Bulletproof Web Design: One Paragraph Review

Bulletproof Web Design by Dan CedarholmHaving already written a book introducing readers to the web standards movement, Dan Cedarholm returns to cover more advanced material. While his first focused on markup and basic scenarios like grocery lists, this book focuses on CSS and accessibility. In particular, he explores how to let a web page flex around things like large font sizes or lengthy headlines without breaking – hence, bulletproof. While this material is all certainly all available online, this is a handy reference to some of the best practices and techniques that the gurus in the field have been using, and I would recommend it to anyone who feels like they understand the basics, but need a little boost to get to the next level. (If this book were a college course, it would be 300 level.)

Web Standards Solutions: One Paragraph Review

Web Standards Solutions by Dan CedarholmDan Cedarholm has written a very nice book introducing the reader to the concept of web standards. Unlike Zeldman’s book, which is nearly all theory, this book is heavily focused on markup techniques, with some basic introduction to CSS. Each chapter presents a variety of scenarios, such as how to mark up a grocery list. Several techniques are discussed, and the advantages or disadvantages of each are explained. If you’ve been in the web standards game for awhile, there’s nothing new in here, but if you’re just getting started, this can be a helpful guide to understanding the semantics of markup. (If this book were a college course, it would be 100 level.)