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Web Design: A Beginner's Guide
A guide to Web design basics offers tutorials, exercises, and guided projects demonstrating how to create, maintain, and troubleshoot Web sites enhanced with graphics and multimedia elements.
- GenresWebsite DesignNonfiction
Paperback
First published April 30, 2010
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23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 25, 2011
This book is probably only useful if you're completely new to web design. The book itself isn't very educational, but it includes dozens of references to tools, sites, and services that are useful for learning web design. The most useful chapter for me was the first, which teaches how to discover client requirements and write documentation such as proposals, statements of work, and design specs.
The book provides an introductory overview of the phases of web design: planning and analysis, design, development, then transfer and maintenance. It familiarizes you with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and multimedia, but refers you to other books and sites to learn the details.
Author Wendy Willard promotes designing standards compliant, accessible, usable websites. She recommends offering additional services besides web design, such as SEO and HTML email design. For email design, she recommends using campaignmonitor.com.
Below are the notes I took as I read.
Sites for learning web design
Web Design from Scratch
W3Schools
Smashing Magazine
A List Apart
Recommended web hosts
Site5
DreamHost
BlueHost
Hostway
Free HTML editors
Amaya (from W3C)
Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express
NoteTab Light
Web design proposal
A proposal for a web design project should include the following sections. You can download a sample proposal from the author's site, WendyWillard.com.
Purpose: restatement of client's business needs
Scope/Statement of Work: details of work, including list of pages and features
- Design requirements gathering: example sites, text and graphics, demographics
- Web template design: site map, layout, color theme, number of edits
- Coding & development: pages, rounds of edits
- Project management: administrative tasks covered by project cost
Conditions/Assumptions: conditions and assumptions that may affect cost and schedule
- file transfer method
- communication method and frequency
- testing (screen size, browsers, speeds)
- copyright ownership
- post-launch edits
Hosting
Cost
Schedule
Biographies: bios of design team members, stating experience and skills
Floating and positioning
Floated content must appear in HTML above the content that must wrap around it.
Relative positioning moves elements relative to their original location.
Fixed positioning moves elements relative to the browser window.
Absolute positioning moves elements relative to their parent element.
Use z-index to layer elements that are relatively or absolutely positioned.
Testing designs of sites and HTML email
Test your site in multiple browsers using Adobe BrowserLab or BrowserShots.org. Test HTML email with Litmus.com.
SEO
Put keywords in the URL, heading tags, body copy, images (alt attributes), links (title attributes), page titles, and meta tags (although meta tags are ignored by many engines).
Search engines rank sites based on incoming links and user input.
The fastest way to appear in search results is PPC (pay-per-click) advertising (sponsored links), such as Google AdWords.
Job applicant tracking services
You can integrate these services into your sites for tracking job applicants.
iCIMS
ApplicantStack
myStaffingPro
The book provides an introductory overview of the phases of web design: planning and analysis, design, development, then transfer and maintenance. It familiarizes you with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and multimedia, but refers you to other books and sites to learn the details.
Author Wendy Willard promotes designing standards compliant, accessible, usable websites. She recommends offering additional services besides web design, such as SEO and HTML email design. For email design, she recommends using campaignmonitor.com.
Below are the notes I took as I read.
Sites for learning web design
Web Design from Scratch
W3Schools
Smashing Magazine
A List Apart
Recommended web hosts
Site5
DreamHost
BlueHost
Hostway
Free HTML editors
Amaya (from W3C)
Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express
NoteTab Light
Web design proposal
A proposal for a web design project should include the following sections. You can download a sample proposal from the author's site, WendyWillard.com.
Purpose: restatement of client's business needs
Scope/Statement of Work: details of work, including list of pages and features
- Design requirements gathering: example sites, text and graphics, demographics
- Web template design: site map, layout, color theme, number of edits
- Coding & development: pages, rounds of edits
- Project management: administrative tasks covered by project cost
Conditions/Assumptions: conditions and assumptions that may affect cost and schedule
- file transfer method
- communication method and frequency
- testing (screen size, browsers, speeds)
- copyright ownership
- post-launch edits
Hosting
Cost
Schedule
Biographies: bios of design team members, stating experience and skills
Floating and positioning
Floated content must appear in HTML above the content that must wrap around it.
Relative positioning moves elements relative to their original location.
Fixed positioning moves elements relative to the browser window.
Absolute positioning moves elements relative to their parent element.
Use z-index to layer elements that are relatively or absolutely positioned.
Testing designs of sites and HTML email
Test your site in multiple browsers using Adobe BrowserLab or BrowserShots.org. Test HTML email with Litmus.com.
SEO
Put keywords in the URL, heading tags, body copy, images (alt attributes), links (title attributes), page titles, and meta tags (although meta tags are ignored by many engines).
Search engines rank sites based on incoming links and user input.
The fastest way to appear in search results is PPC (pay-per-click) advertising (sponsored links), such as Google AdWords.
Job applicant tracking services
You can integrate these services into your sites for tracking job applicants.
iCIMS
ApplicantStack
myStaffingPro
October 2, 2011
Good, but not the focus I expected (and was looking for
January 19, 2013
An introduction and not much more. It doesn't really focus on principles or technology, somehow sliding along on the principle of leaving all of the non-Photoshop stuff to your development team, and leaving design principles to more advanced texts. As some others said, the best part is the first chapter.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews