lewro’s blog - 2.1 - web designer beginner

If I should summarize this book in single sentence I would say that this is the most beautifully presented book about web design I have ever seen.

The books deals very well with design issues as well as coding and accessibility. In terms of design you will find lots of inspiration presented in many different ways. The book is full of amazing photographs, pictures and artwork collections.

Inspiration

Andy explains where you can find the inspiration in the real world and this is the section where I found myself in the same box. The inspiration is everywhere and there is no point to concentrate on the web only. It is about walking with open eyes and looking around whenever you are. You can find the inspiration for your projects in architecture projects such are building, bridges or in the transport projects such are vehicles, signs or in furniture projects such are tables, sofas or in the print products such are posters, adverts, magazines, packages etc. In all of these examples you will find colours, patterns, shapes, icons, symbols, layouts.

Grid

Quite big part of the book is dedicated to explanation how grid is implemented in modern web design. To be honest when I was reading this part something clicked in my brain and I have just realized why I liked some sites even I was not able to specify exactly the reason. Now I know. It is a precise use of grid.

As excellent example is Jeff Croft’s site. You cannot see the vibrant colours or rounded corners but the site looks absolutely cool. Jeff uses 4 columns grid for his site and that is the point where is the magic. Everything sits just in its place and your eye can fly true the content very easily. Obviously it is not the only factor why his site looks cool but it plays significant role. It was always one of my favourites sites.

In the last part Andy explains the term transcendence and all the necessary techniques how to achieve it with a help of CSS. Positioning, dealing with multiple image backgrounds, designing with multi-column layouts and lot more.

Summary

The book is well written and easy to read and that is the best synergy how you can learn and relax at the same time. Most of the points are presented with a use of wonderful images. And as science says the human memory will more easy store the information if it is visually presented. I wish all the books about web design would be presented this way.

Thank you Andy. Great work!

Book details

• Author: Andy Clarke
• Author’s blog: www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk
• Book’s site: www.transcendingcss.com
• ISBN: 0321410971

I picked this book because I have seen that other web designers are recommending it. To be honest I would not probably picked it in the book shop because the cover does not impress me a lot. It is obviously wrong to judge books on the base of their cover but that is the way my brain work naturally. But I try to fight it.

On the other hand, should not the book about design look attractive from outside? Even I know there is nothing the author can do about it because that is how it comes from publisher. Anyway I bought the book because I trust people who recommended it (funny think is that I have never met those people) and I have to say it was a very good decision. I have learned a lot from this book despite of the fact I have read couple of books about CSS before.

So what is this book about?

The book is about CSS as the cover says but not only about that. You can find here everything from text styling, images positioning & replacement, navigation, styling of tabular data, forms, different layout types and techniques up to browsers and devices support. You can find here information about the way professional developers produce their sites. The actual workflow and tools they use.

If you are new to CSS do not worry, you will find here all the necessary information about differences between IDs and Classes, how to style the links, how to define background images, how to define text that can be enlarged in any internet browser and so on and so on.

Structure of the book

As you can see from the names of the chapters the books content is divided into the chapters where each of them answers one particular question. There is more then 100 of them. I think it is very good idea to name your chapters with questions. These are the exact questions which I ask myself during the development process.

More importantly whenever you have a problem and looking for a solution you can just simply go true the Table of content and find the question you are asking yourself. In most of the cases you will find it in this book.

What do I find very interesting ?

The stuff I have not find in other books. Chapters with these names:

• I only have access to one operating system. How can I test in more of these browsers?
• Is there a service that can show me how my site looks in various browsers?
• Can I install multiple versions of Internet Explorer in Windows?
• How do I test my stile in a text-only browser
• How do I test my site in a screen reader?
• How do I create print style sheet?
• How do I create style sheet switcher?

Summary

The books is really well written and consist of very useful stuff. I will definitely use it on a daily bases so it can not go far from my table. Actually after I finished reading this book I found the cover somehow more interesting. So for the future I have to be really more careful with first judgments. :o) Have you read the book? What are your opinions?

The CSS Anthology site, Rachel Adrew’s personal blog