Books
Ethical Web Development will be a series of short digital books that explore the ethics of practical development topics. The books will be released throughout 2016 and early 2017 as free downloads from O’Reilly. They are being actively written in the open on GitHub. I welcome contributions and comments.
Building Web Apps For Everyone
Many users own outdated computers with older browsers, have slow connections, or struggle with physical disabilities that prevent them from accessing today’s sites and apps. How do you strike a balance in your design to include everyone?
This title explores best practices for using progressive enhancement, accessibility, and inclusive web forms in our applications.
As the Web continues to play an increasingly large role in our daily lives, these features will help our sites to fulfill Tim Berners-Lee’s promise of a global communication network that enables everyone with a connection to participate fully.
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20% of the proceeds from Building Web Apps that Work For Everyone will be donated to support the efforts of the W3C.
Building Web Apps That Work Everywhere
Many people around the world who can’t afford high-speed Internet—or have slow, unreliable connections—often resort to smartphones with restrictive data plans just to take care of basics such as banking or job hunting. How can you build sites that work everywhere, on every network?
This title explores how resource-heavy websites limit the options for millions of users and shows you what you can do to make your sites and apps more inclusive through exposing permanent, human-readable links, utilizing responsive web design, focusing on web performance, and including offline capabilities.
As the Web continues to play an increasingly large role in our daily lives, these features will help our sites to fulfill Tim Berners-Lee’s promise of a global communication network that enables people to participate fully, no matter what connection they use.
20% of the proceeds from Building Web Apps that Work Everywhere will be donated to support the efforts of the World Wide Web Foundation.
Building Web Apps That Respect A User’s Privacy and Security
A recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that few Americans are confident about the security or privacy of their data—particularly when it comes to the use of online tools. Each of us now produces more data every day than people in earlier generations did throughout their lifetimes. Every time we click, tweet, or visit a site, we leave a digital trace. As a web developers, we represent the first line of defense in protecting our user’s data and privacy.
This title explores several techniques, tools, and best practices for developing and maintaining web apps that provide the privacy and security that every user needs—and deserves.
20% of the proceeds from Building Web Apps that Respect A User’s Privacy and Security will be donated to support the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Collaborative Web Development
Having learned our craft as a thought-intensive, independent activity, many of us begin our career by working as a team of one. Yet web development is a highly social endeavor where developers collaborate with one another to build complex systems. This title provides guidelines for working effectively with other developers, particularly when it comes to making compromises, writing documentation, and interacting with open source in ways you can’t achieve as a solo learner.
Collaborative Web Development explores widely accepted methods for writing quality code, contributing work to open source, improving documentation practices, and—perhaps most critical—respecting and involving every member of your team. As the final part of the series on ethical web development, this book emphasizes how empathetic development practices like these will help you create empathetic products.
20% of the proceeds from Collaborative Web Development will be donated to support the efforts of Mozilla and Girl Develop It.