The audience for Going Offline

My new book, Going Offline, starts with no assumption of JavaScript knowledge, but by the end of the book the reader is armed with enough code to make any website work offline.

I didn’t want to overwhelm the reader with lots of code up front, so I’ve tried to dole it out in manageable chunks. The amount of code ramps up a little bit in each chapter until it peaks in chapter five. After that, it ramps down a bit with each subsequent chapter.

This tweet perfectly encapsulates the audience I had in mind for the book:

I pre-ordered it, and I’m excited about it. I’ve been curious about service workers for a long time, but have been nervous about actually writing one.

— Matthew J Derocher (@mjamesderocher) April 13, 2018

Some people have received advance copies of the PDF, and I’m very happy with the feedback I’m getting.

Seriously applauding the author for explaining how to run a local server in passing, in like 3 lines.

People do not understand how this is a massive barrier to designers who are interested but don’t know how/are new to coding.

— Lívia De Paula Labate (@livlab) April 5, 2018

Here I am all self-congratulatory “yes, yes, I am understanding service workers much now…”

…when I realize this book is also TEACHING ME JAVASCRIPT pic.twitter.com/X6c3O1UiMz

— Lívia De Paula Labate (@livlab) April 6, 2018

How is this happening: it did not tell me upfront I needed to learn it, it did not even tell me it was going to teach me.

It’s just telling a very detailed and compelling story. It happens to be taking place in the browser, and the browser happens to speak JavaScript.

— Lívia De Paula Labate (@livlab) April 6, 2018

Ok, I’m done reading @adactio’s Going Offline book and as my wife would say, it’s the bomb dot com.

You can check the thread above for some impressions, but definitely read it. It is a _very_ gentle introduction to technology we are going to use A LOT.

— Lívia De Paula Labate (@livlab) April 15, 2018

Honestly, that is so, so gratifying to hear!

Words cannot express how delighted I am with Sara’s reaction:

Today I finished reading @adactio ’s new book: Going Offline. As someone who rarely ever reads a book cover to cover, this alone says a lot about how good the book is.

It is *so* good. So, so good. I cannot recommend it enough: abookapart.com/products/going-offline

— Sara Soueidan (@SaraSoueidan) April 13, 2018

I’ll tweet about this in time, but for now: THANK YOU for a WONDERFUL book. I can’t believe how approachable you made SWs with your writing style. I’d recommend it to everyone in a heart beat.

— Sara Soueidan (@SaraSoueidan) April 12, 2018

She’s walking the walk too:

I’m expecting weird or inconsistent behavior / bugs at this point (still need to test!) BUT I can finally say that sarasoueidan.com is now officially a Progressive Web App. 🎉

✅ HTTPS (long ago)
✅ Service Worker (since yesterday)
✅ Manifest (added today)

— Sara Soueidan (@SaraSoueidan) April 13, 2018

That gives me a warm fuzzy glow!

If you’ve been nervous about service workers, but you’ve always wanted to turn your site into a progressive web app, you should get a copy of this book.

Blog service workers and the chicken and the egg

This is a great little technique from Remy: when a service worker is being installed, you make sure that the page(s) the user is first visiting get added to a cache.

A Book Apart, Front-End Next Steps

If you buy this bundle of books, you get Going Offline in some very, very good company.

Word Count 53: The state of AI and the Goodreads fiasco

Could the tsunami of AI shite turn out to be a flash flood? Might the models rapidly degrade into uselessness or soon be sued or blocked out of existence? Will users rebel as their experience of the internet is degraded?

In my most optimistic moments, I find myself hoping that the whole AI edifice will come tumbling down as tools disintegrate, people realise how unreliable they are, and how valuable human-generated and curated information really is. But it’s not a safe bet.

Bookin’. — Ethan Marcotte

The twelve(!) year old photo that Ethan has illustrated this post with still makes my heart sing.

Sci-Fi & Me – Jeremy Keith – Stay Curious Café by beyond tellerrand - YouTube

Here’s the video of the talk I gave on Wednesday evening all about my relationship with reading science fiction. There are handy chapter markers if you want to jump around.