Category: WebDesignBookReview

Review: Handcrafted CSS


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A review by Web Teacher of
Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design, Video Edition (includes Handcrafted CSS book and Handcrafted CSS: Bulletproof Essentials DVD)

(rating: 5 stars)

Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm with Ethan Marcotte is from New Riders (2010). It’s a beautiful book designed by Cederholm himself. Most of it was written by Cederholm. Marcotte contriubuted one chapter called “The Fluid Grid”.

Cederholm’s trademark style is to examine every angle of a problem—such as the way to display a menu with an item and a price or the way to create rounded corners. After looking at the various options, he selects the one he considers the most bulletproof and recommends it for use.  To be bulletproof, a design solution must be flexible enough to work in many browsers (or at least not differ beyond use in some browsers), be functional with various levels of zoom, be accessible, and be workable in terms of future upkeep.

Many of the techniques in the book use CSS3. There’s also some jQuery in the mix. No HTML5, though he does suggest it’s the next big thing.

He concentrates on a few “crafty” CSS techniques in the slender volume. This book is not a complete guide to CSS. It deals with selected design problems. The specific topics getting the Cederholm treatment in this book:

  • his flexible approach to problem solving with CSS
  • rounded corners and background clipping
  • text-shadow
  • RGBA and opacity, with several lovely design tricks well explained
  • his progressive enhancement philosophy aimed at better browsers and letting go of pixel perfect sameness in lesser browser
  • modular float management, a very cool idea for dealing with float problems
  • fluid designs with percentages and ems, even fluid media sizing (this is Ethan’s chapter)
  • typography and @font-face
  • select jQuery enhancements

Well written and clear to implement ideas are what you’ll find in this book. You need to know HTML and CSS before you dig in.

Summary: A select set of CSS improvements for designers.

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Review: Fancy Form Design

A review by Web Teacher of

(rating: 5 stars)

Fancy Form Design by Jina Bolton, Tim Connell and Derek Featherstone is from Sitepoint Book (2009). This is really an excellent little book. It gives you tips on planning and designing a form that is both attractive and usable. It provides information on structuring the form using standards-based HTML. Both usability and accessibility features are built into the form structure as a matter of practice in this book. You’d hardly expect less with authors of the caliber of the three who worked on the book.

Since this book is just about one thing, forms, you learn some things you might not learn in a book that treated forms as a small part of a larger whole. For example, there is an interesting discussion about when to use legends with fieldsets, and when you’d be better off not using legends. You learn about the types of error messages that are most useful in form design. The fine points of labels are discussed.

In the chapter on styling the form with CSS, there are some excellent tips for form design. Everything from ideas for styling with icons, sprites, and styling widgets is included in the CSS chapter.

The final chapter takes you through some JavaScript enhancements that will improve your form without making it inaccessible.

The book reads fast, the code examples are right there and are clearly explained.

Summary: A must-have book for the form designer.

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This is not a review of Microformats Made Simple

I’m not going to review Microformats Made Simple here because the author is a friend, I’m mentioned in a few places in the book, and I could not write an unbiased review. Add to that the fact that I think the author is awesomeness electrified, one of the women in tech to keep an eye on, a brilliant front end developer, and my bias shows in an even brighter shade of sunshine.

But I do want to talk about the book. So, accept that I’m biased. My remarks are not presented in a review wrapped up in my normal hReview microformat; there are no affiliate links to the book on Amazon; there is no cover photo. I’m just talking here.

Microformats Made Simple (New Riders, 2009) is by Emily Lewis. The book is exactly what its title says, a source of information and code that make using microformats dead simple to use and easy to understand—all wrapped up in the logic of semantic HTML and web standards.

If you care at all about semantic HTML, SEO, accessible data, reusable content, or web design you need to read this book. I think you do care about those things. I suggest you read the book sitting by your computer, because you are going to want to implement microformats as you read through the chapters. It’s so easy and the benefits are so clear, you can’t read the book and not want to use the information. In many cases you can add microformat data instantly as you see the code examples provided and apply the concepts to your own sites.

When New Riders contacted Emily about writing a book, she indicated that she wanted to use her natural language. She didn’t want to write like a technical writer. I think she set a new standard for an accessible, personal writing style and tone in a technical book. Examples in evidence:

Can I get a “Hell, yeah!” for meaning and semantics?

I’d call it crap, but I’m trying to be dignified here.

So now you know your first compound microformat. Proud? I am. You are already becoming my favorite person.

If you are teaching HTML or any beginning level web development class, you could add microformats to your course with almost no effort by adding various microformats at appropriate moments as students learn new material. This book would guide you in that effort.

My biased opinion is that this is a terrific book.

Review: CSS: The Missing Manual

by Web Teacher

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CSS: The Missing Manual (Amazon.com affiliate link)

★★★★ CSS: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland is from O’Reilly (2009). The books in the missing manual series are always dependable resources, and this book is no exception. The book isn’t a big wow. It isn’t bad. It’s somewhere in the middle where solid resources and reliable information can be found. If you need a book that answers your CSS questions quickly and clearly, this book is a good choice.

