Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

What’s in the Book

This Nutshell book focuses on frontend matters of web design and development: markup, style sheets, image production, multimedia, and so on. Ironically, despite its title, there is little in the way of “design” advice, per se. Rather, it strives to be a thorough reference for all the technical details and requirements that we face in our day-to-day work designing and developing web content.

The book is divided into six parts (plus appendixes), each covering a general subject area.

Part I: The Web Environment

Chapter 1, Web Standards, describes the current approach to web design and sets the stage for the entire book. It is essential reading. Chapters on designing for varying browsers and displays provide useful overviews of the unique challenges web developers face. Chapter 5, Accessibility, and Chapter 6, Internationalization, both serve as introductions to the ways web content may be created to reach all users, regardless of ability, browsing device, or language. Chapter 4, A Beginner’s Guide to the Server, is a primer on basic server functions, system commands, uploading files, and file types.

Part II: The Structural Layer: XML and (X)HTML

This part of the book is about document markup, commonly referred to as the structural layer because it provides the foundation upon which presentation (styles) and behaviors (scripting) are applied. I highly recommend starting with Chapter 7, Introduction to XML, as it covers critical concepts that guide the way (X)HTML is ...