Feb 21, 2008 | Filed in: Books, Reviews, Web Design, Web Development
Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model
Author: Jeremy Keith
Publisher: Friends of ED
Since I started observing web standards and trying to produce websites that were accessible to the widest possible audience I’ve tried to avoid JavaScript assuming my sites wouldn’t be accessibly to those users with screen readers or JavaScript turned off.
Jeremy Keith, from Brighton’s web consultancy Clearleft, explains how to write good, clean code that degrades gracefully in this fantastic book. Starting at the beginning with the history and basics of JavaScript, he steers you comfortably through best practices and real world, useful examples. Whatever your technical ability you can soon become proficient with writing your own JavaScript and you’ll soon be ready for his next book - Bulletproof Ajax (review coming soon - I’m still reading it!)
Buy DOM Scripting at Amazon.co.uk
Buy DOM Scripting at Amazon.com
Sep 15, 2007 | Filed in: Books, CSS, Reviews, Web Design
Author: Andy Budd, Simon Collison & Cameron Moll.
Publisher: Friends of Ed.
I had originally thumbed through this book, subtitled “Advanced Web Standard Solutions” in my local bookstore and shrugged it off as covering pretty much most of what I’d already digested from other popular CSS books. It wasn’t until a friend showed me some cool techniques from the book that I properly read though it and regretted not buying it sooner!
Though it’s aimed at the intermediate web designer, it is well written and I would certainly recommend this as an essential buy for all web designers. The book begins with Clear:Left’s Andy Budd provides most of the content starting with a chapter about well-structured and meaningful mark-up. It’s these best practices that will help catapult you into the realms of CSS Master! It then recaps on the box model, positioning and floats, making it easy for a beginner to pick up this book and run with it, before moving into the techniques, with clear and concise examples, including a couple of good chapters on bugs and hacks.
The final two chapters are where Simon Collison & Cameron Moll step in to demonstrate these examples in two real-world showcase websites. This book is absolutely the best book currently on offer for CSS web design.
Buy CSS Mastery at amazon.co.uk
Buy CSS Mastery at amazon.com
Sep 15, 2007 | Filed in: Books, CSS, Reviews, Web Design
Author: Rachel Andrew.
Publisher: SitePoint.
This is one of the first CSS books I bought and I still feel it’s one of the best for those trying to make the jump from HTML table-layouts to XHTML & CSS layouts. My copy has done the rounds in my office and it’s one of the most worn-out, dog-eared books on our shelf which certainly says something about it’s popularity and usefulness!
What I like most is the way this book works. It’s based around questions, such as “How do I create rollovers in CSS without JavaScript?” or “How do create a fixed-width, centred, two-column layout?” with a solution, clear example images and discussion of the technique. If you’re buying your first CSS book then this is an essential purchase.
Buy The CSS Anthology at amazon.co.uk
Buy The CSS Anthology at amazon.com
