A List Apart
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''A List Apart'' is a
webzine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer magaz ...
that explores the design, development, and meaning of
web content Web content is the wikt:text, text, visual system, visual or audio signal, audio Content (media), content that is made available online and user encountered as part of the online usage and user experience, experience on websites. It may include t ...
, with a special focus on
web standards Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of s ...
and best practices.


History

''A List Apart'' began in 1997 as a mailing list for
web design Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code a ...
ers, moderated and published by
Jeffrey Zeldman Jeffrey Zeldman is an American entrepreneur, web designer, author, podcaster and speaker on web design. He is the co-founder of A List Apart Magazine and the Web Standards Project. He also founded the design studios Happy Cog and studio.zeldman, ...
and Brian Platz. Founder's notes, by Zeldman:

In 1997, web developer Brian M. Platz and I started the A List Apart mailing list because we found the web design mailing lists that were already out there to be too contentious, too careerist, or too scattershot. There was too much noise, too little signal. We figured, if we created something we liked better, maybe other people would like it too. Within months, 16,000 designers, developers, and content specialists had joined our list.

Editing was the key. Many members submitted comments and topics each day; we dumped the dross, published the gold, often selecting pieces for their thematic relevance to one another. Through editorial cultivation, we rapidly grew an intelligent and insightful community.

Zeldman transformed ''A List Apart'' into a web magazine in 1998. Noting that among the then existing web magazines, David Siegel’s ''High Five'' advocated graphic design and Wired’s ''
Webmonkey Webmonkey was an online tutorial website composed of various articles on building webpages from backend to frontend. The site covered many aspects of developing on the web like programming, database, multimedia, and setting up web storefronts. The ...
'' taught web technologies, he observes:

Both magazines were great, both subject areas vital. But to me they were parts of a larger whole, incorporating writing, structure, community, and other bits nobody had quite put together. Then, too, no web design zine of the time seemed to grasp or value web standards the way I and my peeps at The Web Standards Project did.

The web site has had three major visual designs. The original, designed by Zeldman, featured custom club-flyer style graphics that accompanied each article. In early 2001, this design formed the basis of the site's conversion to one of the earliest CSS layouts on the web, establishing its reputation as "one of the leading sources of information and advocacy for CSS design and layout." The first major redesign, by Jason Santa Maria in 2005, featured a softer color palette. It also included
Cascading Style Sheets Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
by Eric Meyer and introduced custom illustrations by Kevin Cornell. The most recent update to the site, launched in January 2013, features a black-and-white design scheme by Mike Pick. It continues to prominently feature Cornell's illustrations, but takes a "content first" approach to design by reducing the presence of almost all brand and design elements in favor of article content.


''A List Apart'': The Web Design Survey

From 2007 to 2011, ''A List Apart'' annually surveyed the web design and development community and presented its findings in a series of reports. These reports claimed to be the “first true picture” of the profession of web design as it is practiced worldwide. Topics covered include salary; title; educational background and its effect on salary, job satisfaction, and title; workplace discrimination by gender, age, and ethnicity; and more. Tens of thousands of respondents around the globe participated each year. The magazine provides anonymized raw data with each findings report so that readers may crunch their own numbers, verify ''A List Apart''s findings, or conduct their own investigations. * Findings from the 2007 survey (PDF)
link
* Findings from the 2007 survey
link
* Findings from the 2008 survey

* Findings from the 2009 survey

* Findings from the 2010 survey

* Findings from the 2011 survey


International editions

An official Arabic edition of ''A List Apart'' was launched on January 18, 2010. This is an authorized ''A List Apart'' publication, and was its first international edition. Since then, an Italian version has launched as well.


See also

*
Web Standards Project The Web Standards Project (WaSP) was a group of professional web developers dedicated to disseminating and encouraging the use of the web standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium, along with other groups and standards bodies. Foun ...
*
CSS Zen Garden The CSS Zen Garden is a World Wide Web development resource "built to demonstrate what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design." It launched in May 2003. Style sheets contributed by graphic designers from around the world are ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:List Apart, A Computing websites Online magazines published in the United States 1997 introductions Magazines established in 1998 Design magazines