Jeffrey Zeldman's Blog, page 61

Getting Started with Sass – A List Apart

CSS' simplicity has always been one of its most welcome features. But as our sites and apps get bigger and become more complex, and target a wider range of devices and screen sizes, this simplicity—so welcome as we first started to move away from font tags and table-based layouts—has become a liability.

Fortunately, a few years ago developers Hampton Catlin and Nathan Weizenbaum created a new style sheet syntax with features to help make our increasingly complex CSS easier to write and manage—and then used a preprocessor to translate the new smart syntax into the old, dumb CSS that browsers understand.

Learn how Sass ("syntactically awesome style sheets") can help simplify the creation, updating, and maintenance of powerful sites and apps.

A List Apart: Articles: Getting Started with Sass.

Illustration: Kevin Cornell







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A Book Apart holiday sale: 30% off entire collection

THE FIRST SIX essential new classics from A Book Apart — brilliant, brief books by Jeremy Keith, Dan Cederholm, Erin Kissane, Ethan Marcotte, Aarron Walter, and Luke Wroblewski — make the perfect gift for the web geek in your life. During our holiday sale, buy all six books and save 30%!

A Book Apart Holiday Bundle







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Fifth International Blue Beanie Day in support of web standards – #bbd11

GET YOUR BEANIE ON! The Fifth International Blue Beanie Day in support of web standards takes place around the globe on 30 November 2011. How can you participate? Glad you asked! Details are now available on the spankin' new official Blue Beanie Day web page.

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Veen: Building Typekit on relationships

TYPEKIT FOUNDER JEFFREY VEEN has always shared knowledge freely, whether writing great books about web design and user experience, or (in this case) happily sharing a key secret of his business' success: raising money isn't about raising money – it's about people.

Building Typekit on relationships by Jeffrey Veen.







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OFF MY LAWN!

IT IS NOT "IRONIC" when an article about web standards is published in an online magazine formatted in Flash, or PDF, or some other non-HTML format. It is not "ironic" when an article on responsive design appears on a website that is not responsively designed. It is not "ironic" when an article on three essential principles of usability appears on a website that violates all three principles. It is not "ironic" when an article bemoaning the overuse of "Share" buttons appears on a website that overuses "Share" buttons. It is not "ironic" when an article advocating long form reading on the web gets chopped into multiple pages that discourage reading for the sake of a few ad views. It is not "ironic" when an article about microformats appears on a site that does not use microformats. It is not "ironic" when an article advocating HTML5 appears on a website formatted in XHTML. It is not "ironic" when an article about web accessibility appears on a website that suffers from serious accessibility problems. It is not "ironic" when an article about the importance of proper semantic markup appears in a magazine whose markup would make a goat cry. It is not "ironic" when an article about progressive enhancement and unobtrusive scripting appears on a website that fails if the user disables JavaScript.

It is publishing. It is humanity. It is the vanguard of ideas clashing against the rearguard of commerce. This is not new. This is all to be expected. We must stop raising our eyebrows and chuckling at it. We must decide to accept the world as it is, or to roll up our sleeves and help.







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Survey for people who make websites

THIS WEEK some friends launched Contents Magazine. Last night other friends threw a party to announce the new (free) Readability. Every day, around the world, hundreds of thousands of web people make magic, working in a digital medium that sometimes perplexes my brilliant engineer father and would have seemed like witchcraft to my grandmother, may she rest in peace.

The web is the most disruptive, empowering invention since, well, I don't know. It helps ordinary people topple dictators or just comparison shop. We, the people who make websites, are responsible for this shamanistic creation, and we've been doing this work for two decades. Yet in all this time, nobody in the mainstream world seems to have noticed. Oh, they notice when Google challenges Facebook for world supremacy. And they noticed when Twitter helped bring about the glorious Arab Spring. But they don't know jack about us, the people who do this work, and they don't care.

If anyone is going to compile data about us and sift meaningful analysis from that data, it's going to be we ourselves. The boot-strappers, the self-taught HTML wonder kids. You and me.

And that is why, as I have every year since 2007, I once more ask you to take ten minutes and complete the survey for people who make websites. Do it now.

I thank you, and you'll thank yourself later.

For the curious, here are the ALA survey findings from 2007–2010:

A List Apart Survey Findings 2007
A List Apart Survey Findings 2008
A List Apart Survey Findings 2009
A List Apart Survey Findings 2010








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SXSW love me long time

SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST Interactive ("SXSWi" or simply "South by" to its friends) has somewhat brazenly announced that I will be the first inductee in its new Hall of Fame. The induction will take place during the 2012 Interactive Awards presentation in March of next year. There will be flowers and virgins. Well, flowers.

SXSW Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology. Founded in 1995—the same year I started this website—the Austin, TX-based interactive festival attracts tens of thousands annually.

I hope this announcement will not negatively affect attendance.







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A Sea of Blue Hats

"London, Ontario Digital Interactive Game and Web Conference Day 1. Jeffrey Zeldman delivered the keynote in the Web stream downstairs at London Convention Centre. Later that day, SxSW announced his upcoming Hall of Fame Induction March 13, 2012!"

Jeffrey Zeldman at DIG 2011 Photo Gallery.







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Air Travel As We Know It

My thrice-delayed, once-cancelled flight home has been resurrected and is boarding. No one was ever so happy to be flying coach to Newark.







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.net Magazine's Top 25 Web Design Books

CONGRATULATIONS TO A List Apart technical editors Aaron Gustafson and Ethan Marcotte, whose Adaptive Web Design and Responsive Web Design were ranked #1 and #2 in .net Magazine's "Top 25 Books for Web Designers and Developers" of 2011.

Other top-ranked web design books include CSS3 for Web Designers by Dan Cederholm, Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin, and Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug.

Four of the top 25 were A Book Apart books: namely, Responsive Web Design, CSS3 for Web Designers, Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski, and The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane.

I contributed to the article but did not nominate any A Book Apart books.

Congratulations to these authors!

The top 25 books for web designers and developers | Feature | .net magazine.







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