RE: Variety in Tech Writing (was: Display, Displays, or Appears)

[john -at- garisons -dot- com]

The closest thing I've seen to really revolutionary new ways of
communicating technical information is in O'Reilly's latest series of
"Head First" books. I got the Head First: SQL recently and I love the way
it sucks you in to the content. My wife had gotten the Head First: PMP
book and loved it. I looked at the JavaScript one and it's excellent, as
is the HTML and CSS one. The Ajax book is due shortly.

It uses lots of pictures, crazy funny, but useful and typical examples,
and does a great job of using the problem to determine what the solution
would be.

Take a look next time you're at Borders or Barnes & Noble ... and you can
find reviews about them on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-SQL-Brain-Learners/dp/0596526849/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213111177&sr=1-7

My 2¢,

John Garison


> I can't recall seeing any, either. For all that we *talk* about variety
> in technical writing, maybe no one wants to actually *pay* for it.
>
> It's a straw man, beating a dead horse with a moot point.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Gene Kim-Eng
>> Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 5:36 PM
>> To: Dan Goldstein; TECHWR-L
>> Subject: Re: Variety in Tech Writing (was: Display, Displays,
>> or Appears)
>>
>> If you mean documents with "variety" in their
>> descriptions, offhand I can't recall seeing any. If you
>> mean documents that give me the impressions you described,
>> I don't think they're online, but the printed manuals that
>> IBM provided for its OS/2 operating systems would be the
>> first ones that come to my mind.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "Dan Goldstein"
>> > ... Actually, I've never had the pleasure of reading
>> > such a document. Can someone point me to an example
>> > online?


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