@HAWK; Could HQ look to have the code bases for the older books available for download (maybe a drop down where someone selects what version of the book it’s for with the default being whatever the current version of the book is)?
I would gently point out that the errata link also points to the home page of the new book - finally got going on it today and …<sound of head hitting wall>
I was told that there weere not enough errprs top warrant an errata - maybe! But a forum for each book could be very helpful - as would inline notes on the pdf until a new version was ready. Lots of changes to PHP + MySQL since the new book - eg now no need to specify utf8 and magic quotes are DEAD! (I spent a while getting my head around the latter for absolutely no reason!
If there was a book specific forum (if there is one I could not find it!) then I cold look for bits taht made no sense to me and see what others had found!
I believe Tim was looking at making them available. I’ll follow up with him.
We did actually used to have a book specific forum but it wasn’t really used so we culled it a long time ago. Having said that, we’re about to make a transition to Discourse (a new forum platform) at which point we’ll be using a flat forum structure with tags, giving us much more flexibility. That is definitely something that we could consider then.
@molona ;Thanks for the info but, re mysqli, 100% not the case. For my amusement I just did a search on the PDF and the ONLY place I can find it on a search, is in the installation appendix.
But @HAWK ; I fear my fundamental point is missed.With electronic publishing surely the book becomes an editable (or annotate-able) item. So things that become obsolete (eg the magic quotes thing) can be gently highlighted in the current edition and then those edits can be revised into the new edition every two years or so.
My background is in publishing and my degree is in computer science and sociology from 1979. The world I was predicting is finally coming about but there are still sticking points and this seem to be one for me.
And OMG I wish there was a forum for the book - roll on the tags. Have been stuck trying to do an SQL UPDATE for about five (5) hours and I still cannot get it to work. I will build this **** thing if it kills me!
I have leaned A LOT from this book so it is certainly not “obsolete” in any literal terms . I am slowly but surely managing to build a MySQL based web site for the first time BUT…mysqli has been advocated for EVER and this book has, essentially no use of mysqli at all. Seemed a little odd.
BUT @HAWK ; THAT IS NOT THE FUNDAMENTAL POINT - AND I WOULD QUITE LOVE A THOUGHTFUL ANSWER.
I’m not sure that I understand your question. Are you asking me my opinion on your idea about inline editing our books as things change? While in a utopian world that is a fantastic idea, things change so fast in our arena that it’s simply not viable from a business perspective to doing running updates of every book. That’s why we release new editions of the books that continue to be popular.
Thank you Galactic Overlord. I still think it might be possible for big things that change and I understand … but I do think you are missing a trick.
Good luck with the migration (when is it happening?). My experience of “improving” message boards is that the board loses trafffic - but I am sure all will be fine - fingers crossed
Thanks for the kind wishes. We hope to be fine but our main goal is to improve the SPF experience and try to make it easier and faster to use and be able to concentrate on answering questions more than spam, that’s taking so much of our time