Web Site Wizardry

Marianne Krcma [pronounced "KERCH-ma"] assumes that you know the basics of HTML, but wish to improve the appearance of your pages. She focuses her attention on the site itself, and her approach is more practically based. She demonstrates the design features of good Web sites with lots of practical examples, all excellently illustrated with good screenshots. 

It's a very practical approach which forces readers to consider audience, product, and purpose. Functionality is put first, and the Wizardry is given full vent in sections which explain some of the tricks that are possible in page design. It's the usual selection of backgrounds, tables, images, frames, and forms. In some cases she gives the code too - but not too often, and then in a way which is user-friendly.


She's excellent and very detailed on the manipulation of graphics and pixels in PaintShop Pro to produce balls, buttons, and special effects such as splash screens and animated GIFs. She has some interesting recommendations to make on the presentation of text, including the use of colour.

There are brief summaries of DOs and DONTs at the end of each chapter, which I found far more useful than the excessively detailed pre-chapter tables of contents found in many books of this kind. 

Those undertaking HTML writing will have to select guides which suit their own inclinations and level of technical competence. This is a field of Information Technology which is developing at an exponential rate, and print publishers can hardly hope to keep up to date with changes.

My impression is that professionals hardly use editors or guides at all, but just hack away in Windows Notepad or a plain text editor, spending their off duty moments learning from other people's pages by clicking on "Reveal source" and analysing the code.

However, for those of us lesser mortals who need all the help we can get, this is an excellently clear and well-written manual to which I've returned time and time again, ever since I first read it.