Friday 14 October 2016

Visualforce Development Cookbook Second Edition

Visualforce Development Cookbook Second Edition

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Introduction

As regular readers of this blog will know, I wrote a book three years ago - the Visualforce Development Cookbook - and I really haven't stopped banging on about it since. Well things just got worse as I finished the second edition in ?September? and I'm obviously keen to shift as many copies as possible!

What’s a Second Edition?

A second edition isn't a new book. Instead it's an iteration on the previous version, minus content that is no longer relevant and including new features, so the first job is to identify what should be cut and what should be added.

One of the nice things about working on Salesforceis that over time new features are added that remove the need for custom code, so I was able to chop a few recipes out that are now handled natively by the platform. The next job is to update all existing code to the latest API version - something that typically happens several times as Salesforce produces releases faster than I can write a book (even a second edition!). 

Then its back to the writing - for existing recipes making sure that the text is still appropriate and creating new recipes from scratch. This was pretty compressed this time around, as Packt proposed a pretty aggressive timescale to complete before Dreamforce which I was more than happy to sign up to, as I knew that would take up all of my time through to mid-October. I wouldn't recommend this if you don't have some vacation time you can dedicate to writing though, as it would have been pretty tough to complete with only evenings and weekends available.

What’s changed?

The main changes in the second edition are:

  • The chapter on Force.com sites has been reworked to use the Salesforce Lightning Design System
  • The chapter on jQueryMobile has been replaced with Salesforce1 recipes.
  • A new chapter on Troubleshooting has been added, covering debugging, managing the view state and advice on avoiding common problems.
  • All the retained recipes have been revised as appropriate.

You want me to buy it again?

Now I’m not like the music industry that expects you to buy the same  music every time they think up a different format, and I can understand that for someone who already purchased the first edition, this might not represent enough of a change to justify buying the second edition (although it was for Fabrice Cathala, who is clearly going for the full set - thanks Fabrice!).

I raised this with the publishers and they gave me a couple of discount codes to use, both valid until 17th October, which you can use on the Packt website:

  • Use code VISDSE50 for 50% off the Ebook
  • Use code VISDSE15 for 15% off the print book

Note that you don't need to have purchased the first edition to use these codes, you can simply use them to scoop up a bargain.

Show me the code!

For those who just need the code and no explanation, its available free of charge on github at:

 https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Visualforce-Development-Cookbook-2e

A word of advice though - best not come to me asking for help around adapting the recipes or producing unit tests if you've decided not to purchase the book - that would be asking me to cannibalize my own sales!

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