Zeldman, Jeffrey

Understanding Web Design

We get better design when we understand our medium. Yet even at this late cultural hour, many people don’t understand web design. Among them can be found some of our most distinguished business and cultural leaders, including a few who possess a profound grasp of design—except as it relates to the web. If we want better sites, better work, and better-informed clients, the need to educate begins with us.

Twenty Signs You Don’t Want that Web Design Project

Most clients are good clients, and some clients are great clients. But some jobs are just never going to work out well. Herewith, a few indicators that a project may be headed to the toilet.

Version Targeting: Threat or Menace?

Real DOM support is a game changer. Enabled by default, it would bring many sites to their knees. That would break the web, and not in quotes. Providing IE8's greater compliance on an opt-in basis is the only way to get everyone over the scripting hump.

The Trouble with Web Standards

You may mistrust web standards because of bad experiences with buggy browsers. Or you might have converted a site from HTML to XHTML, only to discover that their layouts suddenly looked different in standards-compliant browsers. Don't give in to the dark side! Web standards are here to stay.

Web 3.0

To you who are toiling over an AJAX- and Ruby-powered social software product, good luck, God bless, and have fun. Remember that 20 other people are working on the same idea.

CSS in Action: A Hybrid Layout

In this chapter, we'll complete our production task by using CSS to achieve design effects that support the brand and make the site more attractive without relying on GIF text, JavaScript rollovers, spacer pixel GIF images, deeply nested table cell constructions, or other staples of old-school web design.

XHTML by Example: A Hybrid Layout

In this chapter, we’ll roll up our sleeves and apply what we’ve learned about XHTML thus far to mark up a real-world design project. The markup we create will be partly structural, partly transitional, and fully standards-compliant.

Much Ado About 5K

A full-fledged website under 5K? Some of the brightest people in the industry swore it could not be done. Yet hundreds of developers not only came in under the 5K budget, they built great sites in the process. Zeldman explores how the 5K Awards rocked the web.

Tackling Usability Gotchas in Large-scale Site Redesigns

Redesigns can solve old usability problems while creating new ones that must be solved in turn. From the lessons of the ALA 3.0 redesign comes this quick study in remapping content without frustrating readers.

Why Gecko Matters: What Netscape’s Upcoming Browser Will Mean to the Web

Netscape is about to unleash its new browser, built around the Gecko rendering engine. Theoretically the first completely standards-compliant web browser, Gecko enters a world where most people use IE5 (which is not completely standards-compliant). Is Netscape’s effort too little, too late? Or is it the beginning of a new and better way to create websites? Zeldman articulates The Web Standards Project's position and explains what Netscape’s browser will mean to the web.

From Table Hacks to CSS Layout: A Web Designer's Journey

Redesigning A List Apart using CSS should have been easy. It wasn't. The first problem was understanding how CSS actually works. The second was getting it to work in standards-compliant browsers. A journey of discovery.

Why IE5/Mac Matters

It complies with two key web standards. And leaves out two others. It's IE5 Macintosh Edition, the first browser on any platform to truly support HTML 4 and CSS-1. Its accessibility enhancements put the user in charge, and its clever new features solve long-standing cross-platform and usability problems. All this ... but still no XML or DOM.

Patents, Royalties, and Web Standards

We urge all ALA readers to examine the W3C Patent Policy draft, read The Web Standards Project’s opinion of same, and mail your comments to the W3C.

Better Living Through XHTML

Everything you wanted to know about converting from HTML to XHTML, including why you’d want to, tools that help, changes in the way browsers display XHTML pages, shortcuts, bugs, workarounds, and other tips you won’t find elsewhere.

A CSS Redesign in Five Easy Pages

Building a standards-compliant redesign of ALA should have been easy. It wasn’t. The first problem was understanding how CSS actually works. The second was getting it to work in standards-compliant browsers. A journal of discovery.

Getting Paid

As businesses struggle to stay in business, many are short–changing vendors or woefully delaying payment. Zeldman laments the difficulties of getting paid.

To Hell With Bad Browsers

Why does ALA look like @#$ in your 4.0 browser? Read this now.

Why Don't You Code for Netscape?

Long considered the Holy Grail of web design, 'backward compatibility' has its place; but at this point in web development history, shouldn’t we be more concerned about forward compatibility? ALA makes the case for authoring to web standards instead of browser quirks.

Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE

Per HTML and XHTML standards, a DOCTYPE (short for “document type declaration”) informs the validator which version of (X)HTML you’re using, and must appear at the very top of every web page. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won’t validate without them.

SMIL When You Play That: A Gentle Introduction to SMIL + SVG

SMIL is an easy-to-learn, HTML-like language for creating 'TV-like multimedia presentations such as training courses on the Web,' according to the W3C. The current SMIL recommendation is 1.0, and you can read all about it at the W3C address cited immediately above, and at another one we’ll mention later. This is our way of avoiding adding fifty pages to this article.

Circle Jerks

Recently, on several well-known community and personal sites, familiar cries were heard: 'A is a sellout. B, C, and D are much better than X, Y, and Z. N, O, and P are overrated, back-scratching link whores.' The web design community goes through this kind of self-examination every three months. Under the banner of honest criticism, names are named, guesses about motivation are sketched, and sometimes entire bodies of work are dismissed. Useful and reasonable criticism is often advanced in these debates. But too frequently it is overshadowed by those with the loudest voices, whose anger can sound like passionate truth to those who've nurtured similar thoughts but been afraid to express them publicly. Undoubtedly some people sell out, some are overrated, and some use links merely to advance their careers or promote their friends. But even when the accused are guilty as charged, the accusations change nothing—they simply create turmoil.

Naked

Every content producer cowers before twin demons. On one side stands the publisher’s mandate: you must make your deadline. Readers expect it, and readers lose trust if you’re late to market. On the other side stands the editor’s prime directive: you must publish worthwhile material. Readers expect it, and readers lose trust if you publish filler simply because an issue is due. Publish junk once, and you lose a few discerning people. Do it continually, and you lose everybody.

Fear of Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) save bandwidth, vastly reducing the size of your files when compared to old-style markup. With Styles, your sites load faster. You work faster, too. Styles shave grueling hours of grunt-work off your design workload: one brief CSS document can style an entire domain; and when it's time to redesign, you can execute site-wide changes in minutes instead of days. Style Sheets bring genuine leading and sophisticated margination to the web, easing our readers' eyestrain while bringing us the control of negative space we take for granted in other media. They offer exciting new possibilities, from absolute positioning, to interactive manipulation of text and images. And they allow us to create sophisticated layouts while doing no harm to the underlying structure of our documents – ensuring that search engines (as well as hand-held devices, web phones, and other futuristic browser morphs) can 'understand' our pages as easily as readers do.