Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook (Pioneering Series)

Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook (Pioneering Series) | Dan Cederholm | Outstanding Resource!

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Web Standards Solu...

	Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook (Pioneering Series) Dan Cederholm friends of ED, 2004 - 252 pages average customer review:based on 52 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great book with a solid CSS foundation

Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook is a 2004 release by Dan Cederholm. I was inclined to read this book after reading his more recent publication, Bulletproof Web Design. I really enjoy his writing style and the content presented. Though this book was published a few years ago, the principles still apply to many of the modern techniques used to solve problems.

What I liked most about this book was how Dan keeps his opinions to himself and brings facts and solutions to the table. The book was not watered down with 'selling' web standards. Each chapter concluded with several routes to achieving different tasks. Dan walks through each of the methods and explains how each works (and its upsides and downsides). Many of the chapters also concluded with `bonus' or `extra credit' pieces that stretched the reader a step further.

The structure of this book reminded me of Simon Collison's recent book, Beginning CSS Web Development. Both books are excellent in their own respects, and I would recommend having both as a quick reference.

Part One walked through the markup. He took short chapters and devoted them to things such as lists, headings, tables, quotations, and forms. Each chapter discussed old methods for handling tasks, the markup and meaning associated with the tasks, and how to best organize your markup. These chapters give a very thorough understanding of the everyday tags used in web development.

Part Two got down and dirty with CSS and applying it to your markup. Not only did it discuss CSS, but it also discussed organizing your CSS, applying Print styles to your pages, and how to manage things such as text and image replacement (always a tough subject). He gives a very thorough walkthrough of applying CSS - and then looks to the future and stirs up the creative juices.

There are several times where I have referred back to Bulletproof Web Design to help me get creative with different tasks. Dan's writing style is great in that he gets out of the way and opens up the door for you to get creative and get your hands dirty. It's not weighted down with personal opinion or selling - but is loaded with practical techniques and methods. If you are new to CSS and would like to learn best practices, I suggest buying this book along with Simon's book, Beginning CSS Web Development - these two books will give you a solid foundation moving forward. For the advanced CSS developer, this book is still nice to have as a reference.

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Outstanding Resource!

I recently volunteered to assist as webmaster for a friend's mayoral campaign website. Having last used HTML and some Javascript years ago for a very basic personal homepage, I needed to get up to speed quickly. So I hit many, many websites and web tutorials on XHTML and CSS. They gave me an acceptable, but not entirely solid foundation on designing with those technologies. I needed more, and fortunately found this book.

Web Standards Solutions did not just build on my shaky foundation, it completely rebuilt it. I can't imagine a better book for my needs.

Chapter by chapter, it is full of concrete examples of how to use standard tags properly and how to use CSS to style your content. It fully explains the strengths and weaknesses of various common markup techniques and makes very good cases for standards-based solutions each time. The chapter on how to use tables properly should be manditory reading for every webdesigner in the business.

Using what I've learned in this book, I've completely rewritten the site I had designed for my friend. It looks identical, but now it uses semantically relavent markup, and leaves the styling and layout to completely to CSS, as it should be. Now, if someone views the site using an old, pre-CSS browser, the site will still render in a highly readable manner. It's also accessible and friendly to folks with disabilities.

I recommend this powerful, well-written book to anyone who maintains a website, no matter how small or large. This book simply will save you time, effort, sweat and tears.

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The best CSS book yet

I've read many CSS books last several years, but still this is the best CSS book out there. The content itself deserves 5 stars, but what separates it from others is Dan's teaching style. From start to end, every page is carefully organized and well planned with readers in mind, this book is not just collection of good CSS tips and tricks. There are so many great books on CSS these days, but this is the best.

Extremely pedagogic and well-written.

I really liked this book and consider it to be in a class for itself (no pun intended :-).

I especially liked the way the author discussed different methods of solving the same problem, highlighting the pro's and con's of each solution, then summarising in a easily understood conclusion, accompanied by clear examples.

I recommend this book for professionals first, although it of course could be quite useful for amateurs as well.

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Very useful book for web design and layout

I really liked this book. The book expounds practical real world application of semantic html and css to common web design tasks. This is an essential book for anyone who wishes to get away from table-based layout design and get into effective page design and layout using standards. The book is practical in the sense that the techniques or best practices outlined include "hacks" to make the css techniques work with browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer that are not fully standards compliant.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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