Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cederholm
July 14, 2004 | 
8 Comments
First off, Web Standards Solutions is a great book that any Web designer should have on their desktop. Second, I’ve not read the whole thing. How can I say that it’s a great book if I’ve not finished it?
Well, it’s not the kind of book you need to read cover to cover to appreciate.
It’s not a book for beginners, I’ll say that. It doesn’t hold your hand and explain the benefits of CSS and Web standards to you — it assumes you already know all that. What it does do is offer loads of practical examples and reams of Web standard solutions to real world problems.
Based on Dan’s excellent SimpleQuiz series, it’s a great reference tool as well as educational text that helps bridge the gap between theory and practice. If you’ve been struggling with ways to implement Web standards in your daily work — this is the book for you.
What I particularly like about the book is that, with each example, it not only explores solutions and points out where they succeed, it tells you why they’re successful. At times, when you are caught up in getting things done, it can be difficult to nail down why you’ve done something and how it adds value as a solution.
Dan’s writing style is also very accessible and this is a huge plus in my book. He speaks plainly, as a good tech writer should, yet with a solid understand of the material and the ability to get to the meat of a problem.
Bottom line? It a great book every Web designer should own. All it needs is a way to cut and paste the code from page to screen.
Filed under: Review
Comments
1. Henrik Bohman said:
I’m ordering it, especially after reading the review, thanks.
Posted on July 14, 2004 11:39 AM | #
2. Seth Thomas Rasmussen said:
Heh… no offense, but it’s pretty absurd to think anybody should take your advice on this when you open with, “I haven’t read the whole thing.”
Not that I think the rest of your review is worthless, or that you necessarily need to read every letter of a book to review it… it’s just funny. Especially when the first comment is, “I’m going to buy this because of you’re review of the book you didn’t read!” In so many words, of course.
:)
That said, I tried to buy it last nite, but the bookstore was sans Cederholm.
Posted on July 14, 2004 12:57 PM | #
3. david gee said:
my memory is vague on this, but about a month ago there was a rash of design blogs reviewing the 37 signals book on contingency design. now you and todd dominey review this book within a day or so of each other. last time i was willing to write it off as coincidence, but this is getting a bit weird.
not to say the book is bad - i haven’t read it (although personally i find it very rare that anything not published by o’reilly has enough useful content to warrant a purchase), and not to say that supporting the community is bad, but… well, i guess i don’t know what my gripe is exactly, but it does kind of creep me out.
Posted on July 14, 2004 01:10 PM | #
4. Keith said:
Seth – I’ve read most of it. Just haven’t had time to finish is and I explain, in the post, what I mean by that statement. I’ve read enough to post about it.
David – It’s just a coincidence.
Look, I posted about it because I think it’s a good book. End of story, period. There is no agenda other than the fact that I wanted to share a resource I believe will prove valuable.
Posted on July 14, 2004 01:17 PM | #
5. Keith said:
Just to shed a little light on the subject and for the conspiracy theorists out there (WTF?) – I’ve not read the whole book, not would I usually read a whole book of this kind. It doesn’t lend itself to a cover-to-cover reading, at least not in my case.
You could certainly do that and get your money’s worth.
What I have done is read most of it and actually used it several times in the two weeks I’ve had it.
That is what this kind of book is to me – a resource to be used, not a book to be read and put down. It’s an awesome resource and that is the main reason why I chose to post a review. I don’t get anything out of it, other that connecting my readers with a good resource written by a good guy.
I thought I made that clear, but wanted to clarify. Now get out there and check the book out! Read a chapter if you’re not sure about it. I’m pretty sure this one can sell itself.
Posted on July 14, 2004 01:32 PM | #
6. Matt said:
I got this book a week or two ago and must say it’s pretty good. A lot of the stuff in there I already knew but it got me thinking about the different ways to approach the same problem. Definitely recommend it, although like Keith said; it’s not for CSS newbie’s.
Posted on July 14, 2004 04:53 PM | #
7. Yannick said:
I agree with you Keith. I bought the book and am currently going through it and so far I can say its really good. I’m learning quite a lot from it and I recommend it to anyone into webdesign and using web standards and CSS.
Posted on July 14, 2004 05:58 PM | #
8. DaveSW said:
Actually I find all these large ‘tutorial style’ books too long to read… However I do like the ones that come with a CD so you CAN copy and paste!
Personally I’ve found that designing with standards is a mindset rather than something you get taught. Once you can start thinking creatively inside what you can do then you start to find solutions for the things you can’t do.
For example take all the rash of box model hacks there are out there. Yet I’ve only ever used them once, and I have a number of css based sites and menu examples, which all look fine in Mozilla and IE. How? Nesting two divs, applying padding to the inner one, and allowing it to take the width assigned to the outer one. Simple enough, but very effective, and future proof as well.
Posted on July 15, 2004 11:23 AM | #
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