Book: Designing with Web Standards (3rd Edition)

Authors: Jeffrey Zeldman with Ethan Marcotte

This book basically covers the transition from the old and inefficient uses of tables and inline styling, to a more standard and better way to create websites.

The main points is all about designing for a web standard, using semantic html structure, replacing inline styling with well thought out CSS in a separate stylesheet, as well as designing with accessibility in mind. .

It’s mainly for beginners (and for the few people still stuck in the world of tables and inline styling), and I would advice against any experienced designers/developers to read it unless you want to recap some basics (or read about the html/css history, which there was A LOT of, and felt like 2/3 of the book).

Otherwise, save some time by searching for more comprehensive articles and screecasts about these subjects online.

So, Why did I read it?

Having basically only read online articles about these subjects, I just wanted to see if there was anything I had missed or could improve upon.

Mission accomplished?

Well, I guess? I did actually get a few things out of the book, but it wasn’t really worth the time it took to sit down and read it.

Favorite parts:

The few parts where there was actually code and examples to look at.