Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "An equal opportunity disease afflicts nearly every site now on the web, from the humblest personal home pages to the multimillion-dollar sites of corporate giants..." (more)
Key Phrases: Internet Explorer, List Apart, Almost Standards (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Standards, argues Jeffrey Zeldman in Designing With Web Standards, are our only hope for breaking out of the endless cycle of testing that plagues designers hoping to support all possible clients. In this book, he explains how designers can best use standards--primarily XHTML and CSS, plus ECMAScript and the standard Document Object Model (DOM)--to increase their personal productivity and maximize the availability of their creations. Zeldman's approach is detailed, authoritative, and rich with historical context, as he is quick to explain how features of standards evolved. It's a fantastic education that any design professional will appreciate.

Zeldman is an idealist who devotes some of his book to explaining how much easier life would be if browser developers would just support standards properly (he's done a lot toward this goal in real life, as well). He is also a pragmatist, who recognizes that browsers implement standards differently (or partially, or not at all) and that it is the job of the Web designer to make pages work anyway. Thus, his book includes lots of explicit and tightly focused tips (with code) that have to do with bamboozling non-compliant browsers into behaving as they should, without tripping up more compliant browsers. There's lots of coverage of design and testing tools that can aid in the creation of good-looking, standards-abiding documents. --David Wall

Topics covered: Why Web standards (such as XHTML, CSS, ECMAScript, and DOM) are good for everyone, and why site designers and browser makers should move towards standards compliance. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

Jeffrey and his web standards coconspirators have made it possible for those old enemies--beauty, usability, and accessibility--to play nice together in any website. Louis Rosenfeld, publisher, Rosenfeld Media. Zeldman explains complex technologies in a way that designers can not only understand, but actually get excited about. If you are serious about web design, you need this book. --Hillman Curtis, author, MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer


Jeffrey and his web standards coconspirators have made it possible for those old enemies--beauty, usability, and accessibility--to play nice together in any website. Louis Rosenfeld, publisher, Rosenfeld Media;Zeldman explains complex technologies in a way that designers can not only understand, but actually get excited about. If you are serious about web design, you need this book. --Hillman Curtis, author, MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: New Riders; 2 edition (July 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321385551
• ISBN-13: 978-0321385550
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (131 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #249,474 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wholeheartedly recommended, May 29, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Designing With Web Standards (Paperback)

New Rider's slogan "Voices That Matter" is one that I generally take with a large pinch of salt. In Zeldman's case, that's true. If Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the internet, Zeldman and the team at the Web Standards Project are the net's midwives. The W3C wrote the standards (or recommendations as they apologetically and coyly them), whilst Zeldman and his gang set about the hard, political and (until now) thankless task of bullying (browser-beating?) Netscape and Microsoft to conform to the standards that they'd helped set. Having brokered the end of the Browser Wars, they turned their attentions to the WYSIWYG tools like Dreamweaver, GoLive and (ahem) FrontPage, actually advising Macromedia on how to make DMX conform to Web Standards.

And now, this time, it's personal. Zeldman and the WaSP warriors are coming for you.

"Though today's browsers support standards, tens of thousands of professional designers and developers continue to use outdated methods that yoke structure to presentation".

This book is part of the campaign to educate us, the Web Professionals. It's part polemic, and part tutorial. Polemic because so many of us are yet a-standard (or even anti-standards), and tutorial because there's so much talk of why standards that a lot of us are saying "We know they're important. We know it's evil and wrong to use tables, and we know every time we use a deprecated tag a fairy dies somewhere - but how do we sew the DOM, XHTML, CSS and Accessibility all together?"

This book tells you how, and - because Zeldman is a real-life designer, just like us, he isn't pontificating from an ivory tower. This reader has read enough standards-fascists shouting "Ignore the real world!" and wonders if those authors actually do the stuff they're frothing about. Zeldman tells us that "My bias [is] toward getting work done under present conditions - a bias I believe most of this book's readers share". (page 3).

Inevitably, there's a forest of three-letter acronyms, and a lot of frankly rather dull stuff to get through, but Zeldman is (to this reader) as much a writer as he is Standards Samurai. There's a lot of jokes in the book. This reader is the first to admit that Accessibility, CSS, XHTML isn't the most fertile ground for thigh-slappin' gags, but there's enough wry smiles and flashes of personality to keep you turning the pages.

That's enough of the tone; what's the structure? Well, the first half of the book is the polemic. If you aren't a standards convert, this will make you one. If you're already a convert, but your boss/ client isn't, strategically leaving this book on the corner of their desk could result in your professional relationship with that boss suddenly becoming a whole lot easier. Like many polemic computer books, though, there's the danger of the first half of the book preaching to the choir.

The second half of the book is where the meat is. We go step-by-step through hybrid XHTML layouts, DOCTYPEs Standards Mode, Typography and Accessibility, leaning by doing it. This is not theoretical. The only depressing chapter is the one titled, "Box models, bugs and Workarounds", on how to accommodate the nasty gremlins of today's browsers. Unlike legacy browser-sniffing that we used to do, however, the Workarounds here are not wasted effort. Standards-compliance is not perfect in today's technology, but it's not going away; the WaSP have generated an unstoppable momentum.

What's bad about the book? Very little, really. It was `fast-tracked' through production, so the occasional page has a slight layout weirdness. Like many recent New Riders books, there's a typographical prissiness (the numerals `2' and `7' in the body of the text are the worst offenders). These are tiny points, from a publishing pedant, that I've only really included because the rest of the review is so glowing!

Wholeheartedly recommended.
Bruce Lawson,
DMXzone.com

294 of 369 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars <h2 class="review">Designing With Web Standards</h2>, June 10, 2003

By	Revelee (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Designing With Web Standards (Paperback)

<style type="faux/css">
review {
information: priceless
format: real-world, example-based;
clarity: crystal;
history: eye-opening;
audience: essential reading for ALL web profesionals;
humor: witty and wise as always;
timing: perfect - now is the time for standards and accessibility - zeldman explains why and how;
why: save money, time and do the right thing;
how: tons of techniques and proven tactics with real world examples;
bottom-line: actively using dwws as a tool to move my agency and my clients towards standard compliant practices;
}
</style>

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book - but SHUT UP already!, October 10, 2003

By	Bryan Winter (Madison, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Designing With Web Standards (Paperback)

First of all, this is an excellent book. It is well thought out, well written and provides lots of great instruction and examples. Zeldman does a wonderful job making his case for Web standards and the evolution of the WWW. But that is also the biggest problem with this book. Zeldman makes his case - and it is a great one. I'm convinced. But then he makes it again. And again. AND AGAIN. We're fully 150 pages into the book before we actually start learing HOW to develop with standards. Now, I understand that a case needs to be made. I'm one of those "old school" designers that has been in this biz for years and years now. I'm a master of all those HTML tricks that are now taboo in StandardsLand. He was preaching right to me and I for one needed to be preached at. My methods are out of date, my skills need to be honed. No problem, happy to convert. I'm sold. So cut to the chase! Zeldman's passion is clear and his wit is sharp. It really is an excellent read. But I also think he doesn't trust his reader enough to understand his points quickly enough. The initial 150 pages could probably be boiled down to 50 or 75 with the same result, leaving more room for instruction and how-to. Still, highly recommended!