For the third edition of Designing With Web Standards, I’ve brought in a co-author: the brilliant and talented Mr Ethan Marcotte.

Mr Marcotte is a web designer/developer who “works for Airbag Industries as a Senior Designer, swears profusely on Twitter, and is getting married to an incredible lady.” He is also a technical editor and contributing author to A List Apart, and the co-author of several fine books about the intersection between great code and fine design. Then there’s the fact that I dig him. I dig the hell out of him. I love him like a younger, sweeter, funnier brother.

That’s important because I don’t add a co-author to any book, let alone this book, lightly. In asking Ethan to help me bring the awesome to this substantially revised and rewritten edition, I chose not only on the basis of expertise and writing ability, but also on sheer karma.

In his new role, Ethan joins a SuperFriends™ line-up including technical editor Aaron Gustafson (Twitter), another honey of a guy, and truly one of the smartest, most innovative, and most knowledgeable voices in web standards, and editor Erin Kissane (Twitter), whose mastery of the subtlest details of voice consistency alone makes her the finest editor I have ever been blessed to work with. Behind it all, there’s Michael Nolan (Twitter), New Riders’ sagely seasoned acquisitions editor and a designer and author himself, who first took a chance on me as an author back in nineteen ninety humph.

Designing With Web Standards, 3rd Edition is coming this year to a bookstore near you. I thank my brilliant crew for making it possible. Onward!

Tags: EthanMarcotte, beep, unstoppablerobotninja, airbag, alistapart, CSS, design, webstandards, webdesign, designingwithwebstandards, DWWS, 3rdedition, DWWS3e, writer, writers, authors

Filed under: CSS, DWWS, Design, Education, Publications, Publishing, Respect, Web Design, Web Standards, Zeldman, development

The zeldman.com redesign is up. You’re soaking in it. It’s old school. It’s brand heritage, baby. It’s retro 90s web. It’s so retro it’s nowtro. Because old is the new new.

Mainly, the redesign is content focused. After so many years as a web designer, and after creative directing so many influential projects, I naturally considered doing a wide, three-column, ultra-modern design—something cool, detached, polished, and glowing with rich media and fancy-pants sliding-drawer JavaScript effects. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things. In the right circumstances, those things can rock hard. But this site is mainly about my writing. So I crafted a simple look that encourages reading and hearkens back to this site’s early years.

Read more about it here, here, there, and elsewhere. (Don’t freak out; these old posts are now in the new layout, adding a layer of surrealism to the experience, since you’re looking at a blog post in the finished new look that links to and talks about cruddy early versions of that same look.)

If orange hurts you, there’s a style switcher in the footer that will remember your preference for an off-white background. You’re welcome.

WordPress implementation by Noel Jackson.

Rotation script by Mark Huot.

Thanks, fellas! And thanks to all readers who critiqued the public beta.

Tags: zeldman, zeldman.com, redesign, redesigns, webdesign, design

Filed under: Web Design, Web Standards, Zeldman, wordpress, work, zeldman.com

There was a point in the 90s when I felt like a sucker for doing HTML and CSS.”

The .net Zeldman interview is available for your downloading pleasure (4.2 MB PDF). For more of the best in web design and development, visit netmag.co.uk.

Update, 27 May 2009

An HTML version of the interview has now been posted on .net’s website.

Tags: webdesign, webdevelopment, magazine, interview, .net, netmag, interview, interviews, zeldman, jeffreyzeldman

Filed under: Interviews, Press, Publications, Publishing, Standards, Typography, UX, Usability, User Experience, Web Design, Web Standards, Zeldman, reportage, reprints, wisdom, zeldman.com

Ooh, la la! Jeffrey Zeldman, photographed by Daniel Byrne for .Net Magazine.

Tags: zeldman, .net, press, magazine, webdesign, carygrant, handsome, helloladies

Comments off.

Filed under: Press, Zeldman

• Blog post template final (with rotation in footer)
• About page template final (with rotation in footer)
• Contact page template final (with yadda, yadda)
• 404 page – my favorite!
• New! 21 May Subscribe page
• New! 21 May Style switcher in footer
• New! 22 May WordPress tout page
• New! 22 May (mt) Media Temple tout page

Note: Top left and top right footer elements rotate. ALA element (top middle) changes every two weeks, upon publication. Bottom three elements are static, at least for now.

Thanks to Mark Huot for the rotation script (same one we use on Happy Cog) and Noel Jackson, Daniel Mall, and Media Temple for the love and support.

