Posts

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Add nth-child to your css toolkit

I have skimmed over nth-child (css) for the past few years, effectively ignoring it and boy was I silly for doing so. Picture this typical scenario:

I often have items in a list that are laid out horizontally and covering multiple rows. Until I discovered nth-child I was closing that list at the end of each row and starting a new list for each row so that I could control the margins and padding to ensure each item was correctly aligned.

Although this works it is very wasteful and assumes that all rows are different which isn’t always true. Then I stumbled across a tutorial by Trevor Davis who works at the amazing Viget. In a tutorial about css-transforms and diamonds I discovered he was using nth-child to change the margin for items that start on each row and it was this explanation that was my light-bulb moment with nth-child.

Over at Css-tricks where I could lose days learning new techniques  they explain how nth-child works very well and I suggest you head over there now to see it in action.

I have just added nth-child to my base templates and implemented it for a current project for CUPP. On the Shop page I have used nth-child to space the 4th and 5th items so they can sit nicely between the row above.

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A blog as ebook

This week Amber Thomas released an ebook of all her blog posts from the Jisc digital infrastructure  team blog.

Having read pretty much all of those posts over the years and getting a lot out of them, returning the favour by way of an ebook was the least I could do.

Amber explained how everything went pretty well so I don’t have much to add except that including any comments from a blog is a rather interesting point for consideration which i’ll save for a future ramble.

So dust off your ebook reader (oh no he didn’t!) and enjoy the best of Amber Thomas.

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Hello World: travels in virtuality – the ebook

At the weekend I wrapped up a project turning ‘Hello World: travels in virtuality ‘ by Sue Thomas into both Kindle and epub files.

The book was originally released in dead-tree’s format back in 2004 and digital publishing has allowed us to breath a new lease of life into the book and be easily available to the world!

If you want to hear more about how I made the book let me know and i’ll write something but you can just as easily read Ahab! by Craig Mod which covers all the ground and points you to a helpful sample project.  One of the key resources in Craig’s article is to the Kindle previewer which will display the ebook file in all generations of Kindle, saving you having to purchase all of the devices. My top tip is to start with the newest versions and work back until you get bored.

The Kindle version is now available to purchase for only £2.05.

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Audio recordings from Responsive Day Out

Last week I attended the very affordable one day Responsive Day out in Brighton. It was on the subject of emerging practices within the web industry on responsive web design. I really enjoyed the day and think the format of 3x 30min talks per block is really good and I didn’t miss any of the pricey conference “things” they skipped out on to keep the cost down – more of this please!

All of the sessions were recorded and are now available to listen to, enjoy.

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04 Publishing jargon

On my ebook publishing journey I have begun to stumble across processes, stages and phrases that use traditional print terminology. I will note them here for my own sanity and maybe that of others as I figure where it makes sense we should use existing and established phrases.

  • Galley proof – used to describe review copies of a print book
  • Uncorrected proof – commonly used in place of ‘galley proof’ for digital books
  • Name of punctuation and general typography – a list down the right of key technical terms…. a tilde is not a squiggle!
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My reading list for 2013

Another year, another list of the long form books I have read. 2013 is the first year that I have my own personal Kindle (dedicated digital book reader for anybody reading this after about 2015) and it will be interesting to see if I get more read and also “where” I read. I also have a stack of print books that could see me through the next couple of years.

  1. Chimero, Frank. The Shape of Design. 2012  [kindle] – finished 5th January
  2. Bjarnason, Baldur. Knights & Necromancers 2: Loot, kill, obey. 2012 [kindle]  – finished 9th January
  3. Stephenson, Neal. Reamde. 2012 [kindle] – finished 29th  January on London underground
  4. J-Zone. Root for the villain. Rap, bullshit, and a celebration of failure. Cambria Heights, NY, Old Maid Entertainment, 2011. [kindle] – finished 4th February at home
  5. Kawasaki and Welch. APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book, 2013 [kindle] – finished 15th March
  6. The Standardistas. The Craft of Words. Five Simple Steps Publishing Ltd, 2013 [Kindle] – finished 15th March
  7. Wurz, Julia. SuperEgo. 2013 [kindle] – finished  12th April
  8. Guillebeau, Chris. The $100 Startup. 2012 – finished 1st June
  9. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup. 2011  [paperback] – finished 11th August
  10. deWitt, Patrick. The Sisters Brothers. 2011 [paperback] – finished 15th August
  11. Hammersley, Ben. Now for then – how to face the digital future without fear. 2013 [kindle] – finished 17th September in Bordeaux France.
  12. Allen, David. Getting Things Done. 2002 [Kindle] – finished 30th October

 

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Force Kindle to display frontmatter first

When you first load a kindle file it may start on any number of pages as set by the book designer. I am not sure if an ebook should start on the cover as this is visible in the library.

Anyway, a problem I had today was that my book kept starting on the first chapter and bypassing the frontmatter, foreword and introduction.

After various wimperings on the #eprdctn hashtag I stumbled across the solution and am documenting it before I forget.

To control/force the kindle to start on your page of choice you need to do the following it seems:

  1. open content.opf
  2. scroll to the GUIDE section
  3. You only need three items in here – i originally had all chapters but reading around seems to say this is pointless: cover, toc, and your chosen first page as references.
  4. Change/add a reference for your chosen page to <reference type=”text” href=”frontmatter.html”/></reference>
  5. Done

Setting the reference to type fixed the problem. I had read that you need to use “start” but that seemed to be where I failed.

It is interesting to think about what page should be first, would a reader care about frontmatter or just the author and publisher?…. a post for the future me thinks.

Thanks to Tom for leading me to the correct path.

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Public Service Announcement – Jukes

One of my favourite people Matt Jukes is taking a blogging hiatus (like the Black album I hope). It was Matt who first encouraged me to blog about the ‘digital stuff’ I do. So over the past year or so I have been writing bits and pieces and one of the issues I still have is that of ‘voice and direction’. Am I writing for myself as a diary? is it to give back to the community? do i have to write long form? can I just point to things I think are interesting with/without adding a comment? should it always be digital focused or can I just take a moment to post my thoughts on my travels?

Now we are at the top of the year I think I have finally grown comfortable in what my blog is: MY place to do as I please for myself, much like an independent artist. One day it may be posting something epic about digital books and the next it will be a photo of me and my brothers because I can.  I will never top anybody’s top e-learning lists nor ever ‘break through’ to the mainstream and I think I am now comfortable with that. Numbers don’t mean much around here. A few posts that I really took my time over have led to bits of work and praise from people who THANKED ME for writing them. My blog has helped me and a few others which is enough for me.

Keeping on the music theme I guess my blog is more of a ‘freestyle’ (…”I record on duct tape so that my words stick…”) and I’d like to thank Mr Jukes for the encouragement and I look forward to the new you in the 2013 and beyond.

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EPUB check v3.0 now available

Whenever you make an EPUB ebook you should check that it validates (required to convert to kindle too). You can use the web upload or download epubcheck which has just hit version 3.0.

Get it now and join me in tearing your hair out at 1am when you can’t interpret the error code!