| Web Design in a Nutshell is the second edition of a classic Web authoring guide. It is aimed at professionals, with the focus sharply on page layout rather than scripting or programming. Two things are outstanding. First, the book is a handy reference for core Web standards like HTML tags, character entities, MIME types and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Second, and most important, the author offers concise, meticulous explanations and comments on key topics including the various different approaches to text formatting, choosing and optimising image types, and getting good results from tables. She highlights the importance of Web standards, and is careful to include Macintosh as well as Windows issues when discussing design tools or compatibility matters. Reference information is up-to-date as of Internet Explorer 5.5 and Netscape 6.0. The early chapters offer general introduction to the Web environment, laying down basic design principles and covering tricky issues like printing and internationalisation. The next part covers formatting and layout with HTML, hyperlinks, tables, frames, forms and CSS. Part three is an in-depth look at images, particularly JPEG, GIG, PNG, and colour usage. Multimedia comes next, featuring video and audio formats as well as Flash movies, while the final part introduces other technologies such as Javascript and Dynamic HTML, XML, XHTML and WAP. These overviews are useful, but the best chapters are those that cover the nitty-gritty of setting out a page. It is ideal for print designers who need to understand Web design, or as a reliable general-purpose handbook for Web authors. | |
