October 31, 2002
I'm about a third of the way through Joe Clark's Building Accessible Websites. This is without question the best book on web accessibility out there. Read it. I skimmed Constructing Accessible Web Sites a few months back, and it's quite good, but I find that I'm actually reading Clark's book. Part of that is the visual design. I never thought I would care so much about the visual and tactile appeal of a technical book (not that this is necessarily a technical book). Perhaps I was taking certain publishers' work for granted. glasshaus has been publishing some very good books, but their design makes the books rather unpleasant reading. Clark went to great lengths to make his book a worthwhile experience on so many more levels than just the words.
In other news, O'Reilly has published the third edition of Unix Power Tools. This is to Unix what the Perl Cookbook is to Perl. Once I had a basic handle on how to use Unix, how to move around, do basic administration, etc., I used Unix Power Tools to help me grok Unix, to understand its idiom, shortcuts, and mindset. I'm not sure whether I'll buy this — I'm curious to see what's been updated in this third edition — but I will wholeheartedly recommend it.
Too, a new collection of Rising Stars comics has been released, Visitations. This pulls together some ... I don't know, apocryphal stories, I guess you could say. If you're a Straczynski fan, you should read this series.
