Outrider Books: January 2012

Friday, January 20, 2012

Review: Mobilizing Web Sites

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are likely to surpass PCs as the most common sources of web access in the near future. Anyone with a web site, consequently, has to consider the impact this will have on visitor traffic, user experience, accessibility and e-commerce.

This book describes design and coding techniques for making web sites initially created for desktop PCs accessbile and user-friendly on small screen devices. It includes lessons and case studies on mobilizing layout, navigation, images, text and forms.

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Mobilizing Web Sites

Strategies for Mobile Web Implementation

by Kristofer Layon

Peachpit Press, 2011

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

History Book List Addition: Food and Faith in Christian Culture

Without a uniform dietary code, Christians around the world used food in strikingly different ways, developing widely divergent practices that spread, nurtured, and strengthened their religious beliefs and communities.

Featuring never-before published essays, this anthology follows the intersection of food and faith from the 14th to the 21st century.

Food and Faith in Christian Culture

by Ken Albala and Trudy Eden

Columbia University Press, 2011

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Monday, January 16, 2012

Review: After Custer

The Great Sioux War, which included the defeat of General Custer at the Little Big Horn, brought irreversible changes to the northern plains of the United States. In a few short years, Sioux Country and its buffalo herds was extinguished and replaced with railroads and prospectors and cattle and settlements named after the war's white combatants.

"I have attempted to expose the interconnectedness of it all: a war, the generals who came west in 1877 to bask in the accomplishments of their army, the forts they built to lock up a countryside and people, a new transcontinental railroad, the demise of the massive northern buffalo herd, the saga of the dynamic Beef Bonanza, the tribulations of the Lakota and Northern Cheyennes, and the army's substantial effort at memorialization," writes Paul L. Hedren in the preface to this historical geography of the northern Great Plains.

Hedren's assessment begins with the concluding battles of the Great Sioux War of 1876-77 and follows its consequences through the next two decades as the northern Great Plains is opened to settlement, the buffalo herds are replaced with cattle drives, soldiers are converted to reservation watchdogs, battlefields become memorial graveyards and newly created towns are named after the conflict's military leaders.

After Custer

Loss and Transformation in Sioux Country

by Paul L. Hedren

University of Oklahoma Press, 2011.

Out of the Past: Battle of the Little Big Horn
Out of the Past
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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

How-To Book List Addition: Mobilizing Web Sites

Everyone has been talking about the mobile web in recent years, and more of us are browsing the web on smartphones and similar devices than ever before. But most of what we are viewing has not yet been updated for mobile presentation. How can designers bring more of the web up to speed with the capabilities of today's mobile devices?

In Mobilizing Web Sites: Develop and Design, author and designer Kristofer Layon addresses that elephant in the room --the many existing web sites that we manage on a day-to-day basis-- and walks through techniques that web designers can use to make these legacy web sites better-suited for mobile viewing.