HTML and CSS are the workhorses of web design, and using them together to build consistent, reliable web pages requires both skill and knowledge. The task is more difficult if you're relying on outdated, confusing, and unnecessary HTML hacks and workarounds. Author Ben Henick shows you how to avoid those traps by going beyond the standard tips, tricks, and techniques to connect the underlying theory and design of HTML and CSS to your everyday work habits.
With this practical book, you'll learn how to work with these tools far more effectively than is standard practice for most web developers. Whether you handcraft individual pages or build templates, HTML & CSS: The Good Parts will help you get the most out of these tools in all aspects of web page design-from layout to typography and to color.
- Structure HTML markup to maximize the power of CSS
- Implement complex multi-column layouts from scratch
- Improve site production values with advanced CSS techniques
- Support formal usability and accessibility requirements with tools built into HTML and CSS
- Avoid the most annoying browser and platform limitations
Inspired by the success of "JavaScript: The Good Parts" (9780596517748), this hands-on book demonstrates how to make two popular web technologies cleaner and more effective. HTML and CSS have dominated web development for more than a decade, but these technologies and the ways developers use them have accumulated some incredible and intricate junk along the way. This book cuts to the heart of HTML and CSS use to reveal a core set of reliable components that will spare web developers hours of frustration battling browsers and making adjustments to their own web page layouts.
Preface; The Who and What of This Book; Objectives of This Book; Conventions Used in This Book; Using Code Examples; Safari® Books Online; How to Contact O’Reilly; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1: Hypertext at the Core; 1.1 The Web Without Links; 1.2 URIs; Chapter 2: Working with HTML Markup; 2.1 HTML Syntax; 2.2 Rendering Modes, Flavors of HTML, and Document Type Declarations; 2.3 Beautiful Parts: Universal Attributes; 2.4 Separating Content, Structure, Presentation, and Behavior; 2.5 Browsers, Parsing, and Rendering; Chapter 3: CSS Overview; 3.1 Connecting Stylesheets to HTML Documents; 3.2 Choosing the Elements You Want to Style: Writing Selectors; 3.3 Rule Conflicts, Priority, and Precedence; 3.4 CSS Property and Value Survey; 3.5 CSS Units; 3.6 Key CSS Layout Properties; Chapter 4: Developing a Healthy Relationship with Standards; 4.1 The Broad Landscape of Web-Related Standards; 4.2 Why Web Standards?; 4.3 Taking the Middle Road: Standards-Friendliness; Chapter 5: Effective Style and Structure; 5.1 The Four Habits of Effective Stylists; 5.2 CSS Zen and the Stylist’s Experience; 5.3 Information Architecture and Web Usability; Chapter 6: Solving the Puzzle of CSS Layout; 6.1 The CSS Box Model and Element Size Control; 6.2 Quirks Mode and Strict Mode; 6.3 auto Values; 6.4 Margins, Borders, and Padding; 6.5 Element Flow; 6.6 Using the display Property to Change an Element’s Flow; 6.7 The float and clear Properties; 6.8 Implementing Multicolumn Layouts; 6.9 CSS Positioning Properties; 6.10 The visibility and z-index Properties; 6.11 Obtaining Precise Navigation Source Order and Layout; 6.12 Layout Types and Canvas Grids; Chapter 7: Working with Lists; 7.1 Ordered and Unordered Lists; 7.2 Other Uses for Lists; 7.3 Styling Navigation Elements; 7.4 Definition Lists; Chapter 8: Headings, Hyperlinks, Inline Elements, and Quotations; 8.1 Headings and Good Writing; 8.2 Styling Heading Elements; 8.3 Link Markup; 8.4 Styling Links; 8.5 Adding Semantic Value with Inline Elements; 8.6 Quotations; Chapter 9: Colors and Backgrounds; 9.1 Color Theory and Web Color Practice; 9.2 CSS Backgrounds; 9.3 Composing Background Images; 9.4 Bitmapped Copy and Fahrner Image Replacement; 9.5 Reducing Server Load with Sprites; Chapter 10: (Data) Tables; 10.1 The Disadvantages of Layout Tables; 10.2 The Parts of a Data Table; 10.3 Composing Cells; 10.4 Table Headers, Footers, and Heading Cells; Chapter 11: Images and Multimedia; 11.1 Replaced Elements; 11.2 Preparing Images for Production; 11.3 Image Production; 11.4 Working with Color Profiles; 11.5 Image Optimization; 11.6 Publishing Images; 11.7 Styling Images and Plug-in Content; 11.8 Adding Motion and Sound: Using SWFObject to Insert Flash Videos and Presentations; 11.9 Inserting Unwrapped Multimedia; Chapter 12: Web Typography; 12.1 A Brief History of Letterforms; 12.2 A Visual Glossary of Typography; 12.3 Aliasing and Anti-Aliasing; 12.4 Type Styles, Readability, and Legibility; 12.5 Sizing Type; 12.6 Working with Typefaces and Fonts; 12.7 Character Encoding in Brief; 12.8 Creating Balanced Type Treatments; 12.9 Typographical Miscellany in CSS; 12.10 The Practice of Good Web Typography; Chapter 13: Clean and Accessible Forms; 13.1 Building Effective Forms; 13.2 Assessment and Structure; 13.3 Basic Form Structure, Presentation, and Behavior; 13.4 Prototyping and Layout; 13.5 Required Fields and Other Submission Constraints; 13.6 Creating Accessible Forms; 13.7 Form Features in HTML5; Chapter 14: The Bad Parts; 14.1 The Numbing Nature of Internet Explorer (Especially IE 6); 14.2 Systemic Ugliness; 14.3 HTML’s Bad Neighborhoods and Cul-de-Sacs; 14.4 CSS Travesties; 14.5 The Awful Parts; 14.6 Picking Up the Pieces; URIs, Client-Server Architecture, and HTTP; The Underlying Client-Server Architecture; What Every Web Developer Should Know About HTTP; MIME Types, in Brief; Controlling Request Volume; Glossary; Colophon;
Ben Henick has been building Web sites since September 1995, when he took on his first Web project as an academic volunteer. He has worked in nearly every aspect of site design and development, from foundation HTML through finicky CSS to larger scale architecture and content management. He has written for A List Apart, the Web Standards Project, and most recently for Opera Software's Web Standards Curriculum.
Ben Henick has been building Web sites since September 1995, when he took on his first Web project as an academic volunteer. He has worked in nearly every aspect of site design and development, from foundation HTML through finicky CSS to larger scale architecture and content management. He has written for A List Apart, the Web Standards Project, and most recently for Opera Software's Web Standards Curriculum.
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Distributor: Ingram Publisher Services
Publication Date: 02-25-2010
Pages: 352
Measurements: 9.20in X 6.98in X 0.74in X 1.02lb
