Web Standards Solutions (eBook)

Welcome to the expanded second edition of Dan Cederholm's bestselling Web Standards Solutions. Web standards are the standard technology specifications enforced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make sure that web designers and browser manufacturers are using the same technology syntax.

It is important that these implementations are the same throughout the Web-otherwise, it becomes a messy proprietary place, and lacks consistency. These standards also allow content to be more compatible with multiple different viewing devices, such as screen readers for people with vision impairments, cell phones, PDFs, etc. HTML, XML, and CSS are all such technologies.

This book is your essential guide to understanding the advantages you can bring to your web pages by implementing web standards and precisely how to apply them. Web standards such as XHTML and CSS are now fairly well-known technologies, and they will likely be familiar to you, the web designer. Indeed, they are all around you on the Web. However, within web standards still lies a challenge: while the browser's support for web standards is steadily increasing, many web developers and designers have yet to discover the real benefits of web standards and respect the need to adhere to them.

The real art is in truly understanding the benefits and implementing the standards efficiently. As a simple example of its power, you can use CSS to lay out your pages instead of nesting tables. This can make file sizes smaller, allowing pages to load faster, ultimately increasing accessibility for all browsers, devices, and web users.

• Expanded edition containing bonus material.
• Teaches how to use Web standards effectively to build better web sites.
• Solutions style promotes learning by work-through examples and assessments.

Dan Cederholm is an award-winning web designer, consultant, and author who specializes in designing and building sites with web standards. Throughout 2003, Dan became well known for his redesigns of the websites for Fast Company and Inc. using standards-compliant methods, while pushing the limits of CSS. Dan also runs the popular weblog SimpleBits, for which he writes articles and commentary on the web, technology, and life. His consulting firm of the same name focuses on applying the methods found throughout Web Standards Solutions (Apress, 2009) in creating simplistic and attractive interfaces. Speaking at conferences such as SXSW Interactive, Dan shares his simplistic approach to web design and development while spreading the word on the standards-based markup and style techniques he's collected. He lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Kerry, two cats, and one gecko.

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You hold in your hands a recipe book. With clear examples and no wasted words, designer Dan Cederholm shows how to put web standards to work creating beautiful, lightweight interfaces that are accessible to all. Dan isn't here to make the creative or business case for standards-based web design. Others (cough) have already done that. And frankly, if you've bothered to pick up this book and thumb through its pages, you probably already know the accessibility, longevity, and business benefits standards-based design provides. You don't need another overview or elevator pitch; you need a practical, roll-up-your-sleeves, component view, and that's what this book delivers. In down-to-earth, natural language-the same kind of language that's found on good websites- Dan examines universal site elements such as page divisions and navigation. Using a teaching method he pioneered at SimpleBits.com, Dan shows how web standards make these universal page components easier to create, easier to modify when your boss or client requests la- minute changes, and most important of all, easier for people to use.