^^^ I can't stress that enough. First of all, this is not a rant at all. I really do like this book. I am offering my professional opinion and I'm curious what other readers think.


My Argument:

EAP ePub v10 has several gramatical errors which I am concerned will make it into the printed version. As sugarat pointed out in his post back in January 2013, "plans for Sencha version 2.1?", this book is going to be 100% useless once it is published because this is a "...in Action" book but all the "action" is simply outdated. I truly believe that 95% of the book can stay the same since the core fundamental concepts of the Sencha Touch 2.x platform are still valid today.

I've tried out the examples, too, and many of them simply do not work all that well (especially Chapter 10 - ActionList) and I'm finding myself reading the Sench Touch Docs just to figure out how things are done "today". I plan to review this book and blog about it (braindumprelief.com) and I really want people to want to buy it and support the authors.


My Solution:

I would absolutely *love* to help the authors out to update this book before it is published if they are strapped for time due to personal timing constraints (I know how it is). Please PM me if you would like to consider my offer as I see a tremendous amount of value in this book but it may be overlooked due to how outdated some of the material is.

Sencha Touch 2.2 has been very much anticipated by the community and is definitely a major release. And so i agree with you on updating the book! However i think this might be very hard to do as i am sure the authors are already under pressure to release this one. The big question is does taking on 2.2 mean changing a majority of the book? I am not sure. Worst thing anyone would want is to get a review that their book is outdated on launch day! A few chapters on 2.2 is worth considering.

Page 25 of the latest MEAP (v11) states:

>>>
What you have may look a bit different
As of this writing we’re covering Sencha Touch 1.1.1. It’s known that the SDK contents change a bit from version to version.
<<<

The main page lists the MEAP began date as March 2011. If this is accurate or close, it's been over two years since this publication was started. Obviously, many updates are applied to frameworks in the course of two years. At the rate this publication is being developed, updating it to 2.2, or adding chapters to address 2.2, could easily take an additional 6-12 months. There are obvious arguments on both sides for not making any changes, but if no update is made, perhaps a more appropriate title should be 'Sencha Touch 2.0 in Action' so as to avoid prospective customers from disappointment thinking the publication is current. Lastly, one could argue that documentation which addresses changes to the framework is available on Sencha's site. I'm not entirely convinced that the publication should be updated to include 2.2 because I view the publication as more of an introduction to the fundamentals of the framework that the reader could expand upon by simply visiting Sencha's site for more current changes to the framework. Also, should any incompatibilities arise using 2.2 with the publication source code, just download 2.0 or 2.1 and use that instead...if I recall correctly, the examples source code includes Touch 2.1 framework libraries.

Matthew,

Thanks so much for taking the time to provide such feedback.

I updated stuff for 2.1, and it seems that 2.2 brought forth some issues.

I can confirm that the ActionList example doesn't work 100%, but I have a strong feeling it's a CSS issue more than a Touch one. I'll have to dig in and figure it out.


Regarding the text "As of this writing we’re covering Sencha Touch 1.1.1", I could not find that text in the current manuscript. We've been fixing all grammatical issues in preparation for print.

I'm going to revisit all examples and verify that they work.

My pleasure, Jesus. Indeed it did look like a CSS issue from a cursory glance. I debugged it and it appears the template is declaring a CSS class of "gear" which I could not find in "icons/icons.css". Whatever it is I'm sure it'll be easy to track down. I can't wait to see it in action. It's a sweet UI effect which would take *a lot* more code to achieve in Objective-C for native iOS apps. I know from experience, haha.

PDF graphics look amazing in v11, btw, but haven't seen an ePub v11 yet to check clarity. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. I'm super excited for you guys to wrap this project up so I can only imagine how excited you are.

Jesus, the reference to Touch 1.1.1 immediately precedes Table 2.2 on pg.25 of the latest pdf (v11).
The text is in a light blue box.

