An anonymous reader writes: Pro CSS for High Traffic Web Sites was written by Antony Kennedy and Inayaili de Leon. The book provides best practices and techniques for building scalable CSS based web sites receiving 10,000+ unique visitors per day. Covered are CSS framework solutions, processes, development methodologies, branding, testing and performance.
This book is not a reference guide to CSS code and constructs. It was not written to provide the reader with specific code snippets for your site. Instead, the book is about building an infrastructure to support the proper CSS implementation for highly trafficked and scalable sites. It also provides best practices, techniques and tool recommendations. You will find some code here, too, but it is not this book’s focus except to provide principles for good code. The book starts out offering an effective value proposition for process. This includes discussions on teams, staff turnover, code consistency and other strategic concerns. I was excited to see the book built on the fundamentals of process like this.
Further, the authors provide guidance on the most popular CSS frameworks. The book culminates to the final chapter where all the information learned in the previous chapters is put into action to guide the reader to developing their own custom CSS framework.
There are a lot of useful gems found in this book. They cover CSS Resets (including my favorite, Eric Meyer’s), accessibility, CSS Sprites, Grid systems and much more. I was impressed by the breadth of the coverage and how well this book was written.
Process and strategy are keys to creating an effective large-scale site. Their guidance in this area is critical even though at first it may not seem important. I have led the development and maintenance of large scale sites in my capacity as Director of eBusiness and Web Technologies at a large company having supported 18,000 unique visitors per day. Much of what these authors have put together here is similar to the processes, methodologies and approaches I have used/continue to use.
I recommend this book for all web designers/developers. Not just those creating sites for high traffic. I think there is a lot to be said for setting your site up right the first time. It is always good to start out on the right foot and I think this book should be a required resource for all designers.
The best practices and techniques coupled with the process views provided in the book are instrumental, in my opinion, to building a solid strategy and site.
Buy this book!
