WebDesignBookReview Archives - Page 12 of 21

Review: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

Jun 9, 2007 by

Web Teacher

Summary: CSS for design

★★★★☆ This book by Jason Beaird (Sitepoint, 2007) discusses some of the principles of design and explains how to implement those principles using CSS.

It covers some of the same ground as the popular design for non-designers books by Robin Williams, but takes on new topics. And explains how to write the HTML and CSS to make it happen. It even includes some hints for chores in Photoshop. The book has chapters on layout and composition, color, texture, typography and imagery.

As for using it to teach, the book could not stand alone as a semester’s core for a design course. However, it would be a good resource in a general web design class. It’s a slim book and a fast read, so it would be easy to use to supplement other assignments.

0.3

Review: Web Development Solutions

Summary: useful reference

May 6, 2007 by

Web Teacher

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Web Development Solutions: Ajax, APIs, Libraries, and Hosted Services Made Easy

★★★☆☆ This book is about using free tools on the web to become fairly adept at putting together a web site without going through the rigors of actually learning how it’s done. It would be useful as a reference, but it would not make a good book to teach from. It seems a bit unfocused for teaching. On one page it will include complex bits of Ajax and on another page it will tell the reader how to behave as a member of a mailing list.

The focus is actually on finding free resources and using them. The authors, Christian Heilmann and Mark Normal Francis, include such resources as WordPress, Flickr, YouTube, JavaScript libraries, the Yahoo! UI Library, Ajax, installing free testing server enviornments, and RSS. This is the part of the book that I think teachers would most use, and would find useful for adding the same free tools to any web site. The book also has basic search engine tips, and a wide range of other very basic advice for the novice.

If you are interested in nothing more than having a WordPress blog with some very nice features, this book is perfect for you. I found it best when it explained Ajax, Libraries, tweaking PHP, and some of the material in the Yahoo! Developer Network. Assuming, of course, that your blog content was worthwhile, you could use this book to establish a very successful presence on the web as a blogger without reading anything else.

Review: Web Standards Creativity

Apr 27, 2007 by

Web Teacher

Good introduction to several concepts

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photo of 'Web Standards Creativity'

Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design with XHTML, CSS, and DOM Scripting

★★★★☆ This is a book about design ideas. It has 10 chapters and 10 authors (all men, but who’s counting). The authors list includes Cameron Adams, Mark Boulton, Andy Clarke, Simon Collison, Jeff Croft, Derek Featherstone, Ian Lloyd, Ethan Marcotte, Dan Ruben and Rob Weychert. Andy Budd does the introductions.

The main sections of the book deal with layout, using print techniques on the web, and DOM scripting. The chapters are a series of case studies for everything from widgets to entire websites.

CSS is the topic in the chapter on semantic structure, a case study of the building of dirtyprettythings.com. This chapter includes a discussion of CSS styled tables and definition lists. Chapter two deals with CMS templates and how to use CSS, JavaScript and Flash to beat them into submission. Chapter three is a case study of the redesign of The New York Magazine website, which makes use of IDs in the body tag to create various templates within a CMS setup. Both the chapters detailing work on CMS driven sites include a number of hacks.

The case study in chapter four chronicles the CSS design process used on worrysome.net. In chapter five, you get several tips for the creative use of PNG transparency. An excellent chapter with new ideas I haven’t seen assembled elsewhere.

In chapters six and seven the book switches to the explanation of how to adapt grid systems and print typography from print to the Web. The typography chapter has some useful math help with sizing both fonts and layouts.

The final section gives you three chapters on using the DOM and JavaScript. One chapter deals with selectively printing only certain parts of a Web page. Another deals with creating dynamic interfaces, and the final chapter deals with accessible sliding navigation.

This isn’t a book to use to learn CSS or DOM scripting, but if you already understand these things, it’s a good book for picking up new ideas and for seeing how some designers work through a design process. There’s plenty useful CSS examples. As I mentioned, I don’t think I’ve seen so much useful PNG transparency information in a web design book before, which gives this book a definite plus.

0.3

Review: Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0

Apr 8, 2007 by

Web Teacher

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Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0

★★★★★ Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0 by John Allsopp (Friends of Ed, 2007) is a terrific book that tells you everything you need to know to begin using microformats well right now. I’ve been fascinated with microformats for a couple of years now and use the hReview format for book reviews. I’m also using hCard. This book inspired and educated me to other types of microformats and opened up new possibiliites for semantic markup in my mind.

Microformats are design patterns using existing semantic HTML to create formats for specific types of markup.

