Web Development: A Visual Spatial Approach

This is not primarily a book on writing HTML webpages. Though that is indeed discussed at various places within the text. Instead, Baehr moves the discussion to a higher level of organisation - of an entire website. The "visual-spatial" method offers a way to make a thematically unified website. Where the main advantage is that it is easier for a visitor to navigate through the website. No small matter. Your website will compete with many others, for the attention of visitors. The simpler it is for them to grasp the structure of your pages, the more likely they will linger and return. The book's approach applies various visual design principles that predate the Web; notably those explained by Arnheim in 1969. Way back when few envisaged how widespread and useful something like the Web would be. Arnheim's work pertained to more traditional media like the printed page. In fact, Baehr's book might reasonably be considered to showing how Arnheim's work can be mapped onto the Web. Various technical means that aid in the website design are gone into. Notably the use of a consistent style between various pages. This can be implemented (or enforced) via Cascading Style Sheets. Though, as with my remarks above about HTML, the book gives high level guidelines. Details about CSS or HTML are best found in more technical texts.