A thing I really like about this book, is that it covers using OpenCV on a lot of different platforms. OpenCV is used a lot for desktop applications, but this book also covers a range of projects for mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones and tablets.

The book covers a lot of different topics that go beyond the basics. You'll learn how to use OpenCV to create augmented reality applications, both with marker detection and without. There's also a nice chapter about number plate recognition.

The pieces I like the most are the chapters on non-rigid face tracking and head pose estimation. These chapters can be a good way to get you started recreating the "Face Substitution":https://vimeo.com/29348533 piece made by Kyle McDonald and Arturo Castro.

The code for all projects in this book is available on "Github":https://github.com/MasteringOpenCV/code, which is a great thing. If any bugs are found, this might be the best way for the authors to make changes and give everybody access to the most recent version of the code.

Chapter two was kind of boring for me, as it just teaches the basics of programming in the Processing language. But if you haven't programmed before, you'll definitely need this bit. It's written in clear, understandable language, and takes you through all programming concepts you need at a good pace before you can dive into the more complex stuff.

Starting with chapter three, the author turns it up a notch. Whereas other books briefly mention perlin noise, this book digs deeper into the subject, showing you how it can be used to deform lines and circles. I've learned a few new tricks reading these chapters. The book ends with traditional computer algorithms like fractals and cellular automata, and shows you how they can be used and adapted in a creative way.

This is a great book to learn a programming language by exploring how small changes can create a different visual output. You'll learn that the process in creating art is equally important as the output you create. I really enjoyed reading this book, and I hope you do too.

The first problem I encountered was installing the OpenCV library. Apparently, you have to use CMake to do that. Since I'm a designer, I usually try to keep away from doing things like this. The book explains the process for Windows but I'm using Mac OS X. The IDE's used in the book are MS Visual Studio and Nokia QT. I installed Nokia QT, which also runs on the Mac but didn't like the environment. So I gave up.

Luckily for me, "openFrameworks":http://openframeworks.cc/ comes with OpenCV. I'm also more used to working with Xcode, so I decided to try some of the examples with the tools I know. The first chapter is really easy. You'll learn how to read an image with OpenCV and show it on the screen.

Chapter two is about manipulating pixels. You'll learn how you can access pixels and change their color values. There are some useful algorithms in this chapter. There is an algorithm to reduce colors in an image, an effect similar to the Posterize adjustment from Photoshop.

The author also gives you an insight in how histograms are created, how to detect edges, corners, circles, lines and angles. And a lot of things that are a little too technical for me. If you are an experienced programmer, you'll probably love the book. If you're only getting started with C++, this will be too difficult.

The last chapter was the most interesting for me: working with video. I usually use OpenCV with a webcam to do live tracking of blobs to create interactive installations. The book uses a video file that is read from the hard drive but the approach is basically the same. I wish the book would also cover things like face detection with OpenCV, but one can probably write a book on this feature alone.

An Overview

I'm going to take you through the book chapter by chapter so you'll get a good overview of the things you can expect.

Chapter 1: Using CSS3 Today

The first chapter gives some background on CSS3 and shows you why you can start using CSS3 in your projects today. When you target the experience layer, you can deliver better experiences to browsers that support new CSS3 features. Multiple background images, @border-radius@, @text-shadow@, @box-shadow@, @opacity@ and @RGBA@ are supported by most modern browsers, so you can start using them today.

Chapter 2: Understanding CSS Transitions

Transitions are the smallest building blocks to add a better user experience to your pages. They are used for smoothly animating changes in CSS values when a HTML element changes state. An example: animate the background color of a button in 0.3 seconds. You should go ahead and use these CSS transitions in your designs today, but remember to be subtle.

Chapter 3: Hover-Crafting with CSS3

In this chapter, you'll learn to build a navigation that will give a better experience to people with a modern browser, while people surfing with an older browser won't notice a thing. You'll learn how to use @opacity@, @text-shadow@, @border-radius@ and a nifty transparent PNG technique to create better user interactions.

Chapter 4: Transforming the Message

This book will only focus on 2D transitions. You'll learn how to use @scale@, @rotate@, @translate@ and @skew@ to transform pictures in an image gallery when a user interacts with them.

Chapter 5: Multiple Backgrounds

Dan shows you how to use multiple background images to create the parallax scrolling effect made famous by the "Silverback":http://silverbackapp.com/ website. And how to create a default style for browsers like IE7 and below that don't support them.

Chapter 6: Enriching Forms

This chapter goes through some useful techniques to style web forms. You'll learn how to use gradients to give form elements a 3D feeling, and to use @box-shadow@ to create better focus states.

Conclusion

Dan shows you how to use CSS3 in a comprehensible way. If you have some experience writing CSS, you'll get the hang of it real soon. I recommend this book to all my students.

This book starts with drawing simple shapes to the screen. The second thing you learn is adding interactivity to your program with only a few lines of code. Seeing the result of your program when you hit the run button makes it exciting to explore programming in a playful way.

You'll learn programming concepts like variables and functions as you dig deeper in the book. It all starts with drawing a robot, making it responsive, adding animation, ...

This book is also great to use as a text book for teaching Processing. I'll be using it in my classes and hope to get some students interested in programming graphics.

If only a book like this existed when I learned about programming. It would have made my life a lot easier.

Some "design rules" from the book

• Minimalism is dead
• If you don't know what to do... just do it big and red
• Cleavage or legs, never both
• Never use more than two typefaces
• [insert buzzword] is the new black

In 2005 Dave Shea published The Zen of CSS Design together with Molly Holzschlag. The book contains the best designs from the website and explains how they were built. There are a lot of good CSS techniques in this book.

If you are new to CSS, I suggest to wait a little before reading this one. This is not a book for beginners. You should at least know how to add CSS to your HTML documents, and how to use basic typography and color.

The book covers web standards, accessibility and new technologies like microformats and how you can use them to create a more findable website. This book also contains a lot of examples and a gives you a good technical background. I've used a lot of techniques from this book in recent projects.

Like any programming book, this one takes you through everything you need to know about the AppleScript language. You'll learn about syntax, variables, objects, handlers, datatypes, and all the things in this crazy language.

AppleScript is a very powerful language if you want to automate things on your Mac. Yes, you can use Automator for that, but it doesn't always give you the power you need. getting started with AppleScript is hard. Its syntax is weird, and it's (scarce) hard to find good documentation on how to write scripts. This book is good to get started with the language.