Books about Scenarios from Amazon.com

Book Description
No matter how visually appealing or content-packed a Web site may be, if it's not adaptable to a variety of situations and reaching the widest possible audience, it isn't really succeeding. In Bulletproof Web Desing, author and Web designer extraordinaire, Dan Cederholm outlines standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability, and user control--key components of every sucessful site. Each chapter starts out with an example of an unbulletproof site one that employs a traditional HTML-based approach which Dan then deconstructs, pointing out its limitations. He then gives the site a make-over using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so you can see how to replace bloated code with lean markup and CSS for fast-loading sites that are accessible to all users. Finally, he covers several popular fluid and elastic-width layout techniques and pieces together all of the page components discussed in prior chapters into a single-page template.

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Guest Reviewer: Jeffrey Zeldman

Modern web design is user-centered, accessible, and standards-based. In other words, it's completely different from the stuff we did in the 1990s. There are two vital aspects to designing with web standards:

(1) understanding why
(2) knowing how

Know-how is what Dan Cederholm has in spades, and in this updated edition of his essential text, he shares that knowledge with humor and clarity.

Dan's is one of the smartest minds in CSS and HTML. He is internationally known as a deep and innovative coder. But his background is in design and production, working on real-world sites for no-nonsense businesses like Google, ESPN, and Fast Company, Inc.

This grounding in practical user interface design and daily production issues makes Dan a great teacher of CSS, because he never loses sight of the things designers want to do (not to mention the things designers' clients and bosses demand of them).

From multi-column layouts that stay crispy in milk, to maintaining fine control of web fonts and sizes without alienating users: just about every problem a modern web designer faces is examined, with solutions ranging from good to better to best.

This second edition includes everything you need to know about taking Internet Explorer 7 into account. Little else has changed. And that's as it should be, for this book is a classic. It belongs on every web designer's shelf.

-- Jeffrey Zeldman, author, Designing With Web Standards 2nd Edition

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About the Author
Dan Cederholm is a Web designer and author living in Massachusetts. He's the founder of SimpleBits, a tiny design studio. A recognized expert in the field of standards-based Web design, Dan has worked with Google, MTV, ESPN, Fast Company, Blogger, Odeo, and others. He embraces flexible, adaptable design using Web standards through his design work, writing, and speaking. Dan is the author of two best-selling books: Bulletproof Web Design (New Riders) and Web Standards Solutions (Friends of ED). Dan also runs the popular weblog SimpleBits, where he writes articles and commentary on the Web, technology, and life. He also plays a mean ukulele and occasionally wears a baseball cap..
Price: $22.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Scenario planning allows companies to move away from linear thinking and better understand external change. Eight years (and 30,000 copies) after publication Scenarios is still acknowledged as the definitive work in the field. Now, Kees van der Heijden brings his bestseller up to date, following up on his original case studies and adding significant new material. The Second Edition changes focus slightly by providing more in-depth analysis and application of the concept of the 'strategic conversation'. While maintaining the underlying rigour of the first edition, van der Heijden revisits the text to make it far more practical and accessible, and in doing so gives you the tools you need to set out and negotiate a successful future course for your organization in the face of significant uncertainty..
Price: $27.80 [Notify me when price goes down.]

How to Wrestle Free from an Alligator: 4. If its jaws are closed on something you want to remove (for example, a limb), tap or punch it on the snout.

Though it's being marketed as a humorous title--after all, it's unlikely you'll be called upon to land a plane, jump from a motorcycle to a moving car, or win a swordfight--the information contained in The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook is all quite sound. Authors Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht consulted numerous experts in their fields (they're cited at the end of the book) to discover how to survive various and sundry awful events. Parachute doesn't open? Your best bet for survival is to hook your arms through the straps of a fellow jumper's chute--and even then you're likely to dislocate both shoulders and break both legs. Car sinking in water? Open the window immediately to equalize pressure, then open the car door and swim to the surface. Buried in an avalanche? Spit on the snow--it will tell you which direction is really up. Then dig as fast as you can.

