This Nutshell book focuses on frontend matters of web design and development: markup, style sheets, image production, multimedia, and so on. Ironically, despite its title, there is little in the way of design
advice, per se. Rather, it strives to be a thorough reference for all the technical details and requirements that we face in our day-to-day work designing and developing web content.
The book is divided into six parts (plus appendixes), each covering a general subject area.
Describes the current approach to web design and sets the stage for the entire book. Chapters on designing for varying browsers and displays provide useful overviews of the unique challenges web developers face.
This part of the book is about document markup, commonly referred to as the structural layer because it provides the foundation upon which presentation (styles) and behaviors (scripting) are applied.
Part III provides a thorough guide to using CSS for controlling the presentation of web content with a focus on visual media.
Part IV is all about adding interactivity to your pages with JavaScript.
The chapters in Part V contain essential information on working with RGB color and choosing the appropriate graphic file formats. The chapters dedicated to GIF, JPEG, and PNG graphics offer practical tips for graphic production and optimization based on the compression schemes used by each format.
Because the Web is not limited to text and images, Part VI is included to provide a basic introduction to adding audio, video, and Flash movies to web pages. There is also a chapter on printing from web pages using print-specific CSS style sheets as well as an introduction to the PDF format for document distribution.
The Appendixes in this book are sure to get a lot of use. Appendix A is an alphabetical listing of all elements and attributes in the HTML 4.01 Recommendation, as well as a few nonstandard elements that are well supported and in common use. Appendix B is an alphabetical listing of all properties defined in the CSS 2.1 specification. Appendix C lists all the character entities defined in HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 with their numerical references. Appendix D provides a detailed explanation of the color names and RGB color values used in both (X)HTML and CSS.
Excerpted from Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd edition, by Jennifer Niederst Robbins. OReilly Media, Inc., 2006. pp. xxii xxiii.