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Dan Cederholm
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Bulletproof Web Design: Improving Flexibility and Protecting Against Worst-case Scenarios With Xhtml and Css 2nd Edition

by Dan Cederholm (Author)
See all formats and editions
Provides information on successfully designing a Web site using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0321509021
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0321509024
  3. Edition
    2nd
  4. Publisher
    New Riders Pub
  5. Publication date
    January 1, 2007
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.75 x 0.5 x 9 inches
  8. Print length
    298 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Book Description
No matter how visually appealing or content-packed a Web site may be, if it's not adaptable to a variety of situations and reaching the widest possible audience, it isn't really succeeding. In Bulletproof Web Desing, author and Web designer extraordinaire, Dan Cederholm outlines standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability, and user control--key components of every sucessful site. Each chapter starts out with an example of an unbulletproof site one that employs a traditional HTML-based approach which Dan then deconstructs, pointing out its limitations. He then gives the site a make-over using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so you can see how to replace bloated code with lean markup and CSS for fast-loading sites that are accessible to all users. Finally, he covers several popular fluid and elastic-width layout techniques and pieces together all of the page components discussed in prior chapters into a single-page template.

Guest Reviewer: Jeffrey Zeldman

Modern web design is user-centered, accessible, and standards-based. In other words, it's completely different from the stuff we did in the 1990s. There are two vital aspects to designing with web standards:

(1) understanding why
(2) knowing how

Know-how is what Dan Cederholm has in spades, and in this updated edition of his essential text, he shares that knowledge with humor and clarity.

Dan's is one of the smartest minds in CSS and HTML. He is internationally known as a deep and innovative coder. But his background is in design and production, working on real-world sites for no-nonsense businesses like Google, ESPN, and Fast Company, Inc.

This grounding in practical user interface design and daily production issues makes Dan a great teacher of CSS, because he never loses sight of the things designers want to do (not to mention the things designers' clients and bosses demand of them).

From multi-column layouts that stay crispy in milk, to maintaining fine control of web fonts and sizes without alienating users: just about every problem a modern web designer faces is examined, with solutions ranging from good to better to best.

This second edition includes everything you need to know about taking Internet Explorer 7 into account. Little else has changed. And that's as it should be, for this book is a classic. It belongs on every web designer's shelf.

-- Jeffrey Zeldman, author, Designing With Web Standards 2nd Edition



About the Author
Dan Cederholm is a Web designer and author living in Massachusetts. He's the founder of SimpleBits, a tiny design studio. A recognized expert in the field of standards-based Web design, Dan has worked with Google, MTV, ESPN, Fast Company, Blogger, Odeo, and others. He embraces flexible, adaptable design using Web standards through his design work, writing, and speaking. Dan is the author of two best-selling books: Bulletproof Web Design (New Riders) and Web Standards Solutions (Friends of ED). Dan also runs the popular weblog SimpleBits, where he writes articles and commentary on the Web, technology, and life. He also plays a mean ukulele and occasionally wears a baseball cap.

About the Author

Dan Cederholm is a Web designer and author living in Massachusetts. He's the founder of SimpleBits, a tiny design studio. A recognized expert in the field of standards-based Web design, Dan has worked with Google, MTV, ESPN, Fast Company, Blogger, Odeo, and others. He embraces flexible, adaptable design using Web standards through his design work, writing, and speaking. Dan is the author of two best-selling books: Bulletproof Web Design (New Riders) and Web Standards Solutions (Friends of ED). Dan also runs the popular weblog SimpleBits, where he writes articles and commentary on the Web, technology, and life. He also plays a mean ukulele and occasionally wears a baseball cap.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Riders Pub; 2nd edition (January 1, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 298 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0321509021
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0321509024
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 0.5 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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Dan Cederholm

Dan Cederholm

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Dan Cederholm is a Web designer and author living in Massachusetts. He's the founder of SimpleBits, a tiny design studio. A recognized expert in the field of standards-based Web design, Dan has worked with Google, MTV, ESPN, Fast Company, Blogger, Odeo, and others. He embraces flexible, adaptable design using Web standards through his design work, writing, and speaking. Dan is the author of two best-selling books: Bulletproof Web Design (New Riders) and Web Standards Solutions (Friends of ED). Dan also runs the popular weblog SimpleBits, where he writes articles and commentary on the Web, technology, and life. He also plays a mean ukulele and occasionally wears a baseball cap.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
45 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

EuropeanCaliGRL
5.0 out of 5 stars Very clear step-by-step tutorial
Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2010
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This is not for people who are new to CSS en HTML... Now that's said I can come to business: this is a very good place to start when you know the basics of HTML and CSS and want to learn about flexible web design and making your website accessible. Even though this book is not the youngest on the market ;-) it is definitely still contemporary.

Dan shows examples of websites (existing and fictitious)that are not flexible and takes the reader on a step-by-step journey to turn that example into a flexible and accessible design. Very useful!
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Eichlerguy
4.0 out of 5 stars Mind experiment
Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2007
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A good tech book is one I can take with me on the train, read it, gain something, and then try out the technique once I get to the office. In other words, it lets me perform experiments in my mind and then try them for real later. Too many tech books fail to logically walk me through a process and instead either (a) rely too heavily on complex examples that must be done on a computer or (b) regurgitate existing documentation.

_Bulletproof Web Design_ avoids both traps, instead making a case for accessible design and then explaining - in easy-to-understand chunks - how to do it.

