Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Young and Old together

My local Borders book shop carries books on HTML 4.01 right next door to latest books on AJAX.

It just opens up all sorts of questions:

How on earth can we keep up with all of these different ways of putting stuff onto the web?

Is there really a market for such a broad range of old and new web techniques?

Why would anyone buy a book on HTML 4.01 now in 2006? I suppose it has its place, but frankly, if you are new to this, then don’t buy anything that has a version number in the title.

furthermore...

I have noticed that bookshops just don't get books in the right order on the shelves. They appear often in right area but then they are often jumbled up. There is pleasure in book browsing I know, but often, I need to look everywhere within the computing section, so as to be sure not to miss anything. I sympathise with the shelvers. You will notice from this photo that under the HTML/XML label comes books on Skype, Ajax, RSS and CSS

I wonder how many are like me in this regard though; I browse, I memorise, and then I go home and order from Amazon?

So why do I even go to bookshops? In spite of the sophistication of Amazon, and the use of search and similar, it is still easy to miss a book unless you come across it in the shelves of your local bookshop. You can see my display of books right here. I have started this display for books that I own. My intention is to add to this books that I want to own or, at least, read!

Taking Photos in Bookshops:

I do it! I usually have a camera with me. If not my big lovely Lumix, then my phone has a camera. So, I creep up to the shelves and take an image or two. I was stopped once in Waterstones. They thought I might be working for Blackwells (the competition) I suppose.