Book Review: Creating Flat Design Websites

Creating Flat Design Websites was recently published by Packt Publishing. Written by António Pratas, this book's subtitle is "Design and develop your own flat design websites in HTML." The book features six chapters and is fewer than 100 pages in substantive length. In case you're wondering what the term flat design means, I include a definition here provided in the first chapter of Creating Flat Design Websites:

[Flat design] is characterized by a really minimalistic look, focused on removing all extra elements and effects from a design, such as bevels, shadows, lighting effects, depth, texture, and every element that creates and gives an extra dimension to these elements.

Preface

Staying true to the pattern established in other Packt titles, the Preface of Creating Flat Design Websites contains useful overview information such as a chapter-by-chapter summary of what the book covers, what is required for applying the book's examples (primarily PhotoShop, a text editor, jQuery, and a web browser), and who the intended audience is ("designers and developers who are interested in creating websites").

Chapter 1: What is Flat Design?

The initial chapter of Creating Flat Design Websites defines "flat design" (see definition shown above) and talks about the history of flat design. The coverage of flat design's history included reference to The Flat Design Era post and includes examples of how Microsoft and other vendors have adopted flat designs in recent years.

Chapter 1 contrasts Skeuomorphic and flat designs and lists advantages and disadvantages of each. As part of this, Skeuomorphic design is defined: "Skeuomorphic design, also known as realism, consists of creating visual elements that represent their original, physical counterpart." The chapter also includes a detailed example of creating buttons in both styles using PhotoShop that enables the differences between the styles to be made more obvious. The chapter concludes with side-by-side examples of well-known logos that have been changed from skeuomorphic style to flat style.

Chapter 2: Designing in Flat

The second chapter of Creating Flat Design Websites explains how flat design is more than just minimalistic because flat design has a "specific look and certain rules." The chapter discusses some of these rules about what is "allowed" and "not allowed" for a design to be considered a flat design. For example, shadows are allowed while gradients and textures are not. The chapter discusses applying photographs and illustrations in flat designs and introduces 960 Grid System (fixed grid) and Unsemantic (responsive grid) during its discussion of application of grids in flat designs. The chapter lists five "freely available [predesigned flat] icon sets online."

Typography and fonts in flat design are also covered in the second chapter. This section includes a list of six "font families suggested for use in flat design." The section on flat colors introduces and describes how to use the Flat UI Colors site to select flat colors. The chapter concludes with several pages of screen snapshots demonstrating good flat designs that could be used to inspire readers' own flat designs.

I was happy to see that the author states that flat design is not always the answer. Most books covering a topic act as if the tool or approach being covered always works better than the alternatives and it's always more credible to me when an author evangelizes an approach while also recognizing its limitations.

Chapter 3: Creating a Flat and Usable Interface

Chapter 3 of Creating Flat Design Websites addresses maintaining usability features in flat designs, which can be an issue because flat "style may create several usability problems given its simple look." The chapter outlines reasons that usability is important in web pages and sites and then discusses balancing functional and appearance aspects. The chapter then provides an example of applying some of this chapter's principles to migrate a web site to flat design.

The third chapter explains how flat design can lead to removing of some of the normal cues of the existence of web form and then goes through an example of how to convert a web form to a flat design in which it is still obvious that a web form is involved. The chapter concludes with a discussion regarding "flat readability" and advises to "always look to achieve the best contrast between text and background."

Chapter 4: Designing Your Own Flat Website

Creating Flat Design Websites's fourth chapter describes steps to take to design one's own flat website. Topics include planning the website based on anticipated audience, designing the sections of the website, and using tools such as PhotoShop, uiFaces, flatuicolors.com, Lightbox, and Dribbble to create an attractive web page adhering to flat design principles. The chapter introduces Designmodo's Flat UI Free as a tool for quickly jump-starting the website design process.

Chapter 5: Developing Your Site

Chapter 5 of Creating Flat Design Websites extends the example started in Chapter 4. Topics covered here include laying out the project's directory structure, preparing images and generating image assets with PhotoShop, developing the website with Bootstrap-based Designmodo Flat UI Free, and applying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/jQuery to the website.

Chapter 6: Creating Your Own Flat UI Kit

The final chapter of Creating Flat Design Websites references Alexandre Crenn's FREE Pack UI .PSD as an example of a personal Flat UI kit and then explains how the reader can create his or her own kit. The chapter covers creating elements with PhotoShop, creating sprites with Sprite Cow, writing HTML, writing CSS (includes introduction to CSS3 Generator), and documenting the developed code.

General Observations

• The screen snapshots in the PDF edition I reviewed are full color, which is important for illustrating design principles and examples.
• I liked the frequent use and mention of freely available online resources and tools for building flat design websites.
• It seems difficult to really explain flat design and differentiate it from other minimalistic design styles with words alone. The many examples of existing flat designs and of implementing flat designs helped make the subject clearer.
• Although Creating Flat Design Websites includes content related to design and code development, it seems more focused on design than on code development. For me, this was a positive aspect as I am more comfortable with how to implement the code than I am with how to design the page. I appreciated the tips of flat design and design in general.

Conclusion

Creating Flat Design Websites introduces the concept of flat web designs and provides descriptions, code examples, and visual examples of implementing flat designs. This relatively short book provides a nice introduction into what constitutes flat design and how the reader can begin creating his or her own flat design websites.

Video Review: HTML5 Game Development

Packt Publishing recently invited me to review the recently released video HTML5 Game Development by Makzan (http://makzan.net/). I hesitated initially to accept this offer because I've typically preferred reading text (books, blogs, and articles) over watching videos and podcasts for learning new technical concepts. However, after viewing the HTML5 Game Development video, I'm glad that I accepted that offer.

The HTML5 Game Development video, once downloaded, can be viewed in a web browser via the Packt Video player. The next screen snapshot demonstrates this for the first section of the video.

The HTML5 Game Development video is a series of short video clips ranging from a little shorter than 2 minutes to a little longer than 4 minutes each. These videos are categorized by "section" (sections are referenced as "chapters" in navigation buttons) and the next screen snapshot shows the first, second, and last (eighth) sections. The one in the middle (Section 1 in this case) is the Section whose video snippets would be viewed when the "Browse Videos" button is clicked.

When a Section (or Chapter) is selected, multiple short videos are made available. An example of this is shown in the next screen snapshot. Click on "Watch Video" allows one to start watching the specific video.

I have taken the time in this post to depict this presentation of the short video snippets because there are some advantages to the HTML5 Game Development video being available in this format. The short videos allow easily digestible amounts of information to be seen in just a few minutes. Objectives for each video snippet are outlined before the video snippet and then are addressed in the video snippet. With such short video snippets available and with clear objectives outlined before each video, it is easy to pick and choose which portions to watch more than once. An effective way of viewing this overall video might be to first watch the video snippets once through and then return to those of most interest are those that need to be seen again.

The overall video length is advertised as just under 2 hours. This is divided into eight chapters/sections ranging from 12+ minutes each to 17+ minutes each. With each chapter/section having 5 videos, these videos range from 1 minute to 4 minutes each. The Packt HTML5 Game Development Video Table of Contents outlines the eight chapters/sections, the five videos per chapter/section, and the total duration of each chapter/section. The O'Reilly page for this video breaks down each of the five videos in each of the eight chapters/sections by their individual durations (to minutes granularity).

