Include explicit references to all figures in running text

[grondman]

Location within the Book

• Book build date (Is the date on page 1): 2020-07-29
• Book format (PDF, Epub or Mobi): PDF
• Chapter or Appendix: All
• Section: All

Explicit example of the issue is in 44.4.

Description

None of the figures in the book are explicitly referred to, which can cause confusion. I did not notice it at first, but when I came to Section 44.4, the text said

The instructions look nice and clear:

and then presents Figure 39 (screenshot from https://djangopackages.org/), but:

1. The interface (colour scheme) of this website changed slightly (minor issue, but still), so figure is outdated.
2. Given the colon at the end of "... look nice and clear:", the reader expects to see these instructions following this colon, i.e. in Figure 39. It was only later that I realised Section 44.4 is called "Review Django Countries on GitHub" and that I should probably be searching for a figure involving GitHub, which turned out to be Figure 40 on the next page.

Possible Solutions

A book written like a tutorial will obviously contain a lot of screenshots and they will inevitably get detached from the text that they actually relate to. The reader then is really helped by getting an explicit reference (e.g. "see Figure 40") to what he/she should be seeing. In fact, I think it's best practice anyway to have explicit references to figures, tables, etc. in written material. Besides, why have numbered figures in the first place if you're not using the numbers :)

Your full name so we can provide accurate credit within the book

Ivo Grondman (please do tell me if I whine too much ;-))