Web Design in a Nutshell

HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide, Fifth Edition

Html General

Learning Web Design : A Beginner's Guide to HTML, Graphics, and Beyond

Format: Paperback
Author: Jennifer Niederst
ReleaseDate: 25 June, 2003
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

Pleasantly surprised

I purchased this book to teach myself the basics of web design. I am a design student, and have not yet learned web design, or how to build a website. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the language was to understand. I have not yet finished the book, but will continue to use it in the future. .

Great Introduction Book
Without getting too much into the specifics, and stopping before diving into more complicated items such as forms, and book builds a get over-all picture. LEARNING WEB DESIGN is an excellent start to an understanding of how html works and what building websites is all about. If you're looking to become a professional, self-taught web designer, you probably want another guide. But if you are simply trying to build a personal web page and get started on a road to web design as a hobby, then this book is great.

The book comes with a CD, complete with trial versions of software, but I found the WYSIWYG HTML editor NVU very handy. Best of all, it is a free-ware program. Additionally, I found GIMP, a image editing software also very handy. Both of these can be found by a simple Google search.

Worth The Effort To Understand
After using it for about 2 years I finally think I know what I'm looking at. Although the book is positioned as a Beginner's Guide you really need to have some basic understanding or feel for html coding to make the most of it. Ms. Niederst explains some things really well, e. g. , text, inserts, use of graphics, html limitations and tables. Her tie ins to FrontPage, Go Live and Dreamweaver are hard to follow (for me, anyway) because they do not match the Dreamweaver version I have. But, I've adjusted to these differences. I use the book every time I work on my website and I'm happy to have it.