I founded MeetSpace, which is video conferencing for distributed teams. I developed MeetSpace on a linux laptop (yoga 2 pro) and a linux desktop (custom w/ logitech c922 webcam).
I can tell you that for the most part it's worked flawlessly. The only issues I ever had were that linux rendering wasn't great, so sometimes the CPU was high just from rendering!
We are browser-only, so because we don't have a native app we just use browser functionality. The only thing we use the extensions for is for security to ask for permission to use the screen (it's really like a dozen lines of code).
Oh, and if you switch, Dell's XPS series tends to work very well in linux, especially if you buy their developer edition, because they support ubuntu, which means you can find the drivers even if you don't use ubuntu.
We included a few intro chapters so that people would be able to fully comprehend our examples. Think of them as pre-requisites.
Keep in mind Rails Recipes was written by the incomparable Chad Fowler and probably had five figures worth of editing over a much longer period of time.
Our focus from the start was to provide incredibly helpful and relevant code. If we had gone through pragprog the release would have been a few months later with less rough edges.
We wrote our book from the start to be complimentary to the thoughtbot book. They are creating a great introduction through intermediate content and lots of info on rails integration.
My recommendation: buy both, read theirs, then ours :-)
I totally agree with you that we're outside the impulse-buy price range and we'd sell more copies if we charged less money.
However, our goal from the start was not to make a tutorial for people interested in backbone. Our goal was to make a more in-depth collection of great patterns for intermediate to advanced backbone developers.
Hackers are smart, they can read the docs and figure out the basics. We wanted to share our experiences with working with backbone for an extended period of time.
Our book is a great resource for people who would use backbone professionally and at $24, that's cheap.
Check out the excerpts, and read the reviews, play with backbone, learn it. When you're ready to bet your app on it, pick up the book :-)
I looked at the excerpt. The typesetting is terrible for a book priced at $24. See the side by shot of rails recipes and your book. Also in your book the code is not syntax highlighted making it quite difficult to read.
The code is also formatted such a way that the codeblock splits into two pages for just a closing brace (page 44 - collection view)
For $24 I expect better typesetting. Right now it looks like a pirated OCR book.
The content may be great (I haven't read it) but to me a book is difficult to read if it is typeset like this.
I agree that the PDF formatting leaves something to be desired. We are using the OSS git-scribe (https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe) toolchain for producing PDF, Mobi, and ePub. I have already put a ton of work into the toolchain to make it better (http://japhr.blogspot.com/search/label/git-scribe). Most of that work, however, was to help get the Mobi and ePub versions up to snuff.
I plan to take a week or so in the very near future to again focus on improving the toolchain. Hopefully some, if not all, of your valid criticisms will get addressed.
As an open source user, I appreciate that you have improved the tools. But as a potential reader of your book, I want you to use whatever tools necessary to get it to look good.
Even when compared against a non-professionally converted pro Git PDF, this books does not fare that well. https://img.skitch.com/20111216-enxfwjcgkgsu2pcndkcaimd3q.jp... The code block has no padding. In general the typography is not pleasant. If you look at the git book, the italics do not stand out as much as in this book.
Backbone documentation is presented beautifully. So when you are aiming to compliment it, the bar is also a bit high :) (Granted it is HTML but I do think a lot can be done to make this book more pleasant to look at)
I'm sorry, but it's not a great price for a poor university student. I have played with backbone and spine some, but putting hacker cleverness aside, books are a great way to cut down the traversal of learning space. It saves time to read distilled knowledge from those who blazed the trail.
That said, best of luck with the book. I respect that you have specific plan in mind.
Edit: Seriously!? Why am I being downvoted over my financial status? Please point out what I did wrong.
I'm currently writing an eBook teaching Backbone.js in CoffeeScript, of about the same length as Recipes with Backbone. I'm still mulling over how to price it. Does anyone want to make a guess about the potential size of the market? Am I correct to think, the bigger the market, the more cheaply I can price it and still make a bit more than minimum wage for the time I'm putting in? Any further comments or suggestions about pricing are welcome.
I can tell you that for the most part it's worked flawlessly. The only issues I ever had were that linux rendering wasn't great, so sometimes the CPU was high just from rendering!
We are browser-only, so because we don't have a native app we just use browser functionality. The only thing we use the extensions for is for security to ask for permission to use the screen (it's really like a dozen lines of code).