Scott On Writing.NET : About Writing

I’ve Written My Last Article for 4GuysFromRolla

Scott Mitchell — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:32:48 GMT

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 the site, writing a new article each week. This arrangement continued until just recently. My last article for 4Guys has been written – Use MvcContrib Grid to Display a Grid of Data in ASP.NET MVC.

The Beginnings

My first exposure to web programming came in 1998 working at Empower Trainers and Consultants, a mid-sized consulting and training firm with locations in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Nashville. At the time I was an inexperienced, nervous, 19 year old sophomore at the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) who had landed an 8-month internship with Empower at their Kansas City location. My first assignment was to add some new features to the internal timekeeping tool, a custom-build data-driven web application powered by SQL Server and ASP. At the time I had done some rudimentary HTML development, but had zero experience with JavaScript, ASP, and SQL.

Needless to say, I found ASP enthralling. The ability to quickly create an application that could be shared with the world amazed me then as it continues to amaze me to this day. At the time there weren’t many online resources for learning more about ASP. As my internship drew to an end I decided that once I got back to school I would start my own site rich with ASP information.

Upon returning to university I cajoled three good friends into starting a website, 4GuysFromRolla.com. The idea was that the site would boast four sections:

ASP Information
Programming Information
Linux Information
Humor

If you couldn’t guess, we were four witty computer nerds (with an emphasis on the nerd part).

In September 1998 4GuysFromRolla.com went live. Over time, the other three guys lost interest and moved onto other projects. By the time I graduated in May 2000, 4GuysFromRolla.com was run by one guy from Rolla and focused strictly on ASP.

Sale to Internet.com

The dotcom boom reached its fever pitch in 2000. Companies were paying $5,000 a month for a little 125x125 banner to appear on the 4Guys homepage and $500 for a two sentence text ad to appear in the weekly newsletter, not to mention the thousands of dollars per month companies were dropping to have their animated 468x60 banners in the rotation to appear at the top of each article. The spending frenzy also extended to the acquisitions side, as numerous ASP resource sites were gobbled up by larger players.

In late 2000 I decided to “cash out.” 4Guys was sold to Internet.com.

I wrestled with the decision on whether to sell the site or not for a long time. On one hand, 4Guys was my baby and I had poured uncounted hours into it over the previous three years. Having seen how sites like 15Seconds.com fared after their acquisition, I knew that selling 4Guys would be akin to signing its death warrant. When a larger company buys a smaller site it’s not uncommon for the original founders to exit stage right, either immediately or in the very near term. When that happens, and when the acquirer starts to turn the screws in an attempt to better monetize their purchase, the inevitable happens – the site withers on the vine, traffic languishes, and the death knell is sounded. On the other hand, by late 2000 I think it was pretty apparent to everyone that the dotcom boom was coming to an end.

In the end, I decided to sell. The sales price reflected more than five years of dotcom boom revenue, which I deduced would be more like ten or more years of revenue once the boom ended. At age 22, five to ten years is an unimaginable window of time. I wondered, Would I be interested in writing about ASP ten years hence? Would I even be using ASP or web-based technologies? Since the answers to those questions were “maybe,” I decided to take the bird in the hand over the two in the bush.

Of course, here we are, 11 years later, and I am still actively involved in ASP.NET and the ASP.NET community and, until recently, was still writing for 4Guys. If I had it to do over again (and knowing what I know now), I would not have sold the site. Hindsight is 20/20. But that’s not to say that I regret the decision to sell the site – I don’t. In fact, I still hold that it was the right decision at the time given the unknowns.

The Buying Eyeballs Business Model

The dotcom boom heralded an interesting time in the history of the web. At its peak, billions of dollars were spent buying traffic, or “eyeballs,” as it was commonly referred to back then. In 2000, companies like Internet.com and DevX (among many others) were buying technology resource sites not for their content or talent, but for their existing traffic. This was a workable business model at the time due to the high rates advertisers were paying. Unfortunately, it was not sustainable once the bottom dropped out of advertising.

In 2009, Internet.com and its hundreds of technology-focused websites were sold to QuinStreet for $18 million. I continued working on 4Guys for QuinStreet (until recently). Unfortunately, QuinStreet’s purchase was a continuation of the buying eyeballs business model as evidenced by the lack of investment in the purchased web properties. 4Guys retained its dated look and feel as even more ads were squeezed onto the page.

Sites like 4Guys were sold by Internet.com to QuinStreet for pennies on the dollar. Even at such a steep discount, the question remains: did QuinStreet overpay? Time will tell.

Withering On the Vine

After the sale of 4Guys to Internet.com in 2000 I continued on as the site’s editor and primary contributor, authoring an article each week. Despite my continued work on the site, 4Guys started to lose prevalence in the ASP.NET community. There were many times I talked to a developer at a User Group or at a conference who would say something nice like, “I taught myself classic ASP from your articles on 4GuysFromRolla.com - I used to go there all the time.” The message was always the same – a meaningful compliment that had embedded in it a reflection on the current state of the site - I used to visit 4Guys.

