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Category: Book Review
As a researcher I read a lot of books, and tutorials. Here are my reviews. Whatever stated here is my humble oppinion.
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Smashing Magazine tweet about my eBook
If you’re teaching WordPress in school, or know somebody who does, here’s a free eBook on everything WordPress: https://t.co/5QIMIy0txj by @pertjensen
— Smashing Magazine (@smashingmag) November 4, 2017
Vitaly Friedman and the Smashing Magazine kindly shared the link to my eBook on Twitter. Smashing Magazine is always a great source of inspiration on everything about coding, design, graphics and UX trends.
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Review: WordPress for Beginners (New for 2017)
If your’re running a WordPress blog or similar “WordPress for Beginners” is a source of inspiration and knowledge. For web developers: this book is not for you!
Focus on Beginners
Perhaps I should have known: “… for beginners” may just mean “for beginners”. I bought the bookazine. At home it was opened. Not much about code here. Most chapters focus on the GUI usage.
What the web developer may find
Towards the end however things get more interesting, that is: for the web developers. There’s a chapter about the WP-CLI . And some tutorials. Anyone with a little knowledge of CSS would be able to follow the tutorials.
The bookazine’s focus on the end user makes sense. This book is what most people need in order to get up and running with any WordPress site – especially if you run a blog or similar on wordpress.com.
There’s good advice on how to choose plugins and themes. Twenty different themes are reviewed. Theme customization is introduced.
Here things get fun: fading buttons, hovering slide out menus, and so on.
The strength of the book is a clear focus on the WordPress beginner. The text does what it says.
Recommendation
- URL: WordPress for Beginners.
- Review for beginners: 8/10.
- Review for developers: 4/10.
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Torberg: LMS built on top-down approach
By reflecting the hierarchical organizational structures of universities, the LMS built on a strict top-down approach, giving absolute administrative control to technical specialists in an IT-department, while giving less control to the teachers.
(Vladimir Torberg et al. “Sustaining Teacher Control in a Blog-Based Personal Learning Evironment” 2013)
This quote is spot on. To this day I have never seen a LMS that was loved by the teachers and students. The author suggests that the internal structures of LMSs reflect the hirarchy of the organization.
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Læser Real Life Responsive Web Design
“Real Life Responsive Web Design” er redigeret af Vitaly Friedman. Vitaly udgiver Smashing Magazine. Bogen er en mursten med inspiration til arbejdet med responsive sider.
Bogen introducerer løsninger til billeder i responsivt design. Generelt har billeder været et problem. Store billeder fungerer ikke godt på mobile enheder. Yoav Weiss giver bud på løsninger. Generelt er løsningen at fremstille billeder til de forskellige opløsninger. Imagetagget kan pege på løsninger alt efter enhedens beskaffenhed.
Dan Malls artikel om workflow og Zoe Gillenwaters introduktion til Flexbox er spændende læsning.
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Læser nu
WordPress skabes af et samfund af open source udviklere. Derfor er antropologisk forskning i organisationer relevant.
Har læst Peters “In Search of Excelence” og skal til at læse Ed Schein “Organizational Culture and Leadership”. Det er klassikere inden for virksomheder og antropologi.
Peters argumenterer ikke imponerende for begrebet “excellence”; men udpeger en række virksomheder, der havde success i samtiden. Trods det virker enkelte modeller brugbare.
Schein er metodisk stærkere. Han introducerer de lag, som antropologen interesserer sig for:
- Artefakter
- Espoused Beliefs
- Basic Assumptions
Især basic assumptions kan sammenlignes med tanker om det ubevidste fra jungiansk psykologi; men Schein har (så vidt jeg kan se) ingen dybdepsykologisk agenda.