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Book Description

FOREWORD BY ERIK  SPIEKERMANN

How did design help choose a president?
Why are people buying houses they cannot afford?
Why do U.S. car makers now struggle to compete? Why do we really have an environmental crisis?
Design matters. Like never before.

Disarming the weapons of mass deception.
Designers create so much of what we see, what we use, and what we experience. In this time of unprecedented environmental, social, and economic crises, designers can choose what their young profession will be about: inventing deceptions that encourage more consumption—or helping repair the world.

Do Good Design is a call to action:
It alerts designers to the role they play in persuading global audiences to fulfill invented needs. The book outlines a more sustainable approach to both the practice and the consumption of design. All professionals will be inspired by the message of how one industry can feel better about itself by holding onto its principles. In this provocative and dramatically-illustrated book, David Berman offers a powerful and hopeful message for all designers. Download Now »

Book Description

Sometimes it’s hard to get started with a new technology. That’s where this book excels. It’s not going to show Web designers everything there is to know about CSS but rather will provide a solid introduction from which to build their CSS knowledge. The beginning of the book starts with the basics — rules, selectors, classes, IDs, the cascade, internal and external style sheets, Divs, boxes, floats, padding, margins — everything is covered. Next comes styling elements, working with images, menus and navigation, and moving styles from internal to external style sheets. Rounding out this project-based guide is working with browsers, both old and new, and debugging CSS. Succinct and to the point, it’s the perfect book for designers without a lot of time who need to understand and start using CSS. Download Now »

Book Description

Speaking in Styles targets Web designers, aiming to help them learn the “language” that will be used to take their vision from the static comp to the live Internet. Many designers think that CSS is code, and that it’s too hard to learn. Jason takes an approach to CSS that breaks it down around common design tasks and helps the reader learn that they already think in styles–they just need to learn to speak the language.

Jason helps Web designers find their voice, walks them through the grammar of CSS, shows them how to write their design specs in CSS, and how to prepare it for screen, printer or handheld devices. Along the way designers will learn to optimize their code, make it accessible, optimize for search engines, mix it up with Flash, and more. Download Now »

Book Description

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it’s hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn’t read Steve Krug’s “instant classic” on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day.  In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike.  Don’t be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design.

Three New Chapters!

• Usability as common courtesy — Why people really leave Web sites
• Web Accessibility, CSS, and you — Making sites usable and accessible
• Help! My boss wants me to — Surviving executive design whims

“I thought usability was the enemy of design until I read the first edition of this book.  Don’t Make Me Think! showed me how to put myself in the position of the person who uses my site.  After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book.

In this second edition, Steve Krug adds essential ammunition for those whose bosses, clients, stakeholders, and marketing managers insist on doing the wrong thing.  If you design, write, program, own, or manage Web sites, you must read this book.”  — Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards Download Now »

Book Description

* An expanded, updated, and retitled edition of HTML Bible, examining HTML, XHTML-a set of extensions to HTML to make it more like XML-and cascading style sheets (CSS), which provide a simple way to add consistent formatting to HTML Web documents
* Focusing on reader feedback and changing industry trends, this new edition is a major overhaul that addresses the extensive changes in Web development
* Shows readers the best, most efficient way to use HTML and examines which peripheral technologies are worth learning for the long run
* Features “before and after” pictures that show the results of improved Web page coding
* Offers continued coverage of key topics, including site administration, dynamic data-driven pages, and many others, in addition to new sections on hot new topics such as blogs and content management

From the Back Cover
If HTML, XHTML, and CSS can do it, you can do it too…

Whether hand-coded or created by a visual editor, static or dynamic, most Web pages rely on HTML. The more you know about this language and its companion technologies, XHTML and CSS, the more flexible, creative, and effective your Web site will be. This all-new reference covers the latest updates and dramatic improvements in all three. You’ll learn which tools help you achieve specific results, how CSS enables consistent formatting, the most efficient way to code and use HTML, and so much more. Download Now »

Book Description

Themes are among the most powerful features that can be used to customize a web site, especially in Plone. Using custom themes can help you brand your site for a particular corporate image; it ensures standards compliance and creates easily navigable layouts. But most Plone users still continue to use default themes as developing and deploying themes that are flexible and easily maintainable is not always straightforward.

This book teaches best practices of Plone theme development, focusing on Plone 3. It provides you with all the information useful for creating a robust and flexible Plone theme. It also provides a sneak peek into the future of Plone’s theming system.

In this book you will learn how to create flexible, powerful, and professional Plone themes. It is a step-by-step tutorial on how to work with Plone themes. It also provides a more holistic look at how a real-world theme is constructed. We look at the tools required for theming a web site. The book covers major topics such as configuring the development environment, creating a basic theme product, add-on tools and skinning tricks, integrating multimedia with Plone, and configuring your site’s look and feel through the Zope Management Interface (ZMI). Finally, the book takes a close look at the thrilling and greatly simplified future of theming Plone sites.

Download Now »