There are probably a lot of different reasons why the importance and relevance of 4GuysFromRolla diminished over the years. Some of the reasons I’ve arrived at include:

My predominant use of VB code samples (rather than C#). In recent years, I started writing more C#-focused articles, as well as articles with code samples in both VB and C#, but the majority of articles on 4Guys are VB-only. And my switch to a more C#-friendly style came long after C# had become the de facto .NET language.
Increased attempts at monetization. More ads, bigger ads, flashier ads, and more annoying ads all made the site more difficult and less enjoyable to use.
A dated look and feel. If you couldn’t guess, the 4GuysFromRolla.com website hasn’t had a site redesign since 2002. It just looks old and dated. I’d like to think that the quality and quantity of content can make up for such aesthetic issues, but I understand why visitors would find the site appearance off-putting and why that might make them less likely to return, especially if there was similar content to be found elsewhere, which brings me to the next three factors…
The Google. Google turned the Internet upside down. Prior to Google, when faced with a particular problem people would go to a particular site and start hunting (or searching) for a solution. Once Google made search quick, fast, easy, and accurate – something I think happened in the early 2000s – user behavior shifted radically. Now Google was where people went to find answers to their questions. Just ask Jeff Atwood, who notes that: “Currently, 83% of our total traffic [to Stackoverflow] is from search engines, or rather, one particular search engine.” And that search engine, if you couldn’t guess, is Google.
A stronger online presence from Microsoft. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Microsoft offered a substandard web presence for their web technologies. There was technical documentation buried somewhere on Microsoft’s website, some articles on their MSDN site here and there, as well as articles from MSDN Magazine that were available online. But everything was scattered and hard to find. Microsoft finally got it right in the mid-2000s when they made MSDN easier and quicker to search and separated out their core technologies into standalone sites – www.asp.net, www.iis.net, etc. This move sucked an appreciable amount of traffic from community-founded sites like 4GuysFromRolla.
The proliferation of blogs. Blogs are another technology that made resource sites like 4GuysFromRolla.com less relevant. Intelligent developers with something interesting or useful to share didn’t need to get their thoughts published on your site – instead, they could start their own blog. The explosion of blogs outpaced the demand for information, cutting into everyone’s traffic and relevance.

Of all of the reasons listed above only one of them falls on my shoulders, namely my slow move away from VB to C#. But perhaps there are other factors that are my fault that my ego is blinding me from. I do believe that the quality of writing that has appeared on 4Guys has improved over the years. When I read some of the articles I wrote while I was still in school (1998-2000) I cringe. Also, I posit that the articles’ topics are (relatively) timely and of interest to ASP.NET developers. (To be fair, I was a bit late to jQuery and ASP.NET MVC, but once I jumped on that bandwagon I wrote quite a bit on said topics.)

The increased attempts and monetization and dated look and feel falls on Internet.com and QuinStreet’s shoulders. The last three factors were out of everyone’s control and affected all websites, not just those in my little corner of the web. And those macro changes, while perhaps detrimental to the growth of a site like 4Guys, are net gains for the Internet (and humanity) as a whole.

Neither QuinStreet nor Internet.com has ever provided me with traffic numbers so I don’t have any hard data to back up my thoughts on this, but my presumption is that 4Guys is still used by hundreds of thousands of developers around the world each month, but that it’s become less and less relevant as time has gone on. Today, I imagine that most people reach 4Guys from a Google search or from a link posted on an old messageboard or newsgroup thread. Few visit the site to see what new content is available or because a coworker told them that it’s a great website for ASP.NET developers of any stripe.

Yes, there are still many who find a solution to their problem on 4Guys, but few say, “How do I do X? I bet 4Guys has the answer!”

Some Fun Facts

Is it just me, or is this blog post getting a little depressing? How about some fun 4Guys trivia.

First online article I ever wrote was published on 4Guys on September 16th, 1998 – Using ActiveX Controls on Your Web Page
First article on 4Guys about ASP.NET was published on July 15th, 2000 – ASP.NET: An Introduction and My Views on the Matter
Rolla is a small town in Missouri that is home to the University of Missouri – Rolla, now named Missouri University of Science and Technology. Rolla is pronounced Rawl-ah. It’s 4GuysFromRawl-ah, not 4GuysFromRoll-ah.

For those who have never been to Rolla, it is about an hour and a half west of St. Louis, located square in the middle of nowhere. The university in Rolla focuses on engineering and the sciences and the student body is predominantly male. Many people wonder how I had the time to write nearly 750 articles while a student at UMR. The answer is that I went to school in the middle of nowhere with no girls - free time was not something that was hard to find!

When we started 4Guys, one of the other 4Guys created the site design. It had a black background with gray text and these bubbles that spanned the top and right of each page with links to each of the four sections. Together, we redesigned the site in 1999 to give it a more professional look. It was at this time that 4Guys adopted teal as its primary color. After acquiring the site, Internet.com did a resign in 2002. The redesign made the site a bit more graphics heavy and added some curved doodads here and there. I always found the 4Guys logo that Internet.com’s design team created to be hilarious.

The guy on the left looks depressed and ostracized from the group. The guy on the right wants nothing more than a big group hug. And those two guys in the middle? They look like a couple of real a-holes. Too cocky and arrogant to console their melancholy friend on the left, and too cool for school to hug the guy on the right. Jerks.

So Farewell…

My time with 4Guys has now come to an end. It was a fun and unforgettable run. I fondly remember huddled around a computer monitor with the other three guys from Rolla as we tried to decide on a domain name. I remember the excitement of landing my first advertiser and of depositing that first check. And I won’t forget the many emails from fellow developers who wrote in to thank me for an article that helped them solve a vexing problem. But most of all, my memories will center around writing the 4Guys article each week – drumming up a topic, banging out some code, and then putting that code into prose.

Having written a 4Guys article each of the preceding 650 or so weeks, it will be odd not to do so this week. Or next week. Or ever again.

Farewell, old girl, it was a good run.

Just to be clear, I am not retiring! I am a writer, that’s what I do. You’ll continue to see articles from me on this blog and on sites like DotNetSlackers.com and ASPAlliance.com. And I am always looking for additional engagements – if you have a need for a technical writer or prolific ASP.NET author, please don’t hesitate to check out my resume and drop me a line.

Hot Off the Presses – Teach Yourself ASP.NET 4 in 24 Hours

Scott Mitchell — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:27:00 GMT

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 author copies is the final chapter in the book writing process – there is literally no more work to be done. No more writing, no more editing, no more author reviews. It signifies the true completion of the work and results in a physical product you can put your hands on and say, “Here it is. Thank goodness that’s over. Someone please slap me if I ever decide to do this again.”

