In Fancy Form Design, we have three great authors (Jina Bolton, Tim Connell and Derek Featherstone) sharing their experience of building forms while layering in all sorts of accessibility, semantics and UI goodness. It starts off with what appears to be the usual introduction to form elements and controls, but very quickly introduces non-native (as in, not provided by specific HTML elements) UI controls like sliders, split buttons, toggle switches and date pickers. This is encouraging to anyone who already knows a bit about forms, suggesting that you’ll get to learn something new soon (heck, I’d never even heard of a ’split button’ before). And even before the first chapter has finished, we’re reading about planning the interaction using task flows and doing paper prototypes and wireframes. This is not the usual chapter 1 stuff, so it’s a good start!

In chapter 2 it’s the turn of design, beginning with the overall layout of the form (explaining what a grid system is), appropriate use of colour (and the problems with relying on colour alone – a common accessibility sticking point). With a little tweak of the typography here, a splash of colour and some gradients, the selection of six forms identified as being required in chapter one get their first make-over.

Chapter 3 deals with structure – and it’s this chapter that overlaps slightly with the form chapter in my book (but thankfully does not in any way contradict. Nice to have a consistent message!) – and I just know that this was one that Derek wrote. Why? It covers all the HTML constructs required to create a meaningful form but also points out the flaws in using markup that should be right for the job (fieldset and legend, we’re looking at you here) but actually cause other issues; hurdles rather than help. My only regret is that Derek hadn’t seen the recent changes I made to the quick form builder tool on Accessify which makes the process of creating (most of) the forms’ HTML in this chapter an absolutely breeze (it would have been a useful footnote to add, in my humble opinion).

In chapter 4, we get back in to design again, this time how to style the form elements with CSS. Browser inconsistencies and quirks with certain form elements (once again, it’s you, pesky fieldset) are dealt with, along with lots of other nice graphical touches that can be applied to lift the form from plain old HTML. Nothing too complicated in this chapter – all light touches. However, for some reason that I could not ascertain, as the screen shots that show the the form move from basic, unstyled form to the finished job, the date of birth fields inexplicably switch from being three select lists to three text inputs and then back again, with no obvious reason why. It looks like a mistake, but if I have that wrong, I’ll amend this accordingly.

Enhancing! That’s what chapter 5 is all about, mainly through the use of JavaScript (or in most cases jQuery). Topics covered here include how to provide the user feedback on password strength, better styling for notoriously difficult elements like select lists, dynamically highlighting form errors and such like. As it stands, I could read a whole book on the kinds of ideas demonstrated in chapter 5. SitePoint, are you up for it? And perhaps that’s what leads me to the only real criticism I have about the book – there’s arguably not enough of it. Three authors but only five chapters (with a lot of colur pics and code samples)- it could easily have been double the size, so just be aware that this is not a complete compendium of form design patterns.

A great book that covers one topic and covers it well, I can definitely recommend it to anyone who’s got a firm grounding in HTML and wants to fine-tune that part of their work even further and definitely recommend it as a companion/add-on to my book. Good work, Jina, Tim and Derek.

Shortly after this all happened, I received this email from a prospective buyer:

I’ve been interested in your book for a while, and checked out SitePoint’s free sample chapters. I noticed before much else that you use XHTML. I’m wondering if you’ll be coming out with a third edition using HTML 5 now that XHTML 2 has been dropped in favour of HTML 5.

To which I would like to say:

The demise of XHTML2 does not mean that XHTML1 is, by the same notion, not fit for purpose.

Some web developers prefer to use HTML4, others prefer XHTML1 while others are investigating and/or tentatively using HTML5. HTML5 is still something of a moving target, while HTML4 and XHTML1 are well-defined, stable and well-established specifications. You are free to choose whatever you wish, just do it right (follow that language’s rules, e.g. do you need to have lowercase tags? Should tags be closed? Are attribute values quoted or not?).

