Deciding to use use the Up-to-Date format for Silverlight 2 was a no brainer. MIX 08 was just around the corner, and we knew Beta 1 would be released there. What better time and place could there be to put an updateable book into the hands of Microsoft developers. Besides, we knew that Silverlight 2 would be made available to the public through an orchestrated and mostly predictable series of releases: Beta 1 would be followed by Beta 2, and Beta 2 by a release to the web and so on. With our up-to-date format, we could provide developers with an innovative product that would stay current, no matter how many times Microsoft changed Silverlight before its final release. Plus, we could also correct mistakes and add overlooked content that our readers thought was important.

So now that you've seen the product, what other subjects should we publish in this format? Tell us what you'd like us to tackle next.

Dynamic HTML Definitive Reference by Danny Goodman would be an excellent choice. It is far and away my most used reference book but I'm sure I'm at least one revision behind.

The .Net Framework would also be nice, I really haven't found a good well organized reference for that yet. Sometimes I find that I loop around in circles with their online documentation, other times I just feel like I'm looping in circles. Some of Microsoft's other first release products documentation from .Net 3.0 and 3.5 would be nice too. WCF, WPF, WF, Linq, etc.

Another reference manual I'd like to see would be an SQL reference formatted like Danny Goodman does in his Dynamic HTML reference. By that I mean it would show all of the SQL, TSQL, PL/SQL, etc language elements, identify which DB's support which ones (or identify similar commands). This could be done across the SQL standard, Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, and any other major DB. I find my self struggling to get my syntax right right as I move from environment to environment.

I love the Up-To-Date concept, especially considering today's world where there are so many different languages and frameworks that are advancing at such a rapid pace. I'm not big on reading eBooks, so the concept of a beta pdf eBook until the final version is ready doesn't interest me much at all. I love the idea that I can have a book in my hands today and it will stay current as the scope of the book evolves.

Here are some suggestions I have for future topics:

Ruby on Rails 2 Up-To-Date - The Rails team moves at such a rapid pace as soon as you make the investment in a book that's current, they release some new features in the EDGE Rails that I would love to have tutorial style documentation on. This concept could also apply to other fast moving frameworks like Django, Grails, Monorail, etc.

JRuby 1.x Up-To-Date - I believe there is a lot of potential in the jRuby project and would love some tutorial style information with the promise to stay current.

.NET Framework 4 Up-To-Date / Java 7 Up-To-Date - Allthough .NET and Java changes don't come as fast and often as other languages/frameworks, they are on the move.

J2EE 6 Up-To-Date - Another set of techonlogies that's continually being updated/upgraded.

I also like the idea of an HTML/DHTML/Javascript book that keeps pace with updates to the javascript ECMA spec, HTML 5 spec, and which of those specs the current and BETA browsers are supporting.

Hope you find some of these suggestions helpful. Thanks for soliciting our input.

Russ

This post has been edited by russ: Apr 2 2008, 07:45 PM

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