There’s a real connection between craftsmanship and Web design. That’s the theme running through
Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design, by bestselling author Dan Cederholm, with a chapter contributed by renowned Web designer and developer Ethan Marcotte. This book explores CSS3 that works in today’s browsers, and you’ll be convinced that now’s the time to start experimenting with it.
Whether you’re a Web designer, project manager, or a graphic designer wanting to learn more about the fluidity that’s required when designing for the Web, you’ll discover the tools to create the most flexible, reliable, and bulletproof Web designs. And you’ll finally be able to persuade your clients to adopt innovative and effective techniques that make everyone’s life easier while improving the end user’s experience. This book’s seven chapters deconstruct various aspects of a case-study Web site for the Tugboat Coffee Company, focusing on aspects that make it bulletproof and demonstrate progressive enrichment techniques over more traditional labor-intensive methods.
Subjects covered in this book include:
- building for unanticipated future use
- progressively enriching designs using CSS3 properties
- using RGBA color for transparency with an alpha channel
- crafting flexible frameworks
- fluid layouts using grid-based design principles
- craftsmanship details on typography, jQuery, and shifting backgrounds
The video included with this special edition features author Dan Cederholm as he illustrates 10 essential Web design guidelines. Enhancing the content in this book, the
Handcrafted CSS: Bulletproof Essentials DVD will arm you with a checklist to make your next project a flexible, adaptable, and wellcrafted design.
Dan Cederholm is an award-winning web designer, consultant, and author who specializes in designing and building sites with web standards. Throughout 2003, Dan became well known for his redesigns of the websites for Fast Company and Inc. using standards-compliant methods, while pushing the limits of CSS. Dan also runs the popular weblog SimpleBits, for which he writes articles and commentary on the web, technology, and life. His consulting firm of the same name focuses on applying the methods found throughout Web Standards Solutions (Apress, 2009) in creating simplistic and attractive interfaces. Speaking at conferences such as SXSW Interactive, Dan shares his simplistic approach to web design and development while spreading the word on the standards-based markup and style techniques he's collected. He lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Kerry, two cats, and one gecko.
Ethan has been designing and developing online for nearly a decade, and is still amazed and excited at how much there is to learn. He is the co-founder and design lead of Vertua Studios (www.vertua.com), a standards-savvy design studio that builds elegant, usable Web sites.
Ethan has emerged as a well-respected voice on the subject of standards-based Web design. He has been a featured speaker at Web Design World and the South by Southwest Interactive conference, and runs the popular (if infrequently-updated) sidesh0w.com weblog. His clients have included such names as New York Magazine, Harvard University, Disney, and State Street Bank.
When he grows up, Ethan wants to be an unstoppable robot ninja (www.unstoppablerobotninja.com). Beep.
