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 handled in contemporary web design. Chapters 8 through 15 focus on HTML and XHTML markup, including detailed descriptions of all the elements and the way they should be used in standards-based web design.

Part III: The Presentation Layer: Cascading Style Sheets

Part III provides a thorough guide to using CSS for controlling the presentation of web content with a focus on visual media. It begins with an overview of the fundamentals (Chapter 16) and an introduction to CSS selectors (Chapter 17). Chapters 18 through 23 provide detailed descriptions of all the visual properties in the CSS 2.1 specification. Finally, examples of how CSS is used in the real world are provided in CSS Techniques (Chapter 24) and Managing Browser Bugs: Workarounds, Hacks, and Filters (Chapter 25).

Part IV: The Behavioral Layer: JavaScript and the DOM

Part IV is all about adding interactivity to your pages with JavaScript. Chapter 26 is an introduction to JavaScript, covering, syntax, control structures, object-orientation, and the whys and hows of unobtrusive scripting. Chapter 27 introduces the Document Object Model and shows you how to tap into it to manipulate both content and design. As a supplement to Chapter 27, we’ve included a brief introduction to Ajax techniques that will help you on your way to building rich Internet applications.

Part V: Web Graphics

The chapters in Part V contain essential information on working with RGB color and choosing the appropriate graphic file formats. The chapters dedicated to GIF, JPEG, and PNG graphics offer practical tips for graphic production and optimization based on the compression schemes used by each format. The Animated GIFs chapter is a further examination of GIF’s animation capabilities.

Part VI: Media

Because the Web is not limited to text and images, Part VI is included to provide a basic introduction to adding audio, video, and Flash movies to web pages. There is also a chapter on printing from web pages using print-specific CSS style sheets as well as an introduction to the PDF format for document distribution.

Appendixes

The Appendixes in this book are sure to get a lot of use. Appendix A is an alphabetical listing of all elements and attributes in the HTML 4.01 Recommendation, as well as a few nonstandard elements that are well supported and in common use. Appendix B is an alphabetical listing of all properties defined in the CSS 2.1 specification. Appendix C lists all the character entities defined in HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 with their numerical references. Appendix D provides a detailed explanation of the color names and RGB color values used both in (X)HTML and CSS. Finally, Appendix E, contributed by Tantek Çelik, describes the future of XHTML and Microformats.