WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

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Here is a simplified version of the markup: Home About News Works Contact Main content copy. About copy. Copyright information. This case study is available online for you to view at http://wsc.robweychert.com/, and the source files are available to download from www.friendsofed.com/. The page has been tested in the following browsers: Internet Explorer 6 and 7 for Windows Firefox 1.5 for Windows and Macintosh Opera 9 for Windows and Macintosh Safari 1.3 and 2.0 for Macintosh Because of this chapter’s explicit focus on typography, some aspects of the case study’s construction won’t be covered here, but have been documented in detail elsewhere. These include Roger Johansson’s approach to elastic design for the general page layout (“Fixed or fluid width? Elastic!” www.456bereastreet.com/ archive/200504/fixed_or_fluid_width_elastic/) and Douglas Bowman’s sliding doors technique for the expanding header and navigation (“Sliding Doors of CSS,” www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors/). A readable line length The bulk of the techniques I’ll be discussing focus on the case study’s main content area (#main). This section will demonstrate how its proportions were devised and the effect those proportions have on the rest of the layout. 66: The number of the . . . Since #main is the most important element in the hierarchy of the page, I want to be sure it carries the weight of a proper focal point and its readability is maximized. The first step is to determine the width of the line length. The standard range for a readable line of text set in a single column is between 45 and 75 characters (including spaces). This range allows lines to break in chapter 7 Bridging the Type Divide: Classic Typography with CSS 161
162 reasonable increments and prevents them from getting too long or too short for comfortable reading. Many typesetters revere an approximately 66-character line as ideal, and I am among them, so this example will use that width. This is a key proportion, and I want to make sure it is maintained as well as possible, which will be an important factor in how the page is put together. Okay, we admit it: This book breaks the line-length convention outlined here on many an occasion, but we have our reasons. It is mainly due to the fact that we are dealing with not only text, but code sections as well; code lines become a lot less readable if you have to break them up into several fragments to fit them on the page. If I use a liquid layout, the line length will increase or decrease based on the width of the user’s browser window (Figure 7-4). On the other hand, if I use a fixed-width layout, the line length will increase or decrease if the user resizes the browser text, and the potential also exists for horizontal scrolling if the browser window is skinnier than my page’s specified width (Figure 7-5). Dissatisfied with both of these options, I’ve chosen instead to use an elastic layout, which gives me the best of both worlds (Figure 7-6). The layout will expand and contract as the text is resized or as the browser is resized, but it will not expand beyond a specified width. The compromise here is that my line will get shorter as the browser window contracts, but a too-short line is easier to read than one that is too long, and is also a pleasant alternative to horizontal scrolling. Figure 7-4. Liquid layout: When the browser window is expanded, many find the line too long for comfortable reading.
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CAMERON ADAMS ~ MARK BOULTON ~ ANDY
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Web Standards Creativity: Innovatio
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Contents About the Technical Review
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PART 2: EFFECTIVE PRINT TECHNIQUES
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About the Technical Reviewer Molly
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Mark Boulton I’d like to thank Kh
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Getting Creative with Web Standards
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Figure 5. The Zen Garden is still g
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Layout Magic Welcome to Part 1 of o
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Before starting Erskine Design in 2
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6 Figure 1-2. The completed Dirty P
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Dirty pretty presentation When buil
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Background Next, we apply the main
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Finally, the main content selector
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The markup is as follows. Note that
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Unless you study the end result clo
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Tables Descendant selectors are ess
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These very simple rules, and the fa
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Conclusion Of course, building the
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Dan Rubin spends his days blending
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Figure 2-1. On the left, the origin
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The CMS challenge It doesn’t take
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The next step was spending some tim
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Videos Photos Extras Links Forum St
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Ever find yourself getting lost in
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z-index:100; left:29px; top:39px; m
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By looking at the markup generated
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Creating the illusion of vertical t
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The first argument defines the CSS
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Figure 2-9. Before (right) and afte
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Such a #teaser After styling the #t
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When time is of the essence, hacks
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Ethan Marcotte has been designing a
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Getting started The article templat
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Structuring the CSS Looking above t
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Adding a layer of style OK, enough
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A quick preview of our code at this
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For our narrow, 190-pixel-wide righ
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Strictly speaking, these class name
