Students in the Web Application Design and Development course at Bryn Mawr College wear blue beanies in support of Web Standards!

This photo is one of many from the 2008 Blue Beanie Day collection at Flickr.

You can read more about the history and purpose of Blue Beanie Day 2008 here on vvn.net, Jeffrey Zeldman’s recent post about Blue Beanie Day, or Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Read-Write-Web news article about Blue Beanie Day 2008 and web standards.

Update: As of  Jan. 26, 2009 – there are over 4,800 members.

Designing With Web Standards - Facebook Group

Quoting from the DWWS Facebook group page:

Designing With Web Standards is “the foundational web standards text”. “A core text cited by many as the beginning of the true revolution.”

“Web standards” didn’t really exist until Mr. Jeffrey Zeldman, and his colleagues, coined the term, applied it to a set of ill-enforced W3C and ECMA recommendations, and persuaded browser makers to support these core technologies accurately and completely. That was “The Web Standards Project.”

Designers still weren’t using these hard-won standards, so Mr. Zeldman pushed A List Apart in the direction of web standards evangelism, and this had a great effect. An underground of smart, forward-thinking designers and developers embraced web standards.

Still, most people didn’t get the concepts of web standards, and the industry was oblivious to the benefits or even the existence of web standards.

So the book was written, and published, revised and re-published and the story of web standards continues. It’s the book that launched a thousand other books, from Web Standards Solutions on. It changed some people’s careers, launched others, shook up the industry. However imperfectly applied, web standards are behind most “Web 2.0″ apps.

And yet web standards are still a semi-underground movement, and standardistas are still a rare breed.

Back on November 2nd, 2007 – Jeffrey Zeldman wrote about the group in his blog.

In July of 2008, we wrote an update about DWWS group activities, and related events.

In the past year, 4,171 members have to joined the DWWS Facebook group – to ask questions about the Designing With Web Standards book, and dialogue about Web Standards.

The DWWS Facebook group is already very global. Members are from the following countries, or regions: Australia, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, Fiji, France, Ghana, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya,
Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, UK, USA, Venezuela, Vietnam, etc.

Join the DWWS FB group and let’s learn about web standards together.

Just getting started with web design or web standards? Check out Jeffrey Zeldman’s DWWS page, or our recent book review of Jeffrey’s book – Designing With Web Standards.

Remember — this is a survey of books, blogs and magazines that people are recommending to me. I haven’t distilled the list down yet… still collecting suggestions from friends… My friend Antoine told me to look at Digital Web Magazine – they publish a variety of articles of interest to web designers, web developers, etc.

Here’s a few books that Antoine mentioned:

1. Designing With Web Standards, by Jeffrey Zeldman, published by Peachpit Press, 2007, ISBN:0321385551, 410 pages (and you know I’ve recommended Zeldman’s book a Zillion times)
2. Web Accessibility, Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance, by Jim Thatcher, Michael R. Burks, Christian Heilmann, Shawn Lawton Henry, Patrick H. Lauke, Richard Rutter; published by Friends of ED, 2006, ISBN:1590596382, 648 pages
3. The Zen of CSS Design, by Dave Shea, and Molly E. Holzschlag; Published by Peachpit Press, 2005, ISBN:0321303474, 296 pages
4. The Business Side of Creativity, The Complete Guide for Running a Graphic Design Or Communications Business, by Cameron S. Foote, Illustrated by Mark Bellerose;Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, ISBN:039373093X, 432 pages

Context is Everything – For architects, computer programmers, lawyers, philosophers, and theologians – context is everything. The essential reading list for a lawyer is different from the essential reading list of an architect, physician or pastor.  I’m also searching for common themes, and patterns to reuse…

Is there a book (or a blog) that should be essential reading for architects (who build large buildings)  — and for computer architects (who build large computer systems)? I think there might be… and I’m getting to that… hang on a minute…. Are there books and blogs that every designer should read, whether they are designing websites, bikes, book covers, or baby-clothes?

The quest for the best – There are a lot of dead end streets on this quest. For instance, sometimes you find a really cool blog, but alas — the blogger quits blogging. Example: Loosely Coupled – a great blog for software developers and systems architects (covering SOA) – but the last entry appears to be from May 2006.

So, I sent emails to a few friends, saying:

What do you consider essential reading each day, each week, each
month? Books, journals, magazine, blogs?
What technical journals to read each month?
What do you read that keeps you going and growing?
I’m interested in your thoughts.

So, that’s the long contextual explanation as to why I’m building an essential reading list for various professions. Then I want to see if there are common themes — books, magazines, journals, and blogs that are considered essential reading by a lot of people from various backgrounds and professions.

So here’s a few books and blogs that my friends suggested, and guess what? Some of them were already on my blog roll, or books that I’ve read. This is not the distilled list of essential reading… yet… but here are some suggestions that are coming in from my initial survey of computer geeks and web designers…  not a comprehensive survey… (It’s kind of a list from A to Z – with the middle part still missing).

Suggested blogs:

1. 456 Berea Street – A blog by Roger Johansson. A Swedish web professional who has been working with the web and other interactive media since 1994.
2. AlertBox – Jakob Nielsen’s Newsletter on Web Usability
3. A List Apart – A List Apart Magazine (ISSN: 1534-0295) explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
4. Authentic Boredom – A blog by web designer Cameron Moll.
5. UXMag – The User Experience Magazine – Elevating user experience one article at a time.
6. Zeldman – Online since May 1995, “Jeffrey Zeldman Presents” is the personal site of designer, writer, and web standards guru Jeffrey Zeldman. Zeldman was one of the first designers, bloggers, and independent publishers on the web, and one of the first web design teachers. We’ve mentioned (and reviewed his best selling book), Designing With Web Standards, several times before.

To be continued…

Afruj Jahan also rounded up some excellent websites to learn CSS.

Every standardista knows you have to learn CSS to follow web standards. Speaking of which … did you hear that the Facebook Designing With Web Standards Group is giving away a few free copies of Designing with Web Standards (DWWS), by Zeldman.  ( We reviewed the DWWS book here, and the article is one of our most popular links. )

Want more help? Try following these 9 great web developers on Twitter.