This is a clear and practical guide to planning, designing, and managing web sites. It offers an overview of the technologies for online communication and shows you how to use them for maximum effect.
Jason Whittaker starts with a brief description of the Internet and the Web how they work. He looks at the basic principles of setting up your own site. There's a light approach to the technical details, and yet he is quite comprehensive. He then moves on to the intricacies of working with graphics, colour, tables, frames, and even rollovers. It's a survey, rather than detailed instructions.
For instance, he describes the features and advantages of several web editors, rather than how to use any one of them.
He also flags up the possibilities of cascading style sheets, JavaScripts, XML, multimedia, and CGI scripts all within a few pages - without dwelling on any of the details.
This is a rapid survey, but for someone delving into this medium for the first time, this could be very useful. There is absolutely no point in a beginner starting with a manual on XML three inches thick.
All through this advice he explains how to implement his ideas using the most popular editors - such as GoLive, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and Hot Dog.
He introduces forms, CGI scripts, and other aspects of dynamic pages, then covers the management and promotion of a web site. The next part deals with more advanced features such as scripts, forms, and even proprietary software such as Flash.
The latter parts of the book deal with the content of your pages. How to deliver a story, how to target your audience, how to stay out of trouble with copyright and plagiarism.
Finally there is the intricate business of making sure your pages are uploaded to the major search engines, and finely tuned with meta tags which will attract customers. After all, that's what you want at your site, isn't it.
There's a very good combined bibliography and webliography offering listings of resources on web design, graphics, Java, and multimedia, and like many other recent publications, the book has its own web site.
You will need to learn the finer details of HTML coding elsewhere. What this book offers is an overview of the whole web site design and maintenance business.
