|
|
Home  The More Zone Here
Book Review: Designing With Web Standards (Author: Jeffery Zeldman)
June 3rd, 2003 by George of Dynamic Drive
 Fundamental changes are gradually sipping into the WWW like water into
caves, and it has left countless weekend-webmasters and even seasoned professionals
feeling uneasy as they determine just what the resulting icicles that
occupy more and more sites on the web are and imply. The nature of the
leakage itself is easy to explain- HTML is slowly being transformed and
even ousted in favor of XHTML and XML to make the web more structured and
accessible. What all that means to you as a webmaster is anything but
simple to educate and convey. We review one high-profile book, just
released "Designing With Web Standards (May 2003)" to see if it
gets the job done in explaining the later.
"Designing With Web Standards" is authored by Jeffery
Zeldman, a well known web designer and proponent of web standards. The
book can be thought of as a culmination of his experience and knowledge
transforming existing sites to becoming more standards compliant, and the benefits
doing so brings. The book is roughly 430 in pages, and comprises of the
following 16 chapters:
- 99% of Websites are obsolete
- Designing and Building with Standards
- The trouble with Standards
- XML Conquers the World
- Modern Markup
- XHTML: Restructuring the web
- Tighter, Firmer Pages Guaranteed: Strict and Hybrid Markup
- XHTML by Example: A Hybrid Layout (Part I)
- CSS Basics
- CSS in Action: A Hybrid Layout (Part II)
- Working with Browsers Part I: DOCTYPE Switching and Standards Mode
- Working with Browsers Part II: Box Models, Bugs, and Workarounds
- Working with Browsers Part III: Typography
- Accessibility Basics
- Working with DOM-Based Scripts
- A CSS Redesign
One of the most memorable chapters, the first one "99% of Websites
are obsolete" hits you like a ton of bricks, demonstrating how
antiquated and "bloated" the majority of web sites, even prominent
sites like Yahoo.com have become thanks to the HTML language and the
horrendous abuse of it, and how web standards can help change all that.
Now, it is as this point that a book on web standards can easily go horribly
wrong, dabbling exclusively on promised technologies that if used today
would make your web site appear as if it's just been run over by a Mac
truck. Luckily Zeldman understands the need to be fully grounded in
reality when proposing and explaining web standard techniques if they're
ever to be adopted mainstream, and most of what's offered in the book can
be applied directly to today's web sites for the better. There are
detailed discussions on migrating from messy HTML to XHTML, trusting CSS
for the bulk (but not all) of a site's visual presentation, the various
DOCTYPEs to consider when authoring a webpage, bugs and workarounds in
CSS, typography, web accessibility and more.
"Designing with Web Standards" is overall a great book,
and at the very least does probably what it sets out to do- alleviate your
fear of web standards and implants in your brain the need to take such
things into consideration the next time you create a web site. Like web
standards itself the book is still striving towards perfection- some
concepts seemed to have been discussed repetitiously throughout the book,
and more technical discussions on topics such as advanced CSS would have
been appreciated- but all in all, a well done book that's more than the
sum of its parts- it spawns a new way of thinking for the reader.
Product information (Amazon.com): Designing
With Web Standards (Jeffery Zeldman)
Recommend Us!
-If
you like Dynamic Drive, please recommend us to a friend...
Legend
All- Script works with Netscape 4 AND Internet Explorer
4+
NS- Indicates script works with Netscape 4
(NOT NS 6 yet)
IE- Indicates script works with Internet Explorer 4
and above
NS6!- Temporary
index set up on script category pages to indicate script works in NS6
|
