Web Design Complete Course

Author: Joyce J. Evans List Price: $44.99 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0764537520 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (01 April, 2003) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 509,872 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

I have a fair amount of web design knowledge, from WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver MX to the HTML bones behind it all, as well as CSS layout and text styling. This bookd seemed to be a great start with "the rest of the picture." It uses the concept of a complete web site, fully realized, to plan the tutorials. We're building the web site for stockimagination.com, a fictitious stock photo company.

I spent some time with the Fireworks graphic tutorials, to layout the basic look of the site, and to make the icons for navigation. The first thing I noticed was a startling lack of Mac screen shots. Allt he pictures in the book show a Windows XP interface. Now, all the MX programs have the same content in either platform, but where's the nod to the Mac? Even the book nods to the fact that Mac users would frequent this web site, if it were a real site, as they are the majority working in the design industry. It made me sad.

In a tutorial about creating a web palette so multiple designers don't pick other colors (a feature I thought fantastic-big nod to the MX designers at Macromedia), there was one step I needed to complete before it worked as advertised. This step is missing from the book. I needed to click the "rebuild" button in the Save Palette routine.

Another example of missing info, I spent a goodly time trying to figure out why one specific rectangle did not look likew the one in the book. I read through it three times, trying it each time. The tutorial said to create one rectangle, add an inner shadow, then clone it, which places a duplicate on top of the original object. I did so. The tutorial then told me to change the shadow in the cloned rectangle. I did so, to specifications. But I couldn't see the inner shadow around the entire new double object, like in the book. I tried opacity settings, I tried fill options. No go. Finally, I realized that I needed to choose the "Knock Out" option in the inner shadow options. "That's not in the book," I yelled. Ok, I only yelled in my head, but still!

I'll spend more time with this book, definitely. It's a great way for me to sharpen my skills in a practical, contextual setting. I really like the way this website is shaping up too. It's modern looking, pleasant to look at and thoroughly effective. Well designed. If you're a web designer, and you want another skill set, this book might be for you. Just watch for the trickiness in some of the tutorials, and be prepared to feel like you're not part of the Windows only screen shots. For $45.00, I'd grab this one off the shelf any day.

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