Great Web Typography (Paperback)

~ (Author) "You most likely bought this book because you're confused about Web type..." (more)
Key Phrases: nihil nteferat, peraque dure dicere credit eos, volgus videt, Cascading Style Sheets, Controlling Web Type, Internet Explorer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

• Demystifies Web typography by revealing the secrets of professional developers!
• Shows how to find, select and implement Web typography that will give any site a slick, professional look!
• Demonstrates how to use Cascading Style Sheets and other technologies to control the way type appears on any browser!
• Describes how to make beautifully design sites download super-fast.
• Shows how to set type that wraps around images and other objects on the page.
• Provides professional secrets for increasing type legibility.
• Provides recipes for type special effects that will "wow" site visitors and ensure that they come back for more!
• Includes real-world case studies and examples from top companies.
• Includes interviews with top Web design experts and Web type gurus.

From the Back Cover

"I’m betting you’ll be as glad as I am to have this on your shelf!"
–Nick Bradbury, creator of HomeSite and TopStyle

When it comes to great Web sites, looks really ARE everything…

When you design a page for print, you control the size of the paper and the placement of the elements. But on the Web, the size, resolution, fonts, and even the layout of your page can vary with the browser and the system used to view your site. In this lavishly illustrated guide, Web designer Wendy Peck shares the secrets the professionals use to resolve those problems and create eye-catching Web typography that looks as good when viewed with Explorer 4 on a vintage PC as with Netscape 7 on a flat-screen iMac.

Includes a companion Web site featuring examples from the book and more.

• Understand how Web type works and learn why you should avoid certain variations
• Create and use cascading style sheets (CSS) to control type, and learn why they work better than HTML type control
• Work with text in any HTML editor or graphics program, including Fireworks, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash
• Avoid the top ten typography errors
• Learn the secrets of top Web designers, including typographical special effects, CSS, function versus form, and more
• Explore ways to create that "wow!" factor using graphic type

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Product Details

• Paperback: 338 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (February 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764537008
• ISBN-13: 978-0764537004
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #741,862 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than I could have ever imagined, March 17, 2003

By	Jacob Hantla "hantla.com" (Chandler, AZ United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

When I bought this book, I was hoping for a great reference book to teach me a bit about picking good web fonts. I thought maybe it could give me some ideas for the sites that I'm working on. This book has done much more than that. Many times when I'm working on a site, something just doesn't "feel" right. The only way that I've been able to fix that has been by redoing the entire site until it does "feel" right. I didn't understand what was going on. Peck has taught me, by using countless real-life examples and full-color screenshots from other professional sites, what was wrong. My wife tells me every day how much better my pages have started to look. Her words: "Your stuff looked good before, but now it looks professional." Buy this book; read this book; do what this book says.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than I expected, June 20, 2003

By	E. Jaeger (Tucson, AZ United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Defintely one of the best web design books I've read in a while. My strengths lie in the coding side of web design, so I purchased this book to learn more about typography- as you would expect from the title. I am happy to say that I learned much, much more. You'll find lots of great typography, graphics, and page layout tips. Also, the author conducts some excellent interviews with other professional designers which lead to even more useful tips. Bottom line- a great value, and a must-buy for the beginning to intermidiate web developer.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice web-specific font information; great case studies; technically dated, January 18, 2006

By	Bob Carpenter (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I'd been looking for a nice book of web design case studies, and about 1/4 of this book is case studies and interviews. And much of the rest is live mockups to clearly illustrate an important point such as how browsers interpret weight. I enjoyed the interviews and the more design-oriented discussions. And I really enjoyed the author taking us through the design of her own site right down to the grid on paper and basic layout as a case study (though I greatly preferred her work for others displayed in the book). Ironically, the book itself is pretty poorly designed, especially the cover, which violates almost all of the author's advice!

The author's basic advice on fonts is sound. I found it useful to read other books on typography first -- this one won't give you the "classical" education about print fonts. On the other hand, almost everything you know about print fonts can be tossed out the window. The exceptions are letter and line spacing, color and contrast and size. I thought the author did an excellent job of presenting those. There's also a great deal of emphasis on web-specific typography that I just haven't seen elsewhere.

There was a nice discussion of graphic versus HTML fonts, with the author urging the reader to use graphic text for headlines (because of kerning, anti-aliasing and font choice) and for small buttons (because of font choice). In particular, I was fascinated by the in-depth study of Joe Gillespie's crisp, readable pixel-specific fonts such as MINI7 (7 pixels high, all caps, and a perennial favorite on the web for tiny text). Many sites follow these guidelines, but I prefer to use straight HTML. It resizes better.

Another polarizing issue is pure CSS versus table-based layouts. The author uses a mix, as do most design-centric designers. Given portability issues, etc., I remain agnostic on this issue.

There was a lot of discussion of software of the how-to-navigate-Photoshop-version-N's-menus variety. That's already out of date. Most of the case studies are no longer live, or have changed their format considerably. Ditto for a lot of the recommendations on browsers, CSS versions, HTML, etc.

There's also a section on fonts for Flash at the end. Because I don't intend to use Flash, I didn't read it.

I liked this book, but would have liked many more case studies, and much less walking me through menus and CSS.