The Software Design Handbook

by nathanbarry • 14 years ago

42 28 14 years ago

nathanbarry10• 14 years ago

I'm thrilled to announce my latest book focused on designing web applications. After the success of my last book, The App Design Handbook, I had a lot of people asking me to write something specific to web applications. I actually started writing the outline for this book back in 2009, but it wasn't until a few months ago that I actually started writing.

Happy to answer any questions about it!

richaclark• 14 years ago

Congrats. I see this book comes out on December 12th. How were you able to write it so quickly after the last one?

nathanbarry10• 14 years ago

I made a commitment to write 1,000 words per day. So after I finished the first book, I just kept writing. I wrote more about that here: http://nathanbarry.com/commitment-changed-career/

k3n3• 14 years ago

First, good job! I hope to add "authored a book" to my resume some day.

Question, though: if this book is specifically geared towards web apps, why did you give it such an ambiguous name that mentions nothing at all about web apps?

Is your book about architecting applications (on a code level), or is the "design" relating more to the artistic definition of design? Judging by the sample content, it looks to have little-to-nothing to do with actual code, and mostly focused on UI/UX.

As-is, the title just seems really inaccurate; "software design", at least for me, is a very specific area which deals exclusively with UML and other code-level architectural concerns.

nathanbarry10• 14 years ago

I guess we are using the same words to mean different things. I'll see if I can come up with a title that is more clear.

The book is focused on designing software from a user's perspective. That includes how the application flow works, making sure it is intuitive, and adding a layer of polish with colors, textures, and animations.

efmiglioranza• 14 years ago

Indeed. Please, change the name, I'm very interested in the book, but at first I thought it was about software design patterns or something like that.

marekmroz• 14 years ago

I was actually hoping that it would be a book about software design for web applications. Oh well..

mnicole• 14 years ago

Hi Nathan, perhaps this book isn't for me as a designer as much as it is for developers to ensure everything that needs to be there is there, but the modal popup having the action buttons before the messaging doesn't seem to make any sense from a UX perspective.

ngokevin3• 14 years ago

Discount for people who bought previous book? :)

nathanbarry10• 14 years ago

I'll do a 25% (ish) discount on launch day and will be sure to let everyone who bought the previous book know about it.

ngokevin3• 14 years ago

Great, thanks! Can't wait for this book.

jacalata• 14 years ago

Where's your definition of 'site' vs 'app' coming from? How does, e.g, Amazon, fit into this?

gingerlime• 14 years ago

It looks really cool. Sorry to nitpick, but I think you should say "DESIGNING WEB SOFTWARE IS DIFFERENT from DESIGNING WEBSITES" (it might at least help with the British crowd)

The Software Design Handbook

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