Customer Reviews

InterACT with Web Standards: A holistic approach to web design (Voices That Matter)

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Interact With Web Standards - A Holistic Approach to Web Design

This recent discovery is authored by a group of web designers and usability architects in the industry from the US and Western Europe. The book is divided into three sections and starts off with a solid background into web design and its fundamentals. Part Two dives into planning and strategy, while Part Three gets down to the nitty gritty: implementation.

Readers will benefit from the overall perspective of the entire web process and what it takes to get content sourced and brought online. The book's sections on CSS and and coding will get a beginner programmer/web designer up to speed with laying out a site. This book will also aid companies in hiring a web team. Anyone with an interest in learning what goes on behind the scenes will benefit from this read. In addition, many useful web links are provided in the right spots to augment the reading experience while not getting too technical in any given area.

This is one guide that can also serve as a handy reference when talking through a project with clients. They too will benefit by reading the content strategy area, in order to learn how to best approach building a site for the first time - a daunting process for the uninitiated.

I teach a course on Web Application Development at the graduate school level. As a result I end up buying a dozen or more books in this topic area per semester. This book has moved to the top of my recommended list for experienced and new learners. The book does a great job of breaking down the real aspects of developing websites into meaningful topics, arranged them in a great manner and had real experts on those topics cover them. Let me emphasize the "REAL" aspects, there are a ton of other books that cover, say, PHP object oriented abstractions and other technical aspects of developing websites. This book does the best job of recognizing the reality, the human aspects, of the process and ongoing nature of developing a website. This is done with a high level of professionalism while keeping it real and engaging.

Students starting in on the topic will benefit from a great roadmap of best practices. "Seasoned" developers will benefit from the thoughtful review of best practices to add [back] to your business.

I didn't have any issues with the product I received. Everything turned out great and I am pleased with my purchase.

I got this Book for a class and like usual i sell my Books at the end of every semester. I'll be keeping this on. This is one Book every web enthusist should have and keep.

The state of web design education is improving but there always seems to be a gap in our industry between curriculum and employment. The topics covered in this book help bridge that gap, providing a solid, essential foundation for any aspiring web professional. Whether you teach web designers, want to be a web designer, or just want to make sure you're up to speed, I highly recommend this book.

I'm an individual who has a fairly decent sized personal library of web design and development books and I consider myself to have intermediate level skills in the area of web design. With these two things said, I give the highest level of praise to this book.

I don't have a personal connection to any of the authors of this publication but I feel fortunate to have met the book's Project Manager, Aarron Walter, at a 2010 web design conference. After our brief meeting, hearing his presentation at the conference, and now reading this work, I can tell you that this is a person who deeply cares about the education of future web professionals. And that caring shines through in the book. The multiple individuals who contributed chapters to this publication also show concern for web education as they guide readers through web design's best practices and standards with an easy and light-hearted style. I did not have any trouble adjusting to each individual author's approach to the various chapter topics. And I think it's also important to mention that this group of authors is donating 25% of their proceeds to the W3C's Open Web Education Alliance, a group formed to promote standards and best practice based education for web professionals.

More specifically, one of the really great things about this publication is that it includes "Try it yourself" sections, that offer exercises to practice the techniques you learn about in the book. There is also a companion website that provides code downloads for the HTML and CSS chapters. I found the Accessibility chapters particularly helpful. The final chapter provides a very good overview of all the topics presented in the book by guiding readers through the process of planning and building an entire website.

Other aspects of the book I found useful include the introduction to Internet fundamentals provided, coverage of the preparation and planning that goes into the development of websites (e.g., information architecture, content strategy), the various help areas highlighting tips and resources for more information, and the inclusion of HTML5 and CSS3 concepts in the appropriate chapters.

Overall, this is an easy-to-follow and well organized book. If you are looking for comprehensive coverage of standards-based design and development, this is the publication for you.

Full disclosure: I'm acquainted with one of the collaborators of the book but I've done my best to remove my bias from the review.

Right from the beginning, this book stands out just based on it's physical design. The book is just very well laid out. It's full color (which makes a lot of code snippets a lot easier to read) and each chapter contains plenty of graphics to help illustrate many of the concepts.

It's divided into three main sections, covering relevant background material, information architecture basics, and the nuts and bolts of html and css concepts. The book also has the "interact" aspect with plenty of exercises that you can work with to follow along as you learn as well as a final project that ties everything together.

Two places which really stood out to me were the inclusion of a full section on information architecture and the chapters devoted completely to accessibility. The IA section of the book really gives you a great high level view of planning a website and how various people (content creators, designers, developers, etc) come together to plan out a web development project. For the accessibility chapters, they really clarify what accessibility is (and why it matters) and points out resources that you can use to implement accessibility testing and how you can adhere to accessibility standards.

I have to admit, I went into the book at sort of the intermediate-level (not a beginner) but the parts devoted to teaching code (html and css) were very clear and definitely augmented by the code samples from the companion website. Additionally, the final project really helped me bring all of the concepts that I'd learned (both from this book and from previous studies) together in a holistic way.

Finally, if you're visual oriented, you may find that the color and the design of the book really help turn it into a good reference. The edge of the book is colored (sort of like a dictionary) so you can spot where the chapters are. Then, the headings are clear and semantic enough that you can often find the topic you're looking for.

I was going to gripe about having to type out all of the URLs in the book...but I suppose I didn't read the intro well enough. Eventually I found them on the companion website (But only *after* doing all the work, sheesh).