Developing with Web Standards

433 Pages·2009·5.388 MB·English

by  Allsopp, John

developing with web standards
john allsopp
1249 Eighth Street, Berkeley, California 94710
An Imprint of Pearson Education
Developing with Web Standards
John Allsopp
New Riders
1249 Eighth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510/524-2178
510/524-2221 (fax)
Find us on the Web at: www.newriders.com
To report errors, please send a note to [email protected]
New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Education
Copyright © 2010 by John Allsopp
Project Editor: Michael J. Nolan
Development Editor: Erin Kissane
Production Editor: Rebecca Winter
Copyeditor: Rose Weisburd
Proofreader: Darren Meiss
Indexer: Rebecca Plunkett
Cover designer: Aren Howell & Mimi Heft
Compositor: Danielle Foster
Notice of Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts,
contact [email protected].
Notice of Liability
The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis without warranty. While every
precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall
have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be
caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer soft-
ware and hardware products described in it.
Trademarks
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are
claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of
a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other
product names and services identifi ed throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and
for the benefi t of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use,
or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affi liation with this book.
ISBN 13: 978-0-321-64692-7
ISBN 10: 0-321-64692-4
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Developing with Web Standards is dedicated to
Scarlett Bess, and to the one not quite yet here, whom we’ll know soon enough.
iv
Thank You
Not only I, but all of us who work with the web, owe Jeff rey Zeldman a huge debt
of gratitude for his groundbreaking book, Designing with Web Standards, and his
tireless eff orts to improve the web for developers, designers, and all its users.
Over the last several months, I’ve had many sleepless moments in which I wanted
to curse Jeff rey for having suggested that I write this companion to Designing with
Web Standards but in truth it was very humbling to be asked to write this book,
and I hope I have at least gone some way to living up to his recommendation.
To Erin Kissane—who has worked tirelessly and put up with an erratic schedule
caused in equal measure by my far too many commitments and a sequence of
personal challenges that were almost comic in their number, though serious in
nature—thank you. All’s well that ends well.
To Brian Suda, who from his fortress in Iceland has been the technical editor
of both of my books—and whom I’ve yet to meet in person—many thanks for
spotting my myriad inaccuracies and suggesting many an improvement.
To Sharon Lee, thank you for very generously giving of your expertise to provide
this book’s beautiful illustrations. They are a vast improvement over anything
I might have managed, and their presence has saved our readers’ eyes from the
crimes against color and form I might have committed in their absence.
To Michael Nolan, who commissioned the book, I hope that it will repay your faith,
and that the hair you’ve torn out over the months of development will grow back.
To the editorial and production crew at New Riders, who spent sleepless nights
dealing with page overruns and myriad other causes of frustration, thanks for
your professionalism and diligence.
To our editorial interns, Henry Li and Nicole Ramsey, who crunched through
a larger number of Word fi les and import glitches than anyone should have to
deal with, and who did it all cheerfully and at high speed, thank you.
To the countless web designers and developers, who share their experience
and expertise via blogs, meetups, presentations, articles, and more, thanks
for making the web a wonderful place, and a great industry to be in. This is a
remarkable profession fi lled with extraordinary generosity—one I feel genu-
inely privileged to participate in.
v
I could easily fi ll a book naming the contributors to our knowledge and still
leave many out. Quite a few are named throughout the book, but many more
aren’t: thank you to all of you.
And by no means least, to my wife Sara and darling girls ZK and Scarlie, thanks
for putting up with yet one more “Daddy’s got to fi nish his book.” It’s fi nished
now, so hopefully we’ll have a bit more time to play.
vi
About John Allsopp, Author
John Allsopp had been working with, on, for, and against
the web since the fi rst half of the 1990s. He’s a co-founder of
westciv.com and developer of Style Master, the web world’s
most venerable cross-platform CSS development tool. He’s also
the author of numerous courses, tutorials, tools, resources,
and articles for web designers and developers, including the
infl uential A List Apart article “The Dao of Web Design.”
John is the co-founder of the web conference series Web Directions
(webdirections.org), which is held in Australia, North America, Japan,
and the UK. Most recently of all, John co-founded Scroll Magazine
(scrollmagazine.com), a print, PDF, and online magazine that explores
the big ideas around designing and developing for the web. He is the co-chair
of a new W3C Incubator Group that focuses on educating the next generation
of web professionals (www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/owea).
John is the father of two darling daughters, who are the light of his life, with
another child on the way. In his copious spare time, he does as much mountain
biking, surfi ng, and snowboarding as all these other activities allow, which is to
say, very little.
John’s personal site is johnfallsopp.com. Follow him on Twitter, @johnallsopp.
vii
About Brian Suda, Technical Editor
Brian Suda is an informatician currently residing in Reykjavík, Iceland. He
has spent a good portion of each day connected to Internet after discovering it
back in the mid-1990s. Most recently, he has been focusing more on the mobile
space and future predictions: how smaller devices will augment our every day
life and what that means to the way we live, work and are entertained.
Brian is the author of Using Microformats (O’Reilly, 2006) and a stack of articles
about microformats, the mobile web, and informatics. He was the technical
reviewer for John’s previous book, Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for
Web 2.0 (friends of ED, 2007).
His own little patch of Internet can be found at suda.co.uk, where many of his
past projects and crazy ideas reside.
About Sharon Lee, Illustrator
The seed was sown when Sharon Lee found a box of recipe
cards in an op-shop. Ham in aspic. Prawn stuff ed apples.
Fricassee of rabbit. Oh, the culinary delights!
Inspired, she created a food-themed website and named
it after one of the recipes. Her criteria for design success? When it made her
laugh. Word of the website spread, making others laugh too. Prospective cli-
ents, even.
“Are you based in Sydney? Are you available for work?”
And so, in 2001, Richapplefool the business began.
Over the years, she developed her philosophy and practice to create more eff ec-
tive work, fusing branding with user experience architecture and design so
clients could speak with true conviction. She calls the result Human Experi-
ence Design.
The Developing with Web Standards Site
Developing with Web Standards has its own community online at devwws.com.
Here you can fi nd more resources and addenda, contact John, and much more.
Come by and say hi.
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table of contents ix
Table of Contents
Part I > Foundations
1 Before You Begin 3
Who Is This Book For? 5
So Who Isn’t This Book For? 6
What Will I Get from This Book? 6
What You Won’t Get from This Book 7
How to Use This Book 8
Joining the Community 8
Next Up 8
2 Philosophies and Techniques 9
The Browser Wars 10
The Dawn of Standards 10
Web Standards Today 11
Why Should I Care? 11
How to Develop for the World Wide Web 12
It Doesn’t Have to Look the Same in Every Browser 12
Progressive Enhancement 13
Separation of Content, Presentation, and Behavior 14
Once More, with Meaning 14
For My Next Trick 15
3 Markup 17
Why “It Works in Browsers” Isn’t Enough 18
HTML and XHTML 18
Syntax and Semantics 19
A Very Short History of HTML 20
HTML 4.01 21
XHTML 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 21
HTML5 22
Key Concepts of HTML 22
What Is a Web Page? 22
Terminology: Elements, Attributes, Tags and More 23
Empty HTML Elements 25
Document Types 26
Enter the DOCTYPE 26