The Great Book Giveaway Contest
A notebook entry published on June 16, 2004
A notebook entry published on June 16, 2004
To celebrate the launch, and now availability, of Web Standards Solutions, I’m running a little book giveaway contest.
Add a comment (1 per person, anonymous comments will not be counted) to this entry with a link to your favorite article or weblog entry regarding web standards. The topic is wide open — markup practices, CSS tips and tricks, general web standards thoughts, etc. The idea here is twofold. Hopefully we’ll have a nice collection of links for people to browse, while at the same time we’ll have a pool of entries in order to pick a winner.
To keep things fair, and to give everyone an equal chance to win, I’ll be drawing three numbers out of a hat (or some such device) — pure BINGO style. Each number corresponding to the number that’s automatically (and sequentially) assigned to each comment.
Entries must be received before 11:59pm EST on Friday June 18.
Update: The contest is now closed. The winners will be chosen and announced soon. Thanks to all who entered!
Each of the three winners will receive one free copy of Web Standards Solutions and one friends of ED T-shirt from the publisher. Did I mention that both were free? Delivered to you.
Good luck to all!
90% of All Usability Testing is Useless
—————
Catchey title with a nice amount of information.
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000328.php
“The benefits of Web Standards to your visitors, your clients and you”
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/
Has helped convince a client on more than one occassion.
10 Reasons for Web Standards
http://jessey.net/blog/archive/entries/?id=144
Probably Developing with Web Standards. Nice one to start with the basics of web standards.
“An Objective Look at Table Based vs. CSS Based Design”
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2004/05/
an_objective_look_at_table_based_vs_css_based_design/index.php
The long url broke things so the links on 2 lines
“CSS Based Design”
http://adactio.com/articles/display.php/CSS_based_design
One of the first CSS articles I read. Written in an easy to read “Matrix” style.
CSS/Edge, cool things you can do with CSS, especially neat are the complexspiral demos.
http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/index.html
Since i haven’t been participating in CSS design for long time, i have not read many articles, but i think this one from “A List Apart” really gave me a deep sight into CSS design.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/
The Business Case for Web Accessibility
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2004/01/the_business_case_for_web_accessibility/index.php
Blue Robot’s Layout Reservoir
http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/
(This stuff is what made me first understand CSS’s layout capability. The 3-column version remains the foundation for graphicPUSH.)
I like Dave Shea’s Roadmap to standards post. I use this a lot when asked how one would break old habits.
The good ‘ol Floatutorial is one of my favorites.
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/
http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/ which changed the way we design websites today. Or atleast encouraged more people to write a book about web standars and how to use them ;)
Great idea (perhaps, as a bonus, you can give away Gmail accounts?)
Here’s my link:
http://tantek.com/log/2003/01.html#L20030114t1345
Best. Tabs. Ever.
unless they’re outdated now
Web Standards ROI by D. Keith Robinson.
Nothing catches the boss’s attention faster than numbers.
The article that started me on standards.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/tohell/
CSS Crib Sheet @ Mezzoblue
Good for beginners and refreshers.
Also gotta love anything thats translated into 10 diffrent languages.
http://www.mezzoblue.com/css/cribsheet/
Wired.com’s explanation why they switched to web standards for their redesign in 2002. It’s just nice to see that there are companies out there who care. :-)
This article got me interested in standards-compliant design/development.
Making the Absolute, Relative
http://www.stopdesign.com/articles/absolute/
A great explanation of Absolute and Relative positioning.
It seems with me that your only as good as your last game. The very recent The real reason you should care about web standards gets my vote.
(and it’s post #99 on that blog - very significant to a Canadian!)
Rounded Corners without images
Personally I think this is a step in the wrong direction, but it’s just experimentation.
Clagnut’s “How to size text using ems”: http://clagnut.com/blog/348/
I’ve already ordered a copy of the book, but if I should win, I’ll donate it to my local library.
Here’s a good article I read a few months ago:
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/03/10/css_problems/
Good problem-solving checklist for CSS design.
i read this recently and decided it would be a great link to point my friends to who are learning about design and some who are thinking about relearning design.
