Book Recommendation: Web Standards Creativity

Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design with XHTML, CSS, and DOM Scripting

by Andy Budd, Andy Clarke, Ian Lloyd, Cameron Adams, Rob Weychert, Ethan Marcotte, Dan Rubin, Jeff Croft, Mark Boulton, Simon Collison, Derek Featherstone

Pages: 288
Publisher: friends of ED (March 19, 2007)
Language: English

I haven’t finished reading the book yet. In fact, I’m only 30% done. I felt the need to recommend this book because of 2 reasons. One, Molly Holzschlag is the technical reviewer. Two, I’ll be revisiting Andy Clarke’s WorrySome.net. I first saw the duo in Lynda.com’s CSS for Designers. I was so impressed with their tutorial that I have been following them ever since. By the way, my Web design methodologies were greatly influenced by them. I’m a convert from the old school.

Based on the three chapters that I’ve read so far, I will have to say that the book is very interesting for HTML and CSS enthusiasts. This isn’t a book for beginners. However, this book will surely help beginners as soon as they have read an XHTML-and-CSS-focused book like Molly Holzschlag’s Spring Into HTML and CSS. In other words, if this book can talk it would say, “After you’ve read a basic XHTML and CSS book, buy me!” Becoming aware of Web standards early on will greatly benefit novice Web designers.

The book illustrates the different techniques used by the Web design gurus in making their real world Web design projects. For example in chapter one, Simon Collison gave a behind-the-scenes tutorial of how he laid out the Web site of a band name Dirty Pretty Things. In chapter two, it was Dan Rubin’s turn to discuss how he made the Web site of the famous band, Lifehouse while being constrained by a CMS. With 8 chapters more, there’s definitely a lot of tips and tricks to be learned.

Previous Lifehouse Web Site

Andy Clarke’s Worrysome.net

So far I’m enjoying the book. It’s like a compilation of the CSS techniques that I would otherwise search for, one by one in Google if I hadn’t read the book. It’s also a good companion for The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web. The methods in Web Standards Creativity are more updated and have more real world uses compared with The Zen of CSS Design. But what makes The Zen of CSS Design a companion book is its visually appealing archive of designs that are also created with Web standards in mind. In case you didn’t get enough of the visual design aspect of Web Standards Creativity, then go ahead and get The Zen of CSS Design too.

Reading books like Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design with XHTML, CSS, and DOM Scripting doesn’t only help me learn new things, it also solidifies my principle of creating standards compliant Web pages. It’s like changing your way of life, or taking a path that only a few bother to take. It’s a principle that I would like to partake to my readers.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 18:40 and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.