Pro Web Gadgets
Web developers recognize the opportunities (and challenges) of crafting a full-featured application from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then unleashing it onto the global Web. But alongside these desktop-replacement behemoths, there's room in the sea for small fish too.
This book is about those small web apps, by all their various names: gadgets, widgets, applets, whatever. Being more compact than their brethren, these mini-apps can escape from the confines of your own website and find homes elsewhere, from the sidebar of a blog to a slot on a personalized portal. This "Distributed Web" can increase your site's exposure far beyond the number of hits your own site ordinarily receives - channeling traffic back to your main site, or carrying your message in the gadgets themselves.
A well-crafted gadget can also escape from the traditional Web, to a niche directly on computer desktops. Users will no longer need to open a browser to access your content - the desktop application has come full circle. And most exciting of all, gadgets can also wriggle onto the current generation of smartphones, through both dedicated APIs and repackaging as native apps. Phone users can literally carry your web application with them wherever they go, in a convenient single-serving size.
And for all these benefits, the small size of web gadgets means that they are far less daunting to write than larger web apps. In this book, I'll walk you through that process, from the best practices of gadget design and construction, to the deployment of your pocket-sized app on the hottest platforms of today and tomorrow. Turn your web development skills in a new direction, and discover the possibilities.
You can buy the book from Amazon by clicking on the cover image above. The source code for the book's examples is also available.
Please feel free to e-mail me any comments or questions regarding the book.