Web Designer's Reference

jsuda (John Suda) writes "It seems as if everyone and his brother is writing books supporting standards-compliant Web design with XHTML and CSS. I have read and reviewed a half dozen this year alone. People are obviously trying to tell us something - plain HTML has to go! Web Designers' Reference: An Integrated Approach to Web Design with XHTML and CSS, by Craig Grannell, is the latest of these pronouncements." Read on for the rest of Suda's review.

Web Designers' Reference: An Integrated Approach to Web Design with XHTML and CSS
author	Graig Grannell
pages	389
publisher	Friends of ED
rating	8
reviewer	jsuda
ISBN	1590594304
summary	Comprehensive guide to standards-compliant web design

The reasons are clear and compelling: The World Wide Web Consortium, which promulgates Web design standards, has decreed HTML as obsolete. Newer, more compliant browsers, will in time not support the older tags and code; the new standards facilitate much better use by the disabled of screen readers and non-graphic browsers. Not least, the newer code makes writing and revising code easier and more efficient, as well as more capable.

These are certainly good reasons for Web designers to move to the new code. Nevertheless, surveys show that most Web pages are not compliant and that thousands of designers continue to use deprecated code. I confess that I am one of them -- after a number of years learning and getting used to HTML, the need to learn new and more code is onerous. The inertia of habit is a factor, I'm sure.

For those Web designers like me, Mr. Grannell's book is a welcome addition to the literature because it systematically deals with the topics under discussion. In its coverage of XHTML, CSS, Javascript, and complementary coding (like PHP), it provides a nice framework guiding "old dogs" like me into standards-compliant code. Not only does it provide some historical perspectives on these codes, it compares the old with the new in regard to all of the important elements of Web design.

The author is an experienced Web designer and operates a design and writing agency. He also writes articles for a number of computer magazines.

Grannell's goals are to teach cutting-edge, efficient coding, and how to master standards-compliant XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1. There are a dozen chapters. He breaks down the elements of Web design into modular components so that one can focus on each element separately, like page structure, content structure, layout, navigation, text control, user feedback, and multimedia. Relevant technologies are explained in context of producing a typical Website.

If one finally decides to move forward, as many suggest, this is a very good volume by which to get your start. For new designers, this is a nice primer to learn what is expected, in an overall sense, of good, advanced Web design.

This is a well-produced book with clear writing, comprehensive approach, dozens of practical examples, and downloadable files with the code examples used in the book. The author writes in a logical sequence much like an engineer would. It is a heavy textbook-like read, only lightly sprinkled with style and personality. It should appeal primarily to novice designers, but has enough advanced information to satisfy an experienced designer who is looking for that fresh start.

And in fact, the structure of the book facilitates the "fresh-start" idea. It starts with a Web design overview, giving an experienced user's tips on what software to use to write code, what browsers to design for, how to build pages from the very top to the bottom. (XHTML, unlike HTML, requires a preliminary document-type definition (DTD) to validate. Only after the introductory section does the first HTML tag appear.)

Like others writing in this area, Grannell firmly advocates designing for standards compliance, usability, accessibility, and last and least, visual design. Marketing Department people may choke on that priority list, but there is no inherent conflict between function and aesthetics; Grannell simply does not spend a lot of time on the aesthetics.

The middle chapters concentrate on modular construction of pages -- the XHTML introduction, the structural elements like text blocks and images, the logical structure of the links and navigation flow, and finally, the stylizing with CSS. Comparisons between pages styled with HTML vs. CSS compellingly demonstrate the benefits and advantages of CSS. There will be no going back once you've decided to upgrade your technical approach.

Basic CSS concepts are explained and illustrated with code samples and screenshots. Grannell describes how to use CSS for text control, navigation, and layouts. There is a broad section on frames and another on forms and interactive components.

The last chapter covers testing and tweaking including how to create a 7-item browser test suite. Strategies overcoming browser quirks are discussed throughout the book. There is detailed technical information, especially in regard to the XHTML introductory section of the page, which I have not seen elsewhere.

There are three welcome reference appendices at the end covering XHTML tags and attributes, Web color coding, and a very comprehensive entities chart noting currencies, European characters, math symbols and more.

Much of this material is covered elsewhere in the growing set of publications about standards-compliant code. This book has the virtue of having a useful overall perspective on Web design and acts as a framework for new designers and converting designers to renew and upgrade their technical approaches.

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You can purchase Web Designers' Reference: An Integrated Approach to Web Design with XHTML and CSS from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Wow.

[Monkeman]

That's a long title. It's upwards of five words. We need to stop this trend before we get crap that's fourteen words and requires a pamplet hanging off the spine of the book to print in full. New Books:Old Books Diet Cherry Vanilla Lime Dr. Pepper:Dr. Pepper

Standards, Schmandards..

[jimmyCarter]

Bring back the BLINK tag!

Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, a web design book being reviewed on Slashdot. Oh, the ironing is delicious.

Yeah, I'm getting ready...

[ilikeitraw]

... to launch my CSS3 compliant site.
I setup my cron to push the site live in 2007.

Mod parent down

[tehshen]

Obviously a troll.

Have you no eyes, man?

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

the ironing is delicious

You would be the one to grok Chomsky's own: "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously"

Re:Oblig

[Inkieminstrel]

the ironing is delicious.
I get this image of cooking french toast on an iron. Ooh you could fill the iron with syrup which would drizzle all over the toast when you pushed the steam button.

Sorry, I skipped lunch.

Re:Oblig

[nizo]

Just be careful not to burn your tongue if you decide to lick the iron after you are done cooking.

is anyone moving to xhtml?

[yagu]

Just curious, after reading the fine article, then doing a little research and reading a couple chapters of the w3c documents I wonder that anyone would change to xhtml for the sake of canonical righteousness.

Seems to me there are reasons to do xhtml... I DO like the idea of well formed objects, especially things like web pages... at least if it's well formed you've eliminated one source of nasty little bugs creeping into sites, especially sites creating pages dynamically.

But, for sites already rolled out and wrung out in public forums this seems prissy. And problematic. Consider:

• what would we do with sites where users can contribute their own html (hmmmm, a particular site comes to mind...)

I've done an informal look-around, and found some popular and quite famous (hmmmm, a particular site [slashdot.org] comes to mind...

So, academically maybe a good direction to consider, but the predictions of html going away to be supplanted by xhtml is premature, and I predict something that in our internet lifetimes will never happen.

eXtinguish the web - eXtinguisH The Web.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't have "ordinary people" text editing a web page. Not enough money in that! What's next "ordinary people" sharing information! Do away with the three tags - html head body - at once. Replace them with 500 pages of *must read this* before you do anything. Yeah that's the ticket. More profit for all us friendly computer companies. Get rid of text files, text readers and simple editors while we are at it. Too damn simple and easy to figure out. A browser should be a full 3D, animated resolution and color depth independent publishing engine. That'll stop those peons from communicating! Corporate profits are on the way back baby!