Core Animation Book in Beta

Bill Dudney is nearing completion on a book on Core Animation, published by The Pragmatic Programmers. A beta version of the book is now available for purchase, which entitles you to a paper copy when it ships.

I haven't looked closely at the material yet, but I did talk to Bill at the last NSCoder Night in Campbell and he said the model is to basically ease the reader into Core Animation concepts. The focus is initially on adding animation to existing Cocoa views, but moves onto deeper details of the Core Animation framework itself by the end of the book.

Core Animation Book 1


Core Animation Book 2


I'm really excited by the idea of a framework-specific title for Mac OS X, which gives the reader a chance to focus on a particular area. It's also worth noting that Bill started out on NeXTStep, moved into Java and wrote several books, and has now returned home to Cocoa. Welcome home.

The table of contents and two excerpts are available at the site now. Bill also has a blog, which has some great articles, such as one on Front Row-like menus with Core Animation.
Design Element
Core Animation Book in Beta
Posted Feb 1, 2008 — 9 comments below




 

Elliott Harris — Feb 01, 08 5439

Excellent! I had actually been considering freelancing this if no one wrote one for a while, I'll definitely be picking up a copy.

Spencer MacDonald — Feb 02, 08 5442

Nice to see.

I would also like to see some more framework specific titles, the problem is the majority of them are quite small and wouldn't need a whole book.

Bill Dudney — Feb 02, 08 5443

Hi Scott, thx for the plug!

Spencer: I would also like to see some more framework specific titles, the problem is the majority of them are quite small and wouldn't need a whole book.

I'm curious what you'd like to see documented in a book. I'm almost done and starting to think about the next one :)

Daniel Steinberg — Feb 03, 08 5444

Thanks Scott for the mention.

We've got four more Mac titles in the works and are looking or others. My goal is for them to be short focused books like this one. If any of you have any ideas on topics and/or authors, We'd love to hear from you (proposals at pragprog dot com).

Although another book from Bill would be great, he's got to (ahem) finish this one first!

D

J Nozzi — Feb 04, 08 5445

A promising resource! I purchased the digital copy to support the author. Being a beta, there are some rough edges that really only need an editor's eye, but those usually only amount to having to slow down and read a bit more carefully.

One thing worth noting is that those who are already familiar with the basics of Core Animation could probably skip the first 24 pages or so and get right into the meat of things for which there's little documentation or are few examples. Overall, I've been pleased with the Agile Development with Rails (my first eBook purchase) and after only the first thirty pages or so, it looks like my second purchase (surprisingly from the same publisher) will also be well worth the money.

Bravo, guys! Keep up the good work!

Spencer MacDonald — Feb 05, 08 5450

Bill :I'm curious what you'd like to see documented in a book. I'm almost done and starting to think about the next one :)

Hi Bill,
I think there is not a lot of information about lots of Apple's Frameworks such as the PubSub and Calendar store frameworks (ones Im currently playing with), I often find the only source of information is Apple's own documentation. The frameworks them selves are not very large, but its still its nice to have a guide.

Tim Rupe — Feb 05, 08 5452

Hey Bill,

Great work on that book so far, I'm really enjoying it. One of the things I appreciate the most is how you're showing the AppKit way of using Core Animation first, and then moving on to directly working with Core Animation Layers later. This really clears up some confusion I had about the topic, especially since I'm pretty new to the Mac programming scene. It's easy to get a bit overwhelmed by Apple's documentation when diving into the deep end like I am.

Keep up the good work, and thanks for writing this book!

Oh, and how about Quartz 2d for your next book topic, since it ties into working directly with Core Animation layers? :-)

Ricket — Feb 06, 08 5453

A CoreData book is desperately needed.

Spencer MacDonald — Feb 06, 08 5454

A CoreData book is desperately needed.

Yeah I second that. Apparently Hillegass will be covering it in his next book, but as it is only a general cocoa book I doubt it will be in that much depth.




 

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