Category: WebDesignBookReview

Review: HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World


HTML5 & CSS3 For The Real World, written by Alexis Goldstein, Louis Lazaris and Estelle Weyl, is from Sitepoint (2011). This book takes on several topics that could fill an entire book individually, yet manages to serve each topic well. As you can tell from the title, the book talks about HTML5 and CSS3, but it also goes into complementary JavaScript/API topics like geolocation, offline web apps, web storage, Canvas, SVG, drag and drop.

 The authors specifically point to the growing mobile market, and that focus is reflected in the chapters included in the book. They say,
Mobile Safari on iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, as well as the Android operating system’s web browser all provide strong levels of HTML5 and CSS3 support. New features and technologies supported by some of those browser include CSS3 colors and opacity, the Canvas API, Web Storage, SVG, CSS3 rounded corners, Offline Web Apps, and more.

The authors made a strong effort to be as up to date as one can possibly be in a hardcopy format. They mentioned very recent changes in HTML5. They knew what future versions of browsers were likely to support, and therefore, what vendor specific prefixes were no longer needed, or soon would not be needed.

The downloadable site adds valuable practical and hands-on experience with the examples in the book that many learners will appreciate. It gives you something concrete to grapple with in addition to the theoretical information behind what’s going on in a browser or other device. Since I tend to look at everything from an educator’s point of view, I think the downloadable files would be a real asset if this book was used to teach either HTML5 or CSS3 or both.

It’s a lot for one book, but it’s all handled well. Which makes this book a decent choice for someone who wants a single resource to guide them through the new technologies and tools that are available in and around HTML5 and CSS3. I wouldn’t recommend it for someone who didn’t already understand HTML and CSS, but it is certainly a valuable book for learning the latest information in those fields.

Summary: An all-inclusive resource for learning HTML5 and CSS3.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World (rating: 5 stars)

Review: The Book of CSS 3


cover of The Book of CSS 3

The Book of CSS 3: A Developer’s Guide to the Future of Web Design by Peter Gasston is from No Starch Press, 2011. This is a professional level book, meant for developers already capable with CSS. Gasston does an effective job of describing all the currently practical and theoretically useful capabilities of CSS 3.

He approaches each topic by starting with a high level explanation of the syntax for each CSS 3 property. He then gives a brief but practical code example accompanied by a black and white figure showing the effect of the code snippet. If there are a number of ways the CSS can be used to create different effects, Gasston goes through each one. For example, he has numerous examples of what can be done with multiple columns and gradients. He lists which browsers (if any) support the property now and which browsers have promised support in the near future. If browser specific prefixes are needed for properties, he specifies which ones.

The chapters are arranged in an order that takes the reader from parts of CSS 3 that are immediately useful and dependable to things that are still theoretical and not yet implemented. Here are some of the chapters – I’m leaving out things like introductions and appendices – but you can see the way the information is ordered.

  • media queries
  • selectors
  • pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements
  • web fonts
  • text effects and typographic styles
  • multiple columns
  • background images
  • border and box effects
  • color and opacity
  • gradients
  • 2D transformations
  • transitions and animations
  • 3D transformations
  • flexible box layout
  • template layout
  • the future of CSS 3

There are two appendices. One collects all the browser support data from each individual chapter and property. The other is an excellent set of links for online resources.

I read it front to back because I was planning to write this review, but I think this book would be most useful to a developer as a reference. Keep it on a nearby shelf and grab it when you need to check on how to do something or check on what needs a browser prefix or check or the syntax needed to accomplish a particular effect. It’s immediately useful, but it will also be there with solid information as some of the not-yet-implemented aspects of CSS 3 come into common use.

I can certainly understand the decision by an author and publisher to keep the cost of a book down by going with only black and white, but this book would have benefited from color. I have a trivial complaint that has nothing to do with the quality of the content of the book. The paper used for the cover has some sort of coating that makes it feel greasy. It doesn’t actually make your fingers greasy, of course, but I had the urge to wash my hands every time I touched the book. A disconcerting sensation that was distracting to me.

Summary: A thorough examination of the present and potential uses of CSS 3.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of The Book of CSS 3: A Developer’s Guide to the Future of Web Design (rating: 4 stars)

Games and Accessibility

I did two things in the last few days.

  1. Participated in John Slatin AccessU in Austin, TX both as a presenter and as a participant in the some of the excellent classes and sessions offered on accessibility. If you’re self-taught on the topic of accessibility, this event is like getting your Ph.D. in accessibility. I urge you to make an effort to attend some time.
  2. Finished reading Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How they Can Change the World. This fascinating book opened my eyes to so many new concepts I could wax on about it for a long time. It has changed the way I look at many things – not just games. Anyone who is interested in modern technology and social change should read this book.

During AccessU, there was no discussion of games. That does not mean that people with disabilities don’t enjoy playing games. Today I opened my Google Reader and saw this article from ATMac: Time-Independent Games. If Jane McGonigal is right about what game design is going to mean to the future of the entire world, then we need to start thinking and talking about how games can be made accessible and compliant with WCAG 2.0. Particularly if a game is meant to have a real effect in the real world, we don’t want to bar the creative thinking that might come from the disabled who might play.