I was first inspired to start designing with standards after reading the Elastic Design article (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/elastic/) on A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com).
My favorite article is just any article about the LIR; It’s my image replacement of choice and theres no span involved!
http://www.moronicbajebus.com/playground/cssplay/image-replacement/
The Business Value of Web Standards
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000266.php
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/12/04/css_is_visua/
It’s simple, and I really liked the response.
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/typography/
A cleaner alternative to Eric Meyer’s ragged floats. Not being a web designer by profession, this is one of my best contributions to a community which has taught me, among other things, the importance of web standards. And approved by the web design community too.
The Business Value of Web Standards by Jeffrey Veen:
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000266.php
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/journey/
This article has both a discussion of standards and an intricate look at the redesign process, both very helpful and a good resource.
The Learning Curve of Web Standards by Bobby van der Sluis. Nice, honest look at web standards that’s a resource unto itself.
The infamous Semantic Obsolescence, by Mark Pilgrim.
Sobering, though it didn’t quite change my mind.
Cool effect.
http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2003/08/22/css_photo_zoom.html
Wow, sign me up! I go with Dave Shea’s Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death.
Good luck to all of you!
Why tables for layout is stupid
http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/
Accessible, stylish form layout
http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2004/03/24/
I am a big fan of this page, CSS Round Corners, which explains how to create tabs that can expand to the font size. Really a good tutorial and read.
My other site that I have probably spent a ton of time on and learned so much is the Css Vault simply because it gives us an outlet to see all the great css designs around us and allows us to dig inside the code that put those sites together. I am a fan because inside that blog is TONS of standards links to so many different sites.
Great resource to have!
An oldie but goody.
Rules Based Design
Just an excellent working version of how to learn and use web standards. When anybody asks, I direct them here.
Great looking navigation via css, Navigation Matrix Reloaded.
http://www.htmldog.com/
Does the second comment count? :P
“Web Standards ROI” by D. Keith Robinson.
Excellent real-world reasons that effect the $_Bottom Line_$.
http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives/web_standards_roi.php
Navigation Matrix Reloaded by Didier Hilhorst
additionally (not quite CSS but still a killer technique)
Inman Flash Replacement by Shaun Inman
A nifty CSS thingie that showed me how far it capabilities went to:
http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001242.php
Best wishes with the book.
Simon Wilson’s rather spiffy approach to
separating out JavaScript from content.
Helps to convince when you can talk about the bottom line
http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives/nonstandard_code_hurts_the_bottom_line.php
The Business Value of Web Standards has been a good resource for me to pitch to clients when they ask why I code the way I do (instead of, say, Frontpage).
sorry to pimp myself, but the first css trick that comes to my mind is my tutorial describing how to acheive a css drop down menu.
the tutorial: http://www.alexkeeny.com/simplicity/archives/entry-21/
the result: http://www.alexkeeny.com/cssdropdown/
Making the Absolute Relative, by Doug Bowman.
I love it.
Zeldman’s “Spelling and grammar not the same”.
I’ll start by giving a link to the site that started it all for me, http://www.twothirty.com, and the article that started it all for me
http://www.glish.com/css/
Reading this interview really made me want to work hard at learning CSS and semantic markup and all that.
http://www.webstandards.org/learn/interviews/dcederholm/
Accessibility within [Company Name] - Building a business and legal case for accessible websites from <isolani/>
I really sometime feel to listen rather than read.. And that is what was done succefully by webtalkguys
http://www.webtalkguys.com/article-usability-2.shtml
love this one, as its good and also has an audio interview by Steve Krug… His book “Don’t make me think” firstly introduced me to Web Usability .
http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/
this one definetivily converted me.
Great presentation content, great design…
Seybold - Why tables for layout is stupid (Go get your boss)
sosa - great minds think alike…
Catching web standards by John Allsopp’s girlfriend.
This was the first thing I ever read about web standards (I’m a newbie): Developing with Web Standards.
