Web Design Garage (Garage Series) (Paperback)

by Marc Campbell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Tinker with the tools of Web design--in the Garage! Learn how to construct cool and interactive Web sites with this hands-on guide to the world of Web design and usability. In this title from Prentice Hall PTR's Garage Series, author Marc Campbell shows you the "ins and outs" of designing sites with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS as core technologies. Using layout diagrams and graphics to illustrate your journey, Campbell takes you through every step of designing Web sites, from basic layout and usability to uploading your site onto the Web. Want to learn more on a specific topic? Flip to one of the book's "links" that help you delve deeper into certain areas, allowing you to browse the text quickly and easily!Specific topics covered include *Managing pop-up windows *Working with scripts and style sheets *Controlling design space with HTML and CSS *Making rollover graphics *Using text elements properly *Creating e-mail links and hyperlinks *Embedding media in Web pages *Choosing a Web host *Testing and uploading Web sites Whether you're new to Web design or you "speak" HTML as a second language, Web Design Garage will help you discover the solutions you need to create fun and effective Web sites.

From the Back Cover

Tinker with the tools of Web design—in the Garage!

Learn how to construct cool and interactive Web sites with this hands-on guide to the world of Web design and usability. In this title from Prentice Hall PTR’s Garage Series, author Marc Campbell shows you the “ins and outs” of designing sites with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS as core technologies. Using layout diagrams and graphics to illustrate your journey, Campbell takes you through every step of designing Web sites, from basic layout and usability to uploading your site onto the Web. Want to learn more on a specific topic? Flip to one of the book’s “links” that help you delve deeper into certain areas, allowing you to browse the text quickly and easily!

Specific topics covered include

• Managing pop-up windows
• Working with scripts and style sheets
• Controlling design space with HTML and CSS
• Making rollover graphics
• Using text elements properly
• Creating e-mail links and hyperlinks
• Embedding media in Web pages
• Choosing a Web host
• Testing and uploading Web sites

Whether you’re new to Web design or you “speak” HTML as a second language, Web Design Garage will help you discover the solutions you need to create fun and effective Web sites.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (January 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131481991
• ISBN-13: 978-0131481992
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #618,597 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for beginners or those looking to "clean up" their HTML code, December 4, 2005

By	John L. Berger - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been doing HTML work for almost 10 years now. I currently own or manage four different web sites. Because of always changing standards regarding HTML and more recently CSS, trying to keep a web site compliant with these standards is not an easy thing. One of the more problematic issues is how certain functions are employed that seem to work on every browser out there, but suddenly a standards verification says that what is being used doesn't comply with official standards. Grrr...

Another problem is trying to get information that the average Joe can understand. More often than not, web sites that are dedicated to providing HTML and CSS information are very poorly done because they look like someone with no taste or style just threw the page together. (I'm sure that we've all seen the pathetic web sites with huge, dark letters on a black background, centered throughout the page, with needless graphics scattered about.) Other sites regarding HTML and CSS are far too technical and give a lot of details but no practical instructions, examples, or usage. The only thing to do at that point is to find a web site that does what you want to do and try to figure out what was done through that page's source code. Sometimes that alone is enough to make you want to give up.

Web Design Garage is one of the few books about HTML and CSS that actually is written for the starting web author who doesn't know where to start as well as the intermediate author who is looking to fine tune his (or, of course, her) web design skill and perhaps clean up the site a bit.

This book is divided into eighty-six separate chapters with each chapter covering a very specific topic, such as image maps, text elements, paths, forms, and so forth. This is very beneficial because you know that the whole topic deals with one subject, rather than have one larger chapter that deals with a number of topics for which you have to go searching. What's also very nice about the chapter design is that for appropriate topics the HTML chapter is followed by the equivalent chapter to do the same thing through CSS. This is a great way of letting the reader compare the two formats back-to-back for the specific goal that the reader wants to reach. This certainly beats the more commonly used method of having a larger topic dealing with a lot of HTML topics followed by another large chapter of the same number of topics in CSS, forcing to you to hunting through the chapters for comparisons or differences.

This book also contains hundreds of images, screen shots, and code examples. In a visually oriented world like the Web, being able to see how each bit of code works as well as a graphical example of the theories behind that bit of code make it easier to understand exactly what that chapter is attempting to accomplish.

The book also covers some functions that might not appeal to the beginner but would likely be considered to be of value for intermediate HTML/CSS designers. Such topics include blogs, forms, form validation, some Javascript, and even how to validate so that the code is up to W3C standards.

What's really great about this book is not that it's written in layman's terms. It's not that this book keeps the specific topics relegated to their own, individual chapters. It's not that this book contains lots of information that even experienced HTML coders might find of value. What's great about this book is that is does all of this for a list price of US$29.99, so you know that it will be available for less than that in most bookstores. This is not a large book (roughly 530 pages) but the information that it gives for the price make is a great value.

