Designing With Web Standards

[Alexander]

Designing With Web Standards By Jeffrey Zeldman Review by: Alex [attachment=2976:attachment] Designing With Web Standards is considered amongst the web design community as one of two "Holy Bibles" to standards based design. (The other being Web Standards Solutions, which has been reviewed in an earlier post) The "Green Bible" is however no substitute for the other book, they both work independently of each other and are both very useful additions to any library. Web standards are incredibly important in the modern internet, and the aim of this book is to show you exactly how to implement standards in a fresh and up-to-date manner. It's a common statistic that over 80% of the internet is not accessible and 99.9% of the internet is showing some form of decay, these shocking statistics prove Jeffrey's idea that to make a website accessible to all, changes must be made in the way people produce websites. Unfortunately the biggest losers of the battle of web standards is the 1 in 10 people around the world who have some kind of disability (such as colour blindness or arthritis) which affects how they can browse the internet. You will be surprised and shocked when reading this book at how important standards are and how often they are ignored and the book takes steps to educate the reader in how to code properly in accordance with the W3C. Not only does the book accomplish this but it examines web standards and how to make your code so that it will be accessible to everyone and no longer will you be mistakenly denying visitors to your site without realising it because your website doesn’t work for them. Jeffrey is considered in the industry a bit of a standards "nut" but his passion for accessibility clearly shows and is a valid point... why should websites be bulky, poorly coded and inaccessible to those who need it? As quoted in the review of Web Standards Solutions... It could also be said that if every student learning website design had read this book, there would be a lot less of a problem with accessibility on the internet, though you have to want to learn to be able to take onboard what is said and this cookbook shows you how to implement the changes, not always mentioning (in detail) why you should do so. As someone who believes deeply in the benefits of standards based design, I see this book as a very important example on how to make sure your site can be used in any browser by (within reason) any person. The chapters of this book include the following... Chapter 1 gives you a general introduction of why web standards exist and what they are. Chapter 2 explains how to implement web standards through your mark-up and code. Chapter 3 details the potential problems that exist with web standards and how they may affect your design. Chapter 4 brings you information about why web standards are winning and their success. Chapter 5 mentions modern mark-up methods such as XHTML and their advantages. Chapter 6 guides you through converting and upgrading your website to XHTML standards. Chapter 7 tells you how to clean your code up so it takes up less space and is more flexible. Chapter 8 shows you how to implement a hybrid layout. Chapter 9 gives you a good overview of the benefits of CSS and how to implement the technology in your designs. Chapter 10 shows you how to upgrade your hybrid layout using CSS. Chapter 11 mentions doctypes and how to work with different browsers. Chapter 12 explains hacks, filters and the box model workaround and their usage. Chapter 13 discusses typography and how you should lay out your content to give it maximum effectiveness. Chapter 14 is a general look at accessibility and how standards promotes these practices and works within the law and also how to implement good accessibility. Chapter 15 promotes the DOM and gives a general overview in how and when JavaScript should be used. Finally Chapter 16 is a chapter giving an example of good standards based design in practice. This book is suitable for the following types of people interested in website development:[list] [*]Website developers who wish to make their websites usable on any platform or browser. [*]People interested in developing websites for the very first time who want to make sites the right way. [*]Anyone working in website design and wants an introduction to standards and accessibility. [/list]If you are new to website design and would like to know how to make websites which are fast, efficient and work for everyone, this is the book for you. For those people who are website design students and want to know how to code websites to international standards, this book is for you. If you want a discussion on what standards are, what accessibility is and how you can allow disabled users the ability to be able to view your site then you may wish to purchase this book but you may also want to purchase the book "Web Standards Solutions" as they both work closely together. This book is one of those rare gems which everyone should have a copy of on their shelf, no matter who they are in website design or development.