Through the course of the 40 video snippets, HTML5 Game Development uses audio and video presentation to demonstrate creation of two simple HTML5-based game applications that work in web browsers on desktops and laptops and work on mobile devices. Along the way, the presentation covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the EaselJS/CreateJS libraries. Seeing the code being edited in the Sublime text editor while the action being taken is narrated makes it easy to quickly see and learn how this all works together. I also liked that the video introduced many specific syntax features of HTML5 (such as local storage), JavaScript built-in functionality (such as use of JSON.stringify and JSON.parse), and CSS styling techniques.

HTML5 Game Development depicts application of several interesting products. Its use of Sublime Text makes it easy to read the code thanks to color coded syntax on a dark background, line numbers, code completion, and keyword matching capabilities. The video also uses Sloppy and the iOS Simulator to help demonstrate adjusting the developed games to run on mobile devices. The video also demonstrates using free tools available online to secure fonts and make them presentable on the web. Another example is the video's demonstration of using Zoë to covert Flash animation to sprite sheets (.png and .json files) and then applying those with EaselJS Sprite Sheet Animations.

The Packt page describing HTML5 Game Development includes a section with the header "Who this video course is for" that succinctly (and correctly in my opinion) summarizes the audience for this series of video snippets: "HTML5 Game Development is ideal for anyone who wants to get started with the fundamentals of game development in HTML5. Some basic knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS would be useful." The narration in the videos includes several nice references to best practices and reasons why certain things are coded the way they are and having basic familiarity with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript made it much easier to appreciate these points.

The videos demonstrate quite a bit in the two hours. The narration is quick and the code editing in Sublime Text is quick thanks to significant copying-and-pasting that occurs in synchronization with the narration. I enjoyed the relatively fast pace because I didn't have a chance to lose interest or get bored. However, I was glad that I had used HTML5 technologies previously because a lot of content was covered so rapidly. For viewers with less experience with these technologies, the short videos provide the opportunity to easily re-watch parts that need more than one viewing and possibly mix viewing of those parts with reading other more introductory resources.

One of the things I most enjoyed about the HTML5 Game Development video snippets was the real-time development and refactoring that was demonstrated. Other than the JavaScript libraries being used, both simple games were built from nothing in front of the viewer. Although this often meant copying and pasting of code obviously written earlier, it was done as if it was being typed in (but thankfully pasting is much quicker than most peoples' typing). The narration describes what is happening in each case and Sublime Text features are used to highlight portions being discussed. The best presentations at conferences or in videos are those in which significant upfront time has been invested in writing and generating the presentation. It is clear to me that this investment was made in preparing HTML5 Game Development. The coordination of audio and video is generally very good and is very conducive to quick learning.

I learned several things specific to game development from this video. For example, it was interesting to see discussion and implementation of the Sliding Door Effect. It was also interesting to see how common JavaScript functions and calculations could be used to model the game dynamics.

There are a few things to note to get the most out of "HTML5 Game Development." Although video 6.2 is called "Applying Gravity to the Hero", it actually talks about running hero and moving camera instead of falling hero. On the other hand, video 6.3 is called "Making the Hero Run" but talks about making the hero stop falling on the platform rather than falling through it. These videos, at least in my download, were switched in order.

To see full screen (which is particularly important with the code editing video), click on the square to the right of the video progress bar and volume control when mouse cursor is over video in the Packt Video Player.

The audio in HTML5 Game Development is clear and the woman narrating the video speaks in a clear manner and enunciates well (and I liked the accent).

HTML5 Game Development is a great resource for anyone with basic familiarity with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to expand that knowledge into learning key principles that can be applied to generate HTML5 games and other interactive applications. For developers in that position, I highly recommend the HTML5 Game Development video.

Book Review: Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices

The sub-title of Swarnendu De's Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices (Packt Publishing, 2014) is "A one-stop guide to best practices and design patterns when building applications using Backbone.js." The Backbone.js site describes Backbone.js as follows:

Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface.

Preface

The Preface states that most of the book's examples can be followed with simple text editor and web browser, but some examples require a web server and Node.js. The Preface points out that Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices "is not a general introduction to Backbone.js or JavaScript design patterns," but is instead intended " for any developers who ha[ve] a basic knowledge of Backbone.js and is looking for solutions to common Backbone.js problems, looking to enforce reusability in their code by removing boilerplate and developing custom plugins and extensions, and hoping to use the most effective patterns to develop large-scale web application architecture."

The Preface further reinforces the point that this book is not for beginners when talking about the book's objective: "Whether you are an intermediate- or advanced-level Backbone.js developer, this book will guide you through the best practices and patterns to handle different issues with each Backbone component."

Chapter 1: Reducing Boilerplate with Plugin Development

The initial chapter of Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices introduces the basics of Backbone.js and provides short descriptions of Backbone.Model, Backbone.View, Backbone.Collection, Backbone.Router, and Backbone.Events. The first chapter introduces the Underscore.js utility and mentions that "Backbone.js has a hard dependency on Underscore.js." The author also mentions Lo-Dash as an Underscore.js alternative. The core coverage of this initial chapter is on reusing code by extending (with and without a base class) and using mixins.

Chapter 2: Working with Views

Chapter 2 of Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices begins with the sentence, "Backbone view works as the presentation layer of an application." The chapter is dedicated to coverage of Backbone Views and covers the el property, listening to view events, working with nested views, working with templates, organizing templates, precompiling templates, and more. Along the way, the chapter mentions the JavaScript Memory Profiling, Backbone-Debugger, Require.js, Handlebars.js, backbone.stickit, rivets.js, and Backbone.ModelBinder.

The second chapter also introduces Marionette.js, which it describes as "a composite application library for Backbone.js." The focus is on Marionette's ItemView, CollectionView, and CompositeView.

Chapter 2 moves finishes with coverage of backbone.layoutmanager as an alternative to Marionette RegionManager.

Chapter 3: Working with Models

Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices's third chapter discusses working with Backbone models. The chapter begins by outlining the basics of Backbone models and how to use Backbone models with an emphasis on CRUD (create/read/update/delete) operations. Model validation is covered next with examples of using direct Backbone model validation as well as using Backbone.Validation. Chapter 2 covers serialization of Backbone models and using Backbone-relational.js for relational data work with Backbone.

Chapter 4: Working with Collections

Chapter 4 of Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices defines a Backbone collection as "an ordered set of models" that includes "functionality to add, remove, sort, and filter models, and save to or fetch data from the server." The chapter includes a brief overview of Backbone collections before moving onto describing how to perform database-related operations on a Backbone collection. Sorting and filtering of Backbone collections are also covered in the fourth chapter.

Chapter 5: Routing Best Practices and Subrouting

The fifth chapter in Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices describes a Backbone router as a mechanism that matches a "URL fragment" to an invoked method. The chapter provides an overview of Backbone routers and routing before moving onto coverage of "best practices for working with routers." In the course of this discussion, the author references Marionette.AppRouter and Marionette.Controller. Sub-routing is described in Chapter 5 and the extension backbone.subroute is specifically referenced.

Chapter 6: Working with Events, Sync, and Storage

Chapter 6 of Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practies covers "custom events, Backbone.sync() method and Backbone.LocalStorage." The portion of the chapter on events begins with a definition of events from the Backbone.Events API page. This section demonstrates how easy it is to create custom events in Backbone, contrasts use of Events to use of Callbacks, and provides a case study describing use of events. The section of Chapter 6 on Backbone.LocalStorage discusses and demonstrates use of Backbone.localStorage Adapter before mention an alternative called Backbone.dualStorage.

