Without a doubt, the best CSS / XHTML training you can give yourself is pick up any of these books to learn about front end web development.

Most of the books involve learning and adapting web pages using CSS based layouts. Some are new, some are classics. I have learnt valuable tips on working practices for CSS management, color palette selection, and also layouts using CSS3.

Books like ‘Don’t make me think, and ‘Bulletproof..’ make you question ‘Why should I do it this way..?’. Then they cover alternatives you may not have considered. Some of these books are in their Second edition, a testament to how well they are written and deservedly gaining a place on any discerning geeks bookshelf.

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It’s very cool to see things as they happen. Google has at Googleplex a big display that shows live queries from all the world, but they didn’t make it available online for privacy reasons. But there’s an alternative: Dogpile, a small metasearch engine, shows unedited real-time Web searches.

To see all the recent Flickr photos that also have geographical information, there’s Flickrvision. All the photos are placed on a Google map and they change very quickly. It’s an addictive way to learn about diversity, people and to destroy the artificial borders between countries.If you have a site and want a real-time view of your visitors, Clicky has a “spy” feature “that shows you actions on your web site as they are happening, delayed no more than five seconds” (here’s a demo). You’ll spend hours finding who visits your site and why.

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Today is Blue Beanie day! If you haven’t got involved do it now!
It’s the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.
It’s easy to show your support for web design done right. Put on a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on November 26, switch your profile picture in Facebook or other social Network and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day group at Flickr (here).

Event details on Facebook

Photos on Flickr

Below is a screenshot of Twitter this morning, showing colleagues supporting Blue Beanie day, including King Zeldman himself.

Erin Caton has designed a pocket cheat sheet / pocket guide for commonly used microformats.

http://microformats.org/wiki/pocketcheatsheet

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Having del.icio.us‘d this, I thought it would be good to highlight the number of tools to make your management of CSS easier.

A selection of tools to help you clean up your CSS and optimize it by reducing the number of empty lines in the code. However, bear in mind, this may make it very hard to follow when doing future updates to your CSS files.

One that I found useful is the CSS Redundancy Checker for checking larger CSS files and large web sites, it looks at any redundant code and repetitive code you may have. Especially if dealing with a large site that has code from previous layouts and styles. Again cleaning up the files, making leaner and cleaner.
Check them all out at: http://mashable.com/2007/09/25/css-toolbox/

SxSW is of course back for 2008, this time, rather than hearing from colleagues about just how good it was.. I am going!

If you are going you can book your hotel, and book your plane ticket now. Return flights from Gatwick to Texas start at the £300 mark.
Here are the dates:

• SXSW Interactive: Friday March 7 – Tuesday March 11
• SXSW Film: Friday March 7 – Saturday March 15
• SXSW Music: Wednesday March 12 – Sunday March 16

New for 2008: SXSW.mobi

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