Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, Graphics, and Beyond by Jennifer Niederst Robbins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the most comprehensive book on HTML and CSS I’ve read so far. It reads like a textbook and is quite impersonal, which is a shame because author Jennifer Niederst Robbins has been designing since 1993 and obviously has a lot of experience to share. The book was published in June 2007, so it teaches HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1, and is somewhat dated. Even so, it’s a great introduction to web design principles, HTML, and CSS.
Each chapter includes several exercises and ends with a test, which I found very helpful for gauging my understanding. The book concentrates on HTML and CSS and doesn’t touch scripting, but there are two chapters on graphics and many tips for other areas of web design. Below are the notes I made as I read.
Put decorative images in CSS, not HTML.
POST hides submitted data and has no character limit. GET appends form data to the URL, enabling bookmarking, but has a 256 character limit.
Put form controls in lists; ordered lists <ol> if order matters, otherwise unordered <ul>.
Use ems or percentages for font sizes.
Use {white-space: pre;} to preserve character spaces.
Use ems or pixels for box model measurements (content, padding, border, margin).
Use {visibility: hidden;} to hide an element but hold its space blank, and {display: none;} to hide an element and close the space it would have occupied.
Regardless of layout, try to put the main content above extras in the source markup. Position-based layouts are better for this since float-based layouts require elements to be marked up in the order in which they’re laid out.
Use GIF or PNG for graphics with flat colors and hard edges. Use PNG for alpha transparency. Use JPG for photos or graduated color.
I’m a web designer and I learnt HTML and CSS by self-studying through the internet. Even I’m using most of the tips that you have mentioned, and I think these tips are very useful for a beginner. As web designers we should remember to test the website in several browsers like Firefox, Chrome etc. Another thing is, if you are putting some images to the website, it is must to put quality images only.