‘Tis himself.
Our classic orange avatar has turned blue to celebrate the release of Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition by Jeffrey Zeldman with Ethan Marcotte. This substantial revision to the foundational web standards text will be in bookstores across the U.S. on October 19, 2009, with international stores to follow. Save 37% off the list price when you buy it from Amazon.com.
Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2730
An Event Apart Chicago has sold out. If you wanted to join us in Chicago on October 12–13 for two days of design, code, and content, we’re sorry to announce that the show has completely sold out. There’s not a spare seat to be had.
That means, if you don’t already have a ticket, you won’t be able to watch Jason Santa Maria, Kristina Halvorson, Dan Brown, Whitney Hess, Andy Clarke, Aaron Gustafson, Simon Willison, Luke Wroblewski, Dan Rubin, Dan Cederholm, and your hosts Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman share the latest ideas in design, development, usability, and content strategy.
We’re sorry about that.
But, hey. If you can’t be with us in Chicago next week, please join us in San Francisco later this year. Or come see us in 2010 at any of these fine cities:
Tickets for all our 2010 shows go on sale November 2nd, 2009, and are first-come, first served.
To keep up with the latest AEA doings, become a fan on Facebook, join our Ning social network, or subscribe to our mailing list.
Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2651
The new mini-site for the 3rd Edition of Designing With Web Standards has been updated, with additional information about the substantially revised web standards guidebook, and with tweaks to the CSS which, one hopes, now bring embedded web font goodness to Internet Explorer users, as well as our friends on Safari, Firefox, and Opera. We love the smell of Franklin in the morning.
Short URL: zeldman.com/x/60
The 3rd Edition of Designing With Web Standards is coming soon to a bookstore near you. Abetted mightily by our secret cabal of interns, co-author Ethan Marcotte, technical editor Aaron Gustafson, copyeditor Rose Weisburd, editor Erin Kissane and I have worked hard to create what we hope is not merely an update, but a significant revision to the foundational web standards text.
After years of stasis, the world of standards-based design is exploding with new ideas and possibilities. Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition captures this moment, makes sense of it, and keeps you smartly ahead of the pack.
From HTML 5 to web fonts, CSS3 to WCAG2, the latest technologies, claims and counter-claims get broken down in classic DWWS style into their easy-to-understand component ideas, helping you pick the course of action that works best for your projects. As always, the core ideas of standards-based design (which never change) get presented with clear insights and up-to-date examples. You’ll find strategies for persuading even the most stubborn boss or client to support accessibility or reconsider what “IE6 support” means—and for handling the other problems we face when trying to bring rational design and development to the unruly web.
While this 3rd Edition, like its predecessors, spends a great deal of time on “why,” it also features a lot more “how” than past editions. If you loved the ideas in DWWS, but wished the book was a bit more hands-on, this is the edition you’ve waited for.
Oh, and the color this time? It’s blue, like l’amour.
A few chapters remain to be written, but the goal is in sight, and the book will be out this Fall. To celebrate, you can now save 37% when you pre-order Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition from Amazon.com.
There’s a new book mini-site as well, with more content and features to come. The sharp-eyed will notice that the mini-site is set in Franklin Gothic. A web-licensed version of ITC Franklin Pro Medium from Font Bureau has been embedded via standard CSS. It works everywhere, even in IE. (View Source if curious.)
ShortURL: zeldman.com/x/57
Among the pleasures of running an independent personal site is the accidental discovery of an ancient page, such as the version of this site’s contact page from the 1990s that I stumbled onto this morning.
“We’ve got mail!” the old site cheerfully announces, complete with a meaningless header image. The image, like the header and navigation typography, is pixellated to convey “webbiness”—in case you forgot that you were looking at a website in a browser, I guess. “Got mail” is a play on America On-line (kids, ask your parents). “We” is the royal first person plural with which I used to write this site, despite being its sole author. I’d gotten into the habit of “we” from writing copy on entertainment sites for clients like Warner Bros. It made their sites, and mine, seem bigger. It was also an ongoing, self-deprecating joke, although not everyone got it.
As I look at this old page, the copy still feels like me, and it also, if I may say so, anticipates the playful directional body copy of Web 2.0 sites like Flickr by about a decade. (Could be coincidence. Derek Powazek and Heather Champ also wrote jovial instructional copy at the time. Others may have done so as well.)
I’m a lot more ashamed of the design. I’m particularly abashed at:
If your old work doesn’t shame you, you’re not growing.
It’s nice to look back and feel that you’ve made progress. When you look at old work, it should suck glaringly and you should cringe painfully. But there should also be some germ within it that you’re not ashamed of—some spark of talent or inspiration that connects to what you do now.
Update: The position is now closed. Thanks to all who applied.
We’re looking for one good intern. If you love web design, writing, and publishing, this is the gig for you. You’ll work with Aaron Gustafson, Erin Kissane, Ethan Marcotte, and Jeffrey Zeldman on the new edition of the industry-changing Designing With Web Standards, and possibly another great publishing project as well.