A couple more templates to go, and then we can build this thing. Can’t wait.

Tags: zeldman, zeldman.com, design, redesign, designingfromthecontentout

Filed under: Design, Redesigns, Web Design, Working, Zeldman, development, work, zeldman.com

Working on the footer of zeldman.com redesign. Once footer is done, going to adjust header and Twitter sidebar blip.

Tags: zeldman, zeldman.com, design, redesign, css

Filed under: CSS, Design, HTML, Happy Cog™, Web Design, Web Standards, Working, XHTML, Zeldman, development, wordpress, work, zeldman.com

Armed with nothing more than a keen eye, a good seat, a fine camera, and the ability to use it, An Event Apart Seattle attendee Warren Parsons captured the entire two-day show in crisp and loving detail. Presenting, for your viewing pleasure, An Event Apart Seattle 2009 – a set on Flickr.

When you’ve paged your way through those, have a gander at Think Brownstone’s extraordinary sketches of AEA Seattle.

Still can’t get enough of that AEA stuff? Check out the official AEA Seattle photo pool on Flickr.

Wonder what people said about the event? Check these Twitter streams: AEA and AEA09.

And here are Luke W’s notes on the show.

Our thanks to the photographers, sketchers, speakers, and all who attended.

Tags: aneventapart, aeaseattle09, AEA, AEA09, Seattle, webdesign, conference, Flickr, sets, Twitter, photos, illustrations, sketches, aneventapart.com

Filed under: An Event Apart, Appearances, Browsers, CSS, Career, Code, Community, Design, HTML, HTML5, Happy Cog™, Ideas, Images, Information architecture, Redesigns, Seattle, Standards, State of the Web, Surviving, The Profession, Working, Zeldman, client services, content, creativity, eric meyer, events, industry, jobs, speaking, tweets, twitter

Although the WayBack machine did not preserve any of this website’s first year, it did capture quite a lot of our second year, 1996. Behold the splendor of the early web:

• Zeldman.com Table of Contents page
• Alternate TOC page
• GIFPLEX
• Ask Dr Web
• Steal These Graphics: Disturbing Patterns
• The Ad Graveyard

And much more. Enjoy!

Filed under: Design, DigitalUnderground, Publications, State of the Web, Web Design, Zeldman, development, work, zeldman.com

Thanks for the great feedback, folks. For those who find the orange background objectionable, I’ll offer a user-selectable alternate color scheme, like this one (quick sketch, ignore the color of the printer’s mark at the top, final colors may vary).

Tags: zeldman, zeldman.com, redesign, webdesign, css, code

Filed under: CSS, Design, Web Design, Web Standards, Zeldman, zeldman.com

Here’s a little something for a Wednesday evening. (Or wherever day and time it is in your part of the world.)

The body and bottom of the next zeldman.com design are now finished. Tomorrow I start working on the top.

Have a look.

Looks extra sweet in iPhone.

I’m designing from the content out. Meaning that I designed the middle of the page (the part you read) first. Because that’s what this site is about.

When I was satisfied that it was not only readable but actually encouraged reading, I brought in colors and started working on the footer. (The colors, I need not point out to longtime visitors, hearken back to the zeldman.com brand as it was in the 1990s.)

The footer, I reckoned, was the right place for my literary and software products.

I designed the grid in my head, verified it on sketch paper, and laid out the footer bits in Photoshop just to make sure they fit and looked right. Essentially, though, this is a design process that takes place outside Photoshop. That is, it starts in my head, gets interpreted via CSS, viewed in a browser, and tweaked.

Do not interpret this as me dumping on Photoshop. I love Photoshop and could not live or work without it. But especially for a simple site focused on reading, I find it quicker and easier to tweak font settings in code than to laboriously render pages in Photoshop.

If you view source, I haven’t optimized the CSS. (There’s no sense in doing so yet, as I still have to design the top of the page.)

I thought about waiting till I was finished before showing anything. That, after all, is what any sensible designer would do. But this site has a long history of redesigning in public, and the current design has been with us at least four years too long. Since I can’t snap my fingers and change it, sharing is the next best thing.

A work in progress. Like ourselves.

Tags: zeldman, zeldman.com, redesign, webdesign, css, code

Filed under: Appearances, Browsers, CSS, Design, Fonts, HTML, Layout, Web Design, Web Standards, Websites, Working, XHTML, Zeldman, content, creativity, wordpress, work, zeldman.com