My boss came into my office yesterday with a special gift. It was something I’ve been wanting for a very long time (okay only since this past March).
It was Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cedarholm. I’ve been following Dan’s blog ever since I came across a few of his articles on ALA (Mountaintop Corners and Faux Columns). He always has some quick and slick CSS tricks that I enjoy testing and even implementing.
When I first came across his blog, the thing that really drew me was the SimpleQuiz. It consisted of over 15 questions regarding how to code a specific element (such as a list of chocolate bars or breadcrumb navigation) in HTML. Each question was comprised of four suggestions and then he would ask his readers which of the four solutions they would pick. After each question received a significant number of questions, he’d post the findings.
It’s a very useful resource for knowing what the semantic method for coding specific elements.
The nice thing is that his book is set up the same way. At least what I have read so far seems to be. However, even better than this is that after each “quiz†in the book, Dan provides extra credit pages related to the answer. For example, for the list question, he provides a number of different techniques (such as Mini-Tab Shapes) to stylise a list.
I am not at all disappointed that my boss decided to let me have it. It is an amazing resource.
Now if I can just convince him to let me have Defensive Design for the Web by 37signals.
