Web Design the L Line

Jenkins' book is part of what appears to be a new series from Wiley, with the theme of the L line express. This book offers a quick boot up into making your own website. The examples focus on a small commercial website. Well, at least initially, it's going to be a small website. There is a balanced discussion between the design of a single web page and the overall layout of the entire website. For the former, graphics plays a big part, as you might expect. Two important packages, Illustrator and Photoshop, are considered, in which you can make the graphics. Both have more than adequate capabilities to do so. The text also teaches the basics about the different, common graphics formats - gif, jpeg and png. It suggests that you experiment with viewing the same underlying image, rendered in those formats and viewed in different browsers. These days, there should only be minor nuances. But if you are selling products where an accurate rendition matters, then it's a good step, to choose the best format. Then the book also goes into how best to design the whole website. Vital to avoid confusing the visitor. The skills here are different from the visual layout aspects of single pages. If your background is in visual design, this part of the book can be especially useful. It teaches different and complementary skills that you should master.

This is a very good and well organized book on end-to-end web development. Although it is 500 pages, you can use it as a reference and skip around as well. One of the major strengths as another reviewer points out is the presentation of the design phase i.e. who is the audience and how to appeal to them. This material is often lacking from other books. While you may need other books to supplement this reference with respect to advanced coding, this will be all most people will need. Sue Jenkins is also the author of The Dreamweaver All-in-One Reference for Dummies, which is also an excellent, thorough presentation of what you need to know in plain and easy to understand language.

I have more books than I need on Dreamweaver, CSS, PHP, and web design. And very few have been read thoroughly. But I intend to study this book from cover to cover. Here is what I like about this book: 1. The first couple chapters have helped me figure out what to put on the web site. It accomplishes this with a systematic approach that stresses what the visitor wants to see. (This is the kind of information I was searching for because I am weak in this area.) 2. The remaining chapters cover material with which I have experience, which makes it easy to absorb. But I can compare my previous understanding and decide if I need adjust my thinking. You don't need to spend much time with this book before gaining a deep respect for this author's practical knowledge and common sense approach. 3. I like her enumerated steps throughout her book. It's not wishy-washy. I thinks this comes from teaching the subject to classes. 4. I like the abundant number of references to useful web sites. Even though the book is about 500 pages, it cannot go deeply into every topic, but the author points you in right direction with references and advice. This is book packed with a lot of good information and advice without getting into too much detail. I have plenty of other books that get into the nitty gritty.