Chapter 7: Organizing Backbone Applications – Structure, Optimize, and Deploy

As its title suggests, Chapter 7 of Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices discusses issues related to application structure, optimization, and deployment of Backbone-based applications. The author proposes an application directory structure which "is not something that will work universally for every application," but "lots of developers use it for their projects without any issues."

One of Chapter 7's main themes is Asynchronous Model Definition and using Require.js to add AMD support to a Backbone application.

Chapter 8: Unit Test, Stub, Spy, and Mock Your App

The final chapter (not including appendices) of Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices begins with the opinionated statement, "Majority of developers believe that testing is essential, but in reality only a few of them actually go for test-driven development." The author lists multiple tools/frameworks for testing JavaScript code, but the chapter's focus is on use of QUnit (unit testing framework) and SinonJS (test doubles support).

Appendix A: Books, Tutorials, and References

Appendix A includes the author's recommendations for three books on Backbone.js along with recommended online tutorials and blog posts on Backbone.js. This appendix also includes references to additional resources on testing Backbone-based applications with QUnit and SinonJS as well as references to more Backbone plugins and tutorials.

Appendix B: Precompiling Templates on the Server Side

Appendix B is short and uses a Node.js-based example to illustrate how to precompile JavaScript templates.

Appendix C: Organizing Templates with AMD and Require.js

Although two chapters earlier in Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices discuss AMD and Require.js briefly, both chapters reference Appendix C for additional details. The example in this appendix is built on top of requirejs-tpl.

General Observations

• My most important observation is that the implication of Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices's title and the explicit statements in its Preface that the book is targeted at intermediate Backbone developers should not be taken lightly. Although the book does provide some brief introductory material on most of the subjects it covers, at least some familiarity with the basics of a Backbone.js-based application would be extremely beneficial in realizing the full value of reading this book.
• There are not many images or screen snapshots in this book, but these are not particularly important to the content.
• Even in the PDF version of Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices that I reviewed, the code listings are black text on white background with no color syntax. Most of the code listings are short enough to mitigate the issue, but color-coded syntax would be easier to read.
• Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices is written with the intent to discuss issues that the author believes developers frequently run into when developing Backbone-based applications.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices (Packt, 2014, 174 pages) is explicitly intended for intermediate to advanced level Backbone.js developers. For more introductory text to Backbone.js, other books that might be more appropriate (none of which I have read) include Beginning Backbone.js (Apress, 2013, 304 pages), Developing Backbone.js Applications: Building Better JavaScript Applications (O'Reilly, 2013, 374 pages, free open source reading), Backbone.js Cookbook (Packt, 2013, 282 pages), or Instant Backbone.js Application Development (Packt, 2013, 64 pages). There are also numerous online resources with introductory Backbone.js content. Because I have not reviewed these other Backbone.js books, I cannot definitively state that Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices picks up where they leave off. However, my best guess is that there is some overlap between these seemingly more introductory Backbone.js books, but that Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices likely covers some more advanced topics (patterns and best practices) not covered in those books.

Book Review: Mastering HTML5 Forms

When I accepted Packt Publishing's offer to review the recently released book Mastering HTML5 Forms, I was curious about what an entire book would cover related to HTML5 forms. Although they are relatively basic when compared to some of HTML5's other features, I've always felt that HTML5 forms have much to offer consumers of HTML5 applications.

The subtitle of Mastering HTML5 Forms is "Create dynamic and responsive web forms with this in-depth, hands-on guide." Mastering HTML5 Forms is written by Gaurav Gupta, has five chapters, and is a bit over 125 pages long.

As is the case with most of the Packt Publishing books I have read, Mastering HTML5 Forms's Preface introduce's the book's objectives, describes the book's overall approach ("step-by-step, example driven, and visual-based approach to learning"), summarizes the book's chapters, explains what readers should have when reading the book (text editor, Wamp, and phpMyAdmin), and describes the book's intended audience ("those who are interested in learning how HTML5, CSS3, and PHP can be used to build responsive, beautiful, and dynamic web forms").

Chapter 1: Forms and Their Significance

The first three chapters of Mastering HTML5 Forms's five chapters cover traditional HTML5 forms topics. The initial chapter introduces HTML5 forms, briefly discusses the history and appeal of forms in web pages, outlines benefits of web forms in general, contrasts HTML5 web forms with traditional HTML web forms, and an introduction to common <input> elements and the browsers that support them. Chapter 1 also introduces HTML5 form elements (<datalist>, <keygen>, and <output>) and HTML5 form attributes (including autocomplete, autofocus, placeholder, min and max, list, formnovalidate, required, and pattern).

After introducing HTML5 form elements and attributes, the initial chapter looks at complete web page code listings using some of these with CSS and shows some screen snapshots of the web pages generated by the HTML5/CSS code. Before closing with a Summary, the first chapter provides a list of bullets highlighting guidelines for obtaining "better results" when using HTML5 web forms.

Chapter 2: Validation of Forms

The second chapter of Mastering HTML5 Forms is focused on form validation. After contrasting client-side validation and server-side validation including discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each, the second chapter moves to more detailed coverage of HTML5 form validation. This is done by first introducing client-side validation with a traditional pre-HTML5 JavaScript approach that helps to demonstrate the advantage of the HTML5 form-based approach that follows.

A good portion of Chapter 2 covers HTML5 constraint validation. This coverage includes descriptions and examples of constraint validation objects, properties, attributes, and methods such as checkValidity() and customError. These are appealing because they require minimal JavaScript.

Chapter 3: Styling the Forms

Chapter 3 of Mastering HTML5 Forms focuses on styling HTML5 forms with CSS. The chapter provides an overview of using CSS with HTML5, discusses vendor-specific prefixes for CSS3 properties, and begins introducing specifics of CSS3 such as selectors and pseudo-selectors and the substring matching attribute selectors (begins with, ends with, contains). The chapter also provides a table listing "new pseudo-classes."

Other CSS3 coverage in the third chapter of Mastering HTML5 Forms covers background, borders, text effects, fonts, and gradients. With the CSS3 introduction made, the chapter then covers applying CSS3 to HTML5 forms. The chapter concludes with bullets spelling out "CSS3 guidelines for effective styling of the forms."

Chapter 4: Connection with Database

The fourth chapter of Mastering HTML5 Forms leaves core HTML5 forms concepts behind and shifts focus to storing the information provided via web forms. Specifically, Chapter 4 covers "how to store the user's input data into a database using PHP and MySQL." The chapter briefly introduces both PHP and MySQL before demonstrating how to apply this language and database to storing data provides via forms.

Much of the fourth chapter is highly specific to PHP, MySQL, and the use of PHP with MySQL and most of Chapter 4 is not generally applicable to HTML5 forms. However, there are some general principles of HTML5 forms that can be glenaed from the PHP/MySQLs-specific descriptions and examples. Specifically, the concepts of handling potentially spoofed forms submissions and linking forms to the server side are illustrated with these PHP/MySQL examples.

Chapter 5: Responsive Web Forms

Mastering HTML5 Forms's fifth and final chapter focuses on one of the trends that I recently highlighted in my post Significant Software Development Developments of 2013 (#6): responsive design. Gupta begins the chapter by referencing Ethan Marcotte's Responsive Web Design and defining responsive web design as, "An approach by which a website or a particular page dynamically adjusts itself according to particular screen resolution to give the best user experience." I also like the author's overall description of the approach, "Using fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and CSS3 media queries, a site designed with responsive web design automatically adapts the layout to the particular device resolution."

