Designing for the Web

Jennifer Niederst (and her publishers, for whom she is a Web page designer) adopt a "show them how it's done" approach. Hers is a step-by-step and very straightforward explanation of how Web pages are assembled, with illustrative screenshots of each point.

First she deals with the basic elements of HTML code in relation to text, and then she shifts attention to graphics, which is clearly where her interest lies. The central section of the book is concerned with creation, sizing and colouring of pages. This book will probably suit designers who don't want to be burdened with too much coding and technical analysis.


Having said that, there are some pages where she wanders into the mind-warping calculations required for working out hexadecimal codes on colour hues. It' a relief to get back to image tags and block quotes.

The latter chapters deal with the more advanced features of lists and frames, and she finishes with one or two tricks to animate pages before offering pointers to recent developments in VRML, Shockwave, and RealAudio. 

The writing is generally clear, but it does have occasional blackspots such as the query which comes as early as page 12: 

'Is the server configured to handle imagemapped graphics (graphics with more than one "hotspot"; for more information, see Chapter 10)?' 

There is no bibliography, but URLs to recommended sites are given as sidebars on appropriate pages. Incidentally, she is in favour of embracing the still-not-officially-ratified Netscape extensions (which in some circles were masquerading as HTML Standard 3.0). Her rationale is simple: "Everybody's doing it - so don't get left behind".