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This looks very interesting. Out of curiosity how did you typeset / format the book? It looks gorgeous! Was it in HTML/CSS? In which case I assume you are using

This looks very interesting. Out of curiosity how did you typeset / format the book? It looks gorgeous! Was it in HTML/CSS? In which case I assume you are using Prince XML I guess since you got the pagination just right. Separately on topic, CSS debugging is a hard thing to put in book form, and there is a lack of materials on the web on CSS (stack overflow which is usually great for programming languages, is not as good for front end design in my opinion), so for those learning CSS, or aspiring to be web developers, this could be a great starting resource.

cambalache 6y ago
Seconded. I have tried many options (Paged.js, github books,rdoc,pandoc) and I have never been satisfied with any of them, the process is either very complicated or the books look like crap.
- abhinav22 6y ago
  I had this epiphany recently. Only Prince works well and prince requires payment for commercial use. The rest are terrible! BUT what I realize is my old friend Latex. I’m reverting back to that now, and trying to build a bridge between HTML/CSS and Latex.
systemvoltage 6y ago
I disagree, the typesetting is too fluffy. Very little information on a page and turning pages is laborious, and you lose context. Why are the margins so massive? People have forgotten why margins were created and what they're used for (Accounting for spine, holding the book without obscuring the text). We don't have such restrictions on digital books. A professional typesetter from Springer or Oreilly would have many things to say. Here are some examples from Springer's text books (Note, they're meant to be printed so the margins are set accordingly): TOC: https://i.imgur.com/gREO73C.png https://i.imgur.com/gREO73C.png Content: https://i.imgur.com/1zFmWgV.png https://i.imgur.com/1zFmWgV.png
- atian 6y ago
  Seconded. It's a bit difficult to consume, however I trust the author in his CSS debugging skills as presentation looks great.
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    Indeed :D Otherwise it wouldn’t be easy for him to sell a book on CSS! Very good implicit marketing strategy for a CSS book
- ofrzeta 6y ago
  No hyphenation makes for suboptimal layout (whitespace).
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    I hear this a lot, but how significant do you think the impact is? I haven’t thought of this as an issue but am open minded to change my view.
    - ofrzeta 6y ago
      It's quite significant because as you can see in the sample without hyphenation you get quite a lot of whitespace between words which makes the text hard to read and also look unbalanced because the length of the whitespace varies a lot between different lines.
- abhinav22 6y ago
  The example you shared is also very well done. However in defense of the main book of this thread - the style of its formatting I think is well suited for web developers and the like, having less information on the page makes the problem a bit less daunting for beginner readers. It also increases the page count, which is a good marketing strategy for the publisher. I think most ebooks in general, particularly in web dev space, are void of quality content; so while I completely understand and see your perspective, I think in the context of what is out there, this book is a good effort. I personally would also write a more condensed guide (actually I did :D see here: https://github.com/ashok-khanna/common-lisp-by-example https://github.com/ashok-khanna/common-lisp-by-example), but that’s just you and me having similar style choices :) I need to copy that springer style, it’s beautiful too!

cambalache 6y ago

Seconded. I have tried many options (Paged.js, github books,rdoc,pandoc) and I have never been satisfied with any of them, the process is either very complicated or the books look like crap.

abhinav22 6y ago
I had this epiphany recently. Only Prince works well and prince requires payment for commercial use. The rest are terrible! BUT what I realize is my old friend Latex. I’m reverting back to that now, and trying to build a bridge between HTML/CSS and Latex.

systemvoltage 6y ago

I disagree, the typesetting is too fluffy. Very little information on a page and turning pages is laborious, and you lose context. Why are the margins so massive? People have forgotten why margins were created and what they're used for (Accounting for spine, holding the book without obscuring the text). We don't have such restrictions on digital books. A professional typesetter from Springer or Oreilly would have many things to say. Here are some examples from Springer's text books (Note, they're meant to be printed so the margins are set accordingly): TOC: https://i.imgur.com/gREO73C.png https://i.imgur.com/gREO73C.png Content: https://i.imgur.com/1zFmWgV.png https://i.imgur.com/1zFmWgV.png

atian 6y ago
Seconded. It's a bit difficult to consume, however I trust the author in his CSS debugging skills as presentation looks great.
- abhinav22 6y ago
  Indeed :D Otherwise it wouldn’t be easy for him to sell a book on CSS! Very good implicit marketing strategy for a CSS book
ofrzeta 6y ago
No hyphenation makes for suboptimal layout (whitespace).
- abhinav22 6y ago
  I hear this a lot, but how significant do you think the impact is? I haven’t thought of this as an issue but am open minded to change my view.
  - ofrzeta 6y ago
    It's quite significant because as you can see in the sample without hyphenation you get quite a lot of whitespace between words which makes the text hard to read and also look unbalanced because the length of the whitespace varies a lot between different lines.
abhinav22 6y ago
The example you shared is also very well done. However in defense of the main book of this thread - the style of its formatting I think is well suited for web developers and the like, having less information on the page makes the problem a bit less daunting for beginner readers. It also increases the page count, which is a good marketing strategy for the publisher. I think most ebooks in general, particularly in web dev space, are void of quality content; so while I completely understand and see your perspective, I think in the context of what is out there, this book is a good effort. I personally would also write a more condensed guide (actually I did :D see here: https://github.com/ashok-khanna/common-lisp-by-example https://github.com/ashok-khanna/common-lisp-by-example), but that’s just you and me having similar style choices :) I need to copy that springer style, it’s beautiful too!