As with my previous installments of Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 24 Hours, this book is intended for beginner to intermediate developers who are interested in learning ASP.NET 4. The book presumes no prior experience with ASP.NET, databases, or even HTML, although familiarity in those technologies in a plus. Over the course of 24 “hours” (or chapters, as I’m wont to call them), the reader is:

Introduced to ASP.NET and the client/server model inherent in every web application,
Given a crash course in using Visual Web Developer to create, design, and test ASP.NET websites,
Presented an overview of the Visual Basic programming language (for those new to programming),
Introduced to ASP.NET’s WebForms model and the most common and germane Web controls,
Taught the basics of working with relational databases, including a crash course in SQL,
Given an overview of working with databases from ASP.NET pages, including how to display data and how to insert, update, and delete data,
Shown how to use ASP.NET features like Membership, the site map, and master pages,
Introduced to the ASP.NET Ajax Library and how to create Ajax-enabled web applications using the server-centric model, and
Walked through deploying a website to a web hosting company.

If you are a seasoned ASP.NET developer, please refrain from buying this book for yourself – it is not written for you. This book is written for the beginner to intermediate developer who is new to or getting started with ASP.NET. So, if you’re getting started with ASP.NET, consider yourself a beginner-level ASP.NET developer, or if you have a colleague who’s learning ASP.NET, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Teach Yourself ASP.NET 4 in 24 Hours.

Happy Programming!

What's the Best Way to Format a Title for a Blog Post, Article, or Tutorial?

Scott Mitchell — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:59:00 GMT

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 titles is most appropriate?

Grouping Data Couldn't Be Easier!
Group Data Using the ListView Control
ASP.NET's ListView Control Makes Groupnig Data Easy
Learn How to Group Data Using the ListView Control in ASP.NET 3.5

I think title (1) is the worst of the four because it provides no context. It could be a blog entry about grouping data in Excel, a look at using SQL's GROUP BY clause, or an article not even related to computers. Granted, the body of the blog post would make it crystal clear, but from an SEO perspective and when considering that the title it what appears in the search engine results, a more descriptive title would seem to be preferred.

Title (2) does a good job mentioning the feature to be discussed (grouping data) and the control to be used (the ListView). However, it still lacks context, especially if there is some other technology stack that has a control with the same name. (See the postscript below for more discussion on why noting the technology can be important.)

Title (3) mentions the goal / feature (grouping data), the control being demonstrated (the ListView), and the framework (ASP.NET), but it makes no mention of the ASP.NET version. The ListView control was added to ASP.NET version 3.5, so a developer using ASP.NET version 2.0 might not realize that this technique doesn't apply to her until she gets half way through the blog post.

That leads us to title (4), which gives a complete and thorough description. And this is the title format I've migrated to over the years. For example, my current article series on 4Guys about the ListView is titled: Using ASP.NET 3.5's ListView and DataPager Controls, with subtitles explaining what each installment of the article series covers, as in: Using ASP.NET 3.5's ListView and DataPager Controls: Grouping By a Data Field. However, over time I've found one problem with this most descriptive title: including the version number makes sense and seems like a good idea when covering some new feature in the latest version of ASP.NET, but it unnecessarily dates the article. Because ASP.NET versions are additive, the technologies present in ASP.NET 2.0 are still around in ASP.NET 3.5, which is great from a developer's perspective. But if you include the verison number in the article it makes it sound like the feature in question is now antequated or that it no longer applies to the latest version.

Take the following article title, for example: Health Monitoring in ASP.NET 2.0. Health Monitoring was introduced in ASP.NET 2.0 and does not exist in ASP.NET 1.x, hence the rationale for adding the version number in the title. But today we are using ASP.NET 3.5. Health Monitoring still exists and is still used in ASP.NET 3.5 applications, but that article title makes it sound like Health Monitoring is something specific to 2.0. I worry that someone who sees that title in Google's search results will say, “I'm using ASP.NET 3.5, so that article is not relevant to me“ and instead choose to read an article that's titled, “Learn How to Use ASP.NET's Health Monitoring“ because it makes no mention of ASP.NET 2.0.

Given all of this, I am torn between title formats (3) and (4), and I'm now leaning more to (3) than (4). Including the version number is useful when writing about a technology that will be in the next version of ASP.NET or is in the just-released version of ASP.NET, but it becomes a liability as time marches on and new versions of ASP.NET are released. Perhaps the ideal approach would be to change the title over time. That is, name the article Health Monitoring in ASP.NET 2.0 when ASP.NET 2.0 first comes out, but knock off the version number and change the title to Health Monitoring in ASP.NET when ASP.NET 3.5 is nearing release.

Thoughts?

P.S.: Regarind title (2) and omitting the framwork context... During the ASP.NET 1.x days I wrote an 18-part article series on 4Guys titled An Extensive Examination of the DataGrid Web Control. There is also a DataGrid control that can be used in WinForms applications. Despite having the same name, the DataGrid controls in the ASP.NET and WinForms differ substantially when it comes to binding data to the control, adding paging and sorting features, and so on. Long story short, during the ASP.NET 1.x days I'd get an e-mail or two a week from WinForms developers who had questions about the WinForms DataGrid control. It was clear that some had read the article, realized that the focus was on the ASP.NET DataGrid, but asked their question anyway, hoping I could help, while others clearly did not read a word of the article. Perhaps a more descriptive title: An Extensive Examination of the ASP.NET DataGrid Web Control would have reduced the number of these e-mails.

