Designing with Web Standards.

Jeffrey Zeldman

New Riders, 2003 - Computers - 436 pages

You code. and code. and code. You build only to rebuild. You focus on making your site compatible with almost every browser or wireless device ever put out there. Then along comes a new device or a new browser, and you start all over again.

You can get off the merry-go-round.

It's time to stop living in the past and get away from the days of spaghetti code, insanely nested table layouts, tags, and other redundancies that double and triple the bandwidth of even the simplest sites. Instead, it's time for forward compatibility.

Isn't it high time you started designing with web standards?

Standards aren't about leaving users behind or adhering to inflexible rules. Standards are about building sophisticated, beautiful sites that will work as well tomorrow as they do today. You can't afford to design tomorrow's sites with yesterday's piecemeal methods.

Jeffrey teaches you to:

• Slash design, development, and quality assurance costs (or do great work in spite of constrained budgets)
• Deliver superb design and sophisticated functionality without worrying about browser incompatibilities
• Set up your site to work as well five years from now as it does today
• Redesign in hours instead of days or weeks
• Welcome new visitors and make your content more visible to search engines
• Stay on the right side of accessibility laws and guidelines
• Support wireless and PDA users without the hassle and expense of multiple versions
• Improve user experience with faster load times and fewer compatibility headaches
• Separate presentation from structure and behavior, facilitating advanced publishing workflows

What people are saying

Review: Designing with Web Standards

User Review  - John Uhri - Goodreads

Great book, but by the time I read it, I was pretty much already designing with web standards... so it was more of a review.

