Publisher: AP Professional/Morgan Kauffman
Author: Rebecca Frances Rohan
ISBN: 0125931859
Publication Date: July 1998
Retail Price: $34.95
Buy this book now!
Building Better Web Pages is not really intended for beginners...but beginners should read it. It's not written for hard-core techies, either...but even if you've been on the Web from the beginning, you're going to find something here you didn't know about. Not only that, this book can teach you how to do pages right.
It's also a very accessible book. There are no algorithms or manual pages for obscure commands, and even the HTML tag content is astonishingly -- and refreshingly -- low for a book that's all about making Web pages. Perhaps the best part of all this is the feeling you get that the author's talking right to you, and winking as she does. She refers to the book wryly at one point as "Auntie Rebecca's Web Charm School", and explains how to write good FAQs with questions such as "What if the dinosaur eats my sister?"
Of course, Building Better Web Pages isn't all fun and games, either.
Chapters include coverage of Page Layout and Navigation, Images, Sound, Drop-In
Applets, and Web Marketing. And Rohan knows her stuff. For instance, the chapter
on images explained more about the origins of JPEGs than you've probably ever
heard, as well as outlining a simple method of coming up with complementary colors
for a site design that could be used by even a non-designer like me (if you want
even more proof that she knows her stuff, check out her home page).
This book is full of good, practical advice on every subject it covers, plus some of the best tips I've seen in a generalized work (including advice on how to deal with the press, some of which I'd like to iron on to certain PR peoples' clothing). Frankly, I've seen books three times thicker with less usable content! And I'd never even heard of steganography before, let alone know how useful it could be on the Web.
Perhaps more important than anything else, Building Better Web Pages can help you learn some class and discretion...not just how to do things, but why they're good to do (or not). That knowledge is priceless.
-- David Fiedler
Selections include:
and find truth, justice, and a clue or two.
