Diolch yn fawr
to Em³ for helping me fix the archive page which has been broken since the upgrade to WordPress 2. Would you believe that all it took was the addition of Sören Weber’s Exec-PHP plugin? No, me neither. But there you go.
The deadline for signing up to the BrowserCam annual subscription to the Premium service is fast approaching, just a few places left so leave a comment if you’re interested.
Also, if you’re keen to learn php (from beginner level) or css (from intermediate level) and would like to join a study group, let me know and I’ll point you in the right direction. The text for the css group will either be CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions (Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Cameron Moll) or More Eric Meyer on CSS.
And now for the rant
The price for CSS Mastery is $22.04 on Amazon.com (that’s £11.86) but to buy it from Amazon.co.uk it costs £22.79, a whopping $42.36, almost double the price! Why?
I’ve foregone the pleasure of tucking myself up on the sofa with a pot of tea and a book by buying the CSS Mastery book direct from the publisher, Friends of Ed, as an e-book but…
Rant #2
There are quite a few errata. Fine, I can understand the need to get books out quickly in today’s market but why can’t they be corrected in the downloadable e-book? They’re password protected to prevent text editing (okay, I can highlight and notate text) but surely someone could have spent an hour amending the source files and creating a new pdf for download? Send me the files and I’ll do it!
/end rant.
May 10th, 2006 22:54
If the text for the study group is CSS Mastery I’m interested (I have it already but not read it yet).
And possibly interested in the BrowserCam thing too, what details do you need?
May 11th, 2006 01:08
Ah I’m sorry Gordon, the BrowserCam Premium group was filled earlier today but there are other groups, I’ll dig out the information and email you.
The css (and php) study groups are here – don’t let the name fool you, there are plenty of chaps on board!
The plan is to announce the text tomorrow (11th), give people a few days to order and receive it then work out a study plan starting the following Friday (19th). Which of course is the day the granddaughters arrive for an action packed weekend of babysitting. But I think it’s going to be great fun. And best of all it’ll force me to get my nose stuck into the book and start learning properly rather than doing things piecemeal as I have to date.
Those already signed up come from a variety of backgrounds, mostly intermediate level css but a mix of coder, designer and hobbyist.
May 11th, 2006 23:57
I would love to do the study groups, but the timing monumentally sucks for me. Darn. Maybe next time :)
May 15th, 2006 22:40
Thanks for choosing CSS Mastery for your study group. I’m not exactly sure what it is or how it works, but it looks fun. Hope you enjoy the book.
Regarding the price, the cover price of the book is less in the US than the UK so there is always going to be some disparity. I’m not exactly sure why, but this seems to be standard in IT publishing. Amazon then choose to discount the book, and the amount they discount it by fluctuates depending on demand and availability. So at the moment it’s showing at £15.83.
I agree that the errata is annoying, and we tried to keep errors to a minimum. I can’t tell you how many times I read through the book, but sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees. The book was also checked twice by a tech editor, twice by a copy editor and again by the production editor. Yet despite all this, errors still manage to creep into the printed copy.
However I agree that there is no excuse for errors in the e-book, so will get onto the publisher straight away and make sure they sort this out.
May 16th, 2006 10:06
Hi there,
myself and Andy Budd were both shocked to see this blog posting, so I thought it required an urgent response.
As a reply to your first point, I looked at amazon.co.uk today, and it looks like the book is selling for about £15.00, which is about what I’d expect – I almost jumped out of my chair when I thought it was being sold for around £23.00!
Now on to the eBook issue – apologies for this. I can accept that we have been rather slow in getting the errata updated on the eBook. I’m gonna make sure this happens in the next 48 hours, and we’ll give you access to an updated copy asap after that.
All the best to you.