Rachel Andrew, web developer and creator of Perch, gives us a taste of the future of CSS layout techniques. Even though CSS3 Layout Modules are still too early to implement on client projects, they seem promising and exciting.
I am also digging Five Simple Steps’ A Pocket Guide series. The affordable price tag is irresistible. Definitely looking forward to Tim Brown’s Combining Typefaces.
Truth be told, I didn’t read the first edition of Janice (Ginny) Redish’s Letting Go of the Words simply because I couldn’t get past the reprehensible cover design. After hearing a couple of recommendations from the folks in the web content industry, I decided to give the second edition a read and it turns out to be quite useful, especially tips on writing effective headings, clear sentences and meaningful links. Must-read for anyone who writes for the web.
Colin McFarland’s Experiment! is a refreshing approach on usability. One of his conversion techniques is to “take things away.” He suggests, “Sometimes taking things away is just as good as adding new things. Before you add, experiment with taking things away to the cancel the noise.” I couldn’t agree more. If you’re looking for guiding principles to improve your web site’s user experience, this book will show you how to do so through experiments.
If you’re a Web designer and haven’t jumped on the responsive bandwagon, Tim Kadlec’s Implementing Responsive Web Design will help you make the transition. As the author states it, this book is about “embracing the flexibility of the Web and practicing responsible responsive web design.” He’s done a thorough job of covering the key components (fluid layouts, media queries and responsive media), but the sections on planning, design workflow, responsive content and experiences are the gems of the book. I’ll recommend this book to my professor to be used in our Advanced Web Design class as well.
Modern JavaScript: Design and Develop by Larry Ullman is a comprehensive guide for beginners. Ullman’s accessible writing style and easy-to-follow examples make JavaScript less intimidating for novice designers and developers. This is a perfect book to learn JavaScript fundamentals.
Maintainable JavaScript by Nicholas C. Zakas takes it to another level. Zakas shows you how to write clear, collaborative JavaScript. His suggestions include: keep JavaScript out of CSS and vice versa, keep JavaScript out of HTML and vice versa and don’t modify objects you don’t own. The book is concise, but indispensable.
I finally read Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things because the book is recommended for my upcoming Graduate Design Seminar class. I must confess, this book is not as enjoyable as I had expected. In addition to the dated examples of everyday things (since the book is published in 1988), the design of the book itself is not too pleasing. The page numbers and the headings are bled to the edge. A few times I couldn’t figure out if the text belongs to the illustration or the main content. The most disrupting reading experience is paragraphs after paragraphs of italics. Nevertheless the book has many principles that I agree with, especially on the balance of aesthetics and usability:
If everyday design were ruled by aesthetics, life might be more pleasing to the eye but less comfortable; if ruled by usability, it might be more comfortable but uglier. If cost or ease of manufacture dominated, products might not be attractive, functional, or durable. Clearly, each consideration has its place. Trouble occurs when one dominates all the others.
A smart, approachable guide to the basics of typography. Kristin Cullen’s Design Elements: Typography Fundamentals focuses on the language of type and typesetting tips with rich visual complementaries. Yet what makes the book a pleasure to read and the subject easy to absorb is Cullen’s accessible instructional writing.
I had to read Jonathan Snook’s SMACSS twice, the second time much slower, to digest the author’s analytical process on CSS categorization. In a nutshell, Snook divides his styles into five parts: base, layout, module, state and theme. I like his naming convention to make the stylesheet more readable. For example he uses prefix like .layout- for layout.
When writing my CSS, one of the rules I try to avoid is deep nesting and Snook suggests the same:
We are trying to strike a balance between maintenance, performance, and readability. Going too deep may mean less “classitis” within your HTML but it increases the maintenance and readability overhead.
The chapter on CSS preprocessor serves as a great introduction; therefore, Hampton Catlin (inventor of Sass) and Michael Lintorn Catlin’s Pragmatic Guide to Sass is a perfect complement to get started with Sass. The lean, concise instructions will help you start using Sass’s features including variables, mixins, nesting, importing, extending and take it to the next level with Compass.
I have started to apply Snook’s categorization in my CSS and it is indeed very effective. I am also working backward to get my style.css rewritten into style.scss only to recompile back out to another style.css. It seems like a redundant’s redundant task, but the process helped me see how Sass handles CSS. I recommend both books if you still have yet to make the leap to preprocessor.
After reading Luke Stevens’s The Truth About HTML5, I just want to get rid of all the new, shiny HTML5’s structural elements on this site. He made a convincing argument (backed up with thorough research) how these new elements aren’t accessible as they are intended. We’re better off using divs with AIRA attributes. I have read a handful of books on HTML5, but The True is by far the most engaging and provocative on the new markups. If you’re still confused between section and article, The True will definitely set the record straight. (Hint: It’s not you). Must-read for web practitioners.
Written by someone who holds a PhD on typeface familiarity and its relation to legibility, Reading Letters is packed with research on reading process, history of typography and visual illustration. Sofie Beier has done an exceptional job of pulling together all three aspects to give readers the art and technicality of legibility. From text sizes to letter spacing to the capitals and italics to choosing between sans and serif, this book is a must-read and many rereads for both web and graphic designers as well as anyone who cares about legibility and readability.