Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design (Voices That Matter) (Paperback)

by Andy Clarke (Author), Molly E. Holzschlag (Author), Aaron Gustafson (Technical Editor), Mark Boulton (Technical Editor)
Key Phrases: meaningful markup, multiple background images, grey box method, Internet Explorer, Working Group, Zen Garden (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

As the Web evolves to incorporate new standards and the latest browsers offer new possibilities for creative design, the art of creating Web sites is also changing. Few Web designers are experiences programmers, and as a result, working with semantic markup and CSS can create roadblocks to achieving truly beautiful designs using all the resources available. Add to this the pressures of presenting exceptional design to clients and employers, without compromising efficient workflow, and the challenge deepens for those working in a fast-paced environment. As someone who understands these complexities firsthand, author and designer Andy Clarke offers visual designers a progressive approach to creating artistic, usable, and accessible sites using transcendent CSS.

 

In this groundbreaking book, you’ll discover how to implement highly original designs through visual demonstrations of the creative possibilities using markup and CSS. You’ll learn to use a new design workflow, build prototypes that work well for designers and all team members, use grids effectively, visualize  markup, and discover every phase of the transcendent design process, from working with the latest browsers to incorporating CSS3 to collaborating with team members effectively.

 

Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design:

Uses a visual approach to help you learn coding techniques

Includes numerous examples of world-class Web sites, photography, and other inspirations that give designers ideas for visualizing their code

Offers early previews of technical advances in new Web browsers and of the emerging CSS3 specification

About the Author
Andy Clarke is an internationally known speaker, designer, and consultant focusing on creative, accessible Web development. Andy is passionate about design and passionate about Web standards, bridging the gap between design and code. He regularly trains designers and developers in the creative applications of Web standards. Andy has written articles for A List Apart Magazine and contributed to the CSS Zen Garden. Outside of his studio, Andy is a member of the Web Standards Project.

Author, instructor, and Web designer Molly E. Holzschlag has written over 30 books on Web design and development. She’s been coined "one of the greatest digerati" and deemed one of the Top 25 Most Influential Women on the Web. Molly is also Group Lead of Web Standards Project and frequent lecturer on Web design and development around the world.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 1 edition (November 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321410971
• ISBN-13: 978-0321410979
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 8.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #119,871 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

124 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Both stunningly good and slightly lame, January 13, 2007

By	Michael McKee "mystic cowboy" (Port Townsend, WA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

First off, this is one of the best design books around for the web designer who wants to use good code to create attractive and usable web sites. It is one of the few that does a good, no, excellent job of integrating modern HTML and CSS with good design principles. The examples represent the state of the art in CSS practices and are well paced and very well described. But more than offering some coding tricks, this book teaches solid visual design concepts and good professional workflow practices. Read the book carefully and follow the examples and you will be a better web designer.

Unfortunately, some of the book veers of into CSS 3, which isn't going to be a viable production option for a long, long time. Internet Explorer, the browser with, by far, the highest user base barely does an adequate job of supporting CSS 2, and that's with the brand new version, the first in 5 years. Including a chapter on it in this book is a waste of space. If I want a fantasy, I'll look in the fiction section.

Another quibble is in Clarke's justification for following web standards, especially when he compares building sites in Dreamweaver and hand coding. Saying that learning Dreamweaver is more difficult than learning HTML and CSS to the level needed to make it work in current browsers is plain silly. I am perfectly comfortable with either method and find that each has definite benefits. But the learning curve for hand coding is by far the steeper one. I don't have to browse the forums every week to learn new Dreamweaver workarounds as I do for CSS and Internet Explorer's shortcomings.

I've given more space here to the couple minor negatives than the numerous fine qualities of this book. Don't let my nit picking lead you to think I don't like this book. It is just that the book is so close to superb that its small faults really stand out. Transcending CSS is easily one of the top books for the web designer who wants to move from journeyman to master, maybe the best. It is well written by a highly knowledgeable designer, well structured, well paced and very attractive. Beginners, though, should probably start with something more basic.

63 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new breed of CSS book, December 2, 2006

By	Frank Stepanski (PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Andy Clark (http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/ ) is one of the leading UK designers for the past 10 years and he has been at the forefront in promoting web standards and accessibility.

