 |
|
 |
||||||||||||
| |
|
|
||||||||||||
         |
|
Buy a doorstop now ...The Koran and Plato's Republic can both be contained to 500 pages, the Bible to not much more than 1000. Scores of Web publishing books can boast size to top the great books of civilization. But unless you want very expensive wheel chocks, not all that many are worth purchasing. Here Lighthouse spies out the best buys. In 1997's Internet publishing field, where inch-thick titles crowd shoulder to shoulder like commuters on the 5.30 tram, just a few rare Web how-to books stand out. Here are four: David Siegel's Creating Killer Web Sites, Roger Black's Web Sites That Work, Kim and Brad Hampton's Creating Commercial Web Sites and Ray Davis's Web Design Resources Directory. Prentice Hall Australia distributes all four. The first three are unusually thin (the Hamptons' at 403 pages, including nine appendices; Black's at 250 pages; Siegel's at 270 pages). These three ignore the technical details of HTML, the Web's coding language, in favour of bigger issues. They also make their case in glossy, full-colour glory, their diagrams informative and their screen shots educational. Most important of all, all three books cater unusually well to their target audiences. The fourth book, Davis's Directory, presents Web how-tos with a twist: he sensibly leaves much of the heavy lifting to pre-existing Web sites. We've also reviewed various other books.
Siegel's book is among the best-known in the entire Web design community; on-line bookstore amazon.com's visitors ordered it more than any other in 1996. And the book richly deserves its popularity. Serious site builders shouldn't be without it.
By 1995 Siegel emerged as the Web's leading information heretic, insisting (against a still mainly technology-oriented group of Internet users) that good design must drive the Web just as it already drove other information systems, from print to television. And he gave his favored site-type idea an aura of historic inevitability by coining the phrase "third-generation Web site". The Killer Sites book discusses image-file reduction, type rendering and other chores of the graphic arts. It also devotes considerable space to what Siegel, revealing his print-design background, describes as the "compelling medium" of Adobe's portable document format (PDF). But the core of Siegel's philosophy is site structure and theme. Third-generation sites, in his words, "lure,seduce, coax". Siegel likes sites with entry tunnels - short, punchy, fast-loading pages which lead you towards the meat of the site. He admires whimsical sites like www.joeboxer.com which provide experience rather than mere information. And he describes them wonderfully well. Siegel runs three of the Web's best sites:
But his print product allows a degree of comfort and contemplation which the screen can't yet manage.
The small but growing group of top-level site designers have mostly become famous by stressing the Web's newness and difference. Lynda Weinman taught us how to fine-tune Web graphics; David Siegel popularised single-pixel GIF placement; Nathan Shedroff insisted that "the Web is not a publishing medium!". Now along comes Roger Black, one of the best-known magazine designers in the business. If you've picked up a copy of Newsweek, Esquire or Rolling Stone sometime in the past decade or three, you've seen his work. These days, he also designs Web sites. His team helped sketch the original gorgeous design for Discovery Channel Online (now replaced, to my great sadness) and crafted the classy interface for the high-bandwidth US cable Internet service, @Home. And in a new book called Web Sites That Work (Adobe Press/Prentice Hall Australia, $69.95), he sets out his design philosophy. Black gives the usual nods to Web characteristics such as interactivity. But his big idea is that in some ways Web design differs barely at all from the design of print and other "old" media. Where Wired and HotWired sling yellow type unreadably onto a light orange background, Black pays due regard to the "deep current of design that runs through the great civilisations of the last several thousand years ... All of this time it has been moving in one direction, carefully building on previous efforts." As the cover blurb explains, "It's a new media form with new design criteria and new rules of navigation, but you'd better not veer too far from the design traditions of what works". In 1997, Black's implementation of that approach makes him something of a Web throwback. He hasn't adapted to the Web much at all. That's clearest in his use of type. His sites look as little as possible like the self-consciously ground-breaking HotWired and Fray. Black's sites don't look like Web pages. Indeed, they have more in common with magazine design than just about anything else you'll see in a browser window. Of course, a Black site may not have many Rolling Stone-style pictures; they're hard to squeeze over 14.4k connections. But it will have big images - very often, images of text. Black and his team at the Interactive Bureau use GIF format images not just for headlines, but often for body text. They avoid plain HTML text wherever possible. The book itself quotes The Font Bureau's David Berlow: "There is still typography on the Web, and it's as important as ever". Black's work for @Home, which runs a dedicated high-speed access network, shows off this look; so does the book's own site. Web Sites That Work also reminds you of some simple rules. Use just a couple of typefaces; think about limiting your palette to one or two colors; give your site some "lumpiness" to keep visitors' interest; use text and pictures oversized where possible; but don't use images so big your visitors won't wait for them to load. Some of these rules descend from the simple to the simplistic or merely stupid. Rule One, "Put content on every page" is hardly radical. Rules Two, Three and Four "The first color is white. The second color is black. The third color is red" seek laughably to turn Roger Black's worthy trademark color scheme into some sort of universal design template. Rule Five ("Never letterspace lowercase") is spectacularly trivial. "Don't design pages that require scrolling," they insist, thus declaring a rule which would necessarily eliminate 99 per cent of the Web's current useful content. Black also urges "don't have a lot of text", insisting that "nobody reads anything anymore" - which rather makes you wonder why he and his authorial assistant put all those words in the book. The pseudo-insight also comes mixed with some canned rice-cream mushiness: "Coherence is key in a Web site that works. The design must complement the content and also facilitate for the user." You begin to understand why, when Black first ventured onto the Web in 1994, he took some heat from the natives, including a scathing attack from HotWired. But if you believe in the importance of type, Black's belief in classic design belongs to the Web's future as well as the design past. As cable modems and other technologies come along, bandwidth grows and 14.4k modems move towards museum status, more designers are likely to add GIF-based text to their pages. Typography will matter more, not less. And Web publishers will take their place in a long lineage of media designers obeying rules thought out over many, many years.
