A little too much tub-thumping
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As an amateur website designer, who tries to stick to modern standard-based layout, I'm always keen to pick up tips from the pros. This book certainly helps with this, there are a lot of useful tricks and pointers to websites I might otherwise have missed.
Like other reviewers, I found that the earlier part of the book is overly concerned with the methods of 5 to 10 years ago. People buying the book will probably be sold on CSS-based layout (or at least standards as the method of choice) before they buy. So a much shorter case would suffice. There is an over-emphasis on older browsers as well: Netscape 4.x, IE/Win 4 and IE/Mac 5 get much too much space. Most people are targeting IE 6, Firefox Opera 8 and Safari today.
Overall, there is a lot to learn from this book. Be prepared to skip over the lecturing, though.
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How frustrating........memories of the past
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After the first 200 pages of negativity, I had to throw the book in the bin!
Zeldman continually patronises the developers of the past working in environments of which the browser providers had no standard (to which still continues to a greater or lesser degree today). The fact that multiple instances of a site were required to cater for the anomolies between browser types and versions is true however CSS would not have saved the day then nor now.
Zeldman is right......you do need standards and from what I was picking up on his thoughts, the standards you create yourself are probably appropriate to the work you are performing. This I agree with Zeldman however blaming the development strategies of the past are not the way forward. I do understand Zeldmans frustrations from the past however blaming each developer for using multiple font tags is not really approprite for the time he refers.
I was looking for technical inspriation to the world of CSS (of which I totally agree is the way forward). Certainly, the first two hundred pages do not offer this. I could not cope reading further......hence the book went in the bin.
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Out of date and mainly rhetoric
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It's ironic that a book that is so much about future proofing spends so much time talking about version 4.0 browsers, making much of the book fairly obselete.
Much of the other content is out of date. It reccomends the box model hack, when conditional comments could be used. Fahner image replacement is also detailed, when newer methods eliminate the need for a non-semantic span element.
It is also vague. For example many of the reasons cited to use XHTML are not really convincing. "New browsers love XHTML ... and accord it special treatment" is too vague. To say that using an XHTML 1.0 strict doctype because it switches all browsers to standards/almost standards mode and therefore your site is more likely to work in all browsers would be better.
In short it attempts to fight old beliefs with new beliefs, rather than knowledge
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Fantastic book
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This is a great book which will give you a thorough understanding of web standards. If you are a budding web designer, this book will explain important principles that will save you a great deal of time when you begin creating web sites. One of the most important things you will learn is creating sites that work with all browsers, platforms and devices. Overall, this book will give you a firm understanding of web standards and what it means to be a quality web designer.
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Essential purchase
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The title sounds a little dull and belies the importance of this book. Think about it like this; who specifies the web standards to which the browser makers are increasingly if not fully complying? The W3C. Jefferey Zeldman is the guy who wrote 'their book' about web standards. Web standards isn't just about making sites accessible to the disabled, it's about making them work across browsers, and understanding how the whole whole website/browser thing works. Do you really understand how doctype switching works? Do you really know what XHTML is all about for example? Do you know how to separate presentation from content (cos that's the way it's going)? The first part of the book is a general history thing and the second looks at techniques and examples. But, if you're looking for a CSS cookbook, or a complete tutorial in HTML, CSS then seek elsewhere. If you're doing anything with websites today, you simply must read this book. It'll deepen your understanding 'and' save you time and money.
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