Chapter 6: Sculpting a User Interface
Practical applications for distinctive design theories
Without code, designs cannot exist online. HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other languages, frameworks, techniques, and best practices turn sketches and artistic creations into something that you can render within a browser. The ability to build increasingly difficult, unique layouts that interact with users and provide them with the functionality, content, and experience they require has become the passion of many. So, you need to be able to create and implement your creations in a way that sculpts a beautiful interface.
This chapter examines how you can work with HTML elements (also known as tags) and microformats to promote distinctive, rich layouts. You find out about the various properties within CSS that help turn your aims for a design into reality, including how you can target devices for specific types of style. Then you move on to providing interactivity through JavaScript and frameworks such as jQuery to promote a more feature-rich, depth-loaded experience. Finally, you read about the rich history of code and how it affects browsers, how to debug, and how future standards will affect your ability to add distinction to your pages and to give users the best possible interface.
Markup and Microformats
All aspects of design revolve around the concept of giving visitors an experience. Although user-interface design has the same primary goal (to provide something useful), it’s important ...
