While the number of online, freely available, Web design-related resources and blogs is vast and continues to grow, sometimes reaching for a design book provides welcome relief from the computer screen.
This year has seen the publication in print of a number of established online authors, including Andy Budd, Andy Clarke, Simon Collison, Bruce Lawson, and Richard Rutter. Despite their Web credentials, these authors understand that offline collections of information and opinion (that is, books) are as popular as ever.
Comprehensively accessible
A book-length text allows an author to discuss topics in greater depth and develop extended arguments that would be too long for online reading. Thoughts and analysis of a wide range of issues can be gathered together in one place. This is certainly true of Web Accessibility: Web standards and regulatory compliance, a comprehensive manual of online accessibility good practice, advice on implementation, legal information and guideline interpretation from some well-known experts. As well as HTML-level techniques, there are chapters on JavaScript, Flash® and PDF accessibility. One of the sections I found most interesting was the chapter on WCAG 2.0, which will become the new benchmark for Web accessibility during 2007. Patrick H Lauke‘s case study on retrofitting a large Web site offers practical experience that will be of great use to developers and designers. Although based very much in today’s circumstances, it’s likely that this volume will be the definitive book on Web accessibility for some time to come.
Head above the blogosphere
These days it would seem that the world, her husband, children and pet alpaca are blogging, each using a different blogging engine (though the kids are probably on MySpace). Many bloggers take the default settings and templates provided with the tools and never look back. The team of well-known designers who brought us Blog Design Solutions, however, tries to appeal to the (very?) few who are unafraid of the underlying technologies and willing to take their blog designs a bit further. The book is marketed as a kind of ‘Pimp My Blog’ to people who want to “make [their blog] look cooler than everybody else’s.
� Yet much of the content provides technical information; the longest chapter describes how to set up a bespoke blogging engine using MySQL and PHP, which is probably beyond the point most readers will be willing to go.
“[F]our of today’s most popular blogging engines
â€? are covered, though I’m not sure how ExpressionEngine and Textpattern qualify to be as popular as Movable Type and WordPress. Bloggers using ExpressionEngine and Textpattern are likely to have a relatively high level of technical knowledge so this book may be missing its mark.
Beyond Zen
Web design using style sheets has matured very quickly in recent years, with many online resources describing the latest techniques. It can be difficult to keep track of all the articles and blogs, so Andy Budd’s CSS Mastery: Advanced Web standards solutions is a welcome addition to the Web designer’s bookshelf. Aimed squarely at people armed with some HTML and CSS knowledge, the book brings together many useful CSS techniques in one place, with a focus on browser issues. As well as chapters on using images, styling links, lists and forms, and layout, the book contains two detailed case studies which provide valuable insight into using style sheets on live Web sites. For Web designers looking to develop their basic CSS skills it will prove to be a good investment.
Web design transcendent
Now that standards-based Web design is creeping into the mainstream, there is a new focus on visual design. Transcending CSS: The fine art of Web design by Andy Clarke hopes to shift the recent emphasis on semantics and validation towards creativity. I’m still waiting for my copy to arrive and I hope the book will be as interesting and inspiring as I hope. Certainly, the glimpses inside that we’ve been given look great.
