WHY IT S IMPORTANT

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Around the time that I began thinking about the topic for this book, I realized that there are two important pieces that make up great, compelling Web designs. One piece is the visual componentthe piece that's obvious to anyone just looking at the finished page. This is a combination of the graphic design, colors, and typography the designer chose. Just visit the CSS Zen Garden (www.csszengarden.com), and it becomes obvious that compelling visual design is certainly possible and thriving when XHTML and CSS are used.

The second (but equally important) piece to a building a great Web site is the bulletproof implementation. It's this piece that the book will focus on: you've wisely decided to use XHTML and CSS to build Web sites to reap all of the benefits that come along with them. And now you're ready to leverage those Web standards with some ingenuity to create visually compelling Web sites that are also as flexible, adaptable, and accessible as possible.

As the adoption of Web standards such as XHTML and CSS increases rapidly, it becomes more and more important to have resources that discuss how these standards can be utilized and implemented in the most optimal way.