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Ask HN: I am writing a book on web design. Any suggestions?

by anujkk on 12/11/13, 8:11 AM with 2 comments

I am about to start a new side project and this time I am interested in writing a book on "Web Design". My primary target audience are hackers who want to get better at web design and use the knowledge & skills to develop well designed front-ends for their product. Here are my initial thoughts on how I would like to go about it :

1. I don't want it to be a 500 page HTML reference. There are many such texts available. That's why I want to focus only on HTML5 elements that are used in real life projects.

2. Teach CSS3 in a simple and fun way by focusing on fundamentals and using mini-projects to illustrate how it can be used in real life projects.

3. I also want to cover design concepts like typography, layouts, responsive design, color theory, etc.

I am looking for suggestions on what to include in my book. What are the most important topics that you would like to be covered in a web design book?

  • by ondiekijunior on 12/11/13, 11:04 AM

    you shouldn't avoid a glossary. and put in jQuery there as well, it is a vital component. it wont hurt to touch on responsive design across different devices. simplify that and you got a winner.

  • by thenerdfiles on 12/11/13, 8:37 AM

    1. Metanotational typefaces (FontAwesome to AlphaSymbolic — Blissymbols anyone?)

    2. Perspective-based grid systems (Grid systems to build basic interactive Webworlds, instead of Websites)

    3. Modular CSS Architecture (Using Grunt to compile CSS that lives with JS Modules, served on demand via RequireJS; a more meaningful folder architecture other than the dreaded "css" folder at project root[0]; I namespace my CSS/LESS/SASS as I namespace my Business Objects or Entities, and I namespace my CSS/LESS/SASS by module/state/verb.)

    3.1 Modern Web DRY (Best way to package and create shareable front-end code?)

    4. UI Semantics for Accessibility (What else can we add as sibling to "Skip to Content"? — It really is an Accessibility Hook within a list. What about Accessibility Hooks everywhere?)

    5. Responsive/Adaptive Images by Cool URL[1] (Responsiveness as a Service?)

    [0]: http://www.jakobloekkemadsen.com/2013/07/css-abstractions-do...

    [1]: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html