I've been doing web pages for many years and have gotten many rave reviews on their designs, non-bloated implementations, and compatibility across almost all browsers. And even I found things in this book that I've been thinking of implementing but thought that they'd be too difficult to implement. Web Design Garage has proved me to be wrong. And if I can get value out of this book, I know that just about all beginner and intermediate HTML/CSS coders will be able to get value out of it as well.

If you're looking to impress people with fancy Flash animations or other such multimedia overload, this isn't the book for you. But if you're thinking of starting your own web page or you already have a basic web page and would like to spice it up, buy this book.

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice bookshelf reference, February 23, 2005

By	John A. Suda (Rochester NY) - See all my reviews

"Web Design Garage" is a remarkably clear-headed, concisely-written and feature-rich book about contemporary web design topics. It is part of a "Garage" series of hip-looking, style-laden books published by Prentice Hall (Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference -PH PTR) and is targeted at the "garage" level designer - small business professionals, hobbyists, and technophiles. It assumes some modest familiarity of HTML and working with Javascripts.

This is not a primer, tutorial, or concept-bound book. It is meant to provide practical guidance and solutions to the most common web design issues dealt with by web designers. Author, Marc Campbell, offers a set of 86 topics about web design problems and solutions. The format for nearly all of the 86 topics is to highlight a design issue and offer solutions using pictures, examples, and code snippets. Although a good and quick read from beginning to end, the book can be read piecemeal for information and guidance on a specific issue. One can pick and chose topics depending on interest or need.

There are no traditional chapters, but only a set of design topics of relatively short length organized into 8 general categories. Those categories include design and usability topics, layout, images, text, links, forms, and two others, - one of miscellaneous items and the last being an explanation of basic web design material. There is also an index and a short glossary of HTML, CSS, web, and graphics-related terms.

The fundamental theme of the book is that design and usability are, or should be, the same thing. Usability is paramount, of course, but the author's approach to web design emphasizes creating a "sense of place" so that good design unites pages so that they look like they belong together.

This is not an earth-shattering idea, but like most of all of the design treatments, the goal is to design pages which make it easy for visitors to use the site. Many good design virtues are virtually invisible to the casual user. There is a blend of design and usability. It's only when a design element doesn't work well that it comes to the attention of the user, and that occurrence is meant to be avoided. The author shows by example how design and usability are intertwined.

There are a handful of themes which guide the book. Admirably, the author emphasizes for every design element, a concern for accessibility. Many of the design guides refer to accessibility by screen-readers and non-graphic browsers. A second major concern is for compliance with contemporary web design standards as promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium. Consequently, there is much emphasis on the separation of page structure from content where HTML is used for structure and CSS is used for content. A contrast of HTML and CSS formatting is highlighted in many of the chapters.

There is a large handful of sections which express HTML and CSS formatting differences on page layout, text and image positioning, and other web design elements. There is clear discussion on how to work with Javascripts and stylesheets. The emphasis is on "forward-looking" coding, i.e., clean, standards compliant, and accessibility conscious. Campbell offers an experienced designer's insights on choices to be made in design components. There is much value for both inexperienced and seasoned designers.

Each topic is richly expressed with clear and straightforward text, illustrations, screenshots, and sidebars on a variety of related matters. Throughout there are sidebars titled "FAQS" and "Geekspeak" explaining concepts or terminology for the less-knowledgable reader. Then there are those called "Tips" which usually offer an insight to practical problems, especially dealing with browser compatibility issues. There are many useful tables and charts indexing specific tag attributes, with examples. In addition and most useful are the "Toolkits" which are sample code snippets. It would have been nice to have the code snippets available for downloading from the publisher's web site (www.phptr.com/garageseries).

This is a dense volume containing all sorts of information useful for the "garage" web designer. For some reason, the depth and weight of the content is reflected in the book itself, which is remarkably heavy, weighing in at a well-produced 29 ounces.

There are many books available on basic web design, but this one is unusually clear and well-expressed. This is the type of book one keeps handy in the bookshelf next to the computer to access for quick solutions to everyday web design problems.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A clear, concise, useful, easy read., May 9, 2005

By	M. Addesa (N Andover, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read this book in about three days. It is so clear and concise and packed with simple yet extensible examples to do just about anything a designer would want to do on a web page. It is also full of practical, pragmatic pointers that really get you to think about the goal of your site and how to acheive that goal. I was thoroughly impressed with this book - worth the money, a great reference, and a nice-paced read. You want to design web sites? No experience? Pick up this book. You been dabbling and want to improve? Pick up this book. Do you finally want to see what all the to do is with CSS? Want to stop using html the wrong way? You want to make your sites more accessible for the impaired and do it the right way? Pick up this book.