Jeffrey Zeldman
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Jeffrey Zeldman is a prominent lecturer and author on web design. He also runs his own web design studio, [Happy Cog]; and has maintained a prominent blog, [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report], on the topic since 1995. His most recent book is titled Designing With Web Standards (ISBN 0735712018). Zeldman co-founded the Web Standards Project (WaSP), a group of professional web site designers dedicated to disseminating and encouraging the use of the standards promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Zeldman is generally held to be one of a vanguard of proficient visual designers (others include Dave Shea and Douglas Bowman) who adopted standards-based, cross-browser solutions to web-design problems. In particular, he helped destroy the myth that accessible web sites have to be ugly or apparently "undesigned". His books and web sites have helped promote a general improvement in the technical, visual design, usability and accessibility of web sites.
Prominence on the Web
In 1998, Zeldman began the e-zine A List Apart, beginning with the article "Fear of Style Sheets". This site contains articles that have been praised by several Web designers around the globe, namely "Suckerfish Dropdowns", "Sliding Doors of CSS" and "Alternative Style: Working with Alternate Style Sheets".In 2001, A List Apart's editors grew tired of the lack of standards followed by popular Web browsers. It converted to the standard entitled Cascading Style Sheets, developed by Håkon Wium Lie, and challenged its readers to do the likewise. Hundreds did. However, the vast majority of websites remain uninfluenced by the opinions of A List Apart's editors and Mr. Zeldman.
(A footnote to the above: As we approach 2006 we are seeing more and more sites adopt CSS and its XML counterpart, XHTML. The influential sites continue to gain admirers while web designers are discovering that adherence to CSS/XHTML saves time and reduces effort. Meanwhile web browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple's Safari are becoming ever more adherent to W3C standards, making CSS2 a prescient choice for the long-term. SlashDot launched an updated design based on CSS in September 2005, which was not a milestone event outside that community. Most of those concerned are holding out for more haphazard portals like Yahoo! to make the transition.)
Zeldman maintains his existence on the Web by Happy Cog, his design group, Zeldman.com, his personal site, and A List Apart.
Personal information
He is married to Carrie Bickner of Rogue Librarian fame, Director of Education Outreach for The Research Libraries of The New York Public Library, and author of Web Design on a Shoestring (ISBN 0735713286). The couple have a daughter, Ava. Zeldman is a recovering alcoholic, having been sober since 1993. [link]Books authored
- Taking Your Talent to the Web: Making the Transition from Graphic Design to Web Design. (ISBN 0735710732)
- Designing With Web Standards. (ISBN 0735712018)
External links
- [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents]
- * [Designing with Web Standards]
- [A List Apart]
- * [Web 3.0]
- * [To Hell With Bad Browsers]
- [An Event Apart]
- [Happy Cog]
- [First chapter of Designing with Web Standards: 99.9% of Websites are Obsolete]
- [Slashdot: Jeffrey Zeldman Bites Back] (2000 interview)
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