Mastering HTML5 Forms's chapter on responsive design delineates advantages of responsive design before moving onto discussion on "how responsive design works" using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The chapter introduces use of the <meta> tag, media queries, media features, fluid grids, and fluid grid frameworks (960 Grid System and Bootstrap), and adaptive images. As with most of the other chapters, Chapter 5 includes a "Guidelines" section that includes "guidelines for responsive design so as to make our forms more effective."

General Observations

• The first three chapters are exactly what one would expect from a book on HTML5 forms with deep focus specifically on HTML5 forms. These are the most important chapters for those wanting a comprehensive introduction to HTML5 forms.
• Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 are less about HTML5 forms directly and more about database connectivity and responsive web design and how those two concepts affect form design.
  • Chapter 4 will be mostly of interest to PHP developers.
  • Chapter 5 is generally interesting in terms of what responsive design is; responsive designs can make forms more effective but responsive design is interesting from a broader perspective than forms. Although Chapter 5 was likely not necessary in a book on HTML5 forms, I like its inclusion in the book for completeness.
• Most of the chapters of Mastering HTML5 Forms include "guidelines" and "best practices" related to the material covered in the chapter. Most of these guidelines/best practices were only tangentially covered or not covered at all in the chapter, but provided a starting point for someone wanting to take the next step in that area. There were a few instances in which I would have liked a particular guideline or best practice to come with additional explanation regarding why it is recommended.
• Mastering HTML5 Forms is generally well-written. There were one or two sentences that I had difficulty deciphering, but the majority of the book is clearly written. There were some minor editing issues where lines of ext ended after only a couple of words and then the same sentence continued on the next line, but there edit issues are minor and don't take much away from the substance of the book.
• The electronic (PDF) version of Mastering HTML5 Forms includes color screen snapshots. I wish that more screen snapshots were included. There were some screen snapshots shown of some of the HTML5 forms features, but it would have been nice to have small screen snapshots of each feature rather than of a subset of the features.
• My only reservation in recommending purchase of Mastering HTML5 Forms has nothing to do with book itself. Rather, the one caveat I would offer to those considering this book is that its content is largely covered online in resources such as The Current State of HTML5 Forms, Dive Into HTML5 Forms, Making Forms Fabulous with HTML5, Rethinking Forms in HTML5, Bring Your Forms Up to Date With CSS3 and HTML5 Validation, and A List Apart. However, there are advantages to having all of these items covered in a single book with consistent coverage.

Conclusion

Mastering HTML5 Forms provides a comprehensive introduction and overview of HTML5 forms in its first three chapters. It adds coverage of using HTML5 forms with PHP and MySQL in Chapter 4 for those who are interested in those technologies. Its final chapter introduces responsive design and demonstrates how responsive design techniques can make forms more useful and efficient for users. Although most of the topics covered in Mastering HTML5 Forms are readily available online, the book does a nice job of providing all of this information in a single place and demonstrating how the various concepts it covers can be used together.

Book Review: HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook

Packt Publishing recently published HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook by Gorgi Kosev and Mite Mitreski. The subtitle of the book is: "Over one hundred website building recipes utilizing all the modern HTML5 features and techniques!" I accepted an invitation to review this book and was provided with an electronic copy of that book that I am reviewing in this post.

HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook is a collection of "recipes" organized in categories such as text, graphics, animation, input, data storage, validation, and server communication. The recipes cover not only HTML, but also JavaScript and CSS. This is not too surprising given that HTML5 is really much more than simply HTML.

Preface (Target Audience and Prerequisites)

The Preface provides a brief overview of each of the book's 12 chapters and 2 appendices. The Preface also describes what readers should have available when reading the book such as "a modern browser" such as "Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, or Internet Explorer 9," a text editor, and an Internet connection. The authors also mention in the Preface that node.js is used for examples in later chapters of the book.

The "Who this book is for" section of the Preface describes the audience targeted by the authors:

This book is for programmers who already have used JavaScript in one way or the other. It's for people who work with a lot of backend code, and want to get up to speed with the world of HTML5 and JavaScript. It's for people who have used copy/paste to patch up a part of a page and want to know more about how things work in the background. It's for JavaScript developers who would like to update their knowledge with new techniques and capabilities made possible with HTML5. The book is for both beginners and seasoned developers, assuming that you will have some experience in HTML, JavaScript, and jQuery already, but not necessary [sic] an in-depth knowledge.

Chapter 1: Display of Textual Data

The first sentence of the initial chapter of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook introduces the chapter with the statement, "The most common task related to web application development is the displaying of text." The authors use this chapter to describe how to work with text presentation (including presentation of numeric text and dates as well as alternate text formats). I like the fact that the authors include some iterative and functional examples and describe differences between them including disadvantages and advantages of each. The authors also demonstrate how to add a function to a standard JavaScript object but at the same time explain why this is not generally a good idea. These are examples of how the book does more than simply show how to accomplish a certain task.

Chapter 2: Display of Graphical Data

Chapter 2 of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook looks at "displaying graphical data using various JavaScript libraries that are based on modern HTML5 standards." Presentation of several types of charts (line, bar, pie, area, and bubble) are demonstrated in the recipes of Chapter 2 and these make use of the Flot and D3 charting libraries. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) technology is also applied in this chapter.

The second chapter also includes detailed recipes on creating simple mapping applications, creating and using a gauge jQuery plugin, and creating an LED scoreboard. The last recipe goes into quite a bit of detail regarding font snf introduces terms such as Web Open Font Format (WOFF), TrueType Font (TTF), OpenType Font (OTF), and Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT).

Chapter 3: Animated Data Display

The third chapter of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook covers "some common ways of doing animated data visualizations with minor interactions." D3 and SVG figure prominently in this chapter and one of the recipes is devoted to Web Notifications.

Chapter 4: Using HTML5 Input Components

Chapter 4 provides recipes related to HTML form input fields. It includes standard input form material (placeholder text, HTML5 Date Pickers, Color Pickers, Range Pickers, etc.) as well as information on less commonly discussed input mechanisms such as HTML Speech/Web Speech API. This chapter also features recipes on the Geolocation API Specification, File API, and Drag and Drop.

Chapter 5: Custom Input Components

The fifth chapter of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook builds on the fourth chapter with recipes that demonstrate how to extend the standard HTML input elements. Recipes in this chapter outline use of contentEditable (and browser support for it), Embedded JavaScript Templates (including John Resig's JavaScript Micro-Templating), and OpenStreetMap Nominator as they describe creation of rich content elements, drop-down menus, custom dialogs, input autocompletion (applying jQueryUI and Chosen), and map-related applications.

Chapter 6: Data Validation

Chapter 6 of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook covers data validation and looks at "new mechanisms provided mostly for client-side checks by HTML5 as well as how to tackle some common problems." Recipes in this chapter cover validating form fields, length of text fields, spelling and grammar checks, numeric range checks, calculating password strength, and validating United States zip codes. The examples also include application of box shadows, the required attribute of input tags, and references to the client-side form validation and constraint validation API specifications. This chapter also contains the first recipe requiring use of node.js.

Chapter 7: Data Serialization

HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook's seventh chapter introduces its recipes with the statement, "One of the basic concepts of data storage and transmission is serialization" and then the chapter's recipes demonstrate approaches for saving data, reading data, and preparing data for transmission. Binary data (ArrayBuffer), XML data, and, of course, JSON data each get attention in one or more recipes of this chapter. Serialization inherently involves encoding and decoding, so it's not surprising that much attention is paid to encoding and decoding in JavaScript.

