I’m so glad that this book exists. I’ve been hoping someone would write a book almost exactly like this for a long time. I have to be honest, when I first heard about it I sighed a little. Part of it was the word ‘standardistas’ in the title which made me wince a bit. The other part was wondering if this wasn’t just another book to add to the pantheon of web standards texts that have been published in the last few years. Yes, cynical, I know. However, I was wrong. After being approached by one of the authors, the publishers, Friends of Ed, kindly sent me a review copy. It took me a long while to get around to reading it after the carnage of the last few months, but I can honestly say that HTML and CSS Web Standards Solution: A Web Standardistas’ Approach is excellent.
The authors are Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson — both lecturers in interactive design at the University of Ulster. As they make clear in the introduction, they wanted to:
…cover everything our students needed to embark on a well-grounded, web standards-based approach in one package: namely, a solid foundation in XHTML coupled with a comprehensive introduction to CSS.
That’s exactly what they’ve done. Here’s two reasons from my own experience why I think it’s so important:
- A long time ago, a film editor friend of mine who moved to Bristol found scant local opportunities. (It’s a very nepotistic world.) I knew a web editor job was coming open in a few weeks time. It would only require entry-level HTML and CSS skill. Almost on a whim I suggested he do a crash course in the basics then work next to me in my office. So, for a week, he read everything I directed him to on the Web, did some basic tutorials, and soon after got the job. Using me as a kind of organic bookshelf to solve problems, he quickly became self-sufficient. Today he earns his bread coding HTML and CSS daily into beautiful, accessible, commercial web sites.
- Sometime later, I was interviewing students for an entry-level job. By far the most disappointing aspect of their portfolios was the web design elements. They could write HTML, apply CSS, but were missing what I consider core principles that underpin everything we do. Things like a knowledge of plain old semantic HTML, some understanding of accessibility, and the basics of web typography.
Both examples made me realise that there was something missing amongst the excellent, but often niche or advanced books we know and love. We needed a starter kit, a crash course in basics. That’s the book that Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson have written. HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions is the missing primer of web design.
In an industry where much of the critical knowledge has been researched and published by self-taught designers, and design schools have traditionally lagged behind (inevitably doing a disservice to their students) this book does what all good teachers do: teaches people the core skills and gives them the knowledge to continue learning.
It would be easy to dismiss the detail in the book as entry-level, or incomplete. I could debate resetting body font size to 10px using ems, or grids, or XHTML versus HTML. However, to do so would be missing the point completely. The authors have successfully navigated a huge range of passionately held opinions to present good, solid, core knowledge in an entirely practical format. The common denominators they impart will enable students to be discerning later on when they stumble across niche techniques that can range from brilliant, to totally useless. Those who start with this text may well find it useful later when trying to understand how a technique can be appropriate and superb to use in one context, and awful in another.
Every design school on the planet should make HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions a required textbook. As well as a perfect primer for students, there’s many a formally-trained graphic designer, or self-taught web designer, who might find it useful. I recommend it to you. Careful, though, some people may find themselves arguing the finer points of web typography or debating DOCTYPEs faster than they think.