The Hamptons' volume, like Siegel's, delivers to its intended audience by stylishly explaining Web techniques. But the Hamptons' techniques are designed to deliver customers and cash. It carries the authority you'd expect from people who've created web pages for Intel. From the start, they assume basic computer knowledge; early on, they launch into an sophisticated (though accessible) description of server software. But they also assume you use your computer as a tool, not a toy: after brief descriptions of fancy technologies like ActiveX and VRML, they sensibly advise you not to bother yet. Databases, e-mail and on-line payments get lengthy treatment. So do non-technological but business-critical marketing subjects like reinforcing customers' purchasing decisions, and advertising your site in conventional media. A "Quick and Dirty Guide" at the end of each chapter serves up terrific I-need-it-fast advice. Few other Web investments offer such sure returns.
Ray Davis's "Web Design Resources Directory", a $59.95 book from Lycos Press and Prentice Hall Australia, looks at first a peculiar package. Surely its reviews of Web-publishing-related Web sites belong on the Web itself, where you can jump straight to them? Of course, as author Davis frankly admits, there'd be no money in that. But this book has a better justification: its approach actually works. After all, the Web holds far more good Web publishing advice than you can find in any one of those giant 1000-page volumes now weakening the shelving at any technical bookstore. The Web's advice is merely scattered across myriad sites, variable in quality, and hence badly in need of culling, cataloguing and critical assessment. Multimedia author and Web design lecturer Davis provides this much-needed guidance in 350 pages, covering core Web design issues, HTML, graphics, sound, animation, video, java, Javascript and server issues. And you can use the Web browser version of the book, found on the accompanying CD-ROM, to jump straight to any of the sites described. The book devotes over half its space to site reviews, from the famous (Netscape's various tutorials) to the obscure (I Am Curious Yellow, Johnny V's Music & Sound Extravaganza). But Davis puts flesh on these bones with his own excellent overviews of scores of topics and sub-topics, from table creation to virtual reality. His own HTML tag guide and his discussion of Web audio issues, to take just two examples, stand comparison with the best around. And his pithy, engaging, no-hype-allowed style (David Siegel's excellent www.killersites.com is "like reading a 24-point argument that explains how Batman really could beat up Superman") ties the package neatly together. You can happily read this book for amusement, but it's a highly practical tool. If you want to buy just one Web publishing book this year, this may be it.
Netscape's Navigator Gold 3.0 Web page editor may lag its competitors for sophisticated features. But its simple interface and neat integration into the standard Navigator package make it a convenient, easy-to-use place for Internet users to dip their toes in the waters of page creation. And Alan Simpson's 934-page tome gives Gold users not just the basics of Navigator Web browsing, e-mail, FTP and the like, but almost 600 pages of Web publishing advice. Veteran computer-book author Simpson sweetens the technical jargon with an effectively light writing style and plenty of diagrams and screen shots. He eases readers into hand-coded HTML (the language of the Web) to create frames and Javascript. And he offers detailed guides to useful effects with new tags like Netscape's <embed> which are neglected by most other guides. The accompanying CD provides excellent shareware programs for creating graphics (Paint Shop Pro 3.12), image maps (Map This!), and forms (Webforms), as well as the other standard shareware freebies. The only disappointment: you'll have to download Gold yourself on free "indefinite evaluation", since Netscape has become oddly reluctant to allow Gold onto shareware discs. A souped-up browser it may be, but teamed with this hefty volume, Navigator Gold makes an attractive introduction to Web publishing.
All the weaknesses of ZD Press's "How to Use ..." series are on display here: the too-clever presentation, the poor use of colour, the waste of space and money. FrontPage is Microsoft's increasingly popular no-code Web publishing package, and 97 is the latest, improved version. One of the biggest improvements is the FrontPage manual, whose clear and detailed instructions and tutorials leave this volume to be bought only by the gullible.
