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Web Design: A Beginner's Guide
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Author: Wendy Willard
List Price: $29.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0072133902
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (May, 2001)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 279,933
Average Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 4 out of 5
A very good book for a first course in Web design
I taught a Web design course in which I used both of Wendy Willard's books (Web Design: A Beginner's Guide and HTML: A Beginner's Guide). There is overlap, of course, but the pair worked quite well as a tandem. In fact, the students gave me a lot of positive feedback on the books. We focused on the Web Design book and used the HTML book primarily as a reference.Web Design is a very straightforward presentation of design fundamentals. It was refreshing to find in the book so many bits of design advice that I have pedaled. Moreover, the writing is lively and concise. The publisher makes available a CD-ROM that contains PowerPoint lectures, a test bank, and an instructor's manual. I can't comment on the test bank -- I seldom use them -- but I found the lectures to be useful as starting points for my own in-class presentations. The book would be improved by more depth in topics such as navigation, information architecture, and usability. Navigation is mentioned but probably warrants its own chapter in a Web design book. In sum, this is a very good book for a first course in Web design.
Rating: 1 out of 5
20% Design, 80% HTML Rehash
Wendy Willard is the author of another Osborne book entitled HTML: A Beginner's Guide. It's a great book. Unfortunately, a lot of the material in that book has been grafted into Willard's second book, Web Design: A Beginner's Guide.I bought Web Design because I enjoyed Willard's HTML book. I thought she would concentrate on what the title promises: Web design. Instead, I found a few chapters on very basic Web design, and many more chapters on writing HTML (which has no place in a *design* book!), along with the obligatory padding about 'what is the Web' and other page stretchers. If Willard had actually written a book about Web Design, she might have created a top-notch *set* of books. Instead, she relied on a rehash of her HTML book to flesh out a minimal, mediocre coverage of Web design. I'm disappointed.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Great for the Ground-level Beginner
I am a graphic designer with firm roots in print design--getting into design for the Web has been a daunting prospect. This book is incredibly easy to understand and perfect for an absolute beginner like myself. It provides an excellent jumping-off point into more advanced design and production strategies, even if you are using a WYSIWYG Web page editor. I have been told time and again that even while using a graphical editor like Adobe's GoLive, it is still important to know basic HTML coding--this book even makes HTML approachable! I would recommend it to anyone who is brand new to Web design.
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