shawn's blog : Books

Seeing Data - A really-should-have book

Shawn L. Morrissey — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 05:11:00 GMT

I just received a copy of “Seeing Data – Designing User Interfaces for Database Systems Using .NET” from the kind folks at Addison-Wesley. The simple explanation – it’s a book about how to create nice UI’s for database-driven Windows apps. Longer explanations – this is one of those books that covers topics that can be found a lot of other places, in a way that makes you slap your head and think – “this is exactly how this should be presented!” This is one of those unique books I’d recommend to anyone doing UI work against databases.

Ms. Riordan covers exactly the right list of topics for this specific type of application – Interface Design, .NET Graphic Objects (GDI+, etc.), Typography, Color, Images ADO.NET Data Binding – all the basics, (that’s pretty much part 1 of the book); part 2 covers the good Form Layout stuff and control management, then puts it all together in part 3 to discuss “Interacting with the User”.

Like I mentioned, you can probably find these topics covered elsewhere, and for someone who needs a really tight intro to writing efficient database-driven forms apps, this is the book to hand them. Very Highly recommended.

Managing a small library

Shawn L. Morrissey — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 20:36:00 GMT

Because of my role in MSDN, I have a LOT of books in my office. I also have a LOT of folks on my team who like to borrow my books. I'm looking for a application to help me manage this process - displaying what I have, displaying who has it, etc. I'd prefer it were written on top of ASP.NET. Does anyone have an application like that? If not, I'm going to write one, and my team is *really* nervous about that possibility... It would certainly be, "The Pointy-Haired Manager and the Keyboard Adventure - where the hell is the 'any' key".

Right now, I'm mocking things up using Sharepoint - it's an easy way to get a pretty decent UI on top of a database, and I can make schema changes without nuking the data underneath...

One little ratio

Shawn L. Morrissey — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 13:47:00 GMT

Wow. I picked up “The Golden Ratio” when I went shopping for Quicksilver the other day, and actually started reading it before Quicksilver. No regrets so far. It's not so much a math dissertation as it is a study of the impact on society this little bugger's had - the Pyramids, violins, and the smile of the Mona Lisa, among others... This is a great read - highly recommended.