The people behind the landmark Project Cool site (described elsewhere in Lighthouse) have now written a book, "The Project Cool Guide to HTML", published in Australia by Jacaranda Wiley - and they've given beginners a handy place to start. At 246 pages The Guide fits easily in a bag, eschewing the normal 1000-page doorstop format of Internet technical books. Stump up $A39.95, and Martin and Davis will feed you the basics - site organization, text, links and images, tables and frames - in very digestible form. They assume no prior technical knowledge on your part, and provide example code and screen shots. The book's biggest surprise is that it doesn't teach you all of the sophisticated - "cool" - tricks which make the Project Cool site such a delight. Indeed, Martin and David have written one of the least technically sophisticated Web site tutorials on the market, with not even a list of links to tutorials on the more sophisticated topics such as Javascript. Martin and Davis's version of cool doesn't necessarily mean the latest fancy gadgets, bright colors or flashing lights: their Cool Rule No.5 goes "Be true to yourself".
With a series of authoritative books now stretching all the way from basic page creation to Java programming, technical writer Laura Lemay has just about reached Web guru status. With her latest guide to HTML 3.2 (the latest version of HyperText Mark-up Language, the language your Web browser speaks) you should become a technically able Web author within 500 pages. Lemay starts with the bare basics ("What is the World Wide Web?") and then uses text, example code, screen shots and tips to work through site organization, links, text formatting, images, tables, frames, audio and video, forms and the rest. And she does the job with her normal unintimidating, thorough, relentlessly straightforward style. No frills, but no thrills. Lemay somehow suppresses of Web authoring's buzz - the excitement of a cutting-edge technology, the intellectual challenge, the potential for creativity. So this thorough, straightforward book is not so much an educating read as a Web creator's Concise Oxford Dictionary - a fine if slightly pricey desk reference that you won't browse on the couch.
Awfully pricey for what is tag list, this nevertheless may find a home with Web publishers who make intensive use of Javascript. After all, a detailed description of Javascript instructions is the obvious way to turn a tag guide into a 348-page book. Unfortunately Mullen's book doesn't deliver the comprehensive coverage which would make it, as its cover blurb declares, the ultimate resource for webmasters It fails, for instance, to discuss all the features of Netscape's <embed> tag. And while it tells you which browsers support which tags, it doesn't tell you, for example, whether the tags are supported by Netscape 2.0 or just by version 3.0.
Like other recent models from the burgeoning Giant Internet Book Publishing Industry, Using Netscape 3 carries a cover price fit to send casual bookstore browsers scurrying out of the computer section. Yet teamed with an excellent CD, this $99.95 heavyweight from Que Books offers excellent value to Netscape Navigator enthusiasts - especially those who also design their own Web pages. Written by a 22-strong committee and heavily Windows-centred, the text reads like a slightly chatty version of a school textbook. But its encyclopedic 842-page coverage of all things Netscape will make relative beginners comfortable without patronizing Net veterans. Starting with a simple history of the Net, it moves through search engines, bookmarks, e-mail and other basics to Web page creation using HTML code or Netscape's Navigator Gold page-creation program. Six hundred pages in, you'll hit "Java for C++ programmers". Then the disc moves the book from a solid two-seagulls rating to a three-gull. It teams the usual Giant Internet Book collection of shareware and demo utilities (such as HTML editor WebEdit and graphics utility Paint Shop Pro) with a licensed copy of Navigator 3.0. Best of all, though, it adds not only the full hyperlinked text of Using Netscape 3 but also the text of three other Que titles, on HTML, Java and Javascript. By posting all four texts at its own Web site, Que is betting you'll want to buy after you drive.
ZD Press's "How to Use ..." series follows a simple formula: fill each double-page spread with a picture of a PC monitor, and then use a few words to describe what's happening on each screen. No doubt this saves on writer's fees, but it may leave you feeling you've spent the price of two good CDs on not very much at all. Typical of the series is this disappointingly superficial guide to HTML 3.2, the set of commands which tells your Web browser what to do. Its billing as a "easy, full-colour, step-by-step guide" raises three obvious problems. First, full color isn't much use when you're filling your pages with nothing more than screen shots of text and grey background. Second, HTML is intrinsically easy; someone with no knowledge of computer programming can learn the basics in 15 minutes. Third, cheaper step-by-step HTML guides abound. You can try one of the cheap and popular "Dummies" or "Idiots" range, or look up one of many guides on the Web.
''Plug-ins'' which quietly and unfussily extend the capabilities of your Web browser seemed a great idea when Netscape introduced them in with Navigator 2.0. Many Web page design texts have skated over their use. This PC and Mac "Construction Kit" shows how to use plug-ins in your pages; the accompanying CD provides more than 30 of them. But the CD skimps on programs for actually creating plug-in content. And by discussing the installation and use of more than 40 plug-ins, author Jonathan Angel sacrifices much-needed depth of information on utilizing the few much-used ones. Take the most widely-distributed audio plug-in, RealAudio: Web page authors will find a bare six pages of instruction, much of it duplicating material on RealAudio's own Web page. Hard to justify the $70.
|
||||||||||||
  
|
Siegel (left) staked himself a place on the Web early. A former print designer with several well-known typefaces to his name, he refused to accept the then-dominant idea that Web pages should stick to a strict and austere presentation. Instead, he pushed type and images around using a series of tricks - most famously, clear single-pixel images whose job was to keep other images and text in their place.
His personal site