In my book, I teach with XHTML1. Among the reasons for doing this are:

• The rules are a bit more rigid but they are consistent – this is better for new people learning, in my opinion. No shortcuts to learn
• If you learn XHTML syntax, it’s arguably easier to transition back to writing valid HTML4 than it is to do it the other way around
• The issue of serving the XHTML with the correct MIME type is so ridiculously above the level of knowledge that a beginner should be expected to know that it’s best not touched upon, lest it confuse the heck out of the reader. There is little point in making the reader sweat the small stuff rather than just letting them get on and learn (in an earlier draft, there was an advisory note to this end, but in the review stage we all felt it was best to cut out)
• SitePoint wanted/preferred it. From a marketing point of view, XHTML is an easier one to sell, as it’s a newer spec; some people might (mistakenly) think that learning HTML4 is not appropriate or fresh enough, so I can easily understand why the publishers prefer this

XHTML1 is still appropriate to teach, the demise of XHTML2 has no effect on this at all. So, if you were having second thoughts about this book, as the person who wrote this email did, please don’t worry – I’ll still be teaching you how to build your site the right way!

The tool has now been moved out of the Mozilla add-ons ’sandbox’ (where the experimental add-ons are placed first) and is now freely available on the main add-ons site, only it’s now called CodeBurner. Not quite as cool as the original name, but the tool is still an excellent addition to any web developer’s toolbox nonetheless.

So, go check out CodeBurner at SitePoint and you can start to reap the benefits straight away!

[Disclosure, I wrote the HTML reference which is what powers the HTML querying side of CodeBurner]

Visit SitePoint’s 5-for-1 sale here

As a SitePoint author whose books are on this list, it’s money out of my pocket, frankly, so why should I be so happily promoting it? Simple – the money is going into the pockets of people who need it a hell of a lot more than I and the other SitePoint authors and employees need it right now!. As some of you might know, SitePoint is based in Melbourne, Australia where – at the time of writing – bush fires are still raging and have claimed entire towns with the loss of life currently put at 170 people. This figure will rise.

I know that some of the people at SitePoint have been personally affected, losing friends in the fires, so this should not be seen as a publicity stunt in any way shape or form – this was simply something that they could do to raise some money quickly and easily to support the victims of this tragic incident. I’m only too happy to help promote this and am going to be blogging this anywhere I can, Twittering where I can – and there’s nothing to stop you doing the same!

$30 for five books is an absolute steal. Go on, buy some books and that will be another $30 going directly towards the victims – SitePoint are taking no money from this whatsoever.

Thanks.

As well as the information panel, you can also bring up contextual menus within other panels. For example, when viewing the DOM of the page in the HTML panel, you can right-click on any element or attribute, to look it up in the reference search, or view a code example for it.

I know James is keen to hear any feedback on Firescope (feel free to add comments on this blog post if you want – I’ll be sure to pass them on).

The extension is in the mozilla add-ons directory which is the best place to download it (because then it will subscribe to updates). However, you’ll need a Mozilla login to get it from there because it’s still in the sandbox (in other words, not quite yet approved for mass public distribution). Alternatively, you can download and install it directly from the page on sitepoint.com (but without auto-updates).

As well as having a new reference tool within Firefox/Firebug, the online reference has, itself, also had a make-over which gives it just that extra bit of polish. So even if you don’t feel like installing the tool, you can still check out the reference for yourself.

When I put a competition on the web site for just 5 copies of the book, I wasn’t sure what to ask as a competition question. I didn’t want to ask anything too hard/tricky, so I left it quite open and decided that the way to win a copy was to entertain me with some creative writing – just as I found it really funny the way that people would draft over-the-top creative begging letters on Freecycle. It’ll be fun, I thought.

250 entries of creative writing later, and I have a very different opinon. I wish I’d gone for a simple closed question along the lines of "what does HTML stand for" and then just done a lucky dip!

I must confess that it’s been great to read through some of the funniest and silliest emails I’ve received in a long time; I’ve also received emails from people who appear to be on the verge of self harm or even harming me or their nearest or dearest if they don’t win a copy. Well, I did say to exaggerate! I received emails from people who:

• wanted a copy to create a web site to put a site of themselves online to get back at a cheating ex
• claimed that their dog had eaten all of their html coursework
• were living rough while supporting their family of 15 blind, amputee children
• thought the book would make a good doorstop or help with a wobbly table
• started their email to me as "Dear Andy Clarke" or "Dear Ian whoeveryouare" (fail!)
• wrote several pages’ worth of back story, worthy of publishing as a novella
• admitted being senior people in their respective industry, responsible for web … and not having a clue what they’re talking about!
• taught me all about squirrel habitations (yes, it did relate to building a web site)
• claimed their pregnant wife just likes the smell of SitePoint books and the local supplier just ran out
• were abducted by aliens and had all programming knowledge wiped from memory following a particular experiment
• said that they were fed up with camping in the aisles of the local bookstore to read my book and that if they didn’t get a copy, their continued presence there might cause the store to stop stocking the book

Then there were quite a lot of emails which seemed to be genuine tales of woe – too many for a measly 5 copies to help out with! I really started to feel how difficult it must be for people working in charities having to turn down requests for help for things a lot more important than some (in comparison) silly little book.