P.S.S.: I'm sure that if you e-mail a blogger or author of an article with a question, you do so in a very courteous and kind manner and realize that you are, in essence, asking for free help from a stranger who likely has other tasks and duties that demand his attention. Moreover, I'm sure you understand if said author or blogger cannot respond to your query, or responds with a, “Sorry, I'm too busy to help,“-type message. But there are people who somehow expect that you are there to be their free, private consultant and programmer, and get surly if you don't answer their question post haste. I bring this up because writing the above aside reminded me of one of the most vitriolic e-mails I ever got from a reader was from a guy who had a question about the WinForms DataGrid control. I had explained to him that there were differences between the ASP.NET and WinForms DataGrid, and that I was not familiar with the WinForms DataGrid and therefore couldn't be of help, and got back one of the nastiest e-mails I've ever received about how they were indeed alike and that I just didn't want to help him and was being all sorts of words I don't want to write here for fear that your workplace's Internet filter will flag my site. The point is (and there is a point in here somewhere, I'm sure), is that the next time you run into one of these types of people, feel free to smack them on the back of their head for me.

Random Grammar/Style Question

Scott Mitchell — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:04:00 GMT

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 certainty whether any one of these three are grammatically correct or if any are grammatically incorrect. My guess is that in the sentence above, “To login to the site...” is incorrect because, according to Dictionary.com, log in is a verb, while login is a noun. In other words, you would only use the word login in a sentence like, “Your login is comprised of a username, password, and PIN.“ That leads me to believe that the correct form is, “To log in to the site,“ but I'm sure someone out there can make a case for “To log into...“

In any case, I should have picked a particular approach and used it throughout, rather than varying the styles throughout the tutorial series. If it's any consolation, I assure you that the variance was done on a purely subconscious level.

All that being said, what do you prefer?

To log in to the site...
To log into the site...
To login to the site...

The more I read it and think about it, I believe the latter one to be grammatically incorrect.

Another thing I noticed is that when I read them there is a very subtle pronounciation difference among the three sentences, although I don't know how clearly that difference translates into the spoken word. When pronouncing login I run the “g” and “in” together, like I'm speaking 1.5 syllables instead of two. Log in to are pronounced as three distinct words with a briefest of pauses between each, whereas log into is pronounced as two distinct words: “log” and “into,” with no pause between “in” and “to” (again, almost as if blurring the two words together into 1.5 syllables).

The Economics Behind Writing Subsequent Editions (for Computer Trade Books)

Scott Mitchell — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:06:00 GMT

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 would release different versions of books and how teachers would require students to buy the most recent version (or whatever version the class was using). I can understand updated versions for cutting edge fields, like biosciences and computer-related topics, but has the knowledge or instruction of introductory level Calculus changed any since Newton and Leibniz's time? And if not, then why does a book like Calculus and Analytic Geometry - a highschool level Calculus book - have nine editions? What has changed so significantly since the eighth edition to warrant a ninth?

As a student, I was always envious of those authors who wrote a new edition. I figured it must be easy money.

Correct a few typos from the previous edition,
Replace some of the sample problems,
Have professors (or school board administrators) require that all students use the most recent version, and
PROFIT!

Sure, writing the first version might take an inordinate amount of time and energy and effort, thereby rendering the profit per unit time to be less than ideal, but once you got past writing the initial version, each subsequent version had an incredible ROI. Not only that, but with textbooks selling in the $50-$150 range (compared to the $9.95 you pay for the mass market Stephen King novel), those professors must be raking in the dough.

(As an aside, I'd be interested in any insight from authors or publishers or agents who have experience in this niche market. What are the royalties like for professors? Are they in the 10-15% range, like for computer trade authors, or are they higher (or lower)? How many copies does a successful textbook sell? I imagine that writing textbooks is like any other profession - you have a very small handful of extremely successful people - e.g., the authors whose book becomes the de facto standard for teaching a common subject across many universities or high schools and who can profit handsomely from future editions - but the vast majority of textbook authors could have earned more had they worked at a restaurant for those hours they spent their time writing, editing, and reviewing their book. In other words, I assume it's very similar to the field for writing computer trade books, except in computer trade book land, an 'extremely successful' author likely could make more money working a regular 9-5 job in industry than she could writing books full time.)

Despite having authored seven books on ASP and ASP.NET, I haven't really had much opportunity to work on 'second editions.' The challenge with computer technologies is that they change so radically so quickly that the 'second edition' is really about a brand new technology with many new and exciting features that require virtually rewriting the previous edition in its entirety. For example, my first two books were on ASP, my third on ASP.NET. ASP and ASP.NET are two very different technologies, and are different in very fundamental and important ways. I don't think I've seen a single book with a consistent title gracefully move from ASP to ASP.NET.

But what about ASP.NET? We've had five versions of the .NET Framework - 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 - but only three of them had enough difference between them and previous versions to warrant a new edition (namely, version 1.0/1.1 to 2.0 and 2.0 to 3.5). And the changes from 1.x to 2.0 were profound enough that new editions between these versions required many new chapters. Granted, the move from 2.0 to 3.5 was less radical and offered an excellent opportunity for established ASP.NET authors to release a new edition with much less energy and effort than is needed to start a book anew or was required when transitioning from 1.x to 2.0. (I'll have more thoughts on this in a future blog post, when I write about my latest book, Teach Yourself ASP.NET 3.5 in 24 Hours.)

The point of it all is that, at least in the ASP.NET world, writing subsequent editions is not something that is as easy to do as you might imagine. Yes, it's easier than writing a book from scratch, as you already have an outline down and can reuse certain content, but it's not as easy as (I imagine) authors in other fields have it when producing a new edition. This is something to keep in mind if you're deciding whether to start writing computer trade books. If your plan is to write an initial book at an economic loss, but to make up that loss with future editions, chances are you'll need to reevaluate your plan. As I said in my first blog entry on the economics of writing computer trade books, “If your dream is to become a rich man, don't write computer trade books.” :-)

Musings About How Not Write a Technical Book

Scott Mitchell — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:08:00 GMT

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, and structural elements (like bullet points, tables, sidebars, and so forth) that are found throughout Adam's book, Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed. To highlight the difference in style/layout, Jeff includes screen shots from both books. Charles's text is drab and gray, Adam's is bright and dynamic. The code looks like it does in Visual Studio; the figures, headings, and bullet points help break up the flow of the text.