Allsopp summarizes the principles behind microformats. Microformats

solve a specific problem

start as simply as possible

are designed for humans first, machines second

reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards

are modular and embeddable

enable and encourage decentralized development, content and services

The book describes microformats that may be familiar to you already such as hCard (contact information for people and organizations), hCalendar (events), XFN (relationships between people), and hReview (reviews, like this one). Included also are less familiar microformats such as geo (location), adr (addresses), and hResume (resumes), and hAtom (subscriptions). Link based microformats such as rel-license, rel-tag, rel-nofollow, and VoteLinks are explained.

There are examples including code and real-world examples for each of the clearly described microformats. There are two case studies: Cork’d and Yahoo. There’s a chapter on developing microformats including how to create a draft schema for the format. The appendices include a microformats specification reference, a microformat design patterns reference, and an appendix listing people, tools, publishers and services.

Recommended

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Review: HTML Mastery: Semantics, Standards and Styling

Jan 11, 2007 by

Web Teacher
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HTML Mastery: Semantics, Standards and Styling

★★★★★ HTML Mastery: Stemantics, Standards, and Styling by Paul Haine (Friends of Ed, 2006) is different enough to be desirable as an addition to your library. It takes on some new ideas regarding HTML and has a different slant from most other HTML books.

Paul Haine writes like a teacher. His style is careful, clear, and well planned.

There’s a strong emphasis on semantics in HTML in this book and some very good suggestions and ideas to add to your approach to HTML. Chapter 2 on Using the Right Tag for the Right Job and Chapter 6 on Recognizing Semantics were especially informative.

There’s an interesting chapter on microformats, such as the hReview microformat being used for this review. Other information not usually emphasized in an HTML book includes a chapter on XHTML 2.0 and Web Applications 1.0, an appendix on how to serve XHTML as XML, and an appendix on alternatives to frames.

Overall, an excellent book with a new slant.

0.3

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Review: Pro CSS Techniques

Jan 5, 2007 by

Web Teacher

Pro CSS Techniques

★★★ Pro CSS Techniques by Jeff Croft, Ian Lloyd, and Dan Rubin (Apress, 2006) earns only three stars from me. This is not because it’s a bad book, because it isn’t. It contains all the requisite chapters and information from the basic to a few more advanced CSS techniques.

It’s a question of sparkle. This book is a bit on the blah side. Maybe it’s three authors not being able to find a voice that represents them all. Normally I’m a big fan of Ian Lloyd, whose accessify.com is one of my all-time favorite sites. A recent book he wrote by himself earned five stars from me, so it isn’t about the quality of the information.

Maybe I am reacting to a false expectation from the "Pro" in the title. What’s the definition of a "pro" technique? I expected less basic material and more advanced material. The book has a thorough explanation of the basics of CSS, with plenty of foundation information about browsers, managing CSS files, and specificity. There’s even a chapter on the more useful hacks and workarounds. There was a nice tip for styling definition lists, and the CSS Layouts chapter took on fixed-width layouts, floats, liquid layouts, elastic layouts, and switching layouts from two to three columns with a mouse click.

A chapter you don’t normally find in a CSS book explored what to do when it all falls apart with tips about testing and validating and common CSS bugs such as the whitespace bug and the three-pixel jog bug. And there are three appendices, one with charts of what CSS properties each browser supports (including IE7).

You can see from this examination of the contents of the book that the book covers the bases. My best suggestion to you is to evaluate the book for yourself and not let my vague blah reaction rule your decision-making process as to whether or not this book is right for you.

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Review: Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way

Dec 18, 2006 by

Web Teacher

Get Build Your Own Web Site from Amazon.com

Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML & CSS

★★★★★ Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML & CSS by Ian Lloyd (Sitepoint, 2006) is the first book I’ve reviewed here that closely mirrors my own attitude toward HTML and CSS. Naturally, I like the approach.

This is a very basic treatment. Some of the topics don’t get an in depth treatment, for example, CSS layouts. If the beginner basics are what you seek, then I certainly approve of the way Lloyd has gone about putting together his examples of HTML and CSS to get you there.

The book gets you going on building a web page by Chapter 2. Immediately following are two chapters on CSS, then the book explores the basics of images, tables, forms, and getting online. All of these chapters include standards-based examples and, of course, accessibility. Lloyd is, after all, the man behind the wonderful Accessify. There’s a chapter on using Blogger and one on finding free stuff that you can add to a site to make it more useful, for example, searches and blogrolls.

The XHTML Reference that serves as an appendix is interesting because it takes each HTML element, tells you what it does, what it can contain, what it may be contained in, and shows an example of the element in use.

And the most important question: could this book be used as the basis for a semester’s work? The answer is yes, if you are willing to supplement the thinly covered areas with more in-depth work you put together yourself.

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