This is a somewhat unique CSS book in that it is not a "beginners" book nor it is a purely "advanced" book either. It is a book for web designers who know the basics of CSS who want to know how to use the full potential of CSS level 3 whether or not every browser will support every technique you use. It describes what can be done with CSS and how web layouts can be viewed as a means to provide semantic data to your viewers.

Throughout this book, Andy Clark provides beautiful illustrations and photographs of web pages, stock photos and snap shots that give the book a less "textbook" feeling and more of a slight story telling feeling. It's hard to describe, but it makes reading it more interesting and allows it to flow better. There are four main sections of the book: Discovery, Process, Inspiration, and Transcendence.

The book begins with Discovery: This section reviews many existing well designed web sites (CSS Zen Garden, Clear Left, Adacto, A List Apart, etc.) in explaining what the term "Transcendent CSS" really means. These principles such as not all browsers see the same design, use all available CSS selectors, use CSS3 where possible, se JavaScript and the DOM, avoid sing hacks and filters, and use semantic name conventions.

The next section is Process: This section talks about how to create a perfect workflow. The process of working with wireframes, using prototypes, how to build proper layouts, organizing CSS code, styling navigation and understanding elements of typography are all discussed.

The section Inspiration is my favorite section. This section really focuses on design techniques like grid-based design. The design technique really as the author states is the only way to properly design with CSS. Andy goes through many sample sites and breaks down each design in a grid and shows how it was created and with what markup and CSS. I never found a CSS book before that really explains from a designer's perspective their view of design. The author also goes into other design with print and media to get other points of view to design techniques. The most important thing about the book is that it doesn't just talk about theory; it shows actual CSS code snippets to really explain it. Well, done.

The final section is Transcendence which focuses heavily on the new ideas and techniques of using CSS3 and positioning and floats. Absolute positioning is first discussed with emphasis on positioning images, image zooming, and creative floating. There are so many different techniques and examples in this section it will take you months to properly go through them all. A great section as well.

Well, this book I think is a new beginning (hopefully) to CSS books especially with the new browsers (Firebox 2 and IE7) supporting some of the new CSS3 techniques that make designing web layouts fun again. I hope you get as much out of this book as I know I will. A great buy and a must buy!

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Create cutting edge websites using Transcendent CSS, January 29, 2007

By	Diane Cipollo (Editor at BellaOnline.com) - See all my reviews

One of the major decisions one needs to make when starting a website project is how "cutting edge" your site design will be. Will you use only basic HTML or will you also use CSS, JavaScript, Ajax and more? If you do decide to use these other web languages, how much will you use and how will you use them? For a long time, there was only one answer to this question. Those features that were supported by the most popular web browsers represented the limited amount of advanced features that you could add to your site and still be assured that most people would be able to access your site.

In this book the author, Andy Clarke, presents the argument that website design should not be limited in this way. Written from the designer's point of view, this book has beautiful photography, plentiful screenshots and real-world examples of the author's approach to web design. The purpose of this book is not to teach you web standards or the popular web languages such as XHTML, CSS and JavaScript but to teach you how to use these tools to create effective and cutting edge websites.

In the first part of the book, Clarke discusses the Graded Browser Support approach to web design introduced by Yahoo and the seven principles of Transcendent CSS. The author's goal is to expand your design options beyond the commonly used table-based layouts and toward a content-based approach where the website structure is based on the meaning and purpose of the content on the page.

The next part of the book teaches how to build a web standards compliant and content-based website with XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. Again, it is not the author's desire to teach these languages and he does assume a working knowledge of them. Instead, Clarke shows you how to replace the table-based layout with a grid-based positioning of the elements on the webpage. Once you are not constrained by the table-based layout, your options are far less limited to the common two and three column design. Clarke walks you through several sample websites to demonstrate the use of alternative positioning and layout techniques. Finally, he discusses the advantages of the CSS3 advanced layout module and designing websites for different media types.

Andy Clarke is a ten year veteran of the web and is lead designer and creative director for his design consultancy. He is a member of the Web Standards Project and has worked with the W3C's CSS Working Group.