I finished reading Andy Clarke's book 'Transcending The Fine Art of Web Design.' The book talks at length about designing your sites from the content out rather than trying to shoehorn your content into your design. The concept was interesting, but I wasn't sure how practical it would be or how much time it would really save. That was until last week.

For the past week I've been struggling to work my design into WordPress. I admit I'm not a php coder (although that's something I'll be trying to remedy this year), but it was increasingly frustrating to end up with a layout that didn't match my design vision. That's when the light went off. Wouldn't this have been easier if I had started with my content and then worked my design into it? Putting my head in my hands I mumbled "Why didn't I listen to Andy?"

So, content out design gets my nod of approval. Does this mean I've transcended CSS design?

Labels: CSS

The book is done.

My impressions?

The Zen of CSS Design is definitely a book you'll want on yourself. A good Designer should have an awareness of areas like typography, layout, and white space. The Zen of CSS reinforces these concepts well.

High Points:

Dingbats! - I forgot those little graphics were called that. I was always searching for "bullets", it's no wonder I could never find anything good.

Web Standards - I hang my head in shame. I've been very lax in using alt tags for screen readers etc. I hope this will inspire me to be more stringent with web design standards.

IE = The Devil! - I still use IE as my standard browser, but it's surprising how many CSS design elements will not work in it. I'm not ready to make the switch to Firefox just yet, but I am going to test my design in Firefox first!

Low Points:

Usability - The book sometimes gets bogged down in usability issues going through the same concepts over and over.

Rush to the Finish - The book ends with a break down of a few Zen Garden site designs. I would have liked to have seen more examples on such things as how to add drop shadow edges, rounded corners etc.

Overall I'm happy with the book. Next on my list - Eric Meyer on CSS.

Labels: CSS

My copy of Zen of CSS Design just arrived. I've been looking forward to this book for awhile. There is a little bit of controversy around this book, as some people thought they were getting a book about how to write CSS. In reality the book is more focused on how to make your site beautiful with CSS. That's what I want it for.

I'll let you know if it delivers.

Labels: CSS

Sometimes I think I have it all figured out and there is nothing new under the sun. Sometimes I'm dead wrong.

For about five years I've been content with HTML (We won't talk about the two years I was content with FrontPage - those were the darkest of the dark ages). In those carefree HTML days the table tag had become an old friend. I needed to place a graphic? Layout a paragraph? Table tag how you doin'?

What a fool I was.

CSS entered my life two months ago, and it was like I was being made anew. The scales fell from my eyes and for the first time I saw the world that was web design. I also couldn't stop waxing poetic.

CSS is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents. It stands for Cascading Style Sheets, but it may as well stand for Craptasticlly Super Simple. Granted I haven't delved into the real meat of it yet, but from what I've messed with so far, it seems very straight forward and nicely structured.

I also picked up a handy little reference guide from Amazon called the CSS Cookbook. It's very well put together and looks at CSS from the standpoint of "need and solution". You need to make the first line of paragraph bold? Here's how you do it...

I can dig it.

I still haven't tackled a major site design using only CSS, but I'm really looking forward to it, and Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX 2004 has really focused on CSS this time, making it very easy to code.

Labels: CSS