Chapter 7 reminds the reader that while "JSON is language independent format," it still "is JavaScript." I like that the authors point out that while one could use eval to evaluate JSON data as a subset of JavaScript, its use is "something we should avoid in most cases." The authors instead recommend using JavaScript 1.7's JSON.parse function and, for browsers too old to support that, recommend the fallbacks of either JSON2 or JSON3.

Chapter 7 includes a demonstration of CanvasRenderingContext2D in recipes in which binary data needs to be created. The chapter also mentions use of JavaScript typed arrays. One of the recipes in Chapter 7 introduces Keyhole Markup Language (KML). As would be expected from a chapter on serialization in HTML5, recipes in this seventh chapter use jQuery.serialize(), jQuery.serializeArray(), DOMParser, and XMLSerializer.

Before reading Chapter 7 of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook, I was not aware of JXON (lossless JavaScript XML Object Notation). The authors introduce JXON and describe it as "the API related to creation and use of XML documents in JavaScript" that "defines a convention for a two-way conversion between JSON and XML." The recipe that introduces JXON also introduces something with which I'm much more familiar: XPath (XML Path Language).

Chapter 8: Communicating with Servers

Although Ajax is used throughout recipes of earlier chapters in HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook, it is Chapter 8 that more formally introduces the concept of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and XMLHttpRequest. Just as I thought it helpful when JavaScript and JSON Essentials demonstrated applying Ajax implementation directly in JavaScript before using the easier JQuery-based approach, the authors of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook intentionally show direct JavaScript implementation of asynchronous communication with the (node.js-based) server in early recipes of Chapter 8. The authors explicitly state their very good reasons for this decision: "We strongly believe that jQuery simplifies the DOM API, but it is not always available to us, and additionally, we need have to know the underlying code behind asynchronous data transfer in order to fully grasp how applications work."

I was pleased to see coverage of XMLHttpRequest Level 2 in Chapter 8. The authors succinctly describe the major differences and improvements of this version and discuss browser support for it. Other topics covered in this chapter include Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, Semantic Versioning, JSONP (JSON with Padding), building XML with xmlbuilder-js, and leveraging WebSockets with dnode.

Chapter 8 includes recipes addressing security issues. The concepts of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) are discussed and the OpenSSL Project and Socket.io are used. There is mention of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and its HTML5 Security Cheat Sheet.

Chapter 9: Client-side Templates

Chapter 9 of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook addresses "the shift in web apps from using server-side HTML rendering to client-side HTML rendering" that is attributed to many of today's target platforms not supporting HTML. The recipes in this chapter take turns using one of three "popular client-side template languages": EJS, Handlebars, and Jade.

Chapter 10: Data Binding Frameworks

When I was browsing the table of contents before reading HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook, one of the chapters I was looking most forward to reading was Chapter 10 because it covers two trendy JavaScript frameworks that I only had minimal knowledge (not much more than awareness) of: AngularJS and Meteor. The authors open the chapter contrasting these two frameworks and one of the most obvious differences that they highlight is that AngularJS "provides client-side bindings and can work with any server-side stack" while Meteor is "a complete framework and platform that covers both the client and the server side." The section on Meteor reproduces and references the "Seven Principles of Meteor" that is available on the main Meteor documentation page.

MongoDB is referenced and used in multiple recipes in Chapter 10. Other introduced concepts include EJSON, reactive programming, and Meteor's spiderable.

Chapter 11: Data Storage

Chapter 11 of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook "covers some of the features that are related to HTML5 and are about data storage." The recipes in this chapter cover Data URI, Web Storage (Local Storage), IndexedDB, Web SQL Database, Quota Management API, and History API.

I was particularly intrigued by the number of fallback mechanisms for Web Storage listed in HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook. One of the referenced fallbacks is actually two choices of code implementations and are based on cookies for browsers not supporting Web Storage. Other referenced fallbacks for when Web Storage is not supported include implementations based on Google Gears and Flash.

The authors' recipes include a good explanation of why they cannot currently recommend use of IndexedDB and instead recommend a couple of alternatives.

Chapter 12: Multimedia

The final non-appendix chapter of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook, Chapter 12, covers on the the areas that is most wanting in HTML5 browser compliance: multimedia support. One of the issues making this so difficult is the plethora of formats available. Indeed, in the first recipe of this chapter, the authors refer the reader to media.io to covert files into other formats for use in the recipe. Before displaying a handy table detailing the "rough state of the browser format support using Windows as operating system," the authors make this important observation about working with multimedia in HTML5: "With the current state some browsers support certain format but others do not. If we want to have support in all modern browsers then we supply the option to have multiple sources." After two decades of development for the Internet, browser incompatibilities remain an influential force.

Chapter 12 introduces The Internet Archive (home of the Wayback Machine) as a source of publicly available videos to use for a recipe on video handling. I liked the chapter's introduction of MediaElement.js as a simple fallback mechanism for browsers not supporting the media elements or not supporting certain media formats.

WebVTT (The Web Video Text Tracks Format) is also covered in Chapter 12 along with a reference to Live WebVTT Validator and the Timed Text Markup Language (TTML). The chapter briefly references the Web Audio API before moving to coverage of converting text to speech in HTML5 using emscripten, speakjs, and eSpeak.

The Appendices

HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook includes two appendices with Appendix A devoted to "Installing Node.js and Using npm" (node package manager) and Appendix B covering "Community and Resources." Appendix A is particularly useful to and important for readers who wish to run the many node.js-based recipes in HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook but who do not already have Node.js running.

Appendix B covers WHAT Working Group (WHATWG), Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) [source of many of the links I embedded in this post], HTML5 Rocks, Dive Into HTML5, HTML5 Test, and QuirksMode Compatibility Master Table.

