The Non-Designer's Web Book: An Easy Guide to Creating, Designing, and Posting Your Own Web Site.

• Author: NUNES, CYNTHIA J.
• Position: Review

TITLE: The Non-Designer's Web Book: An Easy Guide to Creating, Designing, and Posting Your Own Web Site

ISBN: 0-201-68859-X

PUBLISHER: Peachpit Press

PUBLICATION DATE: 1998

LENGTH: 228 pages

PRICE: $24.95

SOURCE: Your local virtual or physical bookseller or directly from Peachpit Press at http://www.peachpit.com

"Andy Warhol was wrong: in the future, everyone won't be famous for 15 minutes, but everyone will have their own Web site." So states John Winokur in the first of several memorable quotations scattered throughout the pages of The Non-Designer's Web Book.

This book illustrates what it takes to set up, design, construct, post, and manage a Web site. That is a lot of ground to cover, but Robin Williams (author) and John Tollett (contributor) have done it effectively. And they've done so in an informal, visually pleasing, humorous, and engaging presentation that belies the density and scope of the subject matter.

Parts One and Two, "Using the World Wide Web," and "Making Web Pages," respectively, detail the preliminaries of designing a Web site. They include chapters on the Internet and Web, browser software, site planning issues, HTML, and how to find a site host. The quiz and "Self-Guided Tour of the World Wide Web" at the end of most chapters further illuminate the material covered in each respective chapter. (The quizzes are not intimidating and the answers are provided.)

Parts Three and Four, "Design Issues on the Web" and "Color, Graphics, and Type," are devoted to site design. These chapters are the authors', and therefore the book's, strongest. Part Three presents basic design principles (for non-designers), the differences between Web and print design, site navigation issues, and indicators of effective and poor design. Part Four contains chapters on the use of color on the Web, standard Web graphic file formats, how to prepare images for the Web (including information on scanning and digital photography), typography on the Web, and "Advanced Tips and Tricks."

Part Five, "You're Done-Now What?" discusses how to test, fix, upload, update and register a site. A...