WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

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Dirty pretty presentation When building purely with XHTML, it is sensible to have a good idea of what the layout of the site will be. Naturally, we will be thinking in terms of columns and core areas, such as masthead and footer, and often this will be informed by a Photoshop layout (or even a sketch using pencils and paper!) from a designer on the team. With the Dirty Pretty Things site, this was not the case, as none of us had yet arrived at a layout that we ourselves could agree on, never mind the folks at the record company. By applying an external style sheet to the fully functional XHTML site, we approached the problem organically. This means that, as we were bereft of an agreed-upon design, we began working up a look and feel through experimentation with the CSS. We tested everything from layout (fluid, fixed, or elastic) to font choices by creating and modifying CSS rules. This approach is slow, and demands having Photoshop open at all times to create and tweak background images that may or may not make it into the final design, but it is an exciting process that removes the restraints of a delivered, cast-in-stone design. Armed with all the original artwork from Hannah Bays, and slowly developing parameters such as heights, widths, margins, and padding, a satisfying design will soon begin to materialize. As the style sheet is applied to all pages of the site, it is easy to see what is working site-wide. What areas of the artwork will work as backgrounds? Can certain areas be used as background tiles? Is a common color palette for text and core elements achievable from the collected source material? The next step is to discuss the design with colleagues, involving much chin-stroking and coffee, before making sure the client is happy with the progress so far. Then we hone the ingredients bit by bit and tighten the design, before throwing it out for usability testing. Finally, the site is launched and the collected Agenzians can hit the pub. Background images Perhaps the most dramatic change from XHTML to carefully styled prettiness happens where the main background image meets the masthead and its descendants. A lot of careful Photoshop work is applied using a succession of background images, as illustrated in Figure 1-4. Figure 1-4. Split into several layers, various background images are juxtaposed. Before you start going hell-for-leather with background images, it is important to consider how this will affect the end user. Although less important than it used to be, you still need to realize that some folks are downloading web pages using really slow modems. A typical web page might contain something like 15KB of text and therefore download pretty quickly. Add 35KB of background images to that, and you are reducing the speed of the visitors’ viewing experience significantly, at least until the browser has cached the images. Keep image use light, and go overboard only when it is really necessary or when you are designing for an audience you know will be using super-fast broadband connections. Under no circumstances do we use background images to convey important information when no alternative is available if the images do not display or are manually disabled by a user. For example, we don’t use a background image to show the title of the website, any navigation items, or any kind of flattened text content, unless we also provide this information with standard text if images are turned off. Background images are decorative adornments and certainly not to be considered “content,” which is why they are referenced in the style sheet as separate presentation elements. chapter 1 Semantic Structure, Dirty Pretty Presentation 9
10 Background, masthead, and menu We’ll begin with how the three main layers—background, masthead, and main menu—are styled on the existing XHTML. One inline image is present already: the main Dirty Pretty Things logo. The logo (Figure 1-5) is an animated GIF, which spells out the band name letter by letter when the page first loads. This logo is in the flow of the document, sitting top left within the masthead. Figure 1-5. The Dirty Pretty Things logo becomes an animated GIF, with a jagged background. Looking at the XHTML for this section, you’ll see that the band name is also specified within the element, which is hidden using display:none. This is to ensure that if images and CSS are disabled, the site is still branded. Dirty Pretty Things - Official Website ...rest of content...
Page 1 and 2: CAMERON ADAMS ~ MARK BOULTON ~ ANDY
Page 3 and 4: Web Standards Creativity: Innovatio
Page 6 and 7: Contents About the Technical Review
Page 8 and 9: PART 2: EFFECTIVE PRINT TECHNIQUES
Page 10 and 11: About the Technical Reviewer Molly
Page 12 and 13: Mark Boulton I’d like to thank Kh
Page 14 and 15: Getting Creative with Web Standards
Page 16 and 17: Figure 5. The Zen Garden is still g
Page 18 and 19: Layout Magic Welcome to Part 1 of o
Page 20: Before starting Erskine Design in 2
Page 23 and 24: 6 Figure 1-2. The completed Dirty P
Page 28 and 29: Background Next, we apply the main
Page 30 and 31: Finally, the main content selector
Page 32 and 33: The markup is as follows. Note that
Page 34 and 35: Unless you study the end result clo
Page 36 and 37: Tables Descendant selectors are ess
Page 38 and 39: These very simple rules, and the fa
Page 40 and 41: Conclusion Of course, building the
Page 42 and 43: Dan Rubin spends his days blending
Page 44 and 45: Figure 2-1. On the left, the origin
Page 46 and 47: The CMS challenge It doesn’t take
Page 48 and 49: The next step was spending some tim
Page 50 and 51: Videos Photos Extras Links Forum St
Page 52 and 53: Ever find yourself getting lost in
Page 54 and 55: z-index:100; left:29px; top:39px; m
Page 56 and 57: By looking at the markup generated
Page 58 and 59: Creating the illusion of vertical t
Page 60 and 61: The first argument defines the CSS
Page 62 and 63: Figure 2-9. Before (right) and afte
Page 64 and 65: Such a #teaser After styling the #t
Page 66 and 67: When time is of the essence, hacks
Page 68 and 69: Ethan Marcotte has been designing a
Page 70 and 71: Getting started The article templat
Page 72 and 73: Structuring the CSS Looking above t
Page 74 and 75: 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
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110 PNG, GIF, and JPEG The PNG imag
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112 The image that needs to work on
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114 Wilson includes his transparent
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116 Now I’ll create a 1-by-1-pixe
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118 In another creative example, de
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120 A bit of CSS is then used t
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122 And then the CSS: a.photo-conta
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124 I’ve specified #cc0000
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126 However, I’ve reversed their
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128 var div = document.createElemen
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130 6 Grid Design for the Web mark
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132 What is a grid system? A grid s
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134 Ratios and the canvas Ratios ar
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136 Beginning with the pen I like t
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138 Designing the columns The wiref
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140 This makes 1em roughly 10px (16
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142 The masthead includes several i
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144 Building the CSS I’m at the s
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146 Setting the width of the column
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148 Figure 6-16 shows the masthead
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150 It’s starting to look like a
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152 Issues with the design The proj
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154 Figure 6-20. The new WRC shares
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Rob Weychert is a graphic designer,
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The process Figure 7-1. Times New R
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Here is a simplified version of the
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Figure 7-5. Fixed-width layout: Hor
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Translation Figure 7-9. Final layou
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With just three short paragraphs to
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Figure 7-12. A cohesive text block
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As another elegant piece of insuran
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Image replacement But I’m still n
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All caps I am quite pleased with my
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Small caps There is one more typogr
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Figure 7-24. The effort was all wor
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DOM Scripting Gems What book on web
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Ian Lloyd runs Accessify.com, a sit
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Preparing the foundations With a cl
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Identifying the sections The basic
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The addEvent function primes the we
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That’s our AddEvent part, mention
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for (i=0;i
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It is generally considered bad prac
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hide the sections from printout el[
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The following is the code required
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Sliding in the code In the proof-of
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For the purposes of building on the
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Never mind all that—what about sa
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208 9 Creating Dynamic Interfaces U
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210 Different layouts for different
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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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WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

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