As I have hopefully blogged about a little bit, I have been working a lot lately with Ajax stuff and writing a lot of my course content in HTML. Consequently, I am constantly bouncing from Javascript to CSS to HTML to Java to PHP, etc.... Add to this, I have never been that great at remembering syntax. So I often carry around a number of the O'Reilly quick reference books with me. Cause I know what I need to do, but I can't remember correct idiom (References to Monty Python and the Holy Grail welcome). :)
So I often find myself carrying around a bunch of books that I don't really want to carry around. At the Rails conference this really began to bug me cause I'm sure my books were heavier than my laptop.
So at said Rails conference I chit chatted with the nice O'Reilly lady at their booth. This problem came up during the conversion and she mentioned that a number of their books were available as PDFs.
Well I looked into it this weekend and sure enough, most of their books (especially the new ones) have a PDF version. I found replacements for all my quick references: the CSS, HTML, Regex, JavaScript, and SQL. In addition, I found PDF versions of the PHP Cookbook and Mats' Ruby book. My laptop bag has just dropped about 2 or 3 pounds!
The quick references cost between $7 and $10 each. The regular books from $20 to about $35, only a slight discount off the print book. I do think O'Reilly should consider lowering the price of the PDFs a bit. I think they would sell better.
The PDFs themselves have no passwords or DRM on them. Plus they are indexed and searchable!!! Woo hoo! So if you want to lighten that load, head over to their store and check it out: http://oreilly.com/store/
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