How to do everything with Web 2.0 Mashups by Jesse Feiler
Hill McGraw 2008
$29.99
This book grows on you. I originally bought it to find out something about mashups. I had come across the term before and was not satisfied with the explanations I had come across. This book did an admirable job of that; I’m satisfied, now I know a mashup when I see it.
What turned me off about the book was its almost mechanical approach. Written in terse, no-nonsense, emotionless prose, it had none of the dry, humorous banter I’d come to appreciate in other Internet-related books. He drove from one point to another as if he were building a house instead of a concept. As a liberal arts major, I guess I’m uncomfortable with that. Of course, it is possible that others, more technically inclined than I am, will enjoy the book precisely because of this approach.
The first chapter of the book is titled “Welcome to the World of Mashups,” and that’s the last free kindness you’ll find. After that, bang! “Understanding the World Mashup”; and bang! “Use XML to structure data”; and bang! “Use JavaScript to write the mashup page,” and so on until your head spins. I put the book aside.
I picked it up again about a month later when I suddenly discovered that I had done an excellent job of familiarizing myself with the central mysteries of mashups. I finally recognized them for what they were when I found them, and found that the book had given me the ability to really understand how they did what they were doing. I wasn’t quite ready to start building my own mashups, but I enjoyed the feeling that I had learned something interesting and wanted to learn more; I guess that might be even more important than the humor I found in some minor books.
Rather than fight it, I found myself appreciating the way the book broke mashups down into their components and put them back together. Anyone who has struggled with JavaScript, RSS, XML, Php, and APIs as separate, unrelated entities will get a sudden flash of insight seeing them now working as parts of a larger whole. Still, I wish the author would put a little more of himself into the prose.