Posts tagged book

The Free Zend Framework book has returned! It’s back! Finally…

In case you forgot…

The [Zend Framework: Surviving The Deep End] book was written to guide readers through the metaphorical “Deep End”. It’s the place you find yourself in when you complete a few tutorials and scan through the Reference Guide, where you are buried in knowledge up to your neck but without a clue about how to bind it all together effectively into an application. This take on the Zend Framework offers a survival guide, boosting your understanding of the framework and how it all fits together by following the development of a single application from start to finish. I’ll even throw in a few bad jokes for free.

In fact the entire book (to date since it’s a work in progress) is available for free online in HTML form. And it always will be.

To celebrate the mini relaunch of the website (read on) and free HTML version of the book, I have published a bumper pack of four chapters and an additional appendix. This brings the total to seven chapters of Zend Framework goodness (and that’s only Part 1 of the book) and two appendices. In terms of pages, that’s 70 pages of reading material in PDF form at US Letter page size. No, the text in PDFs is not gigantic…;). The new entries include:

Chapter 4: Installing The Zend Framework
Chapter 5: A Not So Simple Hello World Tutorial
Chapter 6: Standardise The Bootstrap Class With Zend_Application
Chapter 7: Handling Application Errors Gracefully
Appendix A: Creating A Local Domain Using Apache Virtual Hosts

With the future addition of Appendix C, which is testing related, this will complete Part 1 of the book. Onwards to Part 2, Doing Something Useful With The Zend Framework.

It’s been a bit of a long road to this point as many know, and I hope everyone is happy with the…eventual…result.

The website has also been updated quite a bit though my impressive (not so much) attempt at web design remains. Behind the scenes howevers scores of bugs have been exterminated, a symptom of a quickly developed app that needed way more time in an IDE than the few hours I gave it.

The major improvements:

1. Chapter level commenting has been added!
2. The comment systems “remember me” feature actually works
3. The book’s font has been enlarged since spending too much time reading tiny letters is hard on the eyes
4. Code examples now render correctly and fit within the page (where possible)
5. Nearly all reader comments have been integrated in earlier chapters/references
6. The mysterious hovering Google advert has been blackmailed into cooperating

Writing a book is a massive undertaking, one not to be underestimated. Every chapters went through draft after endless draft until it said something worthwhile. That does not mean any chapter is perfect. The entire point of the intricate commenting system is get feedback from readers about any flaws, improvements, suggestions, debates or outright criticism they wish to raise. The more the merrier! The other side of the undertaking is my intention to maintain the book as a solid volume applicable to the current Zend Framework version. There is no version freeze here - there is no final Edition heading to a printing house. It’s a live book. The advantage of the self publishing/wheedling of donations route is that I am free to rewrite an entire chapter whenever I choose. And I will.

There are also a number of translations in progress by volunteer translators, and I hope to publish these during September as they become available. For those who get edgy around the conflicting terms “volunteer” and “Macbook Pro for the author”, I have already informed the volunteer translators that I will refuse any cash/donations/profits for personal use from these derived translated works. Translators may elect to take any future profit arising from their work, or donate it to a worthy cause of their choice. That’s assuming we ever see a profit - it’s not that big a priority if it wasn’t obvious already.

For those who have made donations in the past (to keep the server switched on and the monkey cranking the generator supplied with peanuts), I am also happy to announce that the non-free PDF versions of the book will be made available to you for free, and forever. I have all your email addresses. This is my thanks for the early support, and also a form of apology for the delay in getting back to the book.

For everyone else, PDF copies (among other forms) will be sold online at a future date. Obviously there’s no obligation to buy anything. The HTML form is completely free of charge, and we are still accepting donations if you’re not interested in PDF copies. Though you may wish to wait a bit and make sure I keep publishing new material . Don’t worry - the doctors say I’ll probably live until at least next month…

To conclude…

Free Zend Framework Book. 70 pages so far. Lots of bad jokes. A work in progress. Read it here!