Designing With Web Standards

Rating:
Summary: Perfect introduction to practical CSS-based web design
Review: If you spend your evenings debating the relative merits of the latest four-column CSS-only web page layout methods with your friends, this book may not offer much new or useful information.

For the rest of the web-designing population, it's an unbeatable introduction to CSS-based design methods, their merits and their limits. It doesn't preach impractical theory, it torches a broad, straight path through the jungle of incompatibility, away from kluge markup, towards standards-based design that works in current and future browsers.

Zeldman is wise, funny and lucid.

If you're reading these reviews, yes, you need this book.

Rating:
Summary: This book should be on your desk
Review: Jeffrey Zeldman, the cooler older brother of the internet, has written a new book called Designing With Web Standards. If you are anything like me (that being a design nerd who can write a few lines of code that may or may not work), this book is for you. It would be an understatement to say that this book is useful and informative. Have you ever wondered what all the hubbub is with XML and Style Sheets? DWWS will teach you how to make your site and your clients' sites accessible to every man, woman and child, as well as how to make your pages backwards, forwards, and sideways compatible. Zeldman shows you step-by-step how to put your site on a diet and trim unwanted k's from your pages, and demystifies the current state of and design practices for the web. For me, the seed has already been planted. I am going to have trouble coding things with <font> tags anymore. Once I know ways to make things better and faster, it pains me to do them the old way. I can't wait to redesign and recode this site with some valid XHTML and CSS action. This book should be on your desk. So go get it already.

Rating:
Summary: give evangelism an A
Review: There seem to be two distinct groups among the web community, the Zeldmanites and the Nielsenites. The Nielsenites check their websites in Netscape 3.x, they live in the past, and figure the web must still belong there. The Zeldmanites believe the web is ever evolving and want their work to work for years to come.

Jeffrey shows the whys and wherefores extremely well in this book. The how to's though leave a little bit to be desired. Quite frankly I was expecting a bit more than the i3 layout.

However, I still find this an indispensable part of my library for the simple fact that it contains so many valid points for switching to a standards oriented design methodology. That alone makes it owrth the price.

Rating:
Summary: It's the bomb
Review: Designing with Web Standards is the bomb, all right - just what you'd expect from Zeldman. It addresses all of the issues that have plagued us at one time or another and then gives us options for dealing with them. It's the nuts and bolts and the how-to manual for creating timeless code.

Rating:
Summary: <h2 class="review">Designing With Web Standards</h2>
Review: <style type="faux/css">
review {
information: priceless
format: real-world, example-based;
clarity: crystal;
history: eye-opening;
audience: essential reading for ALL web profesionals;
humor: witty and wise as always;
timing: perfect - now is the time for standards and accessibility - zeldman explains why and how;
why: save money, time and do the right thing;
how: tons of techniques and proven tactics with real world examples;
bottom-line: actively using dwws as a tool to move my agency and my clients towards standard compliant practices;
}
</style>

Rating:
Summary: Good Information for newcomers, however...
Review: if you've read zeldman.com in the past couple years, then unfortunately there is not much fruitfulness to purchasing this book. The first 4 chapters pound the same 4 ideas into your head relentlessly but at least present it with a quick wit and some levity.

I had expected a more technical based book I guess, and was a little disappointed in some of the lack of information as far as quick examples et al.

However if you've never browsed zeldman.com, or are bogged into designing your sites with nested tables - or stuck working somewhere that forces this method of design on you - this is a great book for you for:
a.) background
b.) useful counter points to argumentative 'experts'
c.) a good starting point.

Rating:
Summary: It's a must have!
Review: If you are truly interested in designing with web standards, this is the book for you. I believe that it is well written for newbies as well as for professionals, there is no way, you are not getting anything out of this book. It gives you the knowledge you need, and at the same time, leaves enough space for your own creativity. I wasn't looking for code examples (you find all over the Internet anyway), I was looking for an explanation and general guidance and that's what I got! Thank you Jeffrey, for making me understand, and I really hope, the word is going spread quickly, because once you used good practice, you never want to go back to botching up your web sites.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected from Mr. Zeldman
Review: I am a religious follower of A List Apart and Zeldman.com and come to expect quick code examples or roads to examples that will simplify my life as well as my users' experience. Chapters 1-4 provide extensive history and info that, truthfully, I have read in some form on Mr. Zeldman's site. That being the case, I found little use for the book until Chapter 5 where I culled minimal amount of info that could assist my daily coding. Not sure if this is a book geared towards newbies, but in my opinion, my money could've been spent in better ways.

Rating:
Summary: The best XHTML/CSS book out there
Review: As a web developer and designer who already believed in and wrote sites using web standards, this book did a fabulous job of explaining the concepts behind web standards. I learned how to write and design sites much more efficiently (and in some cases correctly) and most importantly, how to sell these ideas to clients or upper management that may be resistant to "forward looking" concepts.

Jeffrey writes in a very conversational tone (much like his Daily Report website) that balances the "how" with the "why" that makes this book incredibly easy to read. While the book assumes a knowledge of HTML and CSS, it talks to everyone from the beginner to the advanced developer and provides a ton of resources on the web that emphasize key points or provide code examples.

If you are sick and tired of writing nested table inside of nested table, wading through 400 lines of HTML to find that one sentence you need to update, and want to save time and money on development time and bandwidth, then buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Of little value
Review: Jeffrey Zeldman has done a lot, probably more than most, to advance the webdesign community. That's a given, and credit is due to him.
That said, I can't honestly recommend this book: it is printed in cheapest imaginable paper and the content is VERY generic: nothing new or interesting. In fact, most of the "information" contained in the book reads more like a bunch or articles freely available on the internet, which Mr Zeldman put together at the last minute to complete his task of writing this book.

Very dissapointing. Mr Zeldman can certainly do better than this.