- Be inspired by 10 web design lessons from 10 of the worlds best web designers
- Get creative with cutting-edge XHTML, CSS, and DOM scripting techniques
- Learn breathtaking design skills while remaining standards-compliant
Here at friends of ED, we know that as a web designer or developer, your work involves more than just working to pay the bills. We know that each day, you strive to push the boundaries of your medium, unleashing your creativity in new ways to make your websites more engaging and attractive to behold, while still maintaining cross-browser support, standards compliance, and accessibility. That's why we got together ten of the world's most talented web designers to share their secrets with you. Web Standards Creativity is jam-packed with fresh, innovative design ideas. The topics range from essential CSS typography and grid design, effective styling for CMS-driven sites, and astonishing PNG transparency techniques, to DOM scripting magic for creating layouts that change depending on browser resolution and user preference, and better print layouts for web pages. We're sure you will find something here to inspire you! This full-color book's examples are not just stunning to look at, but also fully standards-compliant, up-to-date, and tested in current browsers including Internet Explorer 7. Playing by the rules doesn't have to mean drab or dull websites—Web Standards can be fun!
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 A Masterpiece |
| Review Date: April 27, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Nathan Smith, SonSpring.com |
Every now and then, there a book comes along that really makes you stop and take notice. We review plenty of tech books on this site, and each one is a tome of knowledge in its own right. Web Standards Solutions though, is a work of art unto itself. Each page is full-color, with entire pages varying in color theme from the next. It feels as though you're thumbing through a high-end design catalog. I'd rank it right up there with The Zen of CSS Design.
Not only will this book serve to grace your coffee table, and make visitors "ooh and aah" over your fancy role as a web designer, it is also chalk full of helpful code and graphics tips. As with any multi-author book, each chapter has its own distinctiveness. Rather than attempt to down-play this, as with tech books, the chapters reflect the personalities of the author, both in tone and design. Here's a run-down of each chapter's topic...
Chapter 1 by Simon Collison
In this chapter, Colly covers the design process behind two of his acclaimed designs. He shows how to have solid markup, but at the same time create a distressed looking website in keeping with a band's musical style. The sites that are discussed are: The Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things.
Chapter 2 by Dan Rubin
This chapter is also about a band website, Lifehouse. Dan explains the CMS limitations he was up against, and how he creatively used CSS to wrangle the underlying XHTML under presentational control. He covers everything from his initial sketches > to Photoshop > to the final product.
Chatper 3 by Ethan Marcotte
Departing from the band topics, Ethan goes in-depth on the planning, design and code process that went into remaking New York Magazine. He covers some adept code-forking that was necessary to get IE5 to behave on Windows as well as Mac. Thankfully, IE5 has since been dropped from the A Grade list.
Chapter 4 by Andy Clarke
The king of malarkey cuts loose in this chapter, and walks you through creating a lighthearted, fictional site called WorrySome. He digs into the modern method of using CSS attribute selectors to target highly specific areas of your markup. He also makes mention of Dean Edwards IE7 script, which forces Internet Explorer 5 + 6 to respond to these more advanced techniques.
Chapter 5 by Jeff Croft
Jeff covers everything PNG, showing how to make use of this great, loss-less format. One thing that has slowed PNG adoption, though it is superior to both GIF and JPG, is that Internet Explorer doesn't do PNG alpha channels very well. He shows helpful tricks to get these bad browsers working correctly, and explains how they were used on the 49 ABC News site.
Chapter 6 by Mark Boulton
This chapter is all about designing on a grid. A hold-over from the days of print design, this organizational technique lends itself well to web design. The grid involves logical layouts of content, as well as attention to typographical detail. If one chapter is not enough, Mark has also self-published a book on grid layouts, entitled Five Simple Steps - Designing for the Web.
Chapter 7 by Rob Weychert
Robs chapter picks up where Mark's left off, and delves further into the rich history of typography. He creates a classical looking site (using modern methods of course). It's an homage to the famous dark poet Edgar Allan Poe. You can see the results of his case study here - [...]
Chapter 8 by Ian Lloyd
One of the leading voices in web accessibility, Ian Lloyd shows you how to use JavaScript to make things more accessible. Impossible, you say? Not so. He goes through the code necessary to format a page on the fly in preparation for printing. This makes content more accessible as a physical, paper copy.
Chapter 9 by Cameron Adams
Better known as The Man in Blue, Cameron is inarguably one of the most authoritative JavaScript experts alive. If you haven't seen his new Blobular SVG demo, it will blow your mind. In this chapter, he shows how to make a modular, user-driven Newsvine style layout, complete with drag and drop.
Chapter 10 by Derek Featherstone
Derek is yet another leading expert and international speaker on web accessibility. In this last chapter of the book, he shows how to create advanced JavaScript animation effects, while at the same time keeping the content accessible to assistive technologies like screen readers.
Summary
So there you have it, one of the most comprehensive compilations of real-world web design solutions and techniques. I cannot emphasize enough how nice of a book it is because of it's full-color print. When Molly Holzschlag agrees to be the tech editor, and Andy Budd writes the forward, you just know it's gotta be good. All ten authors have knocked it outta of the park with this one. |
Best web design book yet
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| Review Date: May 14, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Robert Behnke, tucson, az |
| This is the best web design book that I have found yet. Inspiring examples that use practical applications and will fuel your desire to learn more. This book is also beautifully designed... usually I highlight in my books but not this one... I will only tag it with sticky notes. Not a beginner's book. You may understand some of the example but most concepts, I feel, will be lost on the reader. If you are new to web design, I would suggest reading beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional, then CSS Mastery, then getting into this book. As a web designer, I would suggest that you learn CSS... and learn it well before you start building pages for clients or you may find yourself rebuilding may of your pages. |
Highly inspiring
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| Review Date: July 12, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Harmen Janssen, The Netherlands |
The authors of this book have really done a wonderful job. The cases they discuss are as original as they are useful for real-world application.
