Websites are not the same as pictures of websites. When one
person designs in Photoshop and another converts the design
to markup and CSS, the coder must make guesses and assumptions
about what the designer intended. This interpretive
process is never without friction—unless the coder is Dan
Cederholm. When Dan codes other people’s designs, he gets
everything right, including the parts the designer got wrong.
For instance, Dan inevitably translates a designer’s fixed
Photoshop dimensions into code that is flexible, accessible,
and bulletproof. (Indeed, Dan coined the phrase “bulletproof
web design” while teaching the rest of us how to do it.)
In Dan’s case, flexible never means sloppy. The details always
matter. That’s because Dan is not only a brilliant front-end
developer and user advocate, he is also a designer to his core.
He dreams design, bleeds design, and even gave the world
a new way to share design at dribbble.com. Dan is also a
born teacher and funny guy whose deadpan delivery makes
Steven Wright look giddy by comparison. Dan speaks all over,
helping designers improve their craft, and he not only educates,
he kills.
And that, my friends, is why we’ve asked him to be our (and
your) guide to CSS3. You couldn’t ask for a smarter, more
experienced, more design-focused guide or a bigger web standards
geek than our man Dan. Enjoy the trip!