Transcending CSS
As ther Web evolves to incorporate new standards and the latest browsers offer new possibilities for creative design, the art of creating Web sites is also changing. Few Web designers are experienced programmers, and as a result, working with semantic markup and CSS can create roadblocks to achieving truly beautiful designs using all the resources available. Add to this the pressures of presentingexceptional design to clients and employers, without compromising efficient workflow, and the challenge deepens for those working in a fast-paced environment. As someone who understands these complexities firsthand, author and designer Andy Clarke offers visual designers a progressive approach to creating artistic, usable, and accessible sites using transcendent CSS.In this groundbreaking book, you'll discover how to implement highly original designs through visual demonstrations of the creative possibilities using markup and CSS. You'll learn to use a new design workflow, build prototypes that work well for designers and all team members, use grids effectively, visualize markup, and discover every phase of the transcendent design process, from working with the latest browsers to incorporating CSS3 to collaborating with team members effectively, and much more. Written and edited by Web design and CSS luminaries Andy Clarke and Molly E.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
6mentions
6people
2010–2017years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- My favorite resources are now all slightly dated; I haven't really kept up with the cutting edge as I've moved away from design and towards development.
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Web:
A List Apart, especially the articles section - https://alistapart.com/articles
CSS Zen Garden - http://www.csszengarden.com/
Magic Ink - Information Software and the Graphical Interface, by Bret Victor - http://worrydream.com/#!2/MagicInk
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Print:
Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS, by Zoe Mickley Gillenwater
The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web, by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag
Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design, by Andy Clarke
- Some things that have greatly helped me from my time of pasting together snippets of VBA to where I am now (nearly finished building a Ajax enabled Python web-app that parses English into SQL):
- go onto iTunesU or MIT OpenCourseWare (or just find them on YouTube) and watch the video lectures. The three Stanford CS ones are excellent, and probably give you all the theoretical knowledge you need to proceed. There's a good one on Comoutational Linguistics which helped me get to grips with natural language processing and grammars, but is even more relevant for compilers (though to be honest I don't see why you need to know this unless you plan to actually write a compiler)
- read Code Complete. That's probably all you need to not be a 'douche bag coder' who causes more problems than they solve
- get into web programming. Grok HTML, it's quite simple. Next read Transcending CSS, it might take a month but eventually you'll 'get it'. Then work out how to do events and DOM manipulation with JavaScript (make things happen as the user interacts with the page). You can glue on some cargo cult jQuery here :-). THEN study Ajax - follow some of the tutorials on YouTube or iTunesU. It's not really complex it's just bitty and confusing at first (basically you create an XHR object on the page which acts as a halfway house for data going to and from the server without refreshing the whole browser page). Then finally choose a backend system like Ruby/Rails or Python/Django or ASP.NET or PHP and practice doing stuff with it. You don't need to be a big shot computer scientist for this web app stuff - just leverage the libraries and frameworks and platforms that people talk about on HN, and you can create great stuff. You just need to learn the details, which is ultimately trivial
- For CSS, Andy Clarke is my favorite. He wrote Transcending CSS (http://www.transcendingcss.com/) which was very impactful in my understanding of "semantic" markup, as well as general design philosophy.
<!-- Interested in code, web design and web development? Check out our bestselling books on Web Programming: --> <!-- HTML & CSS by Jon Duckett : https://www.waterstones.com/book/html-and-css/jon-duckett/9781118008188 --> <!-- Python in Easy Steps by Mike McGrath : https://www.waterstones.com/book/python-in-easy-steps/mike-mcgrath/9781840785968 --> <!-- JavaScript & JQuery by Jon Duckett : https://www.waterstones.com/book/javascript-and-jquery/jon-duckett/9781118531648 --> <!-- PHP & MYSQL in Easy Steps by Mike McGrath : https://www.waterstones.com/book/php-and-mysql-in-easy-steps/mike-mcgrath/9781840785371 --> <!-- Javascript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford : https://www.waterstones.com/book/javascript-the-good-parts/douglas-crockford/9780596517748 --> <!-- Learning Python with Raspberry Pi by Alex Bradbury : https://www.waterstones.com/book/learning-python-with-raspberry-pi/alex-bradbury/ben-everard/9781118717059 --> <!-- AngularJS: Up and Running by Shyam Seshadri : https://www.waterstones.com/book/angularjs-up-and-running/shyam-seshadri/brad-green/9781491901946--> <!-- Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke : https://www.waterstones.com/book/transcending-css/andy-clarke/molly-e-holzschlag/9780321410979 --> <!-- Jump Start Responsive Web Design by Craig Sharkie : https://www.waterstones.com/book/jump-start-responsive-web-design/craig-sharkie/andrew-fisher/9780987332165 -->- It's in the <head> element.
<!-- Waterstones E-Commerce Platform Version : 1.0 --> <!-- ServerID = 9--> <!-- --> <!-- Interested in code, web design and web development? Check out our bestselling books on Web Programming: --> <!-- HTML & CSS by Jon Duckett : https://www.waterstones.com/book/html-and-css/jon-duckett/9781118008188 --> <!-- Python in Easy Steps by Mike McGrath : https://www.waterstones.com/book/python-in-easy-steps/mike-mcgrath/9781840785968 --> <!-- JavaScript & JQuery by Jon Duckett : https://www.waterstones.com/book/javascript-and-jquery/jon-duckett/9781118531648 --> <!-- PHP & MYSQL in Easy Steps by Mike McGrath : https://www.waterstones.com/book/php-and-mysql-in-easy-steps/mike-mcgrath/9781840785371 --> <!-- Javascript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford : https://www.waterstones.com/book/javascript-the-good-parts/douglas-crockford/9780596517748 --> <!-- Learning Python with Raspberry Pi by Alex Bradbury : https://www.waterstones.com/book/learning-python-with-raspberry-pi/alex-bradbury/ben-everard/9781118717059 --> <!-- AngularJS: Up and Running by Shyam Seshadri : https://www.waterstones.com/book/angularjs-up-and-running/shyam-seshadri/brad-green/9781491901946--> <!-- Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke : https://www.waterstones.com/book/transcending-css/andy-clarke/molly-e-holzschlag/9780321410979 --> <!-- Jump Start Responsive Web Design by Craig Sharkie : https://www.waterstones.com/book/jump-start-responsive-web-design/craig-sharkie/andrew-fisher/9780987332165 --> - I was actually going to be an animator before I picked up "Transcending CSS" by Andy Clarke at the uni library.