Each survival skill is explained in simple steps with helpful illustrations. Most stress the need to be prepared--both mentally and physically. For example, to escape from quicksand, you will need to lay a pole on the surface of the quicksand, flop on your back atop the pole, and pull your legs out one by one. No pole? No luck. "When walking in quicksand country, carry a stout pole--it will help you get out should you need to."

Hopefully you'll never need to know how to build a fire without matches, perform a tracheotomy, or treat a bullet wound. But in the words of survival evasion resistance escape instructor "Mountain" Mel Deweese, "You never know." --Sunny Delaney.
Price: $0.24 [Notify me when price goes down.]

To move students beyond theory to the application of business communication principles, this book drops students into workplace scenarios and requires them to respond by writing business messages or by presenting business ideas. To make the experience challenging for students, this book progresses from business communication basics to challenging rhetorical situations. At each step along the way, students get the groundwork they need to wrestle with the real-world business situations that require written or spoken responses. In short, this book takes the concept “critical thinking” and puts it to the test by challenging students to make informed rhetorical choices in the face of increasingly complex or difficult situations..
Price: $29.63 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Listen to a short interview with Cass Sunstein
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane

Nuclear bombs in suitcases, anthrax bacilli in ventilators, tsunamis and meteors, avian flu, scorchingly hot temperatures: nightmares that were once the plot of Hollywood movies are now frighteningly real possibilities. How can we steer a path between willful inaction and reckless overreaction?

Cass Sunstein explores these and other worst-case scenarios and how we might best prevent them in this vivid, illuminating, and highly original analysis. Singling out the problems of terrorism and climate change, Sunstein explores our susceptibility to two opposite and unhelpful reactions: panic and utter neglect. He shows how private individuals and public officials might best respond to low-probability risks of disaster--emphasizing the need to know what we will lose from precautions as well as from inaction. Finally, he offers an understanding of the uses and limits of cost-benefit analysis, especially when current generations are imposing risks on future generations.

Throughout, Sunstein uses climate change as a defining case, because it dramatically illustrates the underlying principles. But he also discusses terrorism, depletion of the ozone layer, genetic modification of food, hurricanes, and worst-case scenarios faced in our ordinary lives. Sunstein concludes that if we can avoid the twin dangers of over-reaction and apathy, we will be able to ameliorate if not avoid future catastrophes, retaining our sanity as well as scarce resources that can be devoted to more constructive ends.

(20080202).
Price: $15.53 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Celebrate the return of Drizzt Do'Urden!

Some legends are born out of darkness

Drizzt Do'Urden grew up in the underground city of Menzoberranzan, home of the drow--a race of twisted, evil dark elves. However, Drizzt was unlike other drow. He fled the Underdark for the surface realm, where he befriended the human barbarian Wulfgar. Together they battled the most terrible threat ever to ravage Icewind Dale: the white dragon Icingdeath!

This Dungeons & Dragons(R) product includes:

3 figures--Drizzt Do'Urden, Wulfgar, and Icingdeath the Gargantuan White Dragon--in scale with other Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game collectable figures (prepainted, fully assembled, durable plastic)
1 fold-out, illustrated battle map
5 full-color game stat cards, including epic stat cards for Drizzt Do'Urden and Wulfgar
A booklet containing a scenario that rekindles the classic battle between Drizzt, Wulfgar, and Icingdeath, as well as an exclusive excerpt from R.A. Salvatore's newest Drizzt novel, The Orc King..
Price: $30.30 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The college years are a time of noble pursuit of knowledge, self-betterment—and unending peril! Students are at risk from the moment they receive their acceptance letters. Fortunately, the authors of the phenomenally best-selling Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series have come to the rescue, offering all-new, hands-on, step-by-step instructions for surviving the worst that higher education has to offer, on campus and off. Learn how to identify a party school, engineer a hookup, survive "the spins," and escape a stadium riot. Discover the best way to sleep in class, pass a test you haven't studied for, avoid the "freshman fifteen," and pull an all-nighter. With practical advice for avoiding laundry and identifying unsafe institutional food, along with an appendix of excuses for missed deadlines and a back-up diploma, this is truly required reading for all college students—and a perfect high school graduation present..
Price: $1.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]