Review: Smashing CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout

Smashing CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout by Eric A. Meyer is from Sitepoint, 2011. This is a very different sort of book by Eric Meyer. Not in subject matter, of course, but in tone and purpose. Instead of his previous rather pedantic and encyclopedic listing of every thing you might ever want to know about CSS, this book is light, humorous, and organized to be read from front to back.

If you’ve been paying attention to CSS for the last few years, most of this book will be old news to you. But the book isn’t aimed for those already literate with CSS. It’s meant to help the newbie learn enough to master the basics and go on to create some cool looks and layouts with CSS. Every chapter has lots of examples, screen shots, code, and advice.

The first section starts right at the beginning with a chapter on Tools such as Firebug and SelectORacle. Chapter 2 talks about every kind of selector with advice about what works best when there is more than one way to accomplish something. The second section of the book deals with Essentials. In the chapter called Tips you learn about things like unitless line-height values, image replacement, and list styles. The chapter called Layouts reviews float containment and explains layouts like faux columns, liquid bleach, the one true layout, fluid grids, and the holy grail. In the Effects chapter he explains how to create an effect like his complex spiral. He also explains CSS pop-ups, menus, rounded corners, sprites, sliding doors, parallax, ragged floats, and constrained images.

The final section of the book is Cutting Edge, in which he moves away from reviewing the foundation CSS knowledge of the past and jumps into new ideas. There’s a chapter on Tables that shows new techniques for styling tables. He gives tips on using head, body and foot for table design and shows how to use a table to make a graph or provide data on a map. The final chapter is Cutting Edge. This chapter looks at HTML5, media queries, occasional children, occasional columns, RGBa, shadows, multiple backgrounds and transforms.

From a web education perspective, this would be an excellent book for teaching a CSS class.

Summary: A perfect book for those just learning CSS.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of Smashing CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout (rating: 5stars)

Web Design Book Review: HTML Manual of Style

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HTML Manual of Style: A Clear, Concise Reference for Hypertext Markup Language (including HTML5) is by Larry Aronson from Addison Wesley Publishing (2011).

It’s been quite some time since I received a book from a publisher that I couldn’t recommend. I can’t recommend this one. There are many parts of it that are okay, but there are also sections that are confusing, disorganized or just plain  disconnected from best practice.

I won’t describe the acceptable material, although there was some, because it’s overwhelmed by the sections that I wouldn’t want to see a web educator teaching in a modern classroom.

Here are a few of the things that bothered me.

Throughout the book, there is a mishmash of HTML 3.2, HTML 4, XHTML, and HTML5. Often there is no explanation as to which is which, what’s deprecated or obsolete, and what might not work yet in certain browsers. The DOCTYPE provided is for HTML5. That DOCTYPE is not explained, it’s just given as the only DOCTYPE. (I guess that means backwards compatibility must compensate for just about everything.)

In Chapter 2, titled The HTML Language, there’s a section on Tables. It gives some sample code for a table and lists some attributes that can be applied to various table elements—including border, cellpadding, and bgcolor. You read that right: bgcolor The next code block shows some alignment and spacing presentation rules in a table using CSS, but includes this table tag:

<table cellspacing="0" border="1" align="center" width="80%">

There’s no explanation as to why some CSS is used to style parts of the table but not the spacing and the borders, nor why the obsolete align="center" is used.

Here’s the final part of the Tables section.

When tables are coded by hand, the author generally knows what kind of content will go into the cells. However, when tables are generated by server-side scripts drawing content from a database, it is less certain what content, if any, will go into a given row or cell. Therefore, extra care is needed to deal with null data values and edge conditions.

Server-side scripts? Null data values and edge conditions? Wondering what that means in terms of coding a table? Well, there’s no explanation, the phrases are just dropped in there like the reader knows what it’s about.

Later in Chapter 2, in a section on inline images, the author shows how to use the HTML5 figure and figcaption elements, then goes on to explain how to control the presentation of an image using align and hspace
and vspace attributes. Yes, the suggestion is to put obsolete HTML 3.2 presentational attributes in an HTML5 element. CSS isn’t mentioned.

Chapter 4 is called Using HTML. I’m quoting from a section called Tools of the Trade:

The most important tool for working with HTML is the View Source option, available from a menu or toolbar on most browsers.

Really?

I could cite more examples of what I think makes this book not one you want to buy, but I’ll leave it at that.

The thing that upsets me the most about this book is that it’s from Addison Wesley, an educational publisher with access to school textbook adoption programs. This book is going to get into the hands of middle and high school teachers, who—let’s face it—usually don’t have the training to teach HTML. They rely on the textbook—use it as curriculum and build a program around it. Students using this book are not going to learn best practices, web standards, or accessibility. They deserve better.

