Review: The CSS Detective Guide


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A review by Web Teacher of The CSS Detective Guide: Tricks for solving tough CSS mysteries (rating: 4 stars)

CSS Detective Guide by Denise R. Jacobs is from New Riders (2010). This book would be most helpful for beginners. The cover lists the level as beginning/intermediate, which makes sense, but I think beginners will get the most out of it. It’s difficult for a person who already has a strong skill set to remember what the beginner’s mind is like. Jacobs is a master at it.

In Part 1 of the book, she takes the reader through a succinct and very clear introduction to HTML and CSS with standards and semantics thrown into the mix. She describes the debugging process and gives all sorts of checklists for troubleshooting both HTML and CSS. One chapter in Part 1, called “The Usual Suspects” takes the reader efficiently through document flow, positioning, the box model, hasLayout, floats, lists, margins, nasties like the Peakaboo bug, font sizing and a list of fixes for the related design issues. The book is worth the price for Part 1 alone.

I’d give you the chapter titles, but they aren’t informative. The chapter titles are like “Investigating the Scene of the Crime.” That chapter is about HTML document structure, semantic HTML, and CSS.

The tips for isolating problems and figuring out why certain bits of HTML or CSS aren’t working as expected are helpful checklists. For a beginner who is pulling her hair out because something just won’t behave as expected, these lists of how to systematically work through the code in search of the answer are a great resource.

Part 2 of the book is devoted to chapters with a real world “detective case” about a design problem to solve. Each case starts with a design problem. The problem might be a forgotten bit of code, syntax issues, a float problem, and browser workarounds. There are several pages of code in each of the real-world example chapters. Jacobs walks the reader through the code in the debugging process. (The code doesn’t seem to be online anywhere. If a reader wanted to recreate the pages and manually put the fixes in place to see the results, it would have to be typed from scratch. At least I couldn’t find any mention of an online code bank for the detective cases.) [AMENDED: According to the author, the code will be available at http://cssdetectiveguide.com by June 15, 2010. Don’t start typing, you’ll get the code soon.]

There are many IE6 issues and workarounds explained in this book. I’m not convinced a beginning designer needs to worry about IE6 now, at least in the U.S. But when you consider that New Riders has an international distribution system, I think there are still many people who will find this helpful. IE6 is a legacy hangover that lingers.

Summary: A good resource for basic HTML and CSS concepts, with many helpful tips for finding and debugging design issues.

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Useful Links: WestCiv Tools, GHC 2010, Facebook

The Stylemaster folks at WestCiv have some online CSS tools that are useful. Make gradients, transforms, shadows and stroke text with these tools. Small icons on each tool show you which browsers currently support these CSS3 techniques.

Grace Hopper 2010 Poster
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing for 2010 is themed “Collaborating Across Boundaries.” It’s set in Atlanta, Georgia, September 28 – October 2, 2010.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has put together a tutorial explaining step by step how to get the most privacy out of Facebook’s latest attempt to fix its privacy nightmare. You might get a laugh out of Wired Pen’s explanation of Facebook’s Principles.

Useful links: Web Directions, HTML5 Watch, Pew on Reputation

Web Directions North has a new web site and an announced lineup for the Atlanta, GA, conference September 21–25. This group includes a lot of people interested in web education, InterACT, and OWEA. You don’t see  it on the agenda, but there will be plenty of people there who want to engage in conversation about web education. If you are a web educator, this might be the conference for you!

HTML5 Watch is a Tumblr blog collecting links to projects in HTML5. Not only can you find HTML5 projects that way, you can contribute links if you know of anything that isn’t already there.

“When compared with older users, young adults are more likely to restrict what they share and whom they share it with.” That’s according to the Pew report on Reputation Management and Social Media. The report also states, “Young adults, far from being indifferent about their digital footprints, are the most active online reputation managers in several dimensions.” Read the full report online here.

The InterACT Summit I mentioned a couple of days ago is already filled. If you wanted to attend, I hope you registered in time. (There is a waiting list, if you want to keep your fingers crossed.)

SWIX your way into social media analytics

SWIX is an analytics tool that tracks your success in social media. You can check how you’re doing over various time periods in your social media campaigns.

