Category: WebDesignBookReview

★★★★ HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide by Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy (OReilly, 2007) is in its 6th edition. Oddly, for a person in my business, I’ve never held one of these particular Definitive Guides in my hand before now. I have other favorite resources, and I keep DTDs on my desktop, so I didn’t miss knowing what was in this reference book.

If you aren’t the kind of person who keeps DTDs on her desktop, you will find everything about HTML and XHTML in here. It describes every tag, DTD style, but it tells you much more than merely tag and attribute info. There is information about when and why you might want certain attributes and how to use elements effectively.

It’s written in such a way that you could actually read it straight through, but I consider it most useful as one of the references you grab as needed and open it first to the index to find the particular fact you seek. There are numerous well organized tables packed with tons of facts in a compact array. The chapter on Forms, for example, has a table of every form and input element, showing which form attributes are required, optional or not supported for each element or input type.

You couldn’t plan a semester, or even a lone lecture, using this book as your only resource, but you would certainly find many reasons to use it throughout the course of a semester. A recommended reference.

★★★★ DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design Using JavaScript and DOM is by Stuart Langridge (Site Point, 2005). The cover says it contains "Practical Unobtrusive JavaScript Techniques."

I was under the impression that Dynamic HTML was a term that had passed into the sunset, but unobtrusive JavaScript is certainly a current best practice. The book is explicit about former scripting practices that should no longer be used, and gives alternatives to do the tasks according to current thinking.

The book holds more than JavaScript. There is PHP, too, and a bit of HTML and CSS as needed. The book begins with an extensive chapter explaining the DOM, which lays the groundwork for the various scripting techniques that are to follow. The remainder of the book focuses on scripts for various purposes. There are scripts for detecting browser features, animation, forms and validation, menus, remote scripting, communicating with the server, and XPath as an alternative to using the DOM.

The chapter with the scripts for menus was especially interesting to me. The script contains menu actions that people find in places like Son of Suckerfish or Pop Menu Magic, explained in a way that make it comprehensible to construct one from scratch. Langridge writes well. He often presents a complete script and then goes through it line by line explaining each part separately, which I found helpful since I can’t just read a script and understand what it’s doing. If you are teaching or learning JavaScript, give this book a look. It may be just what you need.

★★★★★ CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric Meyer (O’Reilly 2006) is now in its 3rd edition. This book has been on my recommended list for a long time, and most people working with CSS (or teaching CSS) probably have earlier editions on their shelves. Instead of giving you a complete review, I’m merely going to mention the new content covered in this edition.

The significant addition, to my mind, is that Internet Explorer 7 and CSS 3 are covered. It includes everything in CSS 2.1 and describes CSS 3 selectors that are supported by IE7, Firefox, and other browsers. It describes how tables are laid out within CSS and the various display values for tables such as inline-table and table-column. The sections on generated content and pagination expanded, too.

The new material is a significant upgrade over older editions and makes this an appealing new offering from Eric Meyer.

★★★★★ Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance (Friends of Ed, 2006) has multiple authors, each of whom writes one or more chapters on topics related to their particular expertise, which means that every chapter has the most authoritative information to be found. The authors are Jim Thatcher, Machael R.Burks, Christian Heilmann, Shawn Lawton Henry, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Patrick H. Lauke, Bruce Lawson, Bob Regan, Richard Rutter, Mark Urban, and Cynthia D. Waddell.

Everything you need in a reference to web accessibility is here. The first section (three chapters) talks about the impact of web accessibility, how it is affected by laws and guidelines, and how it is implemented in an enterprise.

The next twelve chapters deal with implementing accessible websites. These chapters were the most relevant to me, but other people might be more interested in other parts of the book. (There’s something for everyone here.) These implementing accessibility chapters included descriptions of assistive technology, detailed definitions and examples of accessible content, accessible navigation, and accessible data input. CSS, JavaScript, Flash and PDF each has a chapter of its own. The accessibility testing chapter is particularly enlightening, especially to anyone who thinks that passing Cynthia Says testing is all they need to do. This section contained a fairly critical examination of the WCAG 2.0 and a really well-written explanation of the difference between a standard and a guideline. The last of the chapters in this section was a case study of a redesign of a university website.

The last section (two chapters) examine accessibility law and policy in depth for the U.S. and worldwide.

Finally, there are the appendices, which are very valuable. There’s a glossary, of course. Appendix B is a useful and usable guide to the Section 508 Standards for Electronic and Information Technology. Appendix C is an overview of PAS 78, a guide to good practice from the British Standards Institution.

This is a reference book, obviously, and a must-have one at that. Every chapter is well thought out, well written, exhaustively complete and up to date. Highly recommended for anyone who makes web sites or manages people who make web sites.

★★★☆☆ Web Design: A Complete Introduction by Nigel Chapman and Jenny Chapman (Wiley, 2006) is a book that a book lover would like to hold in their hand. It’s full color with pages of very nice stock, wonderful typography and appearance. I’m telling you this because I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to review it, so I’m delaying.

It’s from Wiley in the UK, so it may be my American perspective that’s holding me back on deciding about this book. I’m not sure where it would fit into an American curriculum. All this indecision on my part doesn’t indicate that the book is not a good book. It’s full of in-depth and clearly written information.

It’s more than a design book. They aren’t kidding when they say this is a complete introduction in the title. The book’s approach is so thorough and so complete that I learned things I’ve considered the secret knowledge of programmers and database people previously.

The book covers things you’d learn in computer science about web technology and includes internet architecture and information programmers learn. It presents that information is a way that makes it easy to understand and clearly connects the knowledge to creating web pages. It has sections on HTTP and server side technology and DOM scripting. It also has sections on web applications and databases.

Mixed in with the technological information you find sections on CSS, XHTML markup, typography, and a fine explanation of accessibility. The book delves into visual communication and layout, with information on color and tone. It explains the logical and navigational structure of a web site.

It’s aimed at the university level market. Each chapter has a summary of key points and exercises that could be used by independent learners or in a classroom. If you teach web design in a Computer Science department this would be a excellent book to help you teach students information that would help them understand standards, accessibility and CSS. If you teach web design in a department such as Visual Communication or Technical Communication this would be an excellent reference and contains information you as instructor would benefit from knowing, even if you didn’t include it in the classroom work.

If anyone in the UK reads this and would leave a comment explaining what the standard curriculum for teaching web design is there, I’d like to hear about it. Help me understand how to classify a book this complete, if you can.