Web Standards Solution

Earlier this month, I reviewed the book by Dan Cederholm called Bulletproof Web Design. In his book, there were lots of coloured pages and well-written guided CSS codes for you to pick it up. At that time I also mentioned that the next book I’ll try to review is his other book, Web Standards Solution.

But here’s an extra treat for everyone, I found another interesting book at MPH Mdvalley that is quite good though very thick and I didn’t get to finish it.

This book surprisingly didn’t follow the same publisher from Bulletproof Web Design. The publisher of this web standards guide was friends of ED which most people would know. You’d be more familiar if you’re learning Flash or remember the book title, New Masters of Flash.

It took me not long to flip through the book this time by Dan because this book wasn’t like the other. In my opinion, I felt this book was more for the beginners who want to learn about the differences in CSS structure and being able to assess the best possible action in solving a CSS problem.

As Dan Cederholm easily explained it;

I wrote a book. It’s filled with standards-compliant solutions intended to give web designers and developers ammunition — to make the best choices with markup and style.

He’s right there because though the book was printed in only black & white, he described, provided and advised in each chapter. The book takes you on a guided tour of learning you could say. And this is list of topics covered in his book later:

• Chapter 1: Lists
• Chapter 2: Headings
• Chapter 3: Tables are Evil?
• Chapter 4: Quotations
• Chapter 5: Forms
• Chapter 6: <strong>, <em>, and Other Phrase Elements
• Chapter 7: Anchors
• Chapter 8: More Lists
• Chapter 9: Minimizing Markup
• ..and another 7 more chapters he calls, Simplebits of Style.

Oh yeah, the book retails for RM106.* Sorry, couldn’t remember how many cents was it. :P

It so happened this book was opened and it on the same shelf as Dan Cederholm so I decided to just take a read after flipping through Dan’s book. This book titled, Train of Thoughts by John Lenker is all about the web experience from his point of view.

The book is an uber big and thick one, full colour but not full text. The layout has a large background image and the conceptual design of the layout was made to look like you’re either viewing his scrap book or note book. It’s pieces of boxes with content in a single page.

His book actually helped bring me back to Earth again although I only read less than a quarter of it. What John said in his book wasn’t complicated nor confusing. It was so straight forward that in the earlier part of it, you even find him pointing out the weakness of Jakob’s views.

I feel that John is bringing a whole new explaination and meaning to the direction of website devleopment. Some might say this is the right way and some might say not. However, let’s try to speak about the same topic as John here.

The web experience as he mentioned is about the people and the user(s). You think it’s the same? Apparently John said that the people are the ones visiting the website and the user(s) are us. He’s actually right when he provided a clearer explaination of it.

Also since he’s speaking about web experience, he’s really talking about all the involving aspect of the experience a person goes through while browsing your website. It’s kind of something like the honeycomb I mentioned in the previous article by Semantic Studios.

John unravels the web experience that involves a person’s usability, accessibility, emotional behaviour, emotional action, and other human behaviour or psychology learning. To him, the web experience is like the science of studying the people and not the user.

You’ve got to take a look at his book and see the different point he’s coming from. I’d buy the book but RM122 is quite hefty since I haven’t even purchased Bulletproof Web Design yet.

Well, till the next book review then. :)