Jeff's analysis follows:

“Beyond the obvious benefit of full color printing, which adds another dimension to any text, it's not even close. The Nathan book is the clear winner:

It's full of diagrams, screenshots, and illustrations showing the meaning of the code.

The text is frequently broken up by helpful color-coded sidebars such as "digging deeper", "FAQ", and "warning".

The code/markup snippets are smaller and easier to digest; they don't dominate page upon page of the text.

Liberal use of bullets, tables, subheadings, and other textual elements provides excellent scannability.

The book has a sense of humor without being obnoxious or cloying.

Did I mention it's in color?

“The Nathan book is brilliant. It reads like a blog and competes toe-to-toe with anything you'd find on the web. Petzold's book, in contrast, is a greyscale sea of endless text and interminable code. There are so few diagrams in the book that you get a little thrill every time you encounter one. It also artificially segregates code and markup: the first half is all C# code; it's not until the second half that you see any XAML markup whatsoever, even though XAML is one of the most important new features of WPF, and the one developers will be least familiar with.“

Charles has responded to Jeff's comments via a blog entry of his own titled, The Future of Writing?

“I've been mulling over Coding Horror's analysis of two WPF books, not really thrilled about it, of course. The gist of it is that modern programming books should have color, bullet points, boxes, color, snippets, pictures, color, scannability, and color.

“Does that remind you of anything?

“Apparently the battle for the future of written communication is over. Prose is dead. PowerPoint has won.“

I don't know Charles personally, but from his online reaction it sounds like he is taking Jeff's (constructive) criticism a little too personally. And Jeff's comments do remind me of something - web developers (like myself) who develop very functional but very ugly web applications only to have customers and managers and the graphics guys come in and say, 'Holy crap, that's an ugly website, we need to add some icons and background images.' When this happens, there's two ways to response:

Take their suggestions/comments/changes as an insult to your web development skills, or
Realize that you do some things well (backend web development, data modeling, software architecture, etc.) and there are other things that you are not so hot at and others excel at (layout, design, usability, etc.).

Charles response sounds similar to the discourse you'll hear from a coworker who decides to response to criticism on his website's layout using option #1 above. And just like that coworker, Charles is wrong. Design matters. It doesn't trump functionality, but it does matter as design affects usability, which, for a book, is its readability. As one commenter in Jeff's entry wrote: 'I have both books and Petzold's book actually made me loose interest in WPF. It's just depressing to read that thing.'

Adam Nathan's book is published by Sams Publishing, which doesn't surprise me. I've written all but one of my books with Sams and their editors have always encouraged using different elements to break up the flow of text, be it figures, bullet points, notes, sidebars, warnings, code listings, notable quotes from the book's text, and so on. When submitting chapters for review to my editor at Sams, I found that if I had a page or more of solid text, I'd get a comment suggesting various elements to break up the text. And while my technical books with Sams were all in gray scale, I also wrote a book for Sams for the beginners market titled, Create Your Own Website. This book was in color and on every other page (or so) the margin included a sidebar that had further information or ideas for developing their own website or online tools they could use (such as validators, free images and clipart, free design templates, and so on).

For more on this discussion on this topic, check out the comments in Jeff's blog post. There's also a good entry by Phil Haack: Prose Is Dead. Long Live Prose.

(An aside - Jeff provided his own constructive criticism at my last book's title in his post, Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 23 Hours, which highlights the flaws in titling books Learn X in TimeUnit. And while the naming scheme does have its drawbacks, I vehemently disagree with Jeff's final conclusion 'that books with titles like Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours cheapen our craft.' My response was a long-winded blog entry titled, Can You Learn ASP.NET in 24 Hours?)

Working with Data in ASP.NET 2.0 - Complete!

Scott Mitchell — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 16:03:00 GMT

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 with Data in ASP.NET 2.0 tutorials were modeled after the tutorial series started by Scott Guthrie and aimed to provide step-by-step instructions (with lots of screen shots) on how to perform common data-related patterns. I use the past tense here because, this past weekend, I wrapped up the final milestone for the data tutorials, turning in the final VB and C# versions of the 75th tutorial!!

At the time of this writing the most recent tutorials to be published were the Working with Binary Files tutorials (#54-#57). The upcoming tutorials examine:

Caching (four tutorials)
Data and the Site Map Provider (one tutorial)
Working with Batched Data (looks at using transactions; four tutorials)
Advanced Data Access Layer Scenarios (nine tutorials)

Writing these tutorials was very similar in process to writing a book. I'd wager that the average tutorial is about 10 printed pages in length, so the series is equivalent to authoring a 750 page book. It should come as no surprise, then, that I feel as spent as when sending off the final author review to a publisher. And, like after authoring a book, I am more than ready for a break from this time-intensive writing.

There are plenty of differences between writing a book and writing a book-length online tutorial series, of course. With a book you don't see a physical manifestation of the hard work until many months after the book has been written and reviewed. Online work, however, allows for incremental and quicker publication schedule, which.helps keep me motivated. And while well-publicized technical online material is more accessible and read by more people than a book, there's still something alluring about books... about being able to see a physical manifestation of your work in a bookstore. To see someone thumbing through your book. To hold it in your hands, to skim the table of contents, to turn to a random page and cast your mind back to the days you spent writing that chapter. These sensory delights are nice, but come at a cost, as writing computer trade books very often has a terrible ROI - see The Economics of Writing a Computer Trade Book for a more detailed breakdown of why writing computer trade books is not the way to riches.

Many thanks to those who helped review the tutorials or who have provided feedback or pointed out typos or other issues since their publication. One of the nice things about having an “online book” is that it is much easier to fix typos and update code, if necessary, so keep sending in corrections.

Can You Learn ASP.NET in 24 Hours?

