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The Mobile Web Handbook

OK, so Vitaly let the cat out of the bag: I’m writing a new book: The Mobile Web Handbook, and Smashing Magazine is publishing it. It’ll be roughly 250 pages and will be available in June. Pre-ordering is possible right now.

My topic is the mobile web, which some maintain does not exist. However, for me it’s really a convenient shorthand for “touch-based small-screen web on more browsers than you’ve ever heard of.” And those are exactly the main topics my book treats: touch events, viewports, and the mobile browser world. You need to know about these things on top of your regular web development experience.

Interspersed are lesser topics: why a few CSS declarations are more difficult to get right on mobile than on desktop, and what it takes to become an accomplished mobile web developer. As a bonus, you will learn why responsive design works. (Not how. You already know how. But do you know why?)

And the team, oh my, the team! Right at the start I knew who I wanted, and I’m glad to report they all said Yes. Stephanie Rieger is my tech editor, Stephen Hay signed up for the design and illustrations, and Vitaly himself handles general editing. A dream team, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Anyway, visit the product page to find out more. And note that right now you get a 20% discount for pre-ordering it. That’s pretty cool. Even better, it comes from Smashing’s pockets, not mine.

I’ve been writing since October, and all the recent research I published about viewports and touch events was meant for the book. So you’ll find nearly all conclusions I drew written down in an easy-to-follow order.

More importantly, the book gave me an opportunity to be complete. Nearly everything that’s in it has appeared on this site in one form or another, but that form was usually a loose blog post that treated one specific aspect of viewports or touch events, and that was hard to find if you needed it. Hell, I myself forgot about some of my research and had to be reminded.

Now, for the first time, you get the whole story in the correct order. In addition to serving you as well as possible, this also allowed me to deepen my own knowledge. If you want to really understand something, teach it to someone else.

I haven’t actually finished writing yet: I need to go through about one-third of the book and incorporate Stephanie’s feedback. That’s going very well. After that, Vitaly and the copy editor will have to go over it, and that will likely trigger some more changes. But that’ll make the book only better.

Anyway, buy the Mobile Web Handbook now. Why wait? If nothing else, it’ll look GREAT on your coffee table.