Czech and Polish Editions of HTML, XHTML and CSS

Today I received three copies of the Czech edition of my HTML, XHTML, and CSS Visual Quickstart Guide... they look wonderful, though I can't read a word of them.

Although I'd like to keep one of them, I'm happy to offer the other two in exchange for shipping charges and a good deed (see Foreign Editions on my Web site for more details).

I also have a single copy of the Polish translation of the Sixth edition... I'm not giving it away, but at least you know it exists.

Let me know if you're interested.

iPhoto Book Themes

Back before Google (shoot, before Altavista, or any of them), I used to offer my readers a spot in a gallery of Web sites that I published on my Web site. It was a huge job to compile them because I insisted on visiting each one to make sure I really wanted to link to it. At the same time, it was a job that I loved, because I got to see what people were making with my books. And they were incredible. There were sites about everything. They (you!) were and are so inspiring.

One of those sites was from a guy in London who took pictures of his two sons on the same day each year on the same bench in Hyde Park. On the Web site you could see how the kids grew every year while the bench and the trees around them stayed pretty much the same. His kids must be teenagers now! At any rate, I decided that I would do that too.

Which brings me to the point of this whole post. I've been meaning to make an iPhoto book with those photos for years. One of the things that has stopped me is that I can never decide which iPhoto book theme I should use.

And one of the reasons I can't decide is that it's so hard to tell what's available in each theme. Sure, Apple shows you a sample page and a sample cover, but there is so much variety within each theme and until you play around with it a little, you can't tell what you can and can't do. It's hard enough to decide between the Picture Book and the Crayon, but what if I decide I have to have captions on each page, or I really need a layout with 8 photos? Only some of the layouts will satisfy those criteria, but which ones?

In addition, a lot of the layouts depend on what I call the original orientation of the photos. That means that if you use a horizontal or landscape photo you get a different layout than if you use a vertical, or portrait, photo. Even when you've chosen the exact same option in the Layouts menu. And that means you can't see every possible layout until you actually place the photos.

So, I decided that I would place all the photos necessary in order to document every possibility of every layout in every iBook theme--all so that I could choose the right theme for my iPhoto book. But then I discovered Skitch, this amazing tool that not only makes it really easy to take screenshots of examples on screen, but lets you annotate them, and then so completely automates the upload process that you feel like you can be luxurious about including as many as you need. Skitch made me want to put every layout online.

So here's my new iPhoto Book Themes Web site. Take a look. I hope you find it useful. Maybe you've got an iPhoto book project you've been meaning to work on. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Don't fill my screen

Allow me a short rant. I've been selected to be a judge in an upcoming Interactive Design competition (more on that soon), and I've been looking at a lot of Web sites. Strangely, I don't mind the ones that blast music at me, since the ones I've seen at least choose music appropriate to their content (instead of annoying midi versions of their favorite 80's songs). Instead, I'm extremely ticked off by sites that insist on expanding my (that's MY) browser window to fill my screen.

Note to web page designers: If I wanted my browser window to fill my admittedly oversize screen, I would have completed that task personally. The way I dispose of my monitor real estate is as particular to me as the way I organize my desk, though not as messy. I like to have several windows open to the sizes that I choose. I am not only not impressed that you fill my monitor with your Web site (and every other site I open in that window), but equally dismayed at your manners. Keep your hands to yourself.

Il modo più facile e veloce!

That is, "the fastest and easiest way" to learn HTML, XHTML, and CSS!

The Sixth Edition of my HTML book has just been published in Italian. As soon as I have their Web site, I'll be sure to post it.

You can find more information about all the foreign language versions of my HTML book on my main Web site. There's even a special page that lists all 17 translations and shows the covers I've been able to get my hands on. If you know of another translation (or have one of the missing covers), please let me know.

The Old Way

In HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide, I was faced with a quandary. Should I continue to talk about old, deprecated tags that had fallen out of favor? I've never been much of an extremist and don't like to dictate gospel. At the same time, I don't want new Web page designers to come across really old-fashioned tags like font and unwittingly use them in a professional setting. On the other, other hand, it feels like the book isn't complete if it doesn't cover the entire specifications, and whether the W3C likes it or not, the font tag is still perfectly valid HTML and XHTML (as long as you're using a Transitional Doctype). Perhaps more importantly, there are still sites that use these tags and it's helpful to know what they mean.