My favorite web standards article of recent memory has been When Semantic Markup Goes Bad by Matthew Thomas. Because presentational markup is better than markup with false semantics.
Source Ordered Columns, at positioniseverything.net.
This article got me away from absolute-positioning sidebars.
Youngpup - Article on popup windows, and how you should properly use them.
Roadmap to Standards is one of the better reaeds on why standards matter.
On a side note, the comment form was rejecting my comment since my URL contained the nickname for William in it.
Standards with Flash, the best article i have ever seen.
http://alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay/
http://stopdesign.com/articles/absolute/
This article finally made positioning clear (no pun intended) to me.
Not trying to kiss up but this article fixed a lot of issues with my sites.
Clagnut made ems easy. Now I use ems all the time for my text.
I have to propose this as a why not a how article:
The Way Forward with Web Standards
Onion skinned drop shadows at ALA. My latest obsession.
silverorange’s updated tabs: durable, crossbrowser, scalable, semantic tabs.
http://labs.silverorange.com/archives/2004/may/updatedsimple
For all you Dreamweaver users out there: Validating XHTML with Dreamweaver MX!
Sliding Doors by Douglas Bowman
I really am in love with this technique although I have never actually used it I think its fabulous and rules when you use multiple levels of tabs.
I’ve no idea of the amount of times I’ve used Doug’s The IE Factor to make it clear to slightly-techie people how much of a pain IE is, but I know it’s far more than you’d expect to have to do if the most used browser on the planet was of any use.
Design Eye for the Usability Guy
http://www.designbyfire.com/000094.html
This has to have been the best read in the last two months. It puts Standards into action and make the visually impaired Jacob Nielsen look good
A Practical Start to Web Standards by Steve Smith
An amusing rant about “click here” and it’s misuse on the web:
http://www.scribbling.net/dont_click_here
I would have to say that Eric Meyer’s css/edge (espesially complexspiral) really opened my mind to the potential of CSS which in turn helped me see the value of web standards (web standards doesn’t mean ugly)
The devedge interview with Mike Davidson of ESPN really helped me sell web standards to the bigwigs at my work.
CSS Design: Taming Lists from A List Apart really made me realize that almost everything in my sites was a list of some sort or another and how to deal with it.
Granted, all of A List Apart is great.
Sam Ruby’s excellent article on i18n was a good one: Survival guide to i18n. Incidentally, I pre-ordered your book on Amazon ages ago, so if I win another copy I’ll roll it over into another competition or something.
This was one of the neatest css tricks I’ve seen in a while.
Mike Rundle’s Accessible Image Replacement.
Look Ma - no tables! - thats the heading for me. Not sure who wrote the original article but this heading says it all. If you’ve done your first table less xhtml standards based design, then you are really proud of it and wanna tell everyone because its not easy!
The latest from A List Apart; using negative margins for layouts is cool.
Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins
http://www.orderedlist.com/articles/a_practical_start
I’ve found the NYPL Style Guide to be a great one-stop resource for the basics on XHTML/CSS/Web standards goodness.
Of course Stefan Münz’ SELFHTML, though it is only available in German, French, Español and Japanese right now…
I found that this article on A Roadmap to Standards by Dave Shea to be very good and it helped me greatly in starting my journey into designing with Web Standards.
This was a great article and reminded me that some times you just need to use the right tool for the job. No matter wheather its tables,css,php,asp or what ever.
Heh… I came here looking for this article:
But it looks like Colin Cameron beat me to the punch. How ‘bout:
XHTML Web Design for Beginners - Part II
That article got me started on XHTML, and I’ll never go back!
This Article at A List Apart really got me started. It just gives simple starting points.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/practicalcss/
It’s even transformed me into a part-time webdesigner - originally I was only designing my personal site.
SimpleBits’ article on Standards, comparing Web standards to Home standards, really got me thinking on how good it is to send the same information to everyone, everywhere.
I will find this link useful.
http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/06/16/contest.html#comments
sorry the few I came up with were already mentioned.
