By Jerry Glenwright & Alastair Campbell
Review by: Alex
Most books on website design fall under two categories... reference manuals or tutorials; the funny thing about this book is that it is a lot like both of the categories except you could take it as more of an overview then an actual guide to website design. WWW.Layout is a book which specifies the Do's and Don’ts of website design layouts, which is something more books (and especially manuals on the subject) should cover in a lot more depth. The book goes into details about the kinds of ways you can design your website, the history of website design, why and how certain websites look cleaner or more friendly then others, and the best practices you can follow when implementing text and graphics in your designs (as well as how best to use layout techniques). What makes books in the W3 (WWW.) series different to other books on design however is that rather then being a step by step guide to the "theory" on different styles of design and what is most effective, these books focus primarily on existing websites on the internet and show you why these websites work so well and what makes them so popular. These books are therefore focused on the website designer who wishes to have a showcase of existing designs from which they can draw ideas on how to make their own website designs more effective and user friendly. Though a downfall of this book could be seen that it does not explain how this impacts on accessibility and does not go into any major detail about usability (and how to relate usability to your audience) the book itself is worth its weight primarily on the way it showcases its designs and explaining in a simplistic language the Do's and Don’ts of effective design.
The chapters in this book are discussed as follows... Chapter 1 discusses what a layout is, a history of design, how sites are organised, HTML and CSS usage, web design software and net objects. Chapter 2 explains on designing sites, the building blocks of design and using backgrounds. Chapter 3 focuses on text usage both in site content and image usage. Chapter 4 focuses on images through placing, navigating and mapping. Chapter 5 studies the designing of multimedia elements, interactivity and adding final touches to make sure your site flows efficiently. In true W3 fashion Chapter 6 is a showcase showing off existing websites for you to examine and see how effective layout can be put to good use which is what truly makes this book worth getting. The final chapter gives details of useful Url's for layout designers, a glossary of terms and an appendix of articles.
This book is suitable for the following types of people interested in website development:
- Graphic artists who wish to branch out into website design.
- Website developers looking for a less theoretical approach to website design.
- Website designers who want a visual showcase of well designed websites to gain ideas from.