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tooling / book-of-modern-frontend-tooling

The Front-end Tooling Book
http://tooling.github.io/book-of-modern-frontend-tooling/
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Book or Website? #14

Closed stephenplusplus closed 10 years ago

stephenplusplus commented 10 years ago

Hey, I think I'm a little fuzzy on if we're going for paperback book or PDF/online "book". If we're not planning on going the printed book route as the target consumption format, I would rather morph this project into "the official website of expert use cases, pro-tips, and getting started instructions on modern day frontend tooling."

Instead of splitting up content into "the Grunt chapter" and "the Bower chapter", I envision those "chapters" being "pages" on the website. From that "Bower page", you would then branch out based on your experience level. Maybe only 2 or 3-tiered, from "I've heard the name, but have no idea what it is" -> "I've used it, but have no idea what I'm doing" -> "I'm an expert. Feed me pro tips and perf optimization!"

This way, we have more room to grow outside of the confines of a one-size-fits-all chapter. Basically, the idea described above is exactly what I had in mind for taptapship almost a year ago! Seeing the growing suite of tools over the last year and the awesome response from the community over this project, it might be worth considering.

Just wanted to throw this out there before it's too late!

sindresorhus commented 10 years ago

I would say both. Books are still nice for quiet readings. So, book in HTML as the website, downloadable ebook, and hopefully an eventual printed version.

addyosmani commented 10 years ago

Lots of great points brought up @stephenplusplus!

The way I originally envisioned the project was an online book (and downloadable) which had super-focused chapters that we could keep up to date. Maybe something physical at some point if there was interest in it. For the version first, I think that having a single tier is something we could realistically strive for and achieve.

Multiple tiers are an awesome idea, but something which I think would be more feasible for us to aim towards once the project has shipped something useful that we can then iterate on. Make sense?

Back in my days involved in the jQuery learning site, we spent a super-long time trying to put together a tiered experience and imo that ended up delaying the project from shipping in the first year. I'd love to see us ship in the next few months and then build upon that if others think thats the right way forward too.

wibblymat commented 10 years ago

Release early, release often. A simple book giving an outline of things is more useful than an unfinished book with more planned detail. It also gives the community more opportunity to contribute because more people will be aware of the project before it is finished.

sindresorhus commented 10 years ago

Something like https://github.com/futurepress/epub.js could also be interesting as it's better for reading than just a long page. Demo: http://fchasen.github.io/epub.js/demo/

addyosmani commented 10 years ago

I agree. I've been wanting to try out epub.js. Wouldn't mind trialling it to see how well it works.