Separation: The Web Designer’s Dilemma
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/separationdilemma/
Hope this counts…I just came across this today in a mailing list…it’s a “semantic validator” of sorts. And while you can have valid, web-standards compliant markup without good semantic markup, I think they do/should go hand-in-hand.
http://www.w3.org/2003/12/semantic-extractor.html
Entering quite late in the contest I find quite a few of my resources already listed. But when it comes to illustrate the enormous possibilities to what a standards based design can look like, it was the CSS Zen Garden that opened my eyes.
Put me down for a dose of Progressive Enhancement and the Future of Web Design.
Definitly is going to be the
37SVN Topic Describing Web Standards in 10 Words or Less.
I was going to say Developing with Web Standards but since it’s been said, maybe I can break the rules a little and go with:
It’s indispensible to me – I use it very often.
This might seem like I’m fishing here, but I really love this article by you re: moutaintop corners. It helped me out a lot and showed how to do better rollovers and linking with gifs and pngs. Very great.
Link to it: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/mountaintop/ - or click here
I’m torn between dynamic image replacement and dynamic flash replacement.
All of a sudden I find myself wanting to replace text.
Is this a good place to mention that Amazon.co.uk emailed me today to say that the book has been delayed and may not be delivered to me for three weeks? Boo hoo. Really looking forward to it.
Oh, and my links: Douglas Livingstone’s layout examples for three columns and rounded corners really helped recently. The best cross-platform solutions I’ve found to date.
I was gonna say Keith Robinsons recent ROI post but i see thats been mentioned at least once or twice.
So, I know this is not a Weblog or Article, although there are probably hundreds of articles about it: http://www.csszengarden.com/ It has so inspired me, and has helped win over clients!
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/practicalcss/
A little old, but it’s a great introduction to some of CSS’s tricks…
I like an article about using tables vs css, but dont remember the link (nor find it)
so the second come:
Web Standard roi
just Zeldman.
http://www.zeldman.com
everyone has his address embedded on their forehead, but I found reading his site pushed me into css more than anything.
You can’t go wrong keep the CSS Validator in your favorites list.
A blog entry from diveintomark called Why we won’t help you
I suggest Real World Style. It’s clearly written, enjoyable, and has a number of techniques for handling certain CSS situations that I’ve used many a time.
It’s been mentioned twice so far I think, but it’s just so good it deserves a third:
everything from boxes to opinions. truly one of the most invaluable resources around.
I’m still learning, and this article is indispensable to me:
Flowing and Positioning: two page models
it was this article that opened my eyes to the beauty and power of css.
Sitepoint’s ‘Equalizing Columns’ sticky post by Paul O’Brien, CSS/Web standards Guru.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143801
Sitepoint’s ‘Equalizing Columns’ sticky post by Paul O’Brien, CSS/Web standards Guru.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143801
I’d just like to reiterate Dave Shea’s Roadmap to Standards. It’s a great post.
Also, Keith’s post that some things are (gasp) more important than web standards, helps me remember that valid XHTML/CSS is only one part of the ballgame.
The CSS Zengarden.
When I saw it, I decided to learn and use CSS, and stop using tables.
Ok, it might seem a bit obvious, but
It is, after all, where all this web stuff started anyway. If you haven’t read it, what the bloody’ell are you doing here, go and read it. Then read it again! making sure sure you’ve covered the whole thing.
http://linear1.org/gm/archives/00000172.php
Control printer output of your pages with CSS. This article rekindled my interest in CSS solutions.
http://www.saila.com/usage/layouts/?front
Well at risk of getting disqualified for promoting someone else’s book I found that Sitepoint’s “Designing without Tables Using CSS” was a helpful read for understanding CSS and ultimately web standards a little better… The link will get you 4 sample chapters to whet your appetite.
No affiliation, happy customer, etc.
This link http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dynatext/ simply because it’s the greatest/latest trick I’ve found.
The article that started me down the standards path.
