Book Reviews!

In this book he presents his opinions on how user interfaces could be much better and also gives some reasons for his opinions. If nothing else this book is at least really good to open up your mind to new ideas in this area.

First I should maybe say one or two sentences about: Who is Jef Raskin:
Jef Raskin is one of the people who have mainly designed the Macintosh user interface and is an adjunct full professor of computer science at the University of Chicago.

In this book he shows ways how to estimate the efficiency of user interfaces and how to improve those. He especially says that a the usage of a good interface should become nearly automatic and by this nearly disappear from the mind of the user.

Such a user interface can be reached by avoiding the change of the user interface depending on program situations and or pressing of special characters.

Finally he introduces some ideas for interfaces, which are really easy to use.

• Other review
• First Principles of Interaction Design

The book game architecture and design written by Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris takes you step by step from the first idea of a game to the final product.

• how to write a concept for your game.
• how to manage game balancing already in the design phase.
• how to design user interfaces for games.

Then ut takes you in to the development of the game itself by introducing

• how to define realistic milestones.
• how to meet the milestones in time.
• how to ensure quality for your code.
• how to design your game architecture for reuse.

Finally the book takes you also through the steps of game development up to your gold master and beyond.

All in all this is a really good read for everyone participating in game design. Especially as the authors emphasize their points with lots of humorous anecdotes. It is also a good read for other people beside game developers because a game is just software like any other software!

Scott Kelbys Buch ist eine sehr gute Einstiegslektüre für alle an Fotografie Interessierte. Er reißt alle wichtigen Themen in ausreichender Tiefe an: Wie Ausrüstung, grundlegende Techniken und Tipps für die unterschiedlichen Aufnahmesituationen (von Hochzeitsfotografie bis Landschaftsaufnahmen).

Dieses Buch eröffnet dem Leser schnell und zugänglich die Welt der digitalen Fotografie. Ich kann es uneingeschränkt als Einstiegslektüre empfehlen. Aber auch alte Hasen der Fotografie werden hier noch so manch einen guten Tipp finden.