Web Menus with Beauty and Brains (With CD-ROM) [Paperback]

Wendy Peck (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764536435 | ISBN-13: 978-0764536434 | Publication Date: December 15, 2001

This book is designed to be the start to finish reference for creating powerful and attractive menus and menu-based interfaces for the Internet and other interactive software applications. It begins with determining the structure for a site, and how to organize menu categories, and then moves on to the practical information required to complete the graphics for the menu, and finally onto the actual page. The sections are clearly divided for use as a reference for experienced designers. The book covers the use of major apps such as Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, GoLive, and Photoshop.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...an informative guide...offers a detailed examination of web menus and provides you with all the advice you need..." (What PC, October 2002)

From the Back Cover

"Wendy demystifies menus with her trademark humor and approachable writing styles." --Andy King, founder WebReference.com

"What a terrific idea! A book like this is sorely needed." --Linda Rathgeber, Team Macromedia member and coauthor of Playing With Fire

Well-designed Web menus are the key to successful sites. This unique guide shows you how to create attractive, well-thought-out menu systems that draw visitors in -- and keep them coming back.

Using Web-tested creative advice, handy checklists, and lots of hands-on examples featuring Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash, Paint Shop Pro, Dreamweaver, CSS, and DHTML, Web designer Wendy Peck explains step by step how to put together a wide range of intuitive, easy-to-use menus and menu systems. Whether you want to keep your site simple by using only text and typography or take your site to the edge with complex rollovers, drop-downs, and animations, this guide makes building great menus easy -- and keeps site visitors happy.

CD-ROM includes:
* Ready-to-use menu templates and examples
* Macromedia Flash 5, Fireworks 4, and Dreamweaver 4 trial versions
* Adobe Photoshop 6 and GoLive 5 tryout versions
* JASC Paint Shop Pro 7 evaluation version

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (December 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764536435
• ISBN-13: 978-0764536434
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,820,504 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Every possible angle on web menus and more..., April 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Web Menus with Beauty and Brains (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

Wendy Peck is a knowledgeable web designer and a wonderful teacher. She knows how to translate technical information into an enjoyable and understandable format. I felt that my skills in web design had been expanded each time I finished a chapter.

Although she covers the design and execution of web menus in depth, the book is also full of valuable advice on a wide range of topics such as understanding browsers, intranets, and wireless devices. As for designing menus, every possible angle is covered from browser compatibility to graphics production. There are sections on creating attractive text menus for wireless, liquid design for any browser resolution, automation and template tricks, and testing methods. There is even a chapter on how to create really tiny text that you can actually read. If she missed anything, I can't think of what it is.

I don't usually buy web development books. They are expensive and the information is often found on the web for free. I browsed this one in a bookshop and got pulled in. It turned out to be the best of both worlds, a satisfying read and a well organized reference book.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good concept, bad execution, June 4, 2002

By 

Carly Lawrence (Southfield, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Menus with Beauty and Brains (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

This is a book for beginners with good concepts for organizing a website, BUT the book has many, many errors on the CD and in the information given, especially with regards to CSS. You will be very frustrated if you rely on the book to create great menus. The example menus on the CD are pretty basic and boring. Flash is discussed for navigation, but never mentioned in the book is that Flash links will not be noticed by search engines!! .css files on the CD are mistakenly .html files and visa versa. Also, example images often do not appear on the same page as the text explaining the examples. Discussion of example images in the book focus on color, but all images are greyscale and this makes it very difficult to utilize the image examples in the book.

There are a few good tips for more experienced designers, but hardly worth the price of the book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally! an intermediate-level design book, December 17, 2002

By 

Teri Murphy (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Menus with Beauty and Brains (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

The problem with web design books is that they all seem to be written either for the beginner or for the person with ten years of art training or programming background. This book at first appeared to be for beginners; and in fact, I probably knew 80% of what's in it. (I teach beginning Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Fireworks, and know a lot of the rules of design, but I was born without an art gene. Plus as a freelancer, sometimes I go long enough between jobs to forget what I learned from my last site.)

As I read this book from cover to cover, (skipping the Flash and Wireless chapters)I realized that its excellent summation of many design points was serving as a solid, mid-journey, take-stock refresher that let me put my knowledge into a new context. For example, Wendy takes issue with exporting an entire sliced page from a graphics program into an editing program. It took me two years to decide that YES, that way is easier, and now Wendy Peck has forced me to rethink about a faster way.

But most of all, I was very happy with the unexpected chapter on liquid design. I've spent uncountable hours trying to figure ways to acheive this: Wendy gives me an excellent starting point, mostly because she did the math to figure which fixed widths were the best compromise for stretching from 640 to 1200 pixels. Now what I really, really want is a book that starts from that chapter and goes on to demonstrate liquid design in a dozen different circumstances with step-by-steps that are as clear as Wendy's. WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE WRITE THAT BOOK!!! And if it offers really useful coverage of the aspects of CSS that can be trusted to help achieve it without going to browser sniffing, I'll not only recommend it for all my classes I'll send the authors a cake and light candles for their successful life.

PS: Something I expected from this book and didn't get was an authortative summation of the chaos surrounding points versus pixels and the implications of making menus one and body text the other. As a consolation prize, I got excellent tips about using anti-aliasing fonts for small type menus and a sample of those fonts on the CD. (Haven't opened the cd yet, but if it has the problems other reviewers complain of, web references are also given for these fonts.)