it as a Christmas present?” I wailed in my head. Of course, the less histrionic part of my brain replied “who would get a responsive web design book for Christmas?” But you never know… So then last Friday, my awesome tech editor, Jon Morin, posted to Facebook that he’d gotten his copy of the book. Jealousy struck! But I stayed calm. In fact, this was a good thing as it meant that the December 26th date might not be right, and it might get out on shelves and on Amazon.com before Christmas. And in fact, Amazon currently says it will be available on December 19th. Hooray! Buy your copy today! It looks amazing. It’s in full color, and I think you’ll find it really useful for learning and doing RWD. And if you do buy a copy, I would really appreciate it if you could write a review on Amazon when you’re done. Let me know what you liked, what you didn’t like and what you want to see more of. All comments are appreciated. I’ll also have code samples and other information on my website HTML5 in 24 Hours

I’m starting to wonder if other web design sites DELETE the anachronistic and ultra-conservative design comments. It seems like whenever I write a post talking about a more modern style design, I ONLY get comments talking about how horrible it is because it’s new and different. Of course, they don’t say that’s the reason, but that’s what it really comes down to. Makes me depressed, as I really like looking at the new stuff, but when the only feedback I get is “eww, that sucks, the scroll bar makes the car move, it doesn’t scroll down the page” it’s hard to stay motivated. Specifics:
I posted a picture of the Beetle.com website last Wednesday as an example of an innovative site using HTML5 in a new and exciting way. This resulted in (so far) five comments. Two of which were positive, which is more than usual and the rest were critical with one guy going into detail about all the reasons that he found the “quality” of the site lacking. Most of them were upset with the usability, which makes me wonder if they were viewing it in some crappy browser like IE7 or something. They don’t say. My Opinion
I think that the web is changing. The classic website with “pages” and sections is going to go away and be replaced by sites like Beetle.com that are more like experiences, like games, like applications. Content is still going to be very important, but websites are going to need to compete with all the other things vying for our attention like video, radio, television, movies, other websites, mobile apps, desktop apps, and oh yeah, our work… (what’s that?) Websites that are fun and draw you in are going to be more successful than ones that are just focused on slapping up “content.” I think the other thing the people commenting on my Beetle.com post need to remember is what the audience of the Beetle.com site is and the demographics of who Beetle.com is trying to attract. Sadly, I suspect that the demographics of people who come to my site on About.com are much older (and more boring and less “hip”) than who Beetle.com is going for. Volkswagen wants to promote the new beetle as being “more power, less flower” but they also want to get on the cutting edge bandwagon of HTML5 siteapps. So they built a site that reflects that. It’s not just a website and it’s not just an app, it’s both

I finished Chapter 19 last night. Very stoked. It’s moving along quite nicely. Chapter 20 is currently Offline Web Applications. But I think I need to re-order it to put Web Storage before it.

The other thing writing this is doing is making me more and more interested in writing a new theme for this blog. I’ll make it HTML5, but I’m not sure if I’ll use my art for it or not. I’ll have to think about it. Of course, that isn’t going to happen until after the book is completed.

If you didn’t know, I’m working on a book—Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 for Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours, and it’s been taking up a lot of my time. I just finished chapter 17—HTML5 Links. Whew! And I hope to have chapter 18 done by Saturday. It’s hard because this weekend was the first really sunny weekend we’ve had all year, and I had to sit inside for a good portion of it writing about HTML5 Drag and Drop. (Thanks, Sandi, for the suggestion for how to lengthen it! While I didn’t implement your suggestions—it ended up long enough without any sex scenes—I’m still looking forward to writing Drag and Drop—the “Good Parts” Version!)

My editor sent me a note about Apple’s new HTML 5 Showcase and my first reaction was to chat with her about it. But then my brain kicked in and I realized that she wanted me to write something about it. :-)

I’m slow, but I do catch on eventually.

I posted a note about writing this template and discussed the virtues of using HTML 5 or lack thereof. I still think HTML 5 is cool, but if you know your audience is using Internet Explorer, you need to head back to HTML 4/XHTML 1 -land if you want it to work. :-(