WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

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The basics of CSS are relatively easy to master, but the
problems start when you try to turn your designs into reality.
Knowing how to mark up the document, applying the
right CSS techniques, and working around browser inconsistencies
become key. This information comes with
experience and cannot be learned from reading the CSS
specification alone. With CSS Mastery, I tried to bridge this
gap and show people some of the latest tips, tricks, and
techniques. At the end of my book, all this information was
put into practice through two amazing case studies from
Cameron Moll and Simon Collison.
There is nothing like learning from the masters, and this is
where Web Standards Creativity comes in. This book picks
up where my book left off, with a series of advanced case
studies for you to dissect. Here, some of the best standardsbased
designers in the world will show you how they take a
project from inception to completion (be it an entire website
design or a cool technique or widget they've developed).
Each chapter is like sitting down with a design master for a
private lesson. They will share with you their unique
processes: how they look at a design, deconstruct it, and
then reassemble it using XHTML and CSS (and sometimes
JavaScript, too, or even other technologies!). Along the
way, you’ll learn some fantastic tricks that you can start
using on your projects immediately. Hey, even I learned a
few new tricks while reading this book.
Yes, I mentioned JavaScript in the previous paragraph.
Scripting is also a big part of this book. For many years,
JavaScript was used to create superfluous effects that
added little to the overall user experience. We saw effects
that did things like scroll the text or shake the browser window.
The code required for these effects was often bloated
and inaccessible, going against the new philosophy of separation.
This led to a backlash, and JavaScript fell out of
fashion for a long time. Then along came Ajax, and everything
changed.
People started to develop a renewed interest in JavaScript,
as pioneers like Jeremy Keith advocated new ways of separating
content and presentation from behavior (see Figure
7). Developers rediscovered the power of the Document
Object Model (DOM), and JavaScript became cool again. By
using JavaScript in a responsible manner, web developers
are now able to add advanced interactivity to their web
pages—interactivity that can help improve the user experience
and make better websites. As well as covering XHTML
and CSS, Web Standards Creativity contains a whole part
dedicated to modern JavaScript techniques for web design.
If you ever wanted a crash course in practical standardsbased
design, this book is for you. So stop reading the
introduction, turn to page 1, and start getting creative with
Web Standards.
Andy Budd
Brighton, England, October 2006
Author, CSS Mastery
Figure 7. Check out DOM Scripting:
Web Design with JavaScript and the
Document Object Model by Jeremy
Keith, for more information on
this subject.