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

by Jeffrey Zeldman (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 the 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: Peachpit Press; 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 (126 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #142,212 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mostly hype, didn't teach me much, February 9, 2005

By	Ryan de Laplante (Orillia, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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

I learned HTML back in 1994. I barely updated my HTML skills until a couple years ago where I picked up very basic CSS but all my HTML was still table based, font tags, etc.. everything you could do that's bad according to XHTML. I decided that now is the time to update my skills. I hear from many people and reviews that this is -THE- book to buy to learn web standards. 150 pages into the book, he is STILL trying to sell me on the idea to use web standards! Jesus, I bought the book already! I bought this book expecting to learn the latest XHTML tags and some CSS. Instead it was a lot of hot air and wasted time. Sure I learned a bit, but I'm sure I would have gotten more out of some other book. After reading it, I don't feel much further ahead than I was before. Time to buy another book.

307 of 380 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Commits the very sins it condemns, October 10, 2005

By	Rose Levy "single scooper" (NJ) - See all my reviews

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

I came upon this book via glowing reviews on amazon, citations on websites, and exalted praise from cutting-edge web developers. This was THE book to read if you want to build websites that didn't rely on spaghetti code and deeply nested tables, I was told.

I was greatly disappointed. While I appreciate the overall message of this book and some of the techniques are helpful, not only is it exasperating in its lack of information, but it actually commits the very sins that it relentlessly cites as the scourge of 99.9% of websites - redundancy, verbosity, and lack of clean, clear structure of what little information it imparts.

-REDUNDANCY AND VERBOSITY GALORE
The book really doesn't even get started until Chapter 6 on page 153 (and even that is being generous), after mind-numbing repetition in the form of exposition, bulleted lists, and executive summaries about why one should design and build websites using web standards. There's even a sentence on page 137 that proclaims, "Now let's stop exulting and get down to work." Well, guess what? It's just a tease - and there will be plenty more -- because the proselytizing never really stops.

When the author finally comes around to showing examples and their accompanying markup, it is sadly deficient. CSS that works with the markup is not even shown alongside it, although we are promised to be shown in another chapter. I learned very little about how to actually employ the techniques that Zeldman advocates so strenuously.

The meaningless subheads drove me nuts! Here's a taste: "CSS: The First Bag is Free; The F Word; How Suite it is; Not a Panacea, But Plays One on TV; Inherit the Wind; Miss Behavior to You." I know this might seem like a petty criticism, and maybe people are used to this style from the Dummies books, but 1. They're stupid 2. They impart absolutely no meaning, so if the book is used for a reference, they are less than helpful and 3. The subsections are constantly referred to in all of their absurd and useless glory. This constant reference to other sections by Chapter Number, Chapter Name, Subsection Name smacked of gratuitous page lengthening to me. (If you must refer, why not just use page numbers? Takes up about 1/10th of the space (LIKE GOOD WEB CODE), or better yet, use footnotes!)

-CRINGE-MAKING BANTER
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't get this stuff. I bought a serious, technical book about the new age of coding websites. It cost $35 and at 415 pages, that's about 8.4 cents per page. I don't need breaks for mindless digressions about blueberry tofu pie, what title you were thinking of for chapter 6, or for that matter why you want to write in the first person plural. At times, Mr. Zeldman seems to almost flaunt it in our face that he's wasting our time, e.g., on pg. 214 (after a discussion of how this isn't a CSS manual, and how he's introducing us to the "thighs" and "drumsticks" of CSS), he writes: "On the other hand, how many full-blown CSS reference manuals use the word "thighs" three times in one paragraph? You're right none of them do. Your money was well spent on this book."

And when he does actually explain something, it's like being hit over the head with a jackhammer. It took more than half of page 159 to explain this XHTML rule: "write all tags in lowercase".

-BAD TEACHING
The book is also sprinkled with pointless putdowns like "none of this is rocket science" (pg. 164), but the most egregious teaching technique occurs on page 196, when, mind you, very little actual teaching has even taken place. The author gives an example of markup from the Microsoft homepage (eek!) of what he calls "toilet debris" code and then goes on to say:

"Because redundancy is as bad in books as it is in code, we'll avoid explaining what's wrong with this markup. If you don't know by now, one of us hasn't done our job."

Should the phrase "we'll avoid explaining" ever be part an educational text? With all due respect Mr.Zeldman, I think it's you who didn't do your job.

272 of 341 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 (Voices That Matter) (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>