In the end, I decided to choose a mixture of people who either made me laugh the most or who I felt would get the most benefit from learning the book. For reasons of privacy, I’ll not mention full names/details here – I’ll contact the winners directly, but they were:

• A photographer whose website looked in need of a make-over (but whose letter to me was the most colourful of the bunch!)
• 10-year-old Dennis whose ‘tutor’ was Dad but who was doing a rubbish job and needed to be fired (now he is)
• Kevin, recently unemployed and looking to re-train (a sign of the times – there were quite a few of these)
• A schools outreach program in Zimbabwe
• A new mother trying to learn a new skill so that she can manage a business from home and bring up the baby too (awww!)

Now, because there were so many funny entries to the competition, I’ve selected some of my favourites [published on accessify.com] and collated them here. Once again, I’ve removed the authors’ names to save them from any potential embarassment, and have also scanned through to make sure that there are no other personally identifiable pieces of information.

Thanks to everyone for taking part – it’s been fun … but I’ll definitely go with the closed question approach next time!

I’ve got some promotional copies of my beginners web development book (Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way with HTML & CSS) that I’m just itching to give away to people who can guarantee them some good homes. How can you win a copy? Well, there are five copies to giveaway (shared between this site and accessify.com). All I need from you is an email, which should be sent to iknowsomeonewhowouldreallyloveacopyofyourbook@accessify.com (you might want to copy that) with the most cheesy/over-the-top/unbelievable/inventive piece of creative begging that you can think of. Don’t let facts get in the way of a creative begging letter – be creative! In fact, just go for the kind of thing that people do when begging for items on Freecycle.

The closing date for this is Friday 23rd January (0900 GMT) – after this point the email address above will no longer be active. I’ll pick five winners soon after (as long as it takes me to read them all – 80 and counting so far!) and contact directly to arrange a shipping address. Good luck.

I saw that a new edition of your book ‘Build your own website the right way’ has just been released. If I wrote a book, I think I would find it interesting to know if it had a big effect on anyone.

Well it was the first book on web design I had ever read, before that I didn’t even really understand how the internet worked in its simplest form (I didn’t even know what a ‘browser’ was – even though I was using one). I actually thought after reading most of the book ‘Hey this is really easy’ (well done) ‘I thought this stuff was supposed to be really complex and hard?’ but then I discovered Javascript and server side technology, and started to understand where the complexities of web development lay.

Anyway I think its been about two years since I first read your book, and since then I have learnt stacks about web development/design and now confidently build web sites using PHP, JavaScript, mySQL and obviously CSS and HTML, always with web standards and accessibility in mind. In september I am starting a degree at university studying e-commerce and internet systems, and I’m currently programming my first online shop.

So thanks for watering the seed of my interest in web design/development! A brilliant beginners book!

Fear not! While the second edition does not have a reference at the back, you have two choices. One of them will cost you nothing, the other will cost you a little more (but you get a hardback book with which to bash web standards ignoramuses over the head with when they say something silly – or is that ignoramii?)

The Ultimate HTML Reference is a much better reference than the somewhat slimline one that appeared at the end of the this book’s first edition, but there’s also a free online HTML reference that you can use straight away. So, please don’t think that you’re missing out on the good stuff.

For the most part, this revision is about updating to make sure the content is still relevant in today’s tech world (a lot can change in 2.5 years, the time since the first edition came out!). You can find out more about what’s changed here, or simply take a look at this video here (assuming you have Flash player and 9 spare minutes).

I’m looking forward to (virtually) helping a new raft of budding web developers take their first tentative steps into this world, safe in the knowledge that they’ll not learn any nasty tricks in the process!