Bulletproof Web Design
Jeffery Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards was the creed of web standards and Dan Cederolm’s Web Standards Solutions was the real-world implementation of that creed. It was the one book that got me off the ground in designing with CSS, and if I could only have one book in my web design library, Web Standards Solutions would be it.
Dan doesn’t even need to convince me to buy his new book, Bulletproof Web Design. In fact, I didn’t even read his annoucement all the way through and I was already clicking “add to cart” in Amazon. Well, maybe not, but that’s how valuable I place Dan’s web design writing.
When my friend Daniel got to attend Web Design World in San Francisco last January (lucky bas… guy), he was telling me that most of the people there were only hearing about web standards and designing in CSS for the first time, while he said a lot of the conference was proselethising the exact same stuff that was heralded in Zeldman’s book. I was floored–to me, it seemed like any web designer who was up to date within the last year would be running–not walking to web standards. Not so. I plead with web designers to get the word out. The faster all websites are being built in CSS, the better off the web will be.
For anybody just starting out with designing websites with web standards in mind, Designing With Web Standards and Web Standards Solutions are must haves. If Bulletproof Design is anything like Dan’s last book, could be more required (but fun!) reading.
This post deserves a comment, even if it probably is boring for at least 90% of the world. Do you know of any good CSS books? I told my dad he can borrow that PHP and mySQL book you recommended if he gets a CSS book I can borrow.
I would say more like 99% of the world. Heh.
Top 5 CSS Books I would recommend:
I noticed that DHTML and CSS Visual Quickstart Guide was published in 2001. I was looking about a couple web design books a friend of mine has that were published around the same time and their material when it came to CSS seemed outdated. One stated that while CSS was not the standard and its future was still unsure (some of the browsers didn’t support it) it should be learned because it might be important.
Are you familiar with how mature that book’s approach to CSS is?
The basic syntax of CSS hasn’t changed much (at all?). It’s the methods, tips and tricks that have changed and are changing with web design guru’s around the web constantly tinkering away. The Visual Quickstart Guide will guide you through the basics, and Web Standards Solutions will give you the tips, tricks, and real world solutions to a lot of problems you’ll inevitably come across.
You were supposed to come to that conference with me, Tim. It’s not my fault CityTeam didn’t let you go. =(
Yeah, I have been pretty suprised at how many people still aren’t up on the latest in CSS and web standards. I can understand if older sites can’t convert over right away, but web developers should at least be doing new sites the right way!