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Our column’s “background” wil
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Figure 3-14. The exact same templat
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Figure 3-17. The anatomy of our nar
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So there we have it: a single class
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Figure 3-21. The text size can be i
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anchor.setAttribute("href", "javasc
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78 4 Designing for Outside the Box
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80 Worries? “Oh baby, what’s th
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82 Stop worrying, start with markup
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84 A third-level heading proudly an
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86 Adding divisions from the conten
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88 With the elements and appropriat
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90 Styling WorrySome.net Whereas ma
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92 Take a peek at how your design i
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94 The final result of your column-
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96 Each of the paragraphs of introd
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98 While floats and image replaceme
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100 Well, maybe you’re not quite
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102 This will be followed by a spec
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104 The result of this is that your
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106 We'll give you another look at
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108 5 Creative Use of PNG Transpare
Page 127 and 128: 110 PNG, GIF, and JPEG The PNG imag
Page 129 and 130: 112 The image that needs to work on
Page 131 and 132: 114 Wilson includes his transparent
Page 133 and 134: 116 Now I’ll create a 1-by-1-pixe
Page 135 and 136: 118 In another creative example, de
Page 137 and 138: 120 A bit of CSS is then used t
Page 139 and 140: 122 And then the CSS: a.photo-conta
Page 141 and 142: 124 I’ve specified #cc0000
Page 143 and 144: 126 However, I’ve reversed their
Page 145 and 146: 128 var div = document.createElemen
Page 147 and 148: 130 6 Grid Design for the Web mark
Page 149 and 150: 132 What is a grid system? A grid s
Page 151 and 152: 134 Ratios and the canvas Ratios ar
Page 153 and 154: 136 Beginning with the pen I like t
Page 155 and 156: 138 Designing the columns The wiref
Page 157 and 158: 140 This makes 1em roughly 10px (16
Page 159 and 160: 142 The masthead includes several i
Page 161 and 162: 144 Building the CSS I’m at the s
Page 163 and 164: 146 Setting the width of the column
Page 165 and 166: 148 Figure 6-16 shows the masthead
Page 167 and 168: 150 It’s starting to look like a
Page 169 and 170: 152 Issues with the design The proj
Page 171: 154 Figure 6-20. The new WRC shares
Page 174 and 175: Rob Weychert is a graphic designer,
Page 176 and 177: The process Figure 7-1. Times New R
Page 180 and 181: Figure 7-5. Fixed-width layout: Hor
Page 182 and 183: Translation Figure 7-9. Final layou
Page 184 and 185: With just three short paragraphs to
Page 186 and 187: Figure 7-12. A cohesive text block
Page 188 and 189: As another elegant piece of insuran
Page 190 and 191: Image replacement But I’m still n
Page 192 and 193: All caps I am quite pleased with my
Page 194 and 195: Small caps There is one more typogr
Page 196 and 197: Figure 7-24. The effort was all wor
Page 198 and 199: DOM Scripting Gems What book on web
Page 200 and 201: Ian Lloyd runs Accessify.com, a sit
Page 202 and 203: Preparing the foundations With a cl
Page 204 and 205: Identifying the sections The basic
Page 206 and 207: The addEvent function primes the we
Page 208 and 209: That’s our AddEvent part, mention
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Page 212 and 213: It is generally considered bad prac
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Page 218 and 219: Sliding in the code In the proof-of
Page 220 and 221: For the purposes of building on the
Page 222 and 223: Never mind all that—what about sa
Page 225 and 226: 208 9 Creating Dynamic Interfaces U
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212 Figure 9-1. The UX Magazine web
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214 Figure 9-3. The White Pages web
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216 Browser size, not resolution Al
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218 There are two major changes bet
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220 return document.documentElement
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222 } else if (typeof target.attach
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224 Figure 9-7 shows the default vi
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226 The markup The high-level struc
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228 if (typeof event.stopPropagatio
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230 Styling with CSS Now that we’
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232 event = window.event; } if (typ
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234 function getPosition(theElement
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236 document.getElementsByTagName("
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238 ghostMarker.marked.appendChild(
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240 Keeping track of changes The te
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10 242 Accessible Sliding Navigatio
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244 The killer feature Admit it. Yo
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246 Accessibility and JavaScript Fo
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248 After the main link is clicked,
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250 Switching between CSS states wi
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252 Adding sliding behaviors Now th
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254 // set the height to a new valu
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256 When using a screen magnifier,
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258 If the user does repeat the “
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260 There may be unforeseen consequ
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262 Croft, Jeff, 109 CSS (Cascading
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264 max-width, 58, 71 @media print,
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266 websites A List Apart, 134 New
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