So as I said in my new years resolutions I am going to try to review more books.  Let’s start with probably the last physical book I bought from Smashing Magazine. The Smashing Book 6.

Synopsis:

The Smashing Book series has always been one of my go to resources in terms of design and development. It always seems like the creators and writers are way ahead of the game. This years book is no different and with UX and design and programming growing bigger so does book number 6. Now what does the book cover this year? Quite a lot actually, from VR to chatbots to grid layouts to even Single Page Applications.

What I Took Away:

There is a lot to cover in this book but some of the important stuff I took away was making websites more accessible to people with disabilities. Something that we tend to not think about when building websites. How to use clicks and areas properly and always being considerate of people using accessibility readers. If you build accessibility while you are building the website it makes life easier, then coming back and trying to test it after everything is complete. Also the book points out a few great websites to start testing what you are building and can point you in the right direction for getting started and moving forward.

Two chapters that definitely did help me are the ones that focused on CSS, such as custom properties and using SASS / LESS and building grid layouts. Now for those of you who don’t know, but CSS isn’t just CSS anymore. Using a compiler like SASS / LESS make life so much easier. The way I have been using my CSS preprocessors is by using variables so I can easily change out colors and make my projects that use SASS a lot more like a template. Now since I am still playing with custom properties, it seems to make CSS feel more like a javascript function focusing on global vs local properties.

Who Is This Book For

If you are a designer / developer or just even a marketing person, I would highly suggest you pick up this book, Especially the physical one. It’s not just because someone mistook it for a bible, but because it will definitely help teach you a number of things that you might not know. Also it will prepare you for the future because there was a number of things I didn’t know and that I plan on further learning about.

IN CONCLUSION

Well I hope you enjoyed my first book review, I will be reviewing a few more books in the coming weeks and I will continue working on more informative posts. Also if you buy the smashing book, buy the physical version it feels so choice.

If you wish to buy it…click the image below

See you space cowboy…