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?

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
No Comments »

Webdesigner Depot just published my first article written for them, all about the ongoing struggle between designers and developers for the heart of the Web. In the article, entitled “5 Pet Peeves Designers Have With Developers (and How to Avoid Them)“, I  wanted to air some of the gripes I constantly hear from those who visualize the Web against those who build the Web and suggest some ideas for how to resolve them.

A little taste from the article:

Peeve #2: “The colors are all wrong!”

You don’t choose colors arbitrarily, but developers seem to think that “close is close enough.”

Issue
I don’t know whether this is true of all developers, but I once worked with a developer who was red-green color-blind (he was a huge fan of our content manager, who sent all of her emails in pink text on a lime-green background). However, being color-blind didn’t stop him from being a kick-ass developer.

Solution
If you want the colors to be right, then spell out all of the color values on the page. Don’t rely on your developer to eyeball the color values or to sample the colors in Photoshop.

You also need to consider that the problem may not be with the developer but with you. Colors look different on a Mac and in CMYK (if you happen to accidentally enable that color space). Make sure that your document color mode and proofs are set to generic RGB by default.

Tags: Excerpt, Web Design, Web Development by jason
No Comments »

At SXSW last week, I read Chapter 3, “The Myths of CSS”, from my forthcoming book Speaking In Styles, and then did a book signing for CSS, DHTML, & Ajax  at the Barnes & Noble booth. It was an interesting session, where I talked to several nice people, and even signed copy of my book for someone from Microsoft (hopefully he won’t be returning it).

SXSW posted an audio recording of my reading on their site and I am happy to re-present it here.

Speaking in Styles: A CSS Primer for Web Designers

Tags: Conferences, Excerpt by jason
No Comments »

One of the most frustrating issues Web designers have to deal with on the Mac is how to test their designs in Internet Explorer 6, which is still very popular and only available in Windows. One great and inexpensive solution is a program called Crossover, which allows you to run many Windows applications directly on your Mac desktop, without having to own or install Windows on your machine. Currently, it does not support Internet Explorer 7 or 8, which is a shame, but these two browsers have fewer inconsistencies than their predecessor.

codeweavers.com/products/cxmac

[NOTE: This is an excerpt from Speaking in Styles: A CSS Primer for Web Designers, coming out later this year.]

Tags: Excerpt, Web Design by jason
No Comments »