Category: WebDesignBookReview

He comes in peace. He has a message that he wants to convince you to accept and make your own, but he does it with gentle humor and reason rather than with strident zealotry. His approach makes good sense.

He is Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards, from New Riders Press (2003). Zeldman is one of the mainstays in the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and the man behind A List Apart, an influential online journal for Web designers.

The book explains the ins and outs of creating a basic structure with XHTML that can be used in any user device from a braille reader to a Palm Pilot to a computer. Fine points in the XHTML structural design (such as selection of the proper DOCTYPE, and the judicious use of the div tag) get a thorough discussion. Then Zeldman shows how to use that carefully planned structure with CSS to achieve design goals in a variety of ways.

Perhaps I shouldn’t claim that he isn’t a zealot, because the topics he chooses to explore at length reveal his purpose: box models, pixels vs. ‘the heartbreak of ems,’ accessibility, the DOM. He deconstructs some sites down to the decisions that went into each design choice and leads us into the light of web standards.

From a teaching point of view, Zeldman’s philosophy in action would mean teaching the basic XHTML needed to tag a page structurally, but without spending any time on various attributes and values that may or may not be used with each tag. Just the tag, ma’am. Then learn how to use the div and the id to organize that structure into containers for possible styling purposes. And the rest of the class would be spent learning CSS. He shows over and over again how this approach produces documents that can be used in multiple devices and still pack the needed punch to deliver the message meaningfully. This feels like a practical outline for a semester to me.

I can’t review the book without commenting on the cover. Jeffrey Zeldman is not a tall man, and the image of him falling off the bottom of the page as if he weren’t quite able to get his whole head into camera range for a head shot is clever. The addition of the cap gives him the look of a punk, which is quite funny in light of his reasoned arguments in favor of standards in web design. The cover may not say anything about web standards, but it says a lot about the humor and originality of the author.

Being a woman very involved with the Web, I have watched Molly E. Holzschlag’s career with some interest since she was voted one of the “Top 25 Most Influential Women on the Web.” She has done good work in many forums, but her latest book Cascading Style Sheets: The Designer’s Edge from Sybex is one of her best contributions to date. The book takes some of those innovative leaps that Sybex is not afraid to try and the result is a work that is fresh and unique in a crowded sea of CSS books.

The unique hook in this book is the sections devoted to design and “vision” with CSS. The book tells the story of the reconstruction of a table-based site that Holzschlag and Eric A. Meyer (the technical editor of the book and author of the highly regarded Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide) did at a User Interface 7 conference. It is a fascinating explanation of how all the font, span, nonstandard markup and nested tables were removed from a page and the CSS decisions that went into rebuilding the page as an almost exact replica (in appearance) of the original. For the CSS newbie who wants to move away from tables, this is one of the most instructive lessons in how to do it that I have seen in print. And for anyone who already knows quite a lot about CSS, it is still highly informative. All the HTML and CSS used in the exercise and book are available for download from sybex.com.

The examples of “vision” in the book include a CSS Design Gallery showing some of the possibilities for innovative design using pure CSS. Holzschlag states that, “we must use CSS in practical as well as visionary ways,” and suggests that since browser support for CSS and standard markup is very good in modern browsers there will be a great flowering of ideas involving the possibilities and opportunities for creative use of CSS.

The book begins by explaining structured markup and CSS in theory and practice and moves to CSS typography, color, backgrounds, borders and layout. I have been devouring HTML and CSS books for years, especially my beloved HTML for the World Wide Web by Elizabeth Castro, and I still managed to learn some new things and discover some fresh approaches to teaching this material in Cascading Style Sheets: the Designer’s Edge.

The Flash MX Learning Studio from Sybex earns a mixed bag of reactions from me.

The package consists of an interactive CD with the complete contents of the accompanying book, Flash MX Savvy by Ethan Watrall and Norbert Herber. The CD contains hands-on projects with a simulated Flash MX environment that allows you to click through the activities described in the lessons. There are a number of movies of Watrall in the role of instructor talking you through various aspects of the Flash interface.

I’ve written before about the high quality I think Sybex has brought to the Web Design publication world with its “Savvy” series. This book is certainly in keeping with that standard. It is exhaustively complete, well written and well illustrated. There is no doubt in my mind that the material provided is a valuable learning tool.

I’m not sure that the Learning Studio on the CD adds a lot of value to the package, however. A lot depends on your learning style or learning preferences and on whether you want to use the CD as a teaching tool or for individual learning. The material on the CD is exactly the same material as that in the book, with the addition of the simulated Flash environment allowing for an occasional clickable interaction and the addition of Watrall talking you through some of the same material printed in the book. Depending on your learning style, this might be exactly what you need to help you “get it,” even though it is the same thing you can read in the book. If you are using the Flash MX Learning Studio to teach a class in Flash, the CD would provide useful fodder for projecting lessons on a big screen that could weave into class discussion of techniques.

I was put off by the fact that the interface on the CD requires so much screen real estate to see everything that the lines of text become unpleasantly long for extended reading. Reading the book is easier on the eyes. When comparing the movies and examples of interactions on this CD with those you might find on a book from lynda.com’s Hands on Training series, these Sybex Learning Studio movies fall short. The movies just don’t add much to what you get in the text.

You could definitely learn Flash MX from this package. The question you need to resolve for yourself is whether the Flash MX Savvy book by itself would be all you need, or whether you want to go for the added interaction and get the Flash MX Learning Studio as well.

J. Scott Hamlin and Jennifer S. Hall authored Flash MX ActionScript: The Designer’s Edge from Sybex.

Being a programming dunce, I gotta tell you that I really appreciated this book! It helped me understand the fundamentals while still offering up advanced techniques.

There is no CD with this book, but all the files used in the exercises can be downloaded from the Web. As with other such books providing exercise files, there is a partially completed file for you to work the exercises, as well as a completed file so you can see where you are headed with the scripts.

The book is a model of good writing, with clear directions and instructions, full color graphics that clarify and support the information and plenty of helpful aids.

The book contains 11 chapters, covering topics such as cursor interactions, coded animation techniques, ActionScript trigonometry and game building. The chapter on Flash Components teaches you how to customize the built in Flash components such as buttons and check boxes to create your own look. There is a chapter on capturing user input from text fields that shows you how to create and use arrays.

Overall, an outstanding book.