General Observations

• HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook references and demonstrates use of several tools and libraries related to HTML5 such as jQuery (1.8.2), jQuery plugins (timeago, DataTables, Validation), node.js (including modules node-restify and FileSystem), big.js, Moment.js, MathJax, ASCIIMathML.js, google-code-prettify, Markdown (markdown-js), Flot, D3.js, Leaflet, OpenStreetMap (including Nominatim), FontSquirrel, google.com/fonts, Rickshaw, GeoJSON, TopoJSON, html5-slider, TinyMCE, Embedded JavaScript Templates, John Resig's JavaScript Micro-Templating, Handlebars, jade, jQueryUI, Chosen, HTML5Pattern, Webshims lib, yepnope.js, Base64.js, hashify.me, form2js, xmlbuilder-js, Connect, OpenSSL, Socket.io, dnode, sessionstorage, Storage polyfill, Storage Compatibility, PouchDB, db.js, history.js, path.js, Abaroids, media.io, AreWePlayingYet?, MediaElement.js, Live WebVTT Validator, Captionator.js, emscripten, speakjs. Many of these referenced products are available via cdnjs.
• HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook contains recipes using and covering several different approaches and tactics commonly used in JavaScript and HTML5 such as Ajax, JSON, Comet, and WebSockets.
• HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook not only has recipes showing how to accomplish certain specific tasks with HTML5 technologies, but it also makes a lot of nice points along the way about things to do and not do with HTML5 technologies.
• One of the most frustrating aspects of web development has always been differing support of alleged standards by different web browsers
  • HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook often calls out features not supported in certain browsers at the time of its writing.
  • Chapter 4 lists two tools that can be used to help determine updated browser support for a particular capability: http://caniuse.com/ and http://html5please.com/.
  • Compatibility Master Table is referenced in Chapter 6.
  • I have also used Modernizr for this.
  • The authors also provide appropriate fallbacks, shims, and polyfills to use in many of the recipes when the newer covered feature may not work in some browsers.
• The code listings in the electronic version of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook are differentiated from regular prose by a fixed-width font being used for code. Other than the different font, there are no differences between code listings and prose. It would be easier to read the large amount of code in this book if it had color coded syntax and was offset with a border or other visual separator. However, the code can be copied-and-pasted easily in this form.
• Although there are many code listings in this book, not all code used in the recipes is directly available in the book. Some listings require code to be downloaded from the book's companion web site and many of the code listings depend upon availability of third-party libraries and frameworks.
• An advantage of reviewing the electronic version of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook is that many of the screen snapshots of HTML5 applications are reproduced in full color.
• I really liked the wide breadth of realistic but small examples contained in the recipes of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook. The "domain" modeled by these recipes introduced some things new to me and in some cases were as interesting as the code examples.
• I expected to learn some new techniques related to HTML5 from reading this book and was not disappointed. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn some interesting minor pieces of information with no specific relationship to HTML5 during my reading. These include things like the existence of the United States postal zip codes in CSV format and how/why the UTC acronym (formerly GMT) was selected. These are just a few examples of many incidental things I picked up from reading this book.
• Most of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook is highly readable and flows fairly well. However, there are a significant number of strange wording constructs and typos. One example comes from Chapter 7: "JSON is extremely simple to use than JavaScript; there are lot of REST services already out there that use XML." I have my suspicions of what this means (and wrote my interpretation when I filed this errata), but I cannot be sure what the intent was. Most of the cases of strange wording constructs are easier to figure out the intent for (many cases were strangely worded because adjectives were used where adverbs should have been used instead or vice versa), but the relatively large number of these strange wordings make me think HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook would have benefited from another and more thorough English grammar editing process. I'd describe the overall editing quality of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook to be equivalent to a well-written blog post, but I typically expect even a well-written blog post to not be able to compare to a book in terms of editorial quality.

Conclusion

I really liked HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook. I learned several new things, reinforced some things I had previously learned, and had several ideas come to mind as I read the book. I particularly liked the book's approach of making liberal use of freely available open source frameworks and toolkits to do some of the recipes' heavy lifting. This approach made the recipes easier to implement and read and introduced me to some tools and frameworks I was not previously aware of. I also appreciated that most recipes covered fallback mechanisms that are available when the newer HTML5 feature is not supported in a particular browser. The many side notes and special emphases in HTML5 Data and Service Cookbook added tremendous value to me as I read the book.

The biggest downsides of HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook were related to presentation rather than to content. The code listings were not as easy-to-read as I would have liked and some of the grammar and sentence structure could have used more editing.

I strongly recommend HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook, especially for those who have similar HTML5 experience to mine. I've been away from it for a couple of years and this book helped me catch up on some of the latest happenings in the community, the specifications, the technologies, and the available libraries and toolkits. It reminded me of the excitement (new technologies and specifications that affect daily online and mobile experience) and the frustration (differing browser support for features, incompatibilities between browsers, and sometimes slowly evolving standards) of developing with HTML5.

Significant Software Development Developments of 2012

I have written before (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) on my biased perspective of the most significant developments in software development for that year. This post is the 2012 version with all my biases and skewed perspectives freely admitted.

10. Groovy 2.0

Groovy 2.0 have been an important version for Groovy. Groovy 2's arguably most notable new features are its static type checking and static compilation capabilities.

9. Perl Turns 25

Perl celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2012. Love it or loathe it, Perl has definitely become the predominant scripting language, especially in the non-Windows environments. Perl is not my favorite (I'd rather use Groovy, Python, or Ruby), but I find myself needing to use it at times, usually because I'm modifying or using an existing script or set of scripts already written in Perl. Happy Birthday, Perl!

8. Git and GitHub

Git is the trendy choice now in version control and GitHub is equally trendy for hosting code. The post Why Would Anyone use Git in their Enterprise? states, "Git has a cult-like following in the development community." The book Pro Git (2009) is freely available for reading online and can be downloaded as a PDF, mobi, or ePub electronic book.

7. NoSQL and Polyglot Persistence

The NoSQL concept seems to be maturing and moving from unabated hype and hyperbole to understanding when it works well and when it doesn't. In 7 hard truths about the NoSQL revolution, Peter Wayner writes: NoSQL systems are far from a perfect fit and often rub the wrong way. The smartest developers knew this from the beginning. ... the smart NoSQL developers simply noted that NoSQL stood for "Not Only SQL." If the masses misinterpreted the acronym, that was their problem.

Martin Fowler's nosql page states: "The rise of NoSQL databases marks the end of the era of relational database dominance. But NoSQL databases will not become the new dominators. Relational will still be popular, and used in the majority of situations. They, however, will no longer be the automatic choice." With this, Fowler introduced the concept of polyglot persistence (which he mentions was previously coined by Scott Leberknight in 2008) and explicitly compared this to the concept of polyglot programming. If we as a software development community believe that the advantages of using multiple languages in the same application (polyglot programming) are worth the costs, then it follows that we might also determine that the advantages of using multiple data stores within the same application (polyglot persistence) are also worth the costs of doing so.

6. Mobile Development

Mobile development continues to rapidly rise in 2012. The December 2012 write-up on the Tiobe Index states that Objective-C is likely to be the language of the year again in 2012 due to its rapid rise (third in December 2012 behind only C and Java and ahead of C++ and C#). The writers of that summary conclude about language ratings on this index, "In fact it seems that if you are not in the mobile phone market you are losing ground."

Suzanne Kattau's post Mobile development in the year 2012 succinctly summarizes the changes in popular mobile device platforms and operating systems in 2012.

5. Scala (and Typesafe Stack 2.0 with Play and Akka)

I have highlighted Scala multiple times in these year-end review posts, but this is my highest rating of Scala because Scala has seen a tremendous year in 2012. On 23 August 2012, Cameron McKenzie asked, "Is Scala the new Spring framework?" An answer to that question might be implied by the 1 October 2012 announcement that Spring founder Rod Johnson had joined Typesafe's Board of Directors (Johnson left SpringSource in July). Scala provides the intersection of again-trendy functional programming with widely popular and proven object-oriented programming and is part of the increasingly popular movement to languages other than Java on the JVM. It's not difficult to see why it had a big year in 2012.

The Typesafe Blog features a post called Why Learn Scala in 2013? that begins with the statement, "2012 was a big year for the Scala programming language - with monumental releases, adoption by major enterprises and social sites alike and a Scala Days conference that knocked the socks off years past." The post then goes on to list reasons to learn Scala in 2013 with liberal references to other recent positive posts regarding Scala.

Ted Neward has predicted that in 2013 "Typesafe (and their Scala/Akka/Play! stack) will begin to make some serious inroads into the enterprise space, and start to give Groovy/Grails a serious run for their money." I am not calling Play and Akka out in this post as separate significant developments in 2012, but instead lump them together with Scala as part of justifying Scala taking the #5 spot for 2012. There is no question, however, that 2012 was a big year for Akka and Play. The year 2012 saw the release of Typesafe Stack 2.0 along with Play 2.0 and Akka 2.0.

