June 2025
Beginner to intermediate
912 pages
30h 4m
English
Content preview from Learning Web Design, 6th Edition
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Chapter 3. Some Big Concepts You Need to Know
3
Some Big Concepts You Need to Know
In this chapter
The web on mobile devices
The benefits of web standards
Progressive enhancement
Responsive web design
Accessibility
Site performance
Before we get to the nuts and bolts of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I want to introduce some “Big Concepts” that every web designer needs to know. I’ll be referring to the terminology introduced in this chapter frequently, so it’s not to be missed.
The heart of the matter is that as web designers, we never know exactly how the pages we create will be viewed. We don’t know which of the dozens of browsers might be used, whether that browser is on a desktop computer or something more portable, how large the viewport will be, what fonts are installed, whether functionality such as JavaScript is enabled, how fast the internet connection is, whether the pages are being read by a screen reader, and so on. The Big Concepts in this chapter are primarily reactions to—and methods for—coping with the inescapable element of the unknown in our medium. They include the following:
- The multitude of devices
- Web standards
- Progressive enhancement
- Responsive web design
- Accessibility
- Site performance
Because we’re just getting started, I’ll keep the descriptions brief and fairly nontechnical. The goal is that you have a basic understanding of what I mean by terms like “progressive enhancement” when you encounter them in lessons later. Many excellent articles and ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.