A web development/programming blog providing info, tips, and tricks on programming languages, scripting, Linux, MySQL and more
Posts tagged Simon Collison
Tech Library
May 27th
This page is a list of all the books I have in my own personal ‘tech library’. This page will be updated regularly with new books added, plus links to reviews I have written of those books (if applicable – I hope to have reviews of all the books I own eventually). If you have a book review of a tech book you have written and would like it included in our library, please see our Guest Post page for more information.
Book Review: CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
Jul 12th
Book Review for:
CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
by Andy Budd with Cameron Moll & Simon Collison
5 out of 5 Stars for CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
This was the first CSS book that I purchased. I was always hesitant to purchase a book on CSS because most of the resources that I’ve found have been mostly beginner’s tutorials or instruction and I felt that I had at least a “beyond beginner’s” understanding of CSS. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I’m an expert at CSS, but at least mid-level to advanced. However, this book had some previous good recommendations from amazon.com so I bit the bullet and bought it. I must say that I was NOT disappointed!
This book starts off with a very quick introduction/recap of CSS basics including good code structure and organization, validation, DOCTYPES, common selectors including IDs and classes, pseudo-classes, and the advanced selectors such as universal, child, attribute and more, and some wonderful reference on the specificity and inheritance, or the “Cascade”, the core of CSS. Although this introduction is provided, it is relatively short at about 25 pages and I would suggest a good working understanding of these basics first, as it will help understand the rest of the book easier as opposed to trying to learn CSS for the first time from this book. The following chapter is another quick 15 pages with on “Visual Formatting Model Recap” including the Box Model and Positioning, two EXTREMELY important concepts to understand CSS properly. Although it is short, it is an extremely powerful section.
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We’re getting NAKED!! But don’t get too excited.
Mar 31st
As anyone who was talked to me knows, I am a huge proponent of web standards and standards based design. For those of you who are unfamiliar with standards based design, here is a brief explanation.
Standards based design is web site design that follows and conforms to current web standards recommendations, as set by the W3C. According to their website, the W3C’s mission is:
To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.
Some people may ask, why are web standards important? Same reason any set of standards are important: To promote continuity and uniformity. Think of all the standards in place in the world today: Standard Units of Weight and Measurement, Street sign colors/shapes, building/construction code, and even our state/local laws are all systems of standards. Without systems of standards, people would be free to do things as they wish. Ultimately, it would result in utter chaos. Unfortunately, that’s what happened back in the days of the browser wars in the mid-to-late 90’s.
Those of you who are fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to remember, know what I’m talking about. Different browser manufacturer’s did things their own way when it came to displaying web pages as web standards had not been published or were not widely known. Now, things are still far from perfect when it comes to browser support for HTML/CSS standards, but they are definitely better than they used to be. Browser manufacturers are getting better at their support for current design standards and W3C recommendations. A W3C Recommendation is the name for a current internet language standard and guideline, and over 110 recommendations have been published since 1994.
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