The book is in three sections. In Part One, you get the basics including a summary of why Plain Old Semantic HTML (POSH) is desirable, a look at the construction of a style rule, and an explanation of internal and external style sheets. Other basics in Part One include selectors, inheritance, and the Cascade. Part Two deals with applied CSS. The applied CSS includes styling text, margins, padding, borders, graphics, links and navigation, tables, and forms. Part Three is devoted to page layout. There an introductory chapter dealing with divs and how to mock up a design based on content. Then a chapter for float-based layouts and another for positioned elements. Neither of the chapters in the page layout part of the book deal with layout techniques using the display property, probably because Internet Explorer is so problematic in that area. (The book does include lots of tips for dealing with the difficulties of IE, however.) Part Four is Advanced CSS. Section Four includes media targeted style sheets such as print styles, tips on commenting CSS, some descendent selector information and information about how to use conditional comments for IE. The advanced information includes a brief chapter on CSS 3. There are three appendixes: CSS properties, CSS in Dreamweaver CS 4, and an extensive list of resources.

The appendix about using CSS in Dreamweaver CS4 is an interesting addition to the book. You don’t often see this sort of thing in a book that is strictly about CSS. Normally, you must get a Dreamweaver CS4-specific book for information about CSS in Dreamweaver. I actually find this to be a plus in CSS: The Missing Manual‘s favor. While I think everyone working in front end web development should know CSS front to back, I also realize that tools like Dreamweaver get used in the real world because they save so much time.

Summary: A solid resource

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Useful links: Teach Naked, eBook format, Trust Agents, Retweet

Teach Naked. What do you think about this idea as a way to teach web design or web development classes? You definitely need a computer lab, but how about the idea for lecture delivery and class discussion?

Sony Plans to Adopt a Common Format for eBooks. This may finally bring the lower priced competition to the Kindle into common use on more campuses where the current standard is the Kindle. Do you see this making a difference?

5 Questions with Chris Brogan. Trust Agents looks like a valuable book for students and users of social media. I probably will never have a chance to actually review it here, so am referring you to this interview.

The Power of the Retweet on Twitter at Webgrrls has a good graphic showing the mathematical effect of a retweet. Appropriate today since Twitter announced revamping the retweet API.

Review: Foundation Website Creation

by Web Teacher
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Foundation Website Creation with CSS, XHTML, and JavaScript (Amazon affiliate link)

★★★★★ Foundation Website Creation with CSS, XHTML, and JavaScript by Jonathan Lane, Meitar Moscovitz and Joseph R. Lewis is from Friends of ED (2008). I recommend this book. It is not the usual heavy dose of XHTML and CSS that I normally like. This book is more comprehensive. It begins with a history of the web, chapters on project management and planning, covers the basics of XHTML, includes both a basic and a more advanced chapter on CSS, goes into JavaScript basics, and finishes up with a look at testing, launching, Ajax, social software and server-side technology.

Chapter 4 is Writing Markup with HTML and XHTML. In about 50 pages, the authors managed to cover the most important facts of HTML and do it in a standards-based way. The first CSS chapter is Chapter 5, Exploring Fundamental Concepts of CSS. Chapter 6 goes into more detail with Developing CSS in Practice From Design to Deployment. Then Chapter 7 covers Creating Interactivity with JavaScript. Surrounding those four key chapters is a complete manual on the management, planning, business use, and deployment of a website. The book has 10 chapters with an afterword called The Business of the Web, but don’t be fooled into feeling that the basics are overlooked. They aren’t. Chapter 6, the one with more detail about CSS is 70 pages long. However, including the rest of the concepts needed to successfully build and maintain a website along with the basics gives his book a real edge in terms of usefulness.

I think it would be a good book for an introductory or overview class. As soon as I finish writing this review, I’m headed over to the WaSP InterAct Curriculum site to add it to my list of recommended readings there.

One small point that prickled a bit. Several chapters conclude with a “Profiling Profession” section about a real person. All the real people are men. I know the three authors have worked with some women who could have been profiled. They even mentioned some in the Acknowledgments. If this book were a tech conference with three male speakers who only talked about the work of other men, I would urge people not to attend. But it isn’t a conference, it’s a book. Therefore, this is just a small complaint about a book that is excellent overall.

Summary: Comprehensive look at website creation.

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Review: HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions

by Web Teacher
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HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions: A Web Standardistas’ Approach (Amazon affiliate link)

★★★★ HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions: A Web Standardistas’ Approach by Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson is from Friends of ED (2009). The thing I like most about this book is also the thing I like least about it. That thing is the book’s organization. The first half of the book is devoted entirely to a complete intensive in semantic, standards-based HTML. Although some things are treated a little superficially (such as making tables accessible), for the most part a person could become very good at semantic HTML after going through this part of the book.

The second half of the book looks at CSS. Again, the book is really thorough about the basics and the use of best practices in writing and using CSS. However, it isn’t until Chapter 13 that the topic of using an exernal style sheet is introduced. There’s a chapter after that with references to good resources, but basically the book is over after Chapter 13.

I like that every part of HTML and CSS is covered from a web standards viewpoint. This book is really good for that. But it bothers me that it takes the book so long to put it all together so that the reader has a complete view of what the process is all about.

If I were teaching a semester class with this book, I would would work around the organization in all sorts of ways. (An individual reader, working through the book on her own, might find the approach excellent.) From a teaching viewpoint, it this would be a great book to have as a secondary resource. The chapter on Images, for example, could be assigned as required reading when you were ready to teach images. The information is thorough, the explanation of alt attributes is helpful: it’s a good chapter.

It’s a good book for working on your own. For classroom use, it’s a good secondary resource.

Summary: Thorough grounding in the basics.

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