Matthew,

I've done an audit and found the following examples to not be 100% functioning for whatever reason:

http://stia/examples/chapter05/5.1.1_all_docked_Items_modified.html

http://stia/examples/chapter05/5.7%20using%20buttons.html

http://stia/examples/chapter06/sheets.html

http://stia/examples/chapter07/7.9_button_under_list.html
http://stia/examples/chapter07/7.12_treestore.html

http://stia/examples/chapter08/figure_8.4.html

http://stia/examples/chapter09/9.4_audio.html
http://stia/examples/chapter09/complete_map_marker.html
http://stia/examples/chapter09/simple_map.html

Chapter 10's extension had to be mostly rewritten due to underlying changes to the framework. This is the second time that I've had to do this and it's frustrated the hell out of me.

The net effect is that the extension is way better than before, but it's *really* advanced and is something that I am considering omitting in favor of a much more simpler "Composite Component" extension.

What I really need is a sanity check to see if it's way too complex for the book: (https://gist.github.com/moduscreate/5469322). Demo video: http://www.screencast.com/t/rMkPs2MRp

Btw, DON'T click the example links. They are local lto me

Hi Jesus, ya douchebag, lmao! j/k I chuckled when I heard that in your screencast.

I've been in contact with a couple folks at Manning Publishing and I'll be assisting you guys. I don't want to share my email publicly so please send me a private comment with your email on my blog's "Me in a Nutshell" page. Makes it faster and easier to communicate that way.

http://www.braindumprelief.com/about/

I've looked over the gist and it's absolutely impressive, utilizing some extremely advanced programming and OO concepts and patterns such as Drag/Drop, inheritance, "this" scope management, memory handling!! (lines 193-197 of gist; this impressed me the most because it's rarely demonstrated in text publishings and non-existent even in Sencha's own documentation), event registration and dispatching, utilizing the "apply" sugar which comes free as a result of the Ext 4 Class System, advanced CSS3 techniques, etc. Dude, this gist rocks!

Being "too advanced" is absolutely relative and truly depends on the skill set of the reader (as you've alluded to in the screencast). My question to you, Jesus, is who do *you* want your target audience to be? If you want novice JavaScripters to buy your book then I truly do believe that this is 20,000 leagues below your readers' chin (I just made that up because we all know the 8+ Other Wonders of the World truly happen under water in the ocean, not above the sky in space...it's really boring up there, just ask NASA! ). Okay, all jokes aside, I'm an an advanced JavaScripter and it's right up my ally and I believe it's a super clean API. I think if anything it could be the very thing that makes this book go viral because I've never seen such a simple example in a "...in Action" book or any book for that matter. To help you "cover your @$$", so to speak, my suggestion would be to consider adding the proverbial "Who Is This Book For?" section to the Preface section of the book. You can explain that this book is for anyone interested in getting their feet wet with Sencha Touch but walk around the fact that they may stumble upon some advanced examples but not to focus on the guts of the solution but more on its design for the problem you're attempting to tackle (i.e., swipe a list item to reveal actions on a list item due to extremely limited screen real-estate which is absolutely a problem that all mobile designers and engineers will face some time in their career).

My $0.02 worth, anyway. Anyone else reading this, please share your opinion about whether you think it's too advanced for the general audience of this book.

Cheers!

Matthew

"Download code examples" on the Manning Pub link still the same from 2 years ago, based on ST1.1.

v11 does not mention a link to download the examples anywhere, only examples/chaper10/ etc

This may be a little disconcerting to anyone who don't know about the ModusCreate and ModusCreateOrg gh-repos.

Greg, i'll be supplying the "final" zip for manning when we're done w/ the latest round of changes. Thanks for the heads up, i'm pretty upset that they did not update the available zip file for the MEAP subscribers. This is a huge fail and I sincerely apologize for it.

Guys, i'm sorry for not responding sooner.

I was in Seattle doing an Ext JS training this week and i've slowed down a little due to time constraints.

The good news is that i'm 1/3 into rewriting section 10.3 for Chapter 10.

Matt, Greg, if you guys want to connect w/ me via email jay{at}moduscreate.com

Edits to CH10 have been sent to Manning for editing.

Any idea when new version will be available?

BTW ST has been moving faster than expected so you have to finish quicker else you will have to rewrite again for 2.3....

This book will focus on 2.2 and should already be in print. I'm verifying this with Manning now.