Scott Mitchell — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:46:00 GMT

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's both entertaining and brings up some good points, the main ones being:

What's with the 24 Hours bit in the title? Why not 23 Hours? Or 25 Hours? Or 1 Hour? Or 5 minutes? Or 1 SECOND?
How in the world can a book say that you can learn ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours. It takes months, years... and even then who really knows it? (Perhaps I don't get out enough, but the only two people I've ever talked to/interfaced with that I felt really knew ASP.NET to their core were Scott Guthrie and Rob Howard. Now Scott, along with Mark Anders, invented ASP.NET, and Rob was a program manager from the early days. I'm know there are more folks out there who have as deep an understanding as those two, but the point remains - very, very, very few people can truly, profoundly know a technology whose breadth is so immense.)
Books with titles like Teach Yourself X in 24 Hours cheapen the field. To quote from Jeff's blog entry: “I humbly submit that books with titles like Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours cheapen our craft. Any computer book with a length of time in the title -- weeks, months, days, hours -- is doing its readers a disservice by demoting software development from a craft you spend your life practicing to a mechanical activity that can be learned in a limited time window.“

I'd like to address each of these points Jeff makes.

What's with the 24 Hours bit in the title? Why not 23 Hours? Or 25 Hours? Or 1 Hour? Or 5 minutes? Or 1 SECOND?
Sams Publishing is the publisher with the Teach Yourself X in <INSERT TIME LIMIT HERE> series. Now I am not a publisher nor was asked to sit in any meetings when deciding these series structure and semantics, but my understanding is that the time periods are chosen for logical reasons. For a 24 Hour book, each hour corresponds to a chapter in the book that, in theory, takes an hour to work through. In a 21 Days book, there are 21 chapters, and the chapters are intended to cover more content at a deeper level of detail than in a 24 Hour chapter.

The point is that there is thought and meaning behind the time period. It's an indication to the prospective buyer on the depth of the material contained within and the “difficulty level” of the text. Want a quick, scatch-the-surface introduction to a technology? Pick up a Teach Yourself X in 10 Minutes. Interested in a more detailed examination, but one still geared for beginner- to intermediate-level developers? The 24 Hours series may be better suited. And if you want a more in-depth exploration of the technology, the 21 Days book is more up your alley.

How in the world can a book say that you can learn ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours
The word “learn” means different things to different people based upon their experiences and expectations. To someone who has never created an ASP.NET page in her life, when she says she wants to “learn” ASP.NET she doesn't mean, “Explain how I can create a custom membership provider to utilize my existing application's database credential store.” She means, “How do I create a Web page that can collect user input?“ and “How do I show database information on a web page?“ Ditto for people who may have had some experience with competing technologies - classic ASP, PHP, ColdFusion - but is interested to moving to ASP.NET. Ditto for junior-level ASP.NET 1.x developers.

Some of the comments left in response to Jeff's blog entry suggested that the book's title spell out what, exactly, will be learned, because it's clearly impossible to learn everything in ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 hours. This information is available. The back of the book spells out what you can expect to accomplish. “In just 24 sessions of one hour or less, you will be able to create ASP.NET web pages that interact with user input and online databases.“ It has a bulleted list of what you can expect to learn:

Get started creating ASP.NET web pages
Collect and store input from users visiting your website
Display, sort, edit, and page through database data in an ASP.NET web page
Allow visitors to insert, update, and delete data from an underlying database
Build websites that support user accounts

The book's Introduction also includes a synopsis of the book's material and what a prospective reader can expect to learn. No where does it promise to make you an ASP.NET master ninja guru.

Furthermore, on the book's cover and spine it clearly says STARTER KIT in a font the same size as the “Teach Yourself.”

Someone who has architected and created large data-driven ASP.NET 1.x applications obviously isn't going to gain much from this book. But here's the kicker - this book ain't for them! What is a little frustrating is that they know this. You can't tell me some developer who's been around the ASP.NET block more than a few times actually says to herself, “I need to master ASP.NET 2.0. Ah, this Teach Yourself in 24 Hours ought to do the trick!” So why gripe about the title? (This provides a nice segue into the next section...........)

Books with titles like Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours cheapen our craft
I can see where this sentiment comes from - there's nothing more frustrating than working with some novice developer who's created his first data-driven website and now thinks he is some ASP.NET Master of the Universe. And, perhaps, books with such titles give a false sense of confidence to those who have worked through the book, allowing them to rationalize, “Well, I've put in my 24 hours and now I am an ASP.NET guru. Watch out Dino Esposito, your job will be mine shortly!”

But what I also think there's a bit of ego wrapped up in this. A top-notch developer has no doubt invested years in formal education, real-world experience, attending conferences/LUG talks/classes, and now, when he walks into the bookstores with his friends they see this book and say, “Oh, that's what you do all day? And it only takes 24 hours to learn it? Man, you have it easy.”

My take on it is thus: I like programming and really enjoy ASP.NET. I think it's neat and fun and interesting and cool how you can go from literally nothing to having a data-driven web application that can be used by people around the world in an amazingly fast amount of time. Furthermore, I want to spread that enthusiasm to folks. I want to say to those who may have never programmed, or to those who are using competing technologies, or to those who are just starting out - “Come over here and try out this ASP.NET stuff. Here, let me show you what it can do!” That's why I teach (which pays pennies compared to consulting). That's why I write (which pays better than teaching, but still is not anywhere near as lucrative as consulting). That's why I give free talks at local user groups and community-sponsored conferences here in Southern California. To get the word out!

To me, saying that titles like Teach Yourself X in 24 Hours cheapen the craft is tantamount to saying, “Our club is full. Go away.” It's not saying, “Let's welcome the newbies and get them excited about this technology.” Rather, it's saying, “Newbies are ok, but they must first realize how hard this is, how hard we've worked, and how much more we know than them.” I worry that such sentiment from the community will come across as pompousness to those very people whom we should be welcoming. (I'm not trying to imply that Jeff has a holier than thou attitude, as his humility is evidenced by various blog entries[1][2][3], but I think some folks do fall into this camp. And even if it's not an ego-driven attitude, it's one that can be off-putting to those entering the field.)

