Just in time for the release of Rails 1.2, I’m pleased to announce the Rails Cookbook.
Not long ago, I pulled the book out of production and, with the help of some friends, updated the content for Rails 1.2. I wasn’t sure how the timing of the book’s production schedule and that of Rails 1.2 would work out, but it looks like I nailed it. I had a blast working on it and with all the people in the community that helped make it a reality.
It’s my sincerest hope that you enjoy and find my book tremendously useful in your day-to-day rails work. Please feel free to pick up a copy of your own and let me know what you think.
Here’s a shot of the final cover:
and for the record, here’s a shot of the book’s very first reader:
Congratulations and Nice shot, It looks like she’s already half-way through your book. She must be really smart.
I’ll be looking forward to a copy coming to my local bookstore
How long Oreilly has been selling books? Still they don’t get that the first time I take a look at a technical book the first thing I want to see is a table of content unless the book is on just one topic say Capistrano or RJS. Even then it’s nice to have TOC.
Cheers.
@Neeraj Kumar: Not to worry, the TOC will be up on the book’s page shortly. Until then you can read my post on this blog that contains the TOC.
O’reilly shows the book being available only in hardcopy and safari editions. Are there plans for a PDF version? So far all the ruby/rails books I have are PDFs. They are easier to have around, too.
Thanks :)
@Kaj: Yes, it definitely will be available in PDF. I made sure of that. I’ll find out what’s keeping that from showing on the catalog page.
Congrats, looking forward to reading it.
@Rob,
Awesome, appreciate it :)
I’m also keen for the PDF version. Based on the TOC’s, your book has the structure I’ve been wanting for a long time now.
Me three – once the PDF is available, I’m a buyer. Until then, not so much.
@Michael Air, @Andrew: I hear you and am trying to push for an earlier release of the PDF on oreilly.com. I’ll keep you updated on my progress.
Can’t wait to get the PDF. Kind of surprised it wasn’t available at the same time as the print book!
Nice work, wonderful & Great addition. Thank you for all good works
Rob, congratulations!
Everyone else: from my experience O’Reilly is still getting used to the PDF thing.
@Leonard: Thanks very much. Yeah, you’re right but as they say, real change comes from within. That said, having the PDF pub two weeks after the print version (down from six) may have taken some fireworks out of the release party, but it isn’t really that long to wait—even in Rails time.
In addition to PDF releases, other progress O’Reilly made was towards a 100% XML-based editorial and production process. Having the book constantly in DocBook allowed me to incorporate contributed content easily and to build Ruby tools to manipulate that content. DocBook also allowed me to easily update the Book for Rails 1.2 late in the production process.
In reality, O’Reilly gets a whole different set of problems then some of their smaller publishing partners, like the Prags. One of those problems is how to publish the large volume of titles they offer, with consistently high quality. To do this they have to have more cooks in the kitchen (authors, editors, etc…) and that makes adapting to new processes more difficult, but definitly not impossible. The pattern here is that our media is getting richer and PDFs are just a first step in that direction.
The future is open.
Rob
I have the book via the safari rough cuts program. However there is no indication that it was finalized. I downloaded (purchased through the rough cuts program) a copy 2 weeks ago, maybe less. Is this the final version ?
TIA
Man you don’t even know how long I’ve waited for this since disabling my own Movable Type widget (that doesn’t work since Haloscan bypasses that code).
I just noticed that the book page on the O’Reilly site now has a ‘buy PDF’ button. I know the PDF isn’t supposed to be ready for ~two weeks, but I figured I’d give it a shot. Summary: it looks like this lets you buy it now, and retrieve it when it’s ready.
I went through the pages, was notified that ‘one of my titles was on backorder’, and saw that my bill was $0.00. After completing the checkout, I received an order confirmation w/ a link to the PDF book, but the link doesn’t work. I’ll try it in a few weeks.
@Andrew: Thanks for going down that dead end and pointing it out. I promise there will be a PDF at the end of that tunnel in about a week.
@Andrew: Okay, that process is a little too broken for my tastes so I pulled the link. You (and 11 others) will be notified when the PDF is ready. Thanks for being patient.
Hey Rob, thanks for pulling the link. I had quite a few customers complaining that the PDF wasn’t available after they purchased it. And when I went to research this, I couldn’t even find where they’d purchased it. But that’s because you’d already resolved the problem. We’ll get this whole PDF process smoothed out one day.
Hi Rob, could you please notify me as well? Thank you!
@Frederico Leonardo: I sure will. I’ve got the list of everyone who tried to buy the PDF over the weekend.
Could someone that bought the PDF early tell me if they are able to access it now?
Is there an email address for reporting errors/omissions?
Got my book 2 days ago and I think it’s brilliant!
One comment on 15.1 Installing RMagick on OS X. I was cruising through, but just couldn’t understand why RMagick wouldn’t “make”.
Circle Six Blog says:
First of all, when you get around to building RMagick, you may run into a ‘headers not found’ error. The headers are there, but for some reason they’re all in /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/universal-darwin8.0 and they need to be in /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/powerpc-darwin8.0. If you run into the error, copy all of the *.h files from universal-darwin8.0 to powerpc-darwin8.0 and it will fix it.
@Max: I glad you like it and I appreciate your feedback on any errors you find.
Here’s the book’s errata page:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527310/errata/
Thanks! Rob
Jason – I hadn’t read the comments here since my last post a while back, but i happened to look just now, and yes, i’m able to see and download the rails cookbook from my O’Reilly account management page. Cool!
I clicked through the PDF and it looks like all the pages are there. The only things I noticed are that it looks like all but the cover pages are pre-print – they have the lines that look they’re to determine where to cut the paper. Also, the file is called ‘Rails’ and not something like ‘RailsCookbook’ (for what it’s worth).
Thanks for all the work to get to this point!
Any news on PDF availability?
Andrew – I just looked through the PDF and I could only find something similar to that in the Index. All the other pages looked just fine. Try re-downloading the PDF, perhaps you got an earlier version. Also, what program are you using to view your PDFs?
block – Yes, the PDF is available .