To put it another way, very few books in this genre succeed in changing the way I approach something. This one does.
2 people found this helpful
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Duane_Pac
5.0 out of 5 stars Bulletproof Web Design Book Review
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2011
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I read this book while taking an XHTML web design class. I was new to web design, but had a lot of experience as a mainframe developer, and some as a windows developer. This book was the absolute best addition to my studies. It focused on best practices and design concepts that were invaluable while learning to develop CSS and create legible markup. The textbook I used in the class was very good, but I greatly improved my work thanks to this book. I highly recommend it.
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Kevyne Kicklighter
3.0 out of 5 stars Firefox users only need to apply
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2008
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After building enough sites from scratch, and wanting to make darn sure they were browser friendly and accessible, I got this book due to it addressing cross-browser problems and techniques for accessibility.

Now the practical knowledge in this book is great. It's the no-hold-bars dirty hacking of CSS/XHTML to force it to work in browsers, and address how to get sites to be more accessible (like addressing text sizing that scales accordingly in IE 7 and FF, and to look similar in each browser). Added benefit it even shows you how to tweak the Blogger Tic-Tac template, to be even better -- for beginning bloggers, this is very sweet.

But, I learned that this book is geared to the 10% of the web browser market (Firefox), which meant code examples to experiment with weren't friendly to IE 7. Worse, the code explanations were quite elementary -- dictation/narrative style -- which didn't give me enough info to know WHAT I was doing. Efforts to tweak examples (like in Chapter 4) required over an hour trying to get the floats to not break, if I resized them -- all because the explanations were so scant to know what variables to tweak.

Really wanted to like this book, as it's tailored for two main headaches in web design (cross-browser friendliness; accessibility tweaking) that's not often covered in other CSS/(X)HTML books. Alas, the search is on for a CSS/XHTML book that is truly cross-browser friendly. :/
8 people found this helpful
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james mccarthy
5.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful
Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2010
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This is a well written book about how to build better websites. He shows you a non bullet proof way and then shows you the correct "bullet proof" way of getting the same result with cleaner more flexible mark up.

I think you will get out what you put in to this book. I also purchased his CSS book. I highly recommend both!
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J. McCreary
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Foundation
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2007
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I found this to provide an excellent foundation for developing web pages using lean HTML and elegant CSS. It was not overly focused on Web Design or Web Development, but comfortably in the middle. The examples were progressive, practical, and timeless. In addition, the final chapter brought it all together nicely to make a full web page from scratch.

This book really is 5 stars! I gave it 4 stars only because I wanted more examples and, as a developer, I would have preferred more code.

Nonetheless, an excellent guide into the next generation of web development. Something I will reference again and wish I had read years ago!
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C. M. Lee
5.0 out of 5 stars Even a experienced Web Designer can learn some thing new...
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2008
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I highly recommend this book, regardless of how much experience you have, most readers will pickup a few new techniques after reading the book. Many of the concepts will help a web designer make lighter websites and better css styles. The book is a quick read for most people, and the advice is very practical.
One person found this helpful
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Little Teacher on the Prarie
4.0 out of 5 stars Heads up on quality of the book cover
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2007
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Book content is excellent, but be prepared for disappointment with the paperback cover. It is not glossy and unlikely to hold up to regular handling. Plan on covering it with something reinforcing. In fact, the cover on my book also started curling within hours of unpacking it, before I even did more than flip through it.

New Riders is not the only publisher who seems unable to put a good cover on a paperback, but it mystifies me as to why that is, since so many publishers have no trouble with that aspect of book design.
5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Mattia Crevani
5.0 out of 5 stars ottimo
Reviewed in Italy on August 6, 2015
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tutto perfetto, condizioni del libro e spedizioni, contenuti chiari ed interessanti anche se l'edizione non è propriamente nuova, comunque consigliato!
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J. Chaytor
5.0 out of 5 stars A jolly good read in my opinion
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 2, 2009
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As someone who is new to XHTML/CSS I bought this book (along with "CSS: The Missing Manual" and "The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks") as I'm soon to convert a static web site into an interactive one using DHTML, Ajax, PHP, MySQL etc. I last did web work with MS Frontpage many years ago.

The "CSS: The Missing Manual" book was delivered first so I started reading that (currently half way through). Then this book arrived today and, as it looked so clear and readable, I read it from front to back this afternoon.

What an excellent book! Dan can certainly write in a clear style and fully explains the point he is trying to make without any distractions. As someone who is late to this world of CSS etc I found it invaluable to see the bugs that are in IE5 and IE6 and how they can be circumvented. (I am aware that I'll need to test our site in many different browsers but I have got the latest versions of them all so would not pick up old browsers and the problems that arise using them.)

He also points out issues re: the structure of HTML elements for users who use readers etc (content before sidebars for example so they get straight to the detail). Our site is aimed at the disabled so I'll certainly bear these issues in mind when re-developing the site.

I bought it from the used & new section and got it for £16.25 + p&p - a bargain in my opinion.

Just one comment. I downloaded the source and immediately tried the chapter 9 example in all my browsers. All worked flawlessly except IE7. Sometimes when you resize the page the sidebar goes to the bottom below the end of the content and above the footer. (At least, after reading this book, I know why IE7 is doing this!) This is corrected by adjusting the width of the browser by a pixel or so. So, for IE7, the hacks aren't bulletproof! I blame Microsoft for writing rubbish software.
2 people found this helpful
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Jackie O
5.0 out of 5 stars Bulletproof Web design
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 29, 2009
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This is a very good book, which addresses accessibility, flexibility and a whole lot more. It has examples which shows a sample site, and a rework of the site (bulletproof approach). it's all about best practices in web design. I love it! As a beginner with a knowledge of css, this is a great book for me.
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