Introduction

This is one little book containing three little books: one about HTML/CSS frameworks, one about HTML/CSS coding guidelines, and one about website quality control.

These books have all been published before, in 2015 and 2016, by the same author (me, Jens), but with a different publisher, O’Reilly. You can still access the originals: The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines, and The Little Book of Website Quality Control.

But just as O’Reilly was so kind to allow me to publish a German translation of The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks back in 2019, they now also allowed me to re-publish these books on my own. I asked about this because I like to maintain books, to keep them alive for a little while, and the three little books in question had been aging.

This Little Book of Little Books does not mean new editions of the three books. For a start, it’s much the same content as before. (That’s why the cover proudly points back to 2015.) But in the spirit of keeping books alive, there were some improvements: All links should again be working (though some, if linking to the Internet Archive wasn’t useful, had to be removed), some wording was made clearer, and my editor and I applied a bit of polish (thank you, Kirsty). There has been one regression: For this combined edition, I left out the forewords, by the venerable Eric A. Meyer, Lindsey Simon, and Kevin Khaw. I did so because this version is these books’ afterlife, something we didn’t take into account when we worked on the original editions.

When I say “start” I cannot yet promise where the journey goes. I’m likely to improve this three-in-one book further, and maintain it as mentioned. (On some platforms where you get this book you’re able to download updated versions, if not receive them automatically.) What’s likely is that at some point, I’ll rewrite and republish one, two, or all three of the Little Books. I admit that I hadn’t done my best with The Little Book of Website Quality Control, which has turned into a badly aging (though now improved) replica of UITest.com. On the other hand I believe that The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks is an underrated book on the topic of frameworks that deserves sustenance and additional pages.

With all three books it shows that they were written years ago. The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks was written during a time when frameworks were used by linking to their style sheets; The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines was written when there was little tooling to format code automatically; and The Little Book of Website Quality Control was written when there were few automated testing options.

Yet while the world of web development has moved on, I like to offer the following view: What has changed the most are our technical standards (and their features), as well as our tooling. When you look at the craft, however, not that much is different. And here, from a craft point of view, you may find the most value in this book.

—Jens