Review: Designing with Web Standards

User Review  - Hhfields - Goodreads

I love good good design. zeldman knows how to do it. best book on design I have ever read.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• One Size Does Not Fit All: 2
• On Their Way Out?: 3
• A Continuum Not a Set of Inflexible Rules: 5
• Show Dont Sell: 6
• Let Your Work Do the Selling for You: 7
• The Smell of Change: 8
• Before You Begin: 13
• Spiraling Costs Diminishing Returns: 14
• Ending the Cycle of Obsolescence: 16
• What Is Forward Compatibility?: 17
• No Rules No Dogma: 18
• Practice Not Theory: 20
• Is This Trip Really Necessary?: 21
• 999 of Websites Are Obsolete: 23
• Modern Browsers and Web Standards: 24
• New Code for a New Job: 25
• The Version Problem: 26
• Backward Thinking: 29
• The Cost to Site Owners: 30
• Backward Compatibility: 34
• The Road to Stupidville: 38
• When Good Things Happen to Bad Markup: 39
• The Cure: 42
• Designing and Building with Standards: 45
• Jumping Through Hoops: 47
• The Cost of Design Before Standards: 48
• Modern Site Ancient Ways: 49
• The Trinity of Web Standards: 53
• Structure: 54
• Presentation: 55
• Behavior: 56
• Benefits of Transitional Methods: 57
• Portability in Action: 60
• One Document Serves All: 63
• Design Beyond the Screen: 66
• Time and Cost Savings Increased Reach: 67
• Where We Go from Here: 68
• Transitional Forward Compatibility: 69
• Strict Forward Compatibility: 71
• The Trouble with Standards: 73
• Lovely to Look At Repulsive to Code: 74
• Common Goals Common Means: 76
• The Year That Browsers Came of Age: 78
• Netscapes Bold Move: 81
• Too Little Too Late?: 83
• Bad Browsers Lead to Bad Practices: 84
• Inherit the Wind: 86
• Miss Behavior to You: 87
• Standardized Scripting at Long Last: 88
• Academics Versus Economics: 90
• Product Awareness Versus Standards Awareness: 91
• The F Word: 93
• The Value of Flash: 94
• The Trouble with Flash: 96
• Compliance Is a Dirty Word: 97
• The Inspiration Problem: 98
• Other Problems: 99
• XML Conquers the World And Other Web Standards Success Stories: 101
• The Universal Language XML: 102
• One Parent Many Children: 104
• More Popular Than MTV: 106
• Builds Strong Data Five Ways: 108
• Web Publishing Tools for the Rest of Us: 110
• XML Applications and Your Site: 112
• Still in Its Infancy: 113
• A New Era of Cooperation: 114
• How Suite It Is: 115
• Web Standards and Authoring Tools: 117
• WYSIWYG Tools Come of Age Two Out of Three Aint Bad: 119
• The Emergence of CSS Layout: 120
• The Flood Begins: 124
• Countless Converts and the Help Sites They Rode in On: 126
• Faddishnesswith a Purpose: 128
• The Mainstreaming of Web Standards: 129
• Commercial Sites Take the Plunge: 131
• Wired Digital Converts: 132
• Embracing Standards with Transitional Methods: 136
• Executive Summary: 137
• Modern Markup: 141
• The Secret Shame of Rotten Markup: 145
• A Reformulation of Say What?: 147
• Executive Summary: 149
• Top 10 Reasons to Convert to XHTML: 150
• Top 5 Reasons Not to Switch to XHTML: 152
• XHTML Restructuring the Web: 153
• Simple Rules Easy Guidelines: 154
• Declare Your Content Type: 157
• Write All Tags in Lowercase: 159
• Quote All Attribute Values: 162
• All Attributes Require Values: 163
• Close Empty Tags Too: 164
• Encode All and Characters: 165
• The Dull the Duller and the Truly Dull: 166
• Structural HealingIts Good for Me: 167
• Marking Up Your Document for Sense Instead of Style: 168
• Visual Elements and Structure: 171
• Tighter Firmer Pages Guaranteed Structure and MetaStructure in Strict and Hybrid Markup: 173
• Must Every Element Be Structural?: 174
• div id and Other Assistants: 175
• Dare to Do Less: 178
• Dos and Donts: 181
• Common Errors in Hybrid Markup: 182
• divs Are Just All Right: 185
• Loving the id: 186
• Banish Redundant Table Cells: 188
• Outdated Methods on Parade: 189
• Slicing and Dicing: 191
• In Defense of Navigational Table Layouts: 192
• The Redundant Verbosity of Redundantly Verbose Tables: 193
• Bad CSS Comes to Town: 194
• Moving On: 196
• XHTML by Example A Hybrid Layout Part I: 197
• Benefits of Transitional Methods Used in These Chapters: 198
• CSS and Accessibility Advantages: 200
• Additional id Attributes: 205
• Same as Last Pass Markup: 206
• The First Table: 207
• The Second Table: 209
• CSS Basics: 211
• CSS Overview: 212
• Anatomy of Styles: 214
• Multiple Declarations: 215
• Whitespace and Case Insensitivity: 216
• Alternative and Generic Values: 217
• Grouped Selectors: 218
• Contextual Descendant Selectors: 220