NYC area location is ideal, but not required—what matters most is your commitment and professionalism. Must be willing to work with Microsoft Word, have access to one of the latest versions of it, and be a Word styles ninja. We’re looking for 6–8 hours per week through September or mid-October. The right person will see this as an opportunity to experience the publication process from first draft through galleys and launch, and to learn from industry and community leaders who are funny, smart, and nice.
Apply by e-mail to internquest at happycog dot com. Send a short note selling us on you. All queries will be handled with discretion.
[tags]jobs, internerships, intern, wanted, webstandards, designingwithwebstandards, DWWS3e, 3rdEdition, HappyCog, ErinKissane, AaronGustafson, EthanMarcotte, zeldman, JeffreyZeldman, employment[/tags]
Found in my in-box on this gloriously muggy morning:
Typical day.
The Happy Cog-designed social network for Brighter Planet is now in public beta. Come on down and kick the tires. Brighter Planet helps you take control of your environmental footprint: measure your climate impact, discover simple ways to reduce it, track your progress, and share your experiences with other people who who want to make a difference.
Happy Cog‘s New York office developed this project. The team:
This truly collaborative project could not have been conceived or completed without the brilliant and generous work of Brighter Planet team members including:
Not only is this young, passionate team dedicated to reducing climate change and all things green, they are also marketing kingpins, shrewd user experience designers, and badass developers.
We love our clients. These folks and this project are dear to us. And it’s a fun way to make a difference. I hope you’ll check out Brighter Planet’s new beta social network.
[tags]brighterplanet, climatechange, beta, site, launch, launches, webdesign, projects, work, happycog[/tags]
Today the pain woke me at 5:00 AM. One week ago today I had surgery. While most of me has bounced back, parts look like I disagreed with a mule. There is tenderness where a hernia repair botched by NYU interns 20 years ago finally got fixed. There’s throbbing, tumescent, Tim-Burton-directed pain in other places, where other things were done.
The past 12 months have been … interesting. I fired a client. My lead designer in New York decided to strike out on his own. I woke one morning with a toe the size of Cleveland, and after four months of practitioner hot potato, was diagnosed with gout and osteoarthritis. My dad had heart surgery, and airline incompetence got me to his side after it was over. (Fortunately he survived.) One of my businesses yielded a tax bill I couldn’t pay. I required intensive periodontal care. My hernia, supposedly fixed two decades ago, popped open again.
Somewhere in the middle of this—around Thanksgiving—my beloved wife screwed up the courage to confess that she was unhappy.
A year of couples counseling could not save the marriage. We did, however, save the family. Our child is well, we co-parent beautifully, and, with a lot of work on both sides, the ex and I have become good friends. Better friends, maybe, than when we were husband and wife. Friends for life. Lemonade for 200, Alex.
The dizzying marital sea change dwarfed everything else. At first I was stunned, like an accident victim. During one of the comic episodes of my toe enlargement mystery, I found myself alone in a hospital gown, about to have an MRI. In the mirror I reminded myself of my hospital-gowned father, whose surgery I had just attended. The doctor bustled in to ask me questions before the test. “How you doing,” he said. It took all my strength not to babble, “My wife is leaving me.”
We threw a Christmas party in the studio. My wife and child were among the guests, the wife looking radiant, the child frolicking adorably. I sensed that people viewed me as lucky and successful, and most were happy for me. They didn’t know that I was about to lose the only thing that matters. In the midst of happy celebrants, I felt alone.
During the inauguration of President Obama, while much of the world experienced hope, I focused on Laura Bush standing beside George Bush, and wondered why their marriage endured, while mine was falling apart.
It was like that. Then it got better.
One day I realized I could not change what would happen, but I could influence how it happened. I could be the angry denier, hanging onto what no longer exists. Or I could embrace change with love and no conditions. After all, it was not about me, it was about us. And the most important thing was that the most important one of us be protected and continue to feel safe and loved.
Once you figure that out, the rest is easy, if you have a good partner.
By the time I started letting people know about the divorce, I was almost okay with it. I had stopped feeling that things were happening to me, and started taking control of my life. I enjoyed family time and single time. Although my depressed mother had raised me to view self-love as narcissism, I began taking care of myself. I ate sensibly, exercised, saw friends, took time to relax.
As part of that self-care, I opted not to leave unexploded land mines in my system.
During yesterday’s initial follow-up, the surgeon told me I was doing well—recovering fast. I celebrated by walking three miles down Fifth Avenue and meeting a friend for lunch. Then the pain told me to rush home and lie down, and I did as the pain commanded.
The pain that wakes me is good pain. It is the pain of taking care of yourself. The pain of recovery.
[tags]myglamorouslife, zeldman[/tags]
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[/tags]
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[/tags]
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.
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[/tags]
Ooh, la la! Jeffrey Zeldman, photographed by Daniel Byrne for .Net Magazine.
[tags]zeldman, .net, press, magazine, webdesign, carygrant, handsome, helloladies[/tags]
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[/tags]