It’s finally here! My new book, Speaking in Styles: Fundamentals of CSS for Web Designers, is ready for purchase from Peachpit, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Borders. I wrote it for designers who want to learn how to describe their Web work without having to get bogged down in all of the jargon. It’s a simple, straight-forward approach that I’ve used with great success in classes I’ve taught over the past couple of years.

From the introduction:

I wrote this book for designers of all stripes—visual, interactive, user experience, information architecture. However, it is really for anyone who wants to learn how to use CSS.

Speaking in Styles is split into three sections and includes three appendixes:

• Part 1: A Web Primer
  Defines what makes a Web page, introduces some tools you will need to build one, and dispels some popular myths about designers and CSS.
• Part 2: CSS Grammar
  Covers the nuts and bolts of how to create style sheets and apply them to a Web page, including the important vocabulary designers need to know.
• Part 3: Speaking Like a Native
  Follows the creation of a simple Web page design, emphasizing the best practices you should use.
• Appendixes
  Includes all of the code for Part 3; the length, font, and color values you use with CSS; and a list of common fixes for dealing with the bugs in Internet Explorer.

Want to win a copy?

Speaking in Styles

To celebrate the publication, I have 3 copies to give away today. Be either the first, fifth or tenth person to tweet a link to this page with the code #SISContest01, and I will send you a copy of Speaking In Styles. It’s that easy. I’ll check the key word #SISContest01 to find the winners. Only one tweet per person will be counted, my tweets are not counted, and the judge’s decisions (mine) are final.

Tags: CSS, Excerpt, publishing by jason
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Over in my other blog, JasonSpeaking, I’ve posted an analysis of the news from Google that Google Chrome OS is in Beta, with a final version to be released sometime (they say mid) next year.

From a Web design standpoint, the news of Google Chrome OS is of little interest and of great interest.

Because Google Chrome uses the Webkit rendering engine—the same rendering engine that Apple Safari uses—it means that there is little difference between designing for Safari or designing for Chrome. There have been a few inconsistencies between the browsers—depending on the build of Webkit they deploy in their live browser—but, for the most part, these differences are cosmetic. We can safely assume that this will continue to be true for Google Chrome OS

However, Google chrome OS could be a game changer in the arena of operating systems, and we may well see more applications that are currently run on the desktop migrate to the Web. As the Web becomes increasingly a place where we interact with each other and information (rather than just consuming it) Web designers are going to have to work more and more in the real of User Interface design. After all, Google Chrome will take care of the chrome.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Tags: Future, Web Design, Web Development by jason
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