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Learning Web Design

About.com Rating four out of Five

By Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com

Learning Web Design - by Jennifer Niederst

Learning Web Design - by Jennifer Niederst

O'Reilly
Nearly anyone who knows me knows that I love O'Reilly books. But until recently, O'Reilly has been the book publisher for power users. If you wanted a refresher on your revision control system - you pulled out the Racoon book. And if you wanted to learn Emacs the Gnu book was for you. And even five years ago, I owned both of those books and they were well worn. But while referring to the Camel has meaning to Perl programmers, to most non-geeks all these are just animals.

So, when I picked up the book Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was published by O'Reilly. That told me right away that the "tech" was going to be strong. But this is a book targetted at beginners, not geeks. It says right on the cover "A Beginner's Guide to HTML, Graphics, and Beyond".

Is it Really for Beginners?

Yes it is! As it says in the first chapter, it's never too late to start, and this book is a great way to start. It is not a book on how to write HTML. It covers that, but that's only part of it. You start out with what the Web is, how to look at a URL and putting up a Web page.

Beyond HTML

It goes beyond HTML to cover things like design, graphics, and multimedia. You'll learn about concepts like "designing above the fold" and what to do when things don't turn out as you expect. Building a Web page is so much more than just HTML and graphics. And this book starts slow, takes you through the basics and leads you into design and graphics so that before you know it you'll have not only a Web page, but a Web design.

The Bottom Line

This is a really good beginners HTML book. It doesn't talk down to the reader, and has all the information you need to create a Web page. As it says in the first chapter, it's never too late to start, and this book is a great way to start. It is not a book on how to write HTML. It covers that, but that's only part of it. You start out with what the Web is, how to look at a URL and putting up a Web page.

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