Right now you can try it free while it’s in beta. When the beta testing is over, there will still be a 14 day free trial. After that it’s $9 a month for a personal account, $29 a month for a professional account or $99 a month for a business account.

Here’s a company video that explains what the product does. It’s short, and there’s a blooper that makes it worth watching to the end.

TechCrunch makes their SWIX information public. You can see what kind of information they are tracking to get an idea of how your or your business could make use of SWIX.

Each data stream of information is called a “pod.” A pod is simply a social media tool that can be tracked, for example blog subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook profiles or groups, YouTube channels, and others—you can see them all in the image.

swix pods

You click the plus sign by one of the pod icons to add it to your pods. You can then add the metrics from that pod to your “reports” by clicking the plus sign in the pod window.

SXIX pod for a Flickr group

You use the menu items at the bottom of the pod window to display graphs, edit, refresh, collapse or remove that pod from your pod choices. I tracked my Twitter account for 2 whole days and got this graph as a visual for how I’m doing.

SWIX Graph

The graphs also appear as part of your report page, which you can see in the TechCrunch example in you click the menu item “Report.”

Mentions and reviews of SWIX

Some conclusions

If you are running a business and investing money and hours in social media campaigns, this tool can help you track your success. Check it out.

For a blogger or a small web site owner, SWIX might not be something you need to spend your money on. There are other anlytics tools that might be more helpful such as Post Rank, Woopra or Google Analytics.

The InterACT Summit

The InterACT Summit: Virtual Book Launch and Conference, June 11, 2010.

Along with members of the Web Standards Project, we are proud to announce the launch of InterACT With Web Standards, a book that brings all aspects of web design together for teachers and students. To celebrate the release of the book, several of the expert contributors come together online to give mini-tutorials in their fields of expertise.

It’s a free event and we expect tickets to go fast. So, reserve your space now!

Details and registration information here. Space is limited.

Review: Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook


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A review by Web Teacher of Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook, Special Edition (rating: 5 stars)

Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook, Special Edition by Dan Cedarholm is from Friends of ED (2009). This is an updated edition of Cedarholm’s 2004 book by the same name. When I reviewed the 2004 book, this is what I said.

The book grew out of Cederholm’s practice of asking his simplebits.com users to offer ideas on markup by asking questions such as, “What is the best way to markup such-and-such a page element with XHTML?” The responses were interesting and so is the book, which explores standards-based structural markup and CSS in a way that is fast and easy reading and provides very useful content.

Cederholm covers topics such as markup for lists, headings, tables, forms, and anchors. He looks at CSS for all those elements, plus print styles, CSS layouts, image replacement techniques, and body styles. He examines possible ways to do all these things and brings you gently to understand the way that best uses standards and semantic markup to accomplish the job.

Although this is not a book for beginners, students with basic knowledge of XHTML and CSS will like this book. It is quick to use, provides good examples and resources, and is written in an engaging and light-hearted style that is fun to read. Definitely recommended.

That review still tells the story of what this book is about. Much of the content is unchanged. A small amount of new content has been added. For example, in the chapter “Applying CSS” there is now a section on “Reset Styles.” With the 2009 edition, there are bonus materials available online from Friends of ED. These include the example files from the book, a couple of extra chapters (one by Ian Lloyd) and several appendix-type reference chapters.

Although the bonus materials are excellent, they may not be enough of an incentive to buy the new edition if you own the 2004 edition. If you don’t own the 2004 edition, this is a terrific book for anyone interested in semantic markup to own. It’s worth buying. You will learn much about the best markup solutions to most text formatting questions.

Summary: An updated classic about semantic markup and CSS.

Cross posted at Webuquerque.

Foursquare

Today’s useful links are all about Foursquare. Are you using Foursquare? Gowalla? Any product of this type?

7 Ways Journalists can use Foursquare at Mashable offers ideas that apply to anyone, not just journalists.

Foursquare for news references the Mashable article but has some additional thoughts to add.

A How-To on Foursquare is for educators.

Mayors of Starbucks now get Discounts Nationwide with Foursquare shows how businesses are using Foursquare to gain loyal customers. Could a reward or recognition system work in education on Foursquare?

Foursquare Snags a Deal with the Today Show. The article also mentions partnerships with The Wall Street Journal, VH1 and The History Channel.