WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

Layout Magic
Welcome to Part 1 of our journey into advanced standards-based web
design! Unsurprisingly, the first part deals with advanced layout techniques,
so the focus is mainly on CSS. The final choices for inclusion here (as for all
of the book) were made because the authors have something a bit interesting
and out of the ordinary to say. Let's face it, how many tutorials have you
seen on the Web dealing with CSS layout techniques?
The authors have really pulled something special out of the hat here. Simon,
Ethan, and Andy show different ways of achieving beautifully designed sites
raised on a strict diet of lean, semantic markup, with clever use of class values,
positioning out of the box, and more.
Dan shows how you can still make a great-looking site, even if you are constrained
by content fed from a content management system. He also throws
in some Flash image replacement and a small amount of DOM scripting for
good measure.
Jeff focuses on using transparent PNGs, along with your CSS and HTML, to
create some truly awesome design effects on your site.
The authors talk about browser-support inconsistencies when they apply,
and explain how they got around those problems. The beautiful layouts you
see here were achieved without having to resort to many hacks!
Have fun on your travels . . .
part 1