[yaddayadda]

1. If a customer is looking for books, they're probably not going to be looking in the code.

2. If someone is looking in the code, they're probably ready for books beyond "HTML & CSS".

3. The urls aren't hyperlinked, so readers have to copy-paste.

4. The two books I bothered to copy-paste both report, "Not in our warehouse". One of them further reports that "We can order it, but could take up to 3 weeks". The big-A can have it to me in 3 days, two of which are the weekend.

[BuildTheRobots]

> 3. The urls aren't hyperlinked, so readers have to copy-paste.

Actually you can just highlight the URL and right click, you get an option to open it in various ways... (firefox and chrome)

[yaddayadda]

I'm using Firefox 35.0.1 on OS X, i.e. the latest version of Firefox and I can't find anything that is faster than "Show Source", click and drag (to highlight the desired url), copy, paste into url bar, and press enter.

I do not have any "Open" options on my right-click from "Show Source". From "Show Source" once I've highlighted the url, the only right-click options available are "Find Again", "Copy" (which I'm already doing, albeit from a keyboard shortcut), and "Select All".

If I try it from "Inspect Elements", I can expand the head tag, double-click to select the comment, click and drag to select the url, at which point my right-click only has the "Show DOM Properties" option available. But this has already taken longer than the above show source, then copy-paste, and go.

[BuildTheRobots]

Huh. It turns out you're completely correct.

Turns out I was able to highlight and right click because I was selecting the <pre> embedded text in the comments of hacker news, rather than viewing source on the waterstones link.

I'm dismayed to report that the view source window doesn't give you this open. Even worse, if you right click on something that's highlighted as being a URL you can't even open it in a new window/tab. Colour me disappointed.

[mistro]

Your second point is off the mark - I teach a load of kids (12-16 years old or so) who know all about pressing F12 and looking at source code, but who know next to nothing more about HTML, CSS, Python etc.

Whether or not they'd be interested in reading a book when you can just watch it on Youtube is another matter entirely!

[yaddayadda]

> 2. If someone is looking in the code, they're probably ready for books beyond "HTML & CSS".

Key word in my original statement - "probably". I didn't claim that everyone reading it was beyond needing a beginners book, just that a reader of the code was "probably" ready for books beyond "HTML & CSS".

As for books versus Youtube - yep, I'm an immigrant. In most cases, I personally still prefer books, online tutorials, and online forums to Youtube. But I'm not surprised to hear that isn't the case with kids. But then again, we're discussion a book-seller's site.

[linuxlizard]

My 12-yo is learning HTML/JS by reading and modifying websites' code.

[jarin]

That is how I learned when I was 12 too :)

[lstamour]

Back then I didn't have developer tools though. That lowers the bar considerably to newcomers. :)

[err4nt]

I first got excited about web design when my computer teacher taught me how to change table cell background colors, in Netscape Composer. Now I do responsive CSS for a living!

[fysac]

I remember the endless amusement I had using Firebug to create ridiculous headlines on yahoo.com.

[ternaryoperator]

>The urls aren't hyperlinked, so readers have to copy-paste.

Is it even possible to have clickable hyperlinks in HTML comments?

[LanceH]

Depending on the editor, it will recognize http:// as a url and link it.

[arbre]

It's because they expect you to extract the urls and open them ! On a mac with chrome :

echo `curl https://www.waterstones.com/` | grep -o 'http[^ "]/book/[^ "]' | xargs open -a Google\ Chrome

[hockley]

http://youtu.be/ObdC3uhPeEY