In closing, the Teach Yourself X in 24 Hours title may seem a bit of a laugh for an experienced ASP.NET developer who knows that ASP.NET is not something that can be “learned” in a scant 24 hours, but to those entering the field, such a title expresses the book's intent and level of detail, and I think it helps reassure an on-the-fence user that they don't need to be a computer whiz to get started with ASP.NET.

Hot Off the Presses - Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours!

Scott Mitchell — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 00:10:00 GMT

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 to user groups, friends, family, coworkers, and so on. What follows are months filled with arduous writing, interspersed with reviews and the early stages of editing. The length of this stage depends on the number of authors, the length of the book, and the productivity of the author(s). My experience has been 3 to 4 months of writing, on average, but keep in mind that I'm verbose and that's typically writing three to four days a week for maybe six hours per day.

After the book has been written and the chapters submitted to the publisher, there's typically a month of author review, which involves the publisher editing the content for grammar and layout along with some technical editing/reviewing. Following that there's silence. The book is in the hands of the publisher as they put together the layout, get the book printed, have any accompanying media pressed, package everything, and distribute to the bookstores' warehouses. So after 3 to 4 months of really hard and tiring work, followed by a month (or two) of lightweight author review, there's 2 to 3 months of quiet. And then, it happens. That box of books arrives in the mail, your author copies. You get to hold in your hands the fruit of your labors. Those words that were just ones and zeros on your computer several month ago are now paper between your fingers. I imagine it's similar (albeit a very muted version) of what it must feel like to hold your child for the first time after their birth.

Today I received my author copies of my latest book, Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours (which is now available for purchase from online and local bookstores (ISBN 0672327384))! The book's first words were typed into Microsoft Word back in September 2005 and today, six months later, they are paper underneath my fingertips.

(In case you're wondering, the second most rewarding day for an author is when he sees it for the first time in a bookstore, sitting there proudly on the shelf. On a side note, if you ever do stumble across any of my books in a bookstore, please take a moment to turn it cover-out. That is, turn it so that the cover is facing outward, rather than just the spine. Thanks! :-)

...Now, about this book....

Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours is geared toward beginner to intermediate developers who are interested in learning ASP.NET version 2.0. The book is designed to be approachable by those who are brand new to development, and the first third of the book looks at fundamentals of server-side technologies (like ASP.NET), familiarizing oneself with Visual Web Developer, and a crash course of the Visual Basic programming language. Readers with experience with ASP.NET version 1.x (or other dynamic web technologies) will likely breeze through this first third.

The middle portion of the book looks at the core controls for creating data-driven ASP.NET pages. It begins with an examination of common Web controls like the Label, TextBox, DropDownList, RadioButtonList, and so on, and then transitions into working with databases, accessing data with the SqlDataSource control, and displaying data with the data Web controls, such as the GridView, DetailsView, FormView, DropDownList, CheckBoxList, and so on. This exploration also includes examining how to add paging and sorting support and creating GridViews that support editing and deleting of data and DetailsView controls that provide editing, inserting, and deleting capabilities.

The final third of the book examines master pages, membership, and site navigation, and then concludes with building a real-world web application from the ground up that ties together the lessons learned throughout the preceding chapters. This real-world application, whose design and creation spans three chapters, is a photo album application that allows for registered users to upload images to the website and manage them through a web-based administration page. Any visitor may view the images in a user's photo album, but only other registered users may leave comments about a picture.

Keep in mind that this book is targetted to the beginner to intermediate developer. If you're a hard core ASP.NET 1.x developer, this book is not the one you should pick up if you are interested in learning about 2.0. Rather, this title is for those developers brand new to ASP.NET who want to start with 2.0 or 1.x developers who would classify themselves as beginner- or intermediate-level. The book includes a CD with Microsoft's free Visual Web Developer software, which is the editor used throughout the book.

If you are a beginner- to intermediate-level developer interested in learning ASP.NET 2.0, or know someone who is, I hope you'll pick up a copy of Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours.

Writing Marathon Complete!

Scott Mitchell — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 02:19:00 GMT

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 layout, printing, and distributing, meaning it will probably be at least another three months before you can pick up a copy of the book at your local bookstore. But the writing, save for edits in the author review, is over! Done! Finito!

The book I just completed - and, yes, saying that never gets old, not in this post at least - is Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours. It takes an ASP.NET novice from no experience with ASP.NET to creating a fully-functional, real-world online photo album, covering programming concepts, collecting user input, working with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, using the SqlDataSource control, editing, inserting, deleting, and viewing data with the GridView and DetailsView controls, using master pages, and understanding site navigation, using Membership.

The first 35% of the book's material was written quick enough as I was able to update the same material from my other book, Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 24 Hours. But the last 65% was all new content, in more ways than one. For starters, I, like everyone else, was learning ASP.NET 2.0 while writing this book. So things didn't progress as quickly as they would have if, say, I started writing this book two years from now. (For example, writing ASP.NET Data Web Controls was a virtual walk in the park since I started it after years of ASP.NET 1.x experience.) Needless to say, this book took a lot out of me, more so than books in the past, in part, I think, because while I was writing this particular title I was also doing consulting work two to three days a week, whereas with past books I dropped consulting work altogether during the two to three months it takes to churn out a book.

Regardless, I'm done writing now, and that's that!

Create Your Own Website, 2nd Edition

Scott Mitchell — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 16:23:00 GMT

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 WYSIWYG HTML editor. The book has sold well and even though I promised myself to stick to books geared toward developers, I let my editor talk me into writing a 2nd edition.