• id Selectors and Contextual id Selectors: 221
• Class Selectors: 222
• Combining Selectors to Create Sophisticated Design Effects: 223
• External Embedded and Inline Styles: 226
• Inline Styles: 229
• The BestCase Scenario Design Method: 230
• Relative and Absolute File References: 232
• CSS in Action A Hybrid Layout Part II: 235
• Preparing Images: 236
• Establishing Basic Parameters: 238
• Hide and Block: 239
• Coloring the Links Introducing PseudoClasses: 240
• Sketching in Other Common Elements: 243
• More About Font Sizes: 244
• Laying Out the Page Divisions: 246
• First Pass: 250
• First Try at Second Pass: 253
• Final Pass: 254
• External Styles and the You Are Here Effect: 255
• Working with Browsers Part I DOCTYPE Switching and Standards Mode: 259
• The Saga of DOCTYPE Switching: 260
• A Switch to Turn Standards On or Off: 261
• Throwing the Switch: 262
• The DOCTYPE Switch: 263
• Complete and Incomplete DOCTYPEs: 264
• A Complete Listing of Complete XHTML DOCTYPEs: 265
• Celebrate Browser Diversity Or at Least Learn to Live with It: 268
• From Vive la Difference to This: 272
• Working with Browsers Part II Box Models Bugs and Workarounds: 273
• The Box Model and Its Discontents: 274
• How the Box Model Works: 275
• How the Box Model Breaks: 276
• Making CSS Safe for Democracy: 283
• The Whitespace Bug in IEWindows: 285
• The Float Bug in IE6Windows: 289
• Objects of Desire?: 291
• Embedding Multimedia While Supporting Standards: 292
• Object Failures: 294
• A Workaday Workaround World: 296
• Working with Browsers Part III Typography: 299
• User Control: 300
• Points of Difference: 302
• A Standard Size at LastBut for How Long?: 303
• Good Works Undone with a Click: 306
• Great Performance Shame About the Size: 308
• The Heartbreak of Ems: 313
• Pixels Prove Pixels Work: 315
• Its Absolutely Relative: 316
• The Trouble with Pixels: 318
• The Font Size Keyword Method: 321
• Initial Problems with Keyword Implementations: 322
• The Fahrner Method: 323
• The Quest Continues: 325
• Accessibility Basics: 327
• Access by the Books: 328
• Widespread Confusion: 330
• The Law and the Layout: 333
• Accessibility Myths Debunked: 335
• A TextOnly Version Satisfies the Requirement for Equal or Equivalent Access: 336
• Accessibility Forces You to Create Primitive LowEnd Designs: 338
• According to Section 508 Sites Must Look the Same in All Browsers and User Agents: 339
• Dreamweaver MXWatchfires BobbyInsert Tool Name Here Solves All Compliance Problems: 340
• Designers Can Freely Ignore Accessibility Laws if Their Clients Tell Them To: 341
• Apples QuickTime and Other Streaming Video Media: 343
• Macromedia Flash 45: 344
• Color: 346
• CSS: 347
• Rollovers and Other Scripted Behaviors: 348
• Forms: 350
• Image Maps: 351
• Frames Applets: 352
• Tools of the Trade: 353
• Working with Bobby: 354
• Our Good Friend the tabindex Attribute: 355
• How You Benefit: 359
• Working with DOMBased Scripts: 361
• Meet the DOM: 362
• So Where Does It Work?: 365
• Deep DOM Details: 367
• Please DOM Dont Hurt Em: 368
• Showing and Hiding: 372
• Dynamic Menus DropDown and Expandable: 377
• Aiding Access Offering Choice: 378
• A CSS Redesign: 383
• Defining Goals: 384
• Method and Madness: 386
• Establishing Basic Parameters: 389
• Installing the Sidebar: 391
• The Positioning Part: 392
• Creating Color Bars: 394
• A Space for Content: 395
• RulesBased Design: 397
• A Home Button with CSS Rollover Effects: 399
• Additional Uses of Fahrner Image Replacement FIR: 402
• A CSSXHTML Navigation Bar: 406
• Adding the Style: 407
• Finishing Up: 412
• Modern Browsers The Good the Bad and the Ugly: 419
• The First Wave: 420
• Netscape 6+: 421
• Safari: 422
• MSIE 55Windows: 423
• Netscape 4: 424
• Index: 425

About the author

Jeffrey Zeldman s personal web site (www.zeldman.com) has welcomed more than 16 million visitors and is read daily by thousands in the web design and development industry. In 1998, Zeldman co-founded The Web Standards Project (www.webstandards.org), a grassroots coalition of web designers and developers that helped end the Browser Wars by persuading Microsoft and Netscape to support the same technologies in their browsers.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Designing with Web Standards.; Voices that matter
• Author: Jeffrey Zeldman
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: New Riders, 2003
• ISBN: 0735712018, 9780735712010
• Length: 436 pages
• Subjects: Computers / Web / Design; Computers / Web / General