Summary: Not the best choice for classroom use.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of HTML Manual of Style (rating: 1 stars)

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Web Design Book Review: HTML5 for Web Designers

HTML5 for Web Designers

HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith is the first book under the A Book Apart imprint, published by Jeffrey Zeldman (2010). It’s available from A Book Apart.

It’s a small book, less than 100 pages, with only 6 chapters. The chapters are A Brief History of Markup, The Design of HTML5, Rich Media, Web Forms 2.0, Semantics, and Using HTML5 Today. If you watched the video of Keith in Jeremy Keith on the Design of HTML5, you have a basic idea what the first two chapters are about. The book, of course, contains more detail than the video.

The Rich Media chapter goes into some detail at the code level about the new <canvas>, <audio> and <video> elements. Code examples help clarify the Web Forms chapter, as well. Form enhancements he talks about include placeholder attributes, autofocus, the required attribute, the autocomplete attribute, the datalist element, and new input types and what they mean right now.

The Semantics chapter talks about microformats, new elements such as <mark>, <time>, <meter>, and <progress>. Everyone is most interested in the new structural elements or sectioning elements, and he explains each of them, including <section>, <header>, <footer>, <aside>, <nav> and <article>. The book ends with a mention of what can be used today and how to help the nonsupporting browsers use HTML5 by adding ARIA roles or scripts like the HTM5 shiv and modernizr.

The book is clear and well-written so it’s easy to read. You could probably read the whole thing in less than an hour. But the simplicity of the book is a bit deceptive, because there is a lot of depth to the material. If you are hesitant about starting to use HTML5, the book can give you the basic knowledge you need to being exploring and trying it out.

Summary: An excellent book for web designers who want to learn how HTML5 can be used now.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of HTML5 for Web Designers (rating: 5 stars)

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Review: Professional Blogging for Dummies

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A review by Virginia DeBolt of Professional Blogging For Dummies (rating: 5 stars)

Professional Blogging for Dummies is by Susan J. Getgood. It’s from Wiley Publishing (2010).

In all the years that I have been reading and reviewing computer/tech books, I’ve never read one the of the books in Wylie’s For Dummies series. I had the idea that they would be watered down and superficial treatments of the topics. Boy, was I wrong—at least if this book by Susan Getgood is representative of the whole series. This book is a complete guide to becoming a professional, money-making blogger who treats a blog as a business.

The discussion starts with the attitude and mind-set you need if you are serious about being a professional blogger. It tells you how to search out and identify a niche that will fit you. You learn how to do the preliminary planning such as identifying your audience, studying your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses before selecting your niche, and getting involved in your niche before you even begin to blog. If you follow the steps in this section of the book about looking for your niche and planning your blog before you even get it set up, you will be in a really strong position to achieve success. It helps you take a hard-headed look at what you have to offer, what others already offer like it, what you can expect to get out of it, and what you’ll need to put into it.

The necessary steps for setting up a business legally and with the proper legal protections and policies are explained in Chapter 3. This includes help with setting up a policy for endorsements, reviews, and testimonials, and for complying with the FTC disclosure requirement. Chapter 4 takes a look at making money with the blog. Early planning decisions are discussed as well as details about selling ads, finding sponsors, and other money making options. You also learn how to track the money effectively as a business. Chapter 5 goes into depth about selling products or services on a blog. Chapter 6 really digs into making money from advertising. Chapter 7 looks at making money writing for blogs.

There’s a section of the book devoted to building the blog. This includes Chapter 8 about naming the blog, finding a platform and hosting, and registering the domain name. Chapter 9 talks about blog design. Chapter 10 gives you tips on creating the blog’s content. Everything from finding your voice to writing good headlines and using video and images is explained.

Maximizing Your Blog’s Success includes a chapter on getting the word out through email, traditional media, blogrolls, comments, contests, social networks, and search engines. There’s a whole chapter helping with what to do when companies come calling with pitches that may or may not work for your blog. The section on how to work with marketers is very helpful, because bloggers are barraged with marketing PR constantly. Tracking the blog’s success with various measurements and analytics is explained carefully. There’s a chapter with help about keeping the blog fresh and engaged and growing in this section.

The last part of the book is called The Part of Tens. It contains chapters on 10 mistakes to avoid, 10 blogs to learn from, and 10 tips for jump-starting creativity.

Overall, the book is clearly written with excellent examples and advice. It works through the process step-by-step from planning to posting. I think you could follow the guidance in this book to a successful, money-making blog.

The disclaimers: I was asked to review this book by BlogHer, who provided me with a copy of the book. I met Susan Getgood briefly at a BlogHer Conference once and exchanged a few words with her. I even snapped her picture. Many (but not all) of the successful blogs mentioned as examples in the book are members of the BlogHer network. This is not because the book is slanted toward BlogHer or women, but because so many successful bloggers are women who are members of the BlogHer network.

Summary: An excellent resource for starting a profitable blog-based business.

[Cross-posted in a different and expanded form at BlogHer]

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