Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference [Paperback]

Jennifer Niederst (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1565925157 | ISBN-13: 978-1565925151 | Publication Date: November 8, 1998 | Edition: 1st

Web Design in a Nutshell contains the nitty-gritty on everything you need to know to design Web pages. It's the good stuff, without the fluff, written and organized so that answers can be found quickly. Written by veteran Web designer Jennifer Niederst, this book provides quick access to the wide range of front-end technologies and techniques from which Web designers and authors must draw.

It is an excellent reference for HTML 4.0 tags (including tables, frames, and Cascading Style Sheets) with special attention given to browser support and platform idiosyncrasies. The HTML section is more than a reference work, though. It details strange behavior in tables, for instance, and gives ideas and workarounds for using tables and frames on your site. Web Design in a Nutshell also covers multimedia and interactivity, audio and video, and emerging technologies like Dynamic HTML, XML, embedded fonts, and internationalization.

The book includes:

• Discussions of the Web environment, monitors, and browsers
• A complete reference to HTML and Server Side Includes, including browser support for every tag and attribute
• Chapters on creating GIF, JPEG and PNG graphics, including designing with the Web Palette
• Information on multimedia and interactivity, including audio, video, Flash, Shockwave, and JavaScript
• Detailed tutorial and reference on Cascading Style Sheets, including an appendix of browser compatibility information
• Appendices detailing HTML tags, attributes, deprecated tags, proprietary tags, and CSS compatibility

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Are you a print designer working on the Web? An HTML coder learning about server-side hosting for the first time? Web Design in a Nutshell has slim but whole chapters for those topics-- and everything else you can imagine.

Written in the popular "Nutshell" format, this guide is full of helpful tables and lists, making it a perfect desktop reference. The book breaks down the huge topic of Web site development into understandable, readable segments: the Web environment (browsers, displays, design principles), an in-depth guide to HTML tags, graphics manipulation and display, multimedia possibilities, and technologies for larger site management (such as Cascading Style Sheets [CSS] and XML).

While this book is certainly comprehensive, the abundance of information could be overwhelming to someone just starting out with HTML. In addition, the heart of this book is filled with technical specificity on Web page creation (for example, a section under "Graphics" is titled "GIF87a versus GIF89a"). Readers looking for more conceptual explanations of Web design and layout would be better served with other titles. But for day-to-day development and maintenance, Web Design in a Nutshell is a truly well-constructed toolkit.

From Library Journal

Niederst discusses everything a web designer needs, from basic principles and HTML to designing for multiple browsers, cascading style sheets, and XML. For a working web designer this book will be an invaluable quick reference, and it is written well enough that someone just starting out on the web could also use it. Highly recommended for all libraries.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 580 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (November 8, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565925157
• ISBN-13: 978-1565925151
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,440,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and complete Coverage, January 12, 2000

By 

David Salter (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (Paperback)

This was my first purchase from the Nutshell series and I was particularly pleased with the content. The layout is very tidy and easy to navigate.

I would consider my knowledge of the internet and web design at an intermediate level, and I would recommend this book to anyone other than a complete novice. Each section is concise and to the point and does not assume too much.

The section on CGI scripting and Server Side Includes, I found invaluable. It was easily explained in basic terms and provided plenty of examples to get these working. In addition there are lots of references in the book to resources available on the web.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable read, if you want only one web reference book on your desk this year, this should be it.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not a starter book but superb as a reference, August 24, 2001

By 

sonytoao (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (Paperback)

This is a nutshell book, plain and simple. It's not intended to teach you HTML but it will help you hone your coding and web design skills. I read this book after learning HTML from Sams' "Teach Yourself HTML in 4 Hours." The former provided the appetizer, this book provides the meat and potatoes. It's best feature is the tips and tricks sprinkled throughout each section, particularly as they apply to getting the same effect in different browsers. The book also highlights IE quirks and Netscape bugs for various HTML tags and provides examples for workarounds. Most invaluable are the various tables included in the text: "MIME Types and Subtypes by Extension," "Decimal to Hexadecimal Equivalents," "Colors w/ their RGB and Web-safe hex values," and a full listing of character entities (@=@). You may be able to find this info. elsewhere, but rarely in one location as it is here. I would highly recommend this reference for any webmaster's desktop library.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive but Outdated, January 30, 2001

By 

"schapel" (Hillsborough, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (Paperback)

I'm amazed at the range of topics covered by this book, especially because it was published in early 1999. It contains information on HTML 4, PNG, animated GIFs, multimedia, JavaScript, dynamic HTML, and XML. There are several noticable gaps, however. For example, the <!DOCTYPE> tag is not described, and information on character sets is very limited. But almost everything that most web developers need to know is covered.

The book's biggest weakness is that much has changed in the past two years. HTML 4.01, XHTML, Java servlets, MNG (animated PNGs), Internet Explorer 5.5, and Netscape 6 have appeared. Of course, this book doesn't mention any of these. If you want to stay informed of the latest technologies, you'll have to buy a more up-to-date book in addition to this one.