4. Big Data

Big Data was big in 2012. AOL Government has named Big Data its Best of 2012 for the technology category. Geoff Nunberg argues that "'Big Data' Should Be The Word Of The Year." Interest in the statistical computing language R has (not surprisingly) risen along with the surging interest in Big Data.

3. HTML5

2012 was another big year for HTML5. Although HTML5 continued to be evangelized as a standards-friendly favorite of developers, some hard truths (such as performance versus native code) about the current state of HTML5 also became more readily obvious.

That being stated, I think HTML5 still has a very positive future ahead of it. Although it has certainly been over-hyped with emphasis on what it might one day become rather than what it is today, it would also be foolhardy to ignore it or underestimate its usefulness. Two articles that remind us of this are FT exec: HTML5 is not dead and HTML5 myth busting. The article 'HTML5 is ready' say creators of mobile HTML5 Facebook clone talks about attempts to prove HTML5 is ready today from a performance standpoint.

2. Security

Awareness of security holes, risks, and vulnerabilities has been increasing for the past several years largely due to high-profile incidents of lost sensitive data and new legal requirements. However, 2012 seemed to be a bigger year than most in terms of increasing awareness of security requirements and expectations in software architecture and design.

Java seemed to be particularly hard hit by bad security news in 2012. Articles and posts that provide examples of this include 1 Billion computers at risk from Java exploit, Oracle's Java Security Woes Mount As Researchers Spot A Bug In Its Critical Bug Fix, Java Vulnerability Affects 1 Billion Plug-ins, Another Week, Another Java Security Issue Found, Oracle and Apple Struggle to Deal with Java Security Issues, and Java still has a crucial role to play—despite security risks.

The article Oracle to stop patching Java 6 in February 2013 suggests that users of Java should upgrade to Java 7 before February 2013 when Oracle will supply the last publicly available security patch to Java SE 6 outside of an Oracle support plan. Another article is called Oracle's Java security update lacking, experts say.

1. Cloud Computing

It seemed like everybody wanted a cloud in 2012 even if they didn't really need one. Archana Venkatraman put it this way, "2012 was the year cloud computing hit the mainstream." Steve Cerocke stated, "2012 will go down as the year of cloud computing." Other articles and posts on the biggest cloud stories of 2012 include The 10 Biggest Cloud Stories Of 2012 and Top five cloud computing news stories in 2012.

Cloud Computing is in the sweet spot many trendy technologies and approaches go through when enthusiasm is much greater than negativism. Charles Babcock's Cloud Computing: Best And Worst News Of 2012 is more interesting to me than many cloud-focused publications because it highlights the good and the bad of cloud computing in 2012.

Honorable Mention

I couldn't fit everything that interested me about software development in 2012 into the Top Ten. Here are some others that barely missed my cut.

C

As mentioned earlier, the C programming language appears headed for #1 on the Tiobe Index for 2012. One of programming's most senior languages is also one of its most popular. When one considers that numerous other languages are themselves built on C and when one considers that many languages strive for C-like syntax, the power and influence of C is better appreciated. C's popularity has remained strong for years and 2012 was another very strong year for C.

Another piece of evidence arguing C's case is the late 2012 O'Reilly publication of Ben Klemens's book 21st Century C: C Tips from the New School. The author discusses this book and C today in the O'Reilly post New school C.

Although I have not written C code for several years now, I've always had a fondness for the language. It was the language I used predominately in college (with Pascal and C++ being the other languages I used to a less degree) and I wrote the code for my electrical engineering capstone project in C. I remember (now fondly) spending almost an entire Saturday on one of my first C assignments fighting a bug to only realize that it was not working because I was using the assignment operator (=) rather than the equality operator (==). This lesson served me well as I learned other languages in terms of both what it important to differentiate and in terms of how to better debug programs even when a debugger is not readily available. I think my C experience grounded me well for later professional development with C++ and Java.

Gradle 1.x

Using an expressive programming language rather than XML or archaic make syntax to build software seems like an obviously beneficial thing to do. However, make, Ant, and Maven have continued to dominate in this area, but Groovy-based Gradle shows early signs of providing the alternative we've all been looking for. Gradle still has a long way to go in terms of acceptance and popularity and there are many other build systems with some of Gradle's ideals that have failed, but Gradle did seem to capture significant attention in 2012 and can hopefully build upon that in future years. Gradle 1.0 was formally released in June 2012 and Gradle 1.3 was released in November 2012.

DevOps

Among others, Scott Ambler predicted that "DevOps will become the new IT buzzword" in 2012. If it is not "the" buzzword of 2012, it is not for a lack of trying on the DevOps evangelists' part. The DevOps movement continued to gain momentum in 2012. The DZone DevOps Zone sees one or more posts on the subject added each day. The only reason this did not make it into my Top Ten is that I still don't see "Typical Everyday Coder" talking about it when I am away from the blogosphere talking to in-the-trenches developers.

Amber's concluding paragraph begins with this prediction, "Granted, there’s likely going to be a lot of talk and little action within most organizations due to the actual scope of DevOps, but a few years from now, we’ll look back on 2012 as the year when DevOps really started to take off." Only time will tell. There continue to be posts trying to explain what exactly DevOps is.

Departures of Noteworthy Development Personnel

There were some separations of key developers from their long-time organizations in 2012. As mentioned previously, Spring Framework founder Rod Johnson left VMWare/SpringSource (and ultimately ended up on the Board of Directors for Scala company Typesafe). Josh Bloch, perhaps still best known for his work at Sun on the JDK and for writing Effective Java, left Google in 2012 after working there for eight years.

Resurgence of Widely Popular but Aged Java Frameworks

Two very popular long-in-the-tooth Java-based frameworks saw a resurgence in 2012. Tomek Kaczanowski recently posted JUnit Strikes Back, in which he cites several pieces of evidence indicating a resurgence in JUnit, arguably the most commonly used testing framework in Java (and, in many ways, the inspiration for numerous other nUnit-based unit testing frameworks). Christian Grobmeier's recent post The new log4j 2.0 talks about many benefits of Log4j2 and how it can be used with more recently popular logging frameworks such as SLF4J and even Apache Commons Logging.

Electronic Books (E-books)

Electronic books (ebooks) are becoming widely popular in general, but also specifically within software development books. This is not surprising because e-books provide many general benefits, but also have benefits particular to software development. In particular, it is nice to be able to electronically search for terms (overcoming the poor index problem common to many printed programming books). Other advantages include the ability to have the book on laptops, mobile devices, e-readers, and other portable devices. This not only makes a particular book readily available, but makes it easy to carry many books on many different technical subjects with one on travel. It is also less likely for the electronic book to be "borrowed" unknowingly by others or turn up missing.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of electronic books is cost. It is fairly well known that technical books are generally not big profit makers for publishers. However, with printing and distribution costs being a significant portion of traditional publication costs, e-books make it easier to publishers to price these books at a lower cost than the printed equivalent.

The reduced cost to the publisher for an electronic book can be passed onto the consumer. I recently took advantage of an offer from Packt Publishing to purchase a total of eight of their books as electronic books for a total price of $40. Given that a single printed programming book can cost $40 or more, this was a bargain. I have also blogged on other good deals on e-books provided by other technical publishers such as O'Reilly and Manning.

I have especially appreciated the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP). This program is only viable thanks to electronic books and allows readers to read a book as it is developed. Because technologies change so quickly, it is often helpful to get access to even portions of these books as quickly as possible.