So, I decided to take the chapters out of the printed book and offer them to my readers on my Web site. The chapters included appear exactly as they did in the Fifth Edition, including page references and black and white illustrations. While I did consider updating these chapters, I'd rather spend my energy going forward with some new ideas. (I've got lots of stuff planned!)

Here's a brief explanation of why none of these chapters were included in the print edition:

Frames

I thought frames were the cat's pajamas back when they were introduced. (The example page that I created as I was exploring frames continues to be one of the most popular areas of my entire Web site.) Frames seemed like the ideal way to combine static navigation and branding areas with dynamic content areas. Frames have several disadvantages, however. First, their scroll bars take up a lot of space in the browser window. Second, they take all the power away from the visitor, since the size of the various frames is all up to the designer. Third, browsers don't navigate them that well, dealing with only the main frameset's URL instead of each individual frame's URL. If a visitor attempts to bookmark the page that's showing, they often don't get what they expect.

The death knell came from search indexes. Because a frameset is made up of several files, and each of these files may be indexed individually, it was entirely possible that the navigation area or a content area might appear by itself in search results—with no supporting frames.

The standard way to achieve static and dynamic areas in a Web page is to repeat a portion of the page—generally the navigation or branding areas—and then change just the part that is different. Use CSS to position the static areas in precisely the same position. My Web site is set up in that way. Note how the navigation areas to the left and top remain (relatively) static while the lower right content area changes.

WML

Back in 2002, when I wrote the Fifth Edition of this book, it looked like WML might win the day with mobile Web sites. There were few phones that could read XHTML and fewer still that could use CSS. Today, that has all shifted. While most phones still understand WML, most phones also can understand XHTML and CSS. And not only is it easier to learn a single technology instead of two, it's much easier to write one set of Web pages and leverage them for two (or more) purposes by creating a CSS style sheet just for mobile visitors.

Formatting: The Old Way

The HTML tags in the first Old Way chapter were already on their way out when I relegated them to the back of the Fifth Edition. There are the basefont and font elements for controlling size, color, and font face, the text, link, vlink, alink attributes of the body element for changing the color of text and links, the strike and u elements which have been replaced by the logical elements del and ins, and the completely non-standard blink element which was one of Netscape's more popular and most hated extensions.

Of those tags, only strike and u are remotely acceptable by today’s standards. Nevertheless, I continue to see the font element used and generated by Web page programs so you may want to know how it works.

I do not recommend using any of the elements explained in this chapter.

Layout: The Old Way

If the elements in the Formatting: The Old Way chapter are unfashionable, many of the elements in this chapter are downright illegal, never having made it into the official specifications at all. There is one element, however, that I decided could not be removed from the book altogether. That is center. The center tag is an abbreviation for the slightly more standard but equally deprecated combination of <div align="center">, yet it is blissfully straightforward and simple. I brought it back to the Basic (X)HTML Formatting chapter on page 79 of the Sixth Edition. The rest of the stuff in the Layout: The Old Way chapter should probably best be forgotten. I offer it to you on the site for historical purposes only.

If you are still interested in looking at these chapters, see the Old Way Chapters section of the Extras part of my Web site.

HTML, XHTML, and CSS 6th Edition Web Site

Putting all the examples from my books online is, in a word, a pain. It takes hours and hours to make sure that the files I've used as examples match the versions that I'm linking to on the Web pages. And since I've just been through a huge push to get the book done, my energy meter is really low (as my kids would say).

Still, I want you, my reader, to be able to read along in the book and then be able to find the example file on line and see if it really works as promised (and you can, and it does).

You can now find all the examples online.

You can also download the examples to work with locally from that same page. The index file in the download has a slightly different base tag so that the examples will be linked locally and not to my site. I have tested them pretty thoroughly, both on Mac and Windows and they work fine.

Nevertheless, please do contact me if you have any trouble or find any errata. (And if you suddenly find yourself transported to the Fifth edition pages, please let me know. It shouldn't happen!)

I hope you find it all useful.

Available at Barnes and Noble!

I've been haunting bookstores and finally found my new Sixth Edition available at Barnes and Noble! For 20% off!

Enjoy!