There’s a saying that’s attributed to physicist Richard Feynman, “If you want to master something, teach it.” After 30+ years of professionally creating websites, I thought I was a pretty good web developer. I worked at some major organizations in the NYC metro area, launched many successful websites, and teaching web development is part of that history. There are lots of web tutorials on this website and on the Photics.TV YouTube channel. But with the “Photics Web Guide”, it’s on a ridiculously different level.
One of the reasons that this book project is taking so long is that almost every page has been a battle. There’s constant fact-checking, learning of new information, creating insightful examples, and making things look pretty in black and white. 😄
This could very well be the best Photics book yet!
However, working at that higher standard is taking more time. Surprisingly, the average number of pages created per day is just… two.
Perhaps that pace is not unusual for a book project. If you’ve been thinking about writing your own book, and you maintained that schedule, you could have a big book in approximately one year. The problem is that the goal is to finish this book before summertime.
Word is that a beta of Hype 5 is planned by Tumult. The Photics Web Guide would be a great companion for an updated version of A Book About Hype. While the exact schedule of Hype 5 is not publicly known, it would be nice to be ready for that beta.
But the main point right now is that… WOW …a lot of new information is being learned. This book is changing the way that I work. Now that I better understand CSS selectors, selector specificity, and modern techniques, I look at web projects differently. Even working on the basic HTML part of the book included a lot of insight. There were some behind-the-scenes changes to Photics.com as a direct result of creating the Photics Web Guide.
There’s a lot of talk that AI is going to replace coding. Well, look at Hype. Over a decade ago, it was marketed as a “No coding required” solution for web animation. And yet, using Hype is how I truly learned to use JavaScript. That means there could be a knowledge gap, as it becomes less desirable to teach the fundamentals of web development.
This book aims to meet that need. A lot has changed in the last few years of web tech. It’s way more difficult for beginners to get started in web design and development. When I first learned about the Internet, it was before web browsers supported CSS and JavaScript. And for experienced web developers, perhaps a new guidebook could be handy. I know I’m looking forward to having this printed book in my hands, in order to quickly look up lots of useful information about web development.
There’s a long list of promotional / educational videos being planned too.
So, I’m going to get back to work. This post is just to give the Photics community a status update. If you’ve been wondering what’s going on with the Hype book or the web book, that’s the latest information. There’s much to do! 😄