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/authoring/stylesheets/tutorials/tutorial1.html
Most of my bookmarks are already here, but i haven’t seen HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
On the side note, when you writers are going to make your books buyable :-) worldwide (Croatia, for example)? Hopefuly some Meyer/Zeldman copies coming next week via my local bookstore, but now you made me interested in yours, too… Damn!
The Business Value of Web Standards
Will you sign the book?
WHy I started using web standards…
The Business Benefits of Web Standards
Chris
Today at work I used How to Clear Floats Without Structural Markup and I am quite enamored with the technique.
The CSS Crib Sheet by MezzoBlue.
The only thing to read when you’ve screwed up your CSS. And you know you eventually break something.
Listamatic, for all your list designing needs:
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/
There are literally a thousand-and-one absolutely superbe articles and tutorials on a ton of excellent websites on CSS and XHTML. But what has really given me personally an incredible boost, ideas-wise, for my new site and for the Fight For Standards itself, was the latest Design by Fire article, The real reason you should care about web standards.
That article has caused an uproar across the bloggers-world, with many people now discussing what is really important: the future of the Internet itself, the way Standards fit into that picture, and the way the W3C go about doing their part, etc.
That entry, for me, is currently the most memorable, because it so perfectly dissects the whole issue that this Standards-advocacy is all about.
This is a good one :)
When in doubt, read the spec.
this page is an awesome resource for those who are learning the quirks of browsers (which is an absolute must if you want to learn xhtml css based coding properly) and how to get around them.
We don’t have to go back and check the other 150 some odd comments to see that we’re not doing a repeat, right?
Methinks I’m probably not eligible, seeing as I won the T-shirt contest, but…
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/
Nice site. I’ll look for the book at the local computer store this weekend.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay/
Because “standards” doesn’t mean “1995”.
Great summary for jumpstarting that first conversation about web standards.
What Every Web Site Owner Should Know About Standards: A Web Standards Primer
loved this one - text sizing… up the garden path
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/font/index.html
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/
I slapped myself when I found out how easy Dan’s solution to this dilemma was.
This site is invalid - a slightly askew rant on web standards. Brilliant!
Hope I’m not repeating a link, but Dean Allen’s Reading Design piece at ALA stands out for me as writer for two reasons:
1. Words are more important than design, because design is fallible
2. Design is fallible.
I have found this article very useful in formatting web pages for printing using CSS.
The one that started it all for me:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/journey/
Stolen Shadows by Mandarin Design —http://mandarindesign.com/shadow.html
I think it’s cool.
I have to agree: A List Apart’s to Hell … was the article which inspired me to know more about web standards. Zeldman and all the guys there really made me rethink the way I used to design.
While I have several favorites, many of which have already been mentioned, my favorite recent article was posted by Andrei Herasimchuk, one of my favorite blog authors. When one of his recent articles was posted, it was awarded a great deal of fanfare throughout the community and regarded as somewhat trivial. I’d guess many who watch this site also watch Andrei’s, but regardless:
The real reason you should care about web standards
An excellent read, IMHO.
“Getting plugged in is probably the single biggest piece of advice I can give anyone looking to get a start with web standards. Through ongoing reading and sharing of what you know, we all grow as a community. [..]”
— ‘A Roadmap to Standards’ by Dave Shea
so many of my favorites have been mentioned… but this book available online had some good info for me at one time:
Developing with Web Standards is probably the single greatest web standards page I’ve ever come across. It touches on so many aspects and is a great article to point to when you want to introduce someone to the why and how of standards.
When I first started getting more involved with using web standards and as it was becoming more possible to do on a larger scale, I came across this article on Apple’s website. At the time, it was certainly a good internal marketing tool to use at work and with clients.
It may not be web standards per se, but DKR sums up web design/development so perfectly in Give The Web Some Respect. A great read for anyone currently involved in web design or looking to get into it. The article really hit home in so many ways.
Design by Fire: For the greater good of Design, p.1 — Why Trebuchet sucks. (Lucida Sans Unicode is my ultimate alternative now.)
The Advantages of Using Valid HTML
A short piece on the benefits of using HTML standards.
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