Scott On Writing.NET

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I’ve Written My Last Article for 4GuysFromRolla
29 March 11 11:32 PM | Scott Mitchell | 118 comment(s)

Warning! This blog post is long and rife with navel-gazing. In 1998 I started an ASP resource site, 4GuysFromRolla.com. Toward the tail end of the dotcom boom I sold 4Guys to Internet.com , but continued working as the editor and primary contributor for...

Filed under: About Writing, Miscellaneous

Hot Off the Presses – Teach Yourself ASP.NET 4 in 24 Hours
18 August 10 08:27 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Yesterday I received the author copies of my latest book, Teach Yourself ASP.NET 4 in 24 Hours . When signing the author agreement many, many months ago, there is typically a clause that promises the author X copies of the finished book. Getting these...

Filed under: About Writing, ASP.NET Talk

What's the Best Way to Format a Title for a Blog Post, Article, or Tutorial?
22 February 09 07:59 AM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

If you are writing an article, blog post, or tutorial about a feature of ASP.NET or the .NET Framework, how do you format the title? For example, say that you are writing a blog entry about grouping data using ASP.NET's ListView control. Which of these...

Filed under: About Writing

Random Grammar/Style Question
26 June 08 03:04 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

When writing my Security Tutorials for www.asp.net , I often wrote sentences like the following: “To log in to the site, ...” Although sometimes I'd write it, “To log into the site, ...” and other times I'd use, “To login to the site...” I can't say with...

Filed under: About Writing, Miscellaneous

The Economics Behind Writing Subsequent Editions (for Computer Trade Books)
24 June 08 05:06 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

The economics behind the college text book must be interesting. I've not written any textbooks, so my comments here are based more on assumption than knowledge, but what I but what always intrigued me - whilst a college student, at least - was how authors...

Filed under: About Writing, ASP.NET Talk

Musings About How Not Write a Technical Book
28 April 07 12:08 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Jeff Atwood recently published a blog entry titled How Now to Write a Technical Book , in which he compared Charles Petzold 's latest book to Adam Nathan 's. In short, Charles's book - Applications = Code + Markup - lacks the color, diagrams, screen shots...

Filed under: About Writing

Working with Data in ASP.NET 2.0 - Complete!
03 April 07 12:03 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Over the past year or so I've been creating a series of ASP.NET 2.0 tutorials for Microsoft that focus on working with data. These tutorials have been published on www.asp.net and on the MSDN website with the first batch published in June 2006. The Working...

Filed under: About Writing, ASP.NET Talk

Can You Learn ASP.NET in 24 Hours?
06 April 06 10:46 AM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Earlier this week I blogged about my latest book hitting bookstores , Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours . Jeff Atwood chimed in with a blog post that pokes fun at the title Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours. Take a moment to read his post, it...

Filed under: About Writing, ASP.NET Talk

Hot Off the Presses - Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours!
04 April 06 08:10 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

As an author the most rewarding day in the life of a book is the day you are sent your author copies. When signing the author agreement many, many months ago, there is typically a clause that promises the author X copies of the finished book to give out...

Filed under: About Writing, ASP.NET Talk

Writing Marathon Complete!
30 November 05 09:19 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Today I emailed off the final chapter of my latest ASP.NET book to my editor, a feeling that is second only to receiving the first copy in the mail. The book is still far from done - there's editing from the publisher's side, then author review, and then...

Filed under: About Writing, ASP.NET Talk

Create Your Own Website, 2nd Edition
04 October 05 12:23 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

About a year ago I blogged about my most recent book , Create Your Own Website (Using What You Already Know) . This book was my first stab at a book aimed at computer novices and examined how to build your own website using Mozilla 's Composer, a free...

Filed under: About Writing

Visual Studio Hacks Available
04 April 05 08:23 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Today I received my complementary copy of James Avery 's Visual Studio Hacks book, of which I contributed a handful of chapters. I assume that this means that the book is now available, although Amazon.com lists its availability as June 30, 2005, which...

Filed under: About Writing, ASP.NET Talk

Tracking a Book's Success
21 February 05 10:14 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

A common metric authors and other interested folks use to ascertain the success of a book is to examine its Amazon.com sales rank. Brad Abrams took this idea and went a little further with it , ascertaining a book's popularity not only by its sales rank...

Filed under: About Writing

Visual Studio Hacks
26 January 05 07:03 PM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

Last year James Avery approached me about providing some hacks for his upcoming O'Reilly hacks book, Visual Studio Hacks . I was honored to be asked, and created five such hacks on the following topics: Halting on exceptions Using the Reflector Add-In...

Filed under: About Writing, ASP.NET Talk

Presentation Style: Lots of Slides or Few?
14 January 05 09:26 AM | Scott Mitchell | with no comments

I'll be speaking at the Spring 2005 ASP.NET Connections Conference this year and am putting together the final touches on my three sessions. As I've blogged about before, I'm quite verbose in my writing, and that translates a bit to my PowerPoint presentations...

Filed under: About Writing, Miscellaneous

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