Finally, another advantage of e-books is their ultimate disposal. In reality, they take up such a small portion of even an old-fashioned CD or DVD, that I can usually dig up a copy if I want to. However, I can remove them from my electronic devices when I no longer need them and need the space. There are no environmental or logistic concerns about their disposal. This is important because these books do tend to get outdated quickly and sometimes an outdated programming book is worse than having no book at all because it can be very misleading.

PhoneGap / Cordova

Given the popularity of mobile development and HTML5 in 2012, it's not surprising that PhoneGap and Cordova had big years in 2011/2012. In the web versus native debate, one of the advantages of web is the portability of web apps across multiple devices. The PhoneGap/Cordova approach brings some of this benefit for writing code but maintains some of the performance advantages of running native applications.

Objective-C

Objective-C looks to win the Tiobe Index language of the year again in 2012. This is yet another indicator of mobile development prevalence as Objective-C's popularity is almost exclusively tied to iPhone/iPad development, though Objective-C's history is closely coupled with the NeXT workstations and even has been called an inspiration for Java (advertised as quoted by Patrick Naughton) instead of C++.

Kotlin

For several years now, it has been trendy for the "cool kids" to post feedback messages on articles or blogs about Java features proclaiming that Groovy or Scala does anything covered in that blog post or article better than Java does it. Many of the "cool kids" (or maybe different "cool kids" with the same modus operandi) now seem to be doing the same on Scala blog posts and articles, advocating the advantages of Kotlin over Scala.

As Scala and Groovy still lag Java in terms of overall popularity and usage, Kotlin lags both Groovy and Scala in terms of adoption at this point. However, there are definitely some characteristics of Kotlin in its favor. First, the Kotlin web page describes the language as, "a statically typed programming language that compiles to JVM byte codes and JavaScript." I could definitely see how "statically typed" and "compiles ... to JavaScript" would be endearing to developers who must write JavaScript but prefer static compilation. Andrey Breslav, Kotlin Project Lead, believes that static languages compiling to "typed JavaScript" will be a major development of 2013 and he cites Dart and TypeScript as other examples of this. Being able to run on the JVM can also be an advantage, though this is no different than Groovy or Scala.

One major positive for Kotlin is its sponsor: JetBrains. It is likely that their IDE, IntelliJ IDEA, will provide elegant support for the Kotlin language. This is also a sponsor/owner with the resources (monetary and people) to improve chances for success. Because JetBrains is "planning to roll out a beta of Kotlin and start using it extensively in production," they are more likely to continue investing resources in this new language.

There was no way I could justify to myself putting Kotlin in my top ten for 2012, but once it is released for production use, it is possible that Kotlin may make another year's Top Ten list if it is widely adopted.

Ceylon

Kotlin isn't the only up-and-coming static language for the JVM; Ceylon is also relatively young in this space. I wrote about the JavaOne 2012 presentation Introduction to Ceylon and that post provides brief overview and description information.

The first milestone of Ceylon IDE (Eclipse plug-in) was released in early 2012 and was followed in March with the release of Ceylon M2 ("Minitel"). This was followed by the Ceylon M3 ("V2000") release in June and Ceylon M4 ("Analytical Engine") in October.

The newer JVM-friendly languages with the seeming best chances of long-term viability are those with strong sponsors: Groovy has SpringSource, Scala has TypeSafe, Kotlin has JetBrains, and Ceylon has RedHat.

End of Oracle/Google Android Lawsuit

The lawsuit between Oracle and Google over Android seems to have, for the most part, concluded in 2012. There still seems to be bad blood between the two companies, but the settlement of this probably allows for continued success of the Android platform and potentially for collaboration at some future point between the two companies on Java. It will be interesting to see if Google allows its employees to submit abstracts to JavaOne 2013.

Everyone a Programmer

When HTML first started to expand across the universities and colleges in the early-to-mid 1990s, it seemed that everyone I knew was learning HTML. Most of us were "learning" it by copying other peoples' HTML source and editing it for our own use. Of course, everything then was static and fairly easy to pick up. It probably also skewed my perspective that I was majoring in electrical engineering with an emphasis in computer science and so was around people who had a tendency to adopt and use new technology. Perhaps for the first time since then, I have felt that there is an ever-growing interest in pushing everyone to learn how to program at a certain level. I don't need to provide any supporting points for this because I can instead reference Joab Jackson's 2012: The year that coding became de rigueur. Not only does this post enumerate several examples of the debate about whether everyone should learn programming, but it also makes cool use of "de rigueur" in its title.

Java

I did not include Java itself in my Top Ten in 2012. Perhaps this is an indication that I too felt that 2012 was a slow year for Java (and agree that this is not necessarily a bad thing). That being stated, Martijn Verburg has listed some "personal highlights of the year" in the world of Java in 2012 in What will 2013 bring? Developers place their bets. These include the JVM's entry into the cloud, Java/JVM community growth, OpenJDK, Java EE 7, and Mechanical Sympathy.

It's a small thing in many ways, but I think James Gosling returning to JavaOne and throwing out t-shirts was symbolic of a strengthening resurgence among an already strong Java development community.

Jelastic

Java on the cloud in general had a big year in 2012. Jelastic had a particularly big year. The screen snapshot below is from an e-mail sent out by Jelastic COO Dmitry Sotnikov.

Jelastic was prominently mentioned at JavaOne 2012 multiple times. Some of these mentions were due to winning the Duke's Choice Award for 2012. Other mentions resulted from James Gosling's positive review of his use of Jelastic. As I blogged on earlier, Gosling described himself as "a real Jelastic fan" at the JavaOne 2012 Community Keynote.

Linux-based ARM Devices

Oracle announced release of a Linux ARM JDK in 2012. The ability to run even JavaFX on Linux ARM devices provides evidence of Oracle's interest in supporting Linux ARM devices. Given that Oracle is well-known for investing in areas where returns are often great, it follows that perhaps Oracle sees great potential for the Linux ARM devices in the future. An interesting article that looks into this is Java 8 on ARM: Oracle's new shot against Android?

One couldn't go to a keynote presentation at JavaOne 2012 without hearing about one very trendy Linux ARM Device, the Rasperry Pi. Similarly, the BeagleBoard and PandaBoard have also become very popular.

Improving Job Market for Software Developers

2012 seemed to be a good year for those with careers in software development and this seems likely to continue. CNN Money ranked software developer as #9 in its Best Jobs in America story (software architect was #3). For example, Lauren Hepler has written that Software developers top 2013 job projection and cites a Forbes slides-based presentation.

Perhaps more importantly than these stories are my anecdotal observations of a surging market for software developers. I have seen an uptake in number of unsolicited employment queries from potential employers and clients. I am also seeing an increase in billboard advertising for developers, especially in areas of the United States with high concentrations of software development. This improving job market might be one of many reasons for increasing interest in programming in general.

Other Resources

There are other posts of potential interest. Katherine Slattery's Takeaways from the Top Development News Stories of 2012 talks about the Node.js "hype cycle," open source hardware, native apps versus HTML5 apps, and the "'learn to code' craze."

Ted Neward's annual predictions (for 2013 in this case) and review of his prior year (2012 in this) predictions is an interesting read.

Conclusion

2012 was another big year in software development across many different areas and types of development. Many of the themes discussed in this post overlap and are somehow associated with mobile development, cloud computing, and greater availability of data.