John Resig is writing a new book that will be released in the fall of 2008 and we are waiting impatiently. It’s called Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja and will be 300 pages full of information for the advanced JavaScript developer. As he says the book will cover cross-browser compatibility issues, I’m already looking forward to the release of it. I’m quite sure that my colleagues and I are not the only ones breaking our heads over that issue. So if you’re interested in designing your own library, or want to know more about them, this is a book for you.

Let’s hope the next book will be as helpful in my learning process as the last one he wrote (Pro JavaScript Techniques). More info can be found here.

The last couple of months, I’ve started reading some books about software and programming and I must say there are a few very interesting books out there. The most eye-catching books are those of Head First, they are not the most in to depth books on the market, but they make you think about the things you read.

Ordinary books just tell you theoretically how things are done, give you the rules how things are done, and on the end of the chapter give you a few exercises. Head First does it on a very unique way; they use a lot of images (admit it, they really draw the attention) and examples throughout the whole book. Not only reading is required from the user, but also thinking and finding solutions. By role-play they make complex issues look very easy and also possible to remember those things for longer than 2 days.

One of those books I’ve read is the Software development book, not really interesting for a full time developer or a beginner but a great reference for people who want to start creating software (that’s what we are trying to do at the moment). It’s amazing how much problems we have in real time where also described and solved in the book. A few examples are:

• Planning your time for development
• Follow up of your project
• Dealing with bugs

I guess you just can’t build software without dealing with those problems. A nice example to get your development planned is using planning poker, where all your theme members play a little poker game, but instead of using cards you’ll use hours or days you need to develop. A great way to talk about different topics and do analyzing at the same time. Those and many other problem solving stories can be found in this book. Hope you like it to.