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Web Design Garage Book Review |
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Written by David Thompson
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Tuesday, 05 February 2008 |
 Web Design Garage is a great resource to help you build a website in just a few easy steps. Building and managing your first
website is not that difficult at all and learning the basics of HTML
code and the development process can be a lot of fun.
If you’re looking at getting started in web design, I would suggest Marc Campbell’s “Web Design Garage” (Prentice Hall ISBN 0-13-148199-1) as a wonderful reference guide. This 512 page book is filled with great beginner information as well as source code examples to help you build your first website.
The book is targeted toward those looking at getting their hands dirty with some HTML tags and a text editor. From my experience, learning to code and its structure will help you become a better web designer down the road. Let’s take a closer look into Campbell’s “Web Design Garage.”
What’s Inside the Book
The book is broken down into eight parts: Design and usability, layout, handling images, text issues, linking, forms, web design tricks and overall web design issues. These eight parts cover various segments of web design from the early planning stages to the final uploading and presentation.
In chapter one, Campbell demonstrates how you should thinking about the layout of the website. Doing things like grouping to determine each section of your website, selecting appropriate colors for background, text and links. This chapter prepares readers for the kinds of decisions they will need to make to build a successful website.
In chapter two, the reader is shown how to do site layouts. Using HTML code such as the table tag and being introduced to CSS (cascading style sheets), Campbell shows how you can design your layout either using CSS or via table cells and columns.
Chapter three covers image handling issues such as displaying them using cascading style sheets, making rollover images, image mapping and using background images in cascading style sheet DIV tags. The background image in a CSS DIV tag is a great design technique and one that I highly recommend you learn. Campbell even offers the source code so you can try it out immediately.
Chapter four refers to text topics such as managing and positioning text using cascading style sheets, creating customized text formatting style sheets, creating lists, defining type and even adding a timestamp to your content.
Chapter five brings us to one of the most important elements within a successful website which is creating links. No one enjoys going to a website only to discover a number of broken links, missing pages or maybe not even be able to distinguish between hotlinks and regular text because the web designer set the color for both as the same. Yikes! Campbell points out the differences in absolute links to relative ones, making rollovers and how to choose the right colors.
Chapter six demonstrates the uses and design features of an HTML form. These are useful when trying to receive feedback or retrieving visitor information regarding their preferences. You can also use forms to run contests or even purchase items from your website (via secure server of course).
In chapter seven, Campbell shows off some of the cool, interactive things you can do with your website to keep visitors interested such as embedding media, displaying random content and browser alerts. It’s these kinds of elements that can either attract or frustrate visitors if not used properly so wary of that.
The eighth and final chapter shows the budding web designer how to add keywords and descriptions to their webpages, how to block certain parts of the website from being spidered by search engines and how to get your website online.
The Final Word
I found Marc Campbell’s Web Design Garage to be a very useful guide to learning the basics and some advanced web design techniques. I was very impressed with his section on cascading style sheets which demonstrated why more designers are using it today to create the website layout they always envisioned. For those who just want to get started with their own website, then I would recommend this book to you.
After completing the book, you will have a better knowledge of not only the HTML language, but you will also become more aware of the features and limitations that WYSIWYG programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive and Microsoft’s FrontPage can present. A great upside from having learned to code is that you can still manually edit anything to your desire. With Campbell’s Web Design Garage at your side, you will be prepared to build that successful website that you’ve always dreamed of in no time.
Although I like Campbell’s explanations and techniques, I felt that people should use this book as a guide to getting started and for reference purposes only. While Campbell points out issues regarding web hosting providers, cost issues and why you shouldn’t use your current ISP’s web space for your website, I feel that people just getting started would be well suited by starting out at a slower pace. Personally, I began learning web design in 1996 and I found that the best way to learn is to be able to test your skills first. If your ISP provides you with some web space (and most do), then you should begin uploading your test HTML files there. Create a directory structure for your website, do the planning, layout and design techniques that Campbell points out. You should take advantage of the web space your ISP is providing you (it’s usually a part of your broadband internet access package). Even those with America Online accounts can build a website on their network (AOL keyword: HomeTown). You can even sign up for a free web hosting service like GeoCities (http://geocities.yahoo.com) or AngelFire (http://www.angelfire.lycos.com) where can test your web designing skills before going with a pay service.
In addition, you can try demo versions of WYSIWYG web designing programs to find out which one would serve your needs. Don’t be intimidated by the realm of web design. It’s a fun place to make your mark on the internet. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to build a great looking website or to even get started so use the options I provided above and get that next internet hot spot online.
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