If you are an AJAX developer and are interested in bringing your AJAX apps to the desktop using Adobe AIR, Mike Chambers and crew have made their New Adobe AIR Book Available for Download in PDF format.  The book titled Adobe Integrated Runtime for JavaScript Developers Pocketguide is a very concise quick start type guide that will have your first AJAX desktop app up and running in no time at all!

Is Tim O’Reilly about to shake up the publishing industry?  Today he announced that you can now  Buy O’Reilly Books by the Chapter!  In the computer book industry this is a really great idea.  For only $3.99 you get to download one chapter in PDF format, complete with a table of contents and index.   I spend a lot of money on computer books.  Sometimes when I buy a book, I am not interested in the 6 “newbie” chapters or introductory content, but instead I buy the book for the advanced chapters or reference.  Many times I will not buy the book because only one chapter looks to be relevant or useful to me.  I fully expect that I will be purchasing single chapters in the near future.  Thanks Tim!

The Pragmatic Programmers have just released their latest beta book – Pragmatic Ajax. This is an opportunity to purchase and download the book before it’s released and get regular updates as the book is perfected and finalized.

The Pragmatic Programmers are offering a new concept in book publishing called Fridays. A Friday is a short, highly focussed book, typically addressing a specific technical topic. It’s written to the same high-quality as all their other books but are only available in PDF format for a charge of between $7.50 to $10.00.

Purchase at Amazon

The Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, Second Edition by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton is a fantastic book that all web designers should read. The full-text of the book is available online or a hard-copy can be purchased through your favourite book seller.

The online version is presented either chapter-by-chapter (good for printing) or in small sections that can easily be read on screen.

The book is divided into 8 chapters that cover most areas of designing and developing a website:

1. Process
2. Interface Design
3. Site Design
4. Page Design
5. Typography
6. Editorial Style
7. Graphics
8. Multimedia

Buy this book at Amazon

I recently read an excellent book on the process of redesigning a website. The book is titledWeb Redesign: Workflow That Works by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler.

The book is well organized into five sections:

• Step 1—Defining the Core Process: discovery, planning, and clarification;
• Step 2—Developing site structure: content-view, site-view, and page-view;
• Step 3—Visual design and testing: creating, confirming, and handing off;
• Step 4—Production and QA: prepping, building, and testing;
• Step 5—Launch and beyond: delivery, launch, and maintenance.

The book is a very entertaining and easy read and is interspersed with many short case studies. The greatest part of the book is the resources that are included online. You can download all the budget spreadsheets, questionnaires, and other sample forms that are used in the book.

The book gets high reader ratings and reviews at Amazon.com. Check this book out – it is a must read!