It was refreshing to read a book about web standards that started not completely at the bottom. The authors will require some knowledge of HTML and CSS prior to reading this book, and that's good, since there already are so many beginner books available out there.
What struck me mostly was the inspiration I got from various examples in the book. It made me want to test the code and experiment further with the explained principles.
I can recommend this book to anyone who is already familiar with web standards and would like to have an entertaining read to broaden their thoughts on certain design problems. |
Fantastic.
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| Review Date: May 15, 2007 |
| Reviewer: David P. Giunta, Chicago, IL |
| If you're a web developer, and you've already got the basics of javascript/DOM scripting, semantic XHTML and CSS, then this book is for you. It's the first book I've found that shows best practices for integrating all three of these basic technologies. As web developers we can often fall into the trap of being comfortable in one technology and then trying to solve every website problem with that technology. This book helps bridge the gap and begins to show how to use each of these technologies for what they're really good at--no more, and no less. |
Fantastic
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| Review Date: August 20, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Ivan Pepelnjak, Slovenia |
Let's start with a warning - this is not a book for beginners. To appreciate it (apart from the "coffee table" usage someone else mentioned), you have to know a lot about CSS, HTML and have decent knowledge of JavaScript and DOM. But once you're there and have a few web design projects behind you, you'll really appreciate all the nuggets in this book. The ideas presented in it, as well as the explanations (in a juicy voice that was obviously not bowdlerized by editorial policies that so many other publishers have) are simply priceless. I also highly appreciated the approach of not going into meaningless details; the text is full of URLs containing background information, additional articles, design guidelines, CSS tricks etc.
To all the authors & the publisher: Congratulations !!! This is one of the Web design books I've seen ... why can't I give you 6 start? |
A rare resource: Anecdotes with code!
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| Review Date: March 8, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Trevor Burnham, Ann Arbor, MI |
| I'd highly recommend this to any intermediate-level web designer: Someone who knows the basics of XHTML and CSS, but could learn a lot from reading real stories from professionals about problems they've encountered and the solutions they used. This glossy, nicely-designed book is rich in both inspiring graphics and clean code. |
Excellent Web Standards reference
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| Review Date: July 19, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Smith, Indianapolis, IN |
I spend my time flipping from designer to developer in the assignments for my classes and projects I pick up on the side. I am facing a semester full of Asp.net so I wanted to use the time between Summer classes and the fall semester to shore up a couple of things on the design. So I have been spending the nights sharpening my flash skills and improving my markup with web standards in mind.
I had been interested in picking up Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design with XHTML, CSS, Dom Scripting since it was released and I came upon the opportunity to obtain in exchange for reviewing the book. This is not a bad deal if you spend as much money on books as I do.
Most of the books I have picked up regarding web standards have been very basic and contain very vague examples. It seemed like I would always end up a little short of my learning goals at the end of these books. Friends of Ed assembled some of the premier web designers in the world know for not only their creativity, but their belief in web standards as well. Ok let's dive in and see if the book was worth the wait.
The book is divided into ten chapters and each author has his own chapter. In that chapter, the individual authors bring something different to the web standards table and provide their own little learning experience. The book was laid out a little differently than I thought it would be providing colorful pages which made the reading experience more enjoyable and was welcome break from the black & white of most technical books.
What I liked about the book
I thought every one of the authors brought something the table that I could use in my own projects down the road. The coverage of CSS in this book is top notch and anyone looking to learn a few new tricks will enjoy the first three chapters. Chapter four Jeff Croft makes light of the fact the .png file format is a viable choice for web graphics. His commentary really explained the advantages and limitations of the different image formats. Another highlight of the book would be the DOM scripting techniques presented in the third section and I felt all three chapters provided useful techniques. I found that the text size section of Evan Marcotte's chapter very useful and I cannot wait to use this technique. I found many of the tips given by the authors simplified things that I perceived as too difficult to pull off and after discovering the ease of use I cannot wait to experiment on my own projects. I thought the color of pages in the book made for a more interesting read. I also enjoyed Rob Weychert's chapter on Typography because it refreshed my knowledge of font types and techniques that I have failed to use recently.
What I didn't like about the book
I wish it would have been a bit longer as it was only 288 pages. The second part of the book focuses on bringing print techniques to the web maybe it is because I have limited experience with designing print publications and I wish these chapters would have be a little more detailed. I would like to have seen a couple of more chapters on DOM scripting, but Friends of Ed has another book that really dives into this area.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed reading this book and working through the examples. This is one of the better technical books I have read in awhile the presentation is clean and concise. I took many useful tips away from this book and I can't wait to experiment with them. I came away from this book hungry for more examples from the author's which lends itself to the quality of the content. I hope Friends of Ed will come out with a sequel and expand open the topics presented even further.
{[Jeff]} |
a look inside the work of great designers
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| Review Date: June 26, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Crevola Andrea, Gattinara, Italy |
Contains a lot of project described by fine designers. I know web standards very well, but with this book I've received a lot of inspiration and acquired some new tecniques that I was not aware.
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