I just finished reading another great… no, scratch that… outstanding book on the topic of standards based web design. The book, Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm, is another must read for those of you who are interested in designing with web standards in mind. In a nutshell, this book takes a look at some common solutions to many specific web design problems, breaks them down to expose any shortcoming(s), and then demonstrates an alternative (or as Dan says, “Bulletproof”) solution which is much more robust. This book was a total eye opener for me. It’s very nicely layed out, very well written and illustrated, and Dan’s writing style makes for easy and entertaining reading. It was nearly impossible for me to put down and I imagine that just about anyone, whether just starting out, or well seasoned in web page design with XHTML & CSS, would really enjoy and benefit from reading it. Wholeheartedly recommended!

To celebrate my totally awesome wife and my 1st wedding anniversary, we decided to spend several days at the Four Seasons Resort Lanai at Manele Bay. The raw beauty of the island is breathtaking and the resort is unbelievable. One of the highlights of the trip for me was chill’in out by the pool with the Zen of CSS design (pictured right) which is an outstanding book by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag. Very well written, nicely illustrated, engaging, insightful, inspirational and entertaining, I found it difficult to put the book down.

A quick tangent… Molly is an incredible proponent and evangelist for web standards. I had the great pleasure of meeting her and listening to her speak about standards based design a couple of summers ago at a two day seminar hosted by Pacific New Media at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I highly recommend attending an event where she will be speaking if you can. (more…)