good overview
Pros: Easy to understand, Concise, Helpful examples, Well-written, Accurate
Best Uses: Novice
Describe Yourself: Developer
I quite liked this book – it had a bit of something for everyone. I’d dispute the ‘for developers’ part of the title though as I think anyone new to website development would get a lot out of it, not just programmers.
That said, they’d get a lot out of it too!
It covers a broad spectrum of web design-related topics: Initial planning, choosing fonts and graphics, colour schemes and so on.
I particularly liked the section on colour schemes – there were some excellent online tools covered for generating site schemes which I hadn’t come across before and had fun playing with, and an interesting coverage of the different types of colour themes to choose from.
Onto building the site, and there’s good coverage of the HTML/CSS side of things, with a well worked-through example site to follow. The section on SEO felt a little light, but it’s a balancing act on getting everything in whilst not making the book too heavy to actually use! Nice section on designing for mobile devices at the end.
Recommended for programmers and non-programmers alike – anyone with an interest in setting up their first website!
(legalese)