Whereas the first edition focuses solely on building your own website from the ground up, the 2nd edition turns its attention more to using free online services to help. The 2nd edition still has two chapters on using Mozilla Composer to create a website from the ground up, but also examines:

Selling items online with eBay Stores
Publishing content online with the help of Blogger, and
Sharing and ordering photos with SnapFish

These three additional chapters took about a month and change to write/edit/author review.

As I mentioned in my blog post about the 1st edition, you are strongly encouraged to purchase multiple copies for your non-computer savvy friends and family members. :-)

Visual Studio Hacks Available

Scott Mitchell — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:23:00 GMT

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 is odd since it lets me add it to my shopping cart....

Anywho, if you use Visual Studio in any sort of manner, I'm confident you'll find a number of tips, hints, and gems in this book for improving your productivity and enjoyability in the IDE. So go buy a copy already. Or you can check out the book's companion site first, before buying: http://www.visualstudiohacks.com/

Tracking a Book's Success

Scott Mitchell — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 03:14:00 GMT

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 but also by the “buzz“ it had generated in the online world. Brad says that he determines the “buzz“ value through the Google API, although I'm not sure what the numbers correspond to. When putting in the book's title, I don't get nearly the same number of results as the “buzz,“ and I can't find the code Brad uses to determine the “buzz“ in his blog entry.

Regardless, Brad's approach is on the right track. My only concern is that the “buzz” rating might be a bit skewed based on the words in the title of the book itself. For example, the book Programming C# is probably more likely to result in false positives on Google (i.e., pages that use those words or that phrase that aren't talking about the book) than, say, Teach Yourself C# in 24 Hours.

You can check out Brad's results here:

The Top 10 .NET books (and top books by category)
http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2005/02/21/377628.aspx
All results - 174 books on .NET... none of them mine :-(
http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/articles/377610.aspx

Visual Studio Hacks

Scott Mitchell — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 00:03:00 GMT

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
Setting breakpoints
Spell checking your code/comments, and
Generating metrics on your code (i.e., LOCs, code complexity, etc.)

These are just five of the many hacks. The majority were authored by James Avery and the other numerous contributors - see James's announcement for a full list of the contributors and additional information on this upcoming book.

So what is this book about? Who is the target audience? James describes it best:

I decided to write a book for 80% of the developers who use Visual Studio. This book is for the everyday developer who already knows how to use Visual Studio, but wants to learn about tips and tools that can help them in their everyday development tasks.

The book is available on Amazon.com for pre-order but won't ship until, likely, early March. If you use Visual Studio - and I know you do! - consider picking up a copy of this book.

This book is the first book I've contributed where I've not been a primary or sole contributor. Basically when only contributing a small percentage of a book, most publishers will just hire you on as a “work for hire,” paying a flat rate for your contribution. I have no details of the arrangements of the other contributors, but I'm wagering that James - the main editor/contributor - is the only one receiving a percentage of the gross.

These types of writing contributions - a single chapter or a small number of hacks - are a great way for prospective authors to ease into the scene, to test out if writing is of interest to them or not. As one who has written a handful of books, doing this type of job is nice every now and then as it's the only opportunity I have to just churn out a short amount of work over the course of a few days and be 100% done! No lengthy author review; no formulating the TOC; no endless nights, trying to hammer out a chapter to meet a deadline.

Even when only contributing a subset of the material of a book, serving as the editor/project manager can sometimes amount to more work than just writing the damn book yourself. I don't know what James's experiences were on this title, but I recall my first ASP.NET book, ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code. This book had seven authors; I authored only three of the book's chapters (granted one of the chapters was approximately 100 pages), but served as the program manager. Essentially, I created the TOC and doled out the writing responsibilities, served as the first technical editor/QA guy, and was responsible for maintaining, as best I could, a consistent theme/writing style across all chapters. This book took more time, energy, and caused more stress than any other book I've worked on. I think this stemmed from the following reasons:

There was some chaos in the list of contributing authors. Four or so of the original authors ended up dropping off due to other commitments.
The book's code was written and fully tested on ASP.NET Beta 1 code. If you used ASP.NET in the early betas you'll remember that there were some big changes from Beta 1 to Beta 2. Meaning virtually all of the code samples had to be rewritten and retested, and the supporting prose as well.
Editing/QAing/managing people is not my forte, nor my idea of a good time. I learned this through this project. I like to write and program. Doling out work, reminding people to meet deadlines, dealing with various people-related issues, serving as a go-between for the authors and Sams editors - I found out that these are things I'm not good at nor particularly enjoy.

It's not surprising, then, that since then I've stuck to writing my own, single-author books. This contribution for Visual Studio Hacks was a nice foray off the normal path since it did not involve any of the tasks I find most difficult/stressful. Hopefully James had a more enjoyable and less trying time in his role in writing/editing Visual Studio Hacks than I did with ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code.

Presentation Style: Lots of Slides or Few?

Scott Mitchell — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:26:00 GMT

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 - that is, I use a lot of slides. A lot more than some others use.

In some 60-90 minute presentations I've seen, the presenter has, maybe, 10 slides. Each slide has a series of very high-level bullet points and the speaker delves into each bullet point with, perhaps, three or five minutes of talking. There may also be lengthy demos that don't have any corresponding slides, but take up another five or ten minutes of the talk.

Compare that to my typical approach. For a 90 minute talk I might have 50-75 slides, obviously containing a finer level of detail than the aforementioned style. Oftentimes I embed my demo in slides - I still go to Visual Studio .NET, use a browser, etc., but in the slides I have code snippets, screenshots, and so forth. The benefit of this (at least in my eyes, what do you think?) is that the slide deck is self-containing in a way. When someone goes back to work at the end of the conference (or user group talk or training session or what have you), they can use the slides as a reference that actually has some level of detail. My concern is that too many slides proves too distracting, that people might not like the near-constant slide flipping (got to average about 60 seconds per slide).

Thoughts? Comments? What's your preferred presentation style?