Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to X HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics: Amazon.co.uk: Jennifer Niederst Robbins: Books

Frequently Bought Together

+

+

Build Your Own Website the Right Way Using HTML & CSS

Price For All Three: �80.27

Show availability and shipping details

This item: Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics by Jennifer Niederst Robbins
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
Build Your Own Website the Right Way Using HTML & CSS by Ian Lloyd
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

by Jason Beaird

3.5 out of 5 stars (13) �31.49

Build Your Own Website the Right Way Using HTML & CSS

by Ian Lloyd

4.8 out of 5 stars (21) �22.79

How to Start a Home-based Web Design Business

by Jim Smith

5.0 out of 5 stars (5) �10.49

Mastering the Internet (Palgrave Master)

by William Buchanan

5.0 out of 5 stars (1) �18.04

The Web Designer's Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design: The Ultimate Guide to Themes, Trends and Styles in Website Design

by Patrick McNeil

4.4 out of 5 stars (8) �11.19

› Explore similar items

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links

(What is this?)

Web Learning Design

www.SpongeUK.com/Custom_E-Learning Creating custom e-learning modules to help your employees' skills.

Learn Web Design

HomeLearningCollege.com/WebDesign Adobe & CIW Courses Available. The Latest Software is Included.

Want to be a Webmaster?

www.Career-in-IT.co.uk Get your Career started by joining our successful CIW Course Today!

Product Description

Conrad J. Obregon, Nikonians.org, October 2007
"If you need to learn HTML, or XHTML, or CSS, I can't imagine a clearer text than this book."

Product Description
Everything you need to know to create professional web sites is right here. Learning Web Design starts from the beginning -- defining how the Web and web pages work -- and builds from there. By the end of the book, you'll have the skills to create multi-column CSS layouts with optimized graphic files, and you'll know how to get your pages up on the Web.

This thoroughly revised edition teaches you how to build web sites according to modern design practices and professional standards. Learning Web Design explains:

How to create a simple (X)HTML page, how to add links and images
Everything you need to know about web standards -- (X)HTML, DTDs, and more
Cascading Style Sheets -- formatting text, colors and backgrounds, using the box model, page layout, and more
All about web graphics, and how to make them lean and mean through optimization
The site development process, from start to finish
Getting your pages on the Web -- hosting, domain names, and FTP

The book includes exercises to help you to learn various techniques, and short quizzes to make sure you're up to speed with key concepts. If you're interested in web design, Learning Web Design is the place to start.

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

(What's this?)

Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)

web design

xhtml

css

web site design

html

web graphics

web development

internet

user experience

web graphic

web design and programming

Customer Reviews

6 Reviews

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.2 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars NOT for beginners, horribly written, but nonetheless quite helpful for some, 12 Jun 2008

By	Cookies (Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This book earns 1 star (utterly useless) because it's marketed as a book "for beginners." If you're truly a beginner, you won't understand a word of it. If you already have a (very) basic grasp of HTML, XHTML, CSS, and internet vocabulary and concepts, however, I'd tell you this book deserves 3 stars. For a non-beginner, the book contains extremely valuable information and direction, but is written so badly I almost can't understand how a professional publishing company would publish it.

First, the problems for a beginner:
(1) The book uses web-design specific vocabulary even before the terms have been explained. For example, the phrase "HTML and style sheets" several times in the first chapter (when I first bought the book I had no idea what either HTML or a style sheet was), most comically at the end of a paragraph which states that "The process of writing HTML and style sheet documents is commonly referred to as authoring..." The very NEXT paragraph opens with the sentence "The people who handle production need to have an intricate knowledge of HTML (the markup language used to make web documents) ..." Which writing instructor in the world wouldn't tell the author that the parenthetical part of the second sentence should actually be part of the p-r-e-c-e-d-i-n-g sentence? Or better yet, included in the first sentence in the book which contains the acronym HTML?

???

(This doesn't address the fact that anybody who doesn't already understand what HTML is most likely doesn't understand the phrase "markup language" either.)

If this glitch were exceptional it would be one thing. But the whole book reads like this. When I first bought the book I was really and truly a "beginner," and reading the opening chapters was like speeding on a road riddled with potholes. A couple potholes I can handle. Or a lot of potholes but then at a slower speed is less than ideal but still survivable. This was impossibly frustrating, and unnecessary. Still, I stuck with it.

(2) The structure of the book is poor. Much of the content in Chapter One is inappropriate to a Beginner's Book Chapter One. For example the book spends nearly a page in Chapter One on which advanced multimedia software is available to me if I decide -- presumably after I've finished the book and learned enough to be able to make a decision -- to specialize in multimedia, as opposed to any of the other web creation specialties I'm going to (presumably in the process of reading this book) learn about. Chapters Two and Three are similarly cluttered with information which would be better placed in sidebars (if at all, if this book is, sorry to say this again, for B-E-G-I-N-N-E-R-S!), much later in the book. I mean, a little theoretical background is useful to any learning process, but IMO a beginner's book on HTML, CSS, and web design should place the chapter "Creating a Simple Page (HTML Overview)" earlier than (Finally!!! I get to Learn How To Do Something!!!) Chapter Four.

(3) The book spends a lot of time telling the learner not to use outdated web design practices, such as using (X)HTML for style, using tables for the visual structure of a webpage, or other legacy HTML practices. Funny thing is, if I'm a beginner, and this book is my first teacher, I won't KNOW any legacy HTML practices. Usually effective teaching means telling me what to do, not what NOT to do. So cluttering up the book in paragraph after paragraph telling me not to do something I wouldn't even have known was possible if you hadn't just mentioned it makes for a book that reads like an intellectual obstacle course. I get mental whiplash trying to keep track of which way the stream of thought is travelling (follow this practice, avoid this practice, follow this practice ...) What's worse, my retention will be severely compromised, as the following day I try, in some level of unconscious confusion, "Was this the way I was supposed to do it, or the way I was not supposed to do it?"

To make this book useful for as many learners as possible it's important to include all the legacy lessons about "what not to do," particularly when they fall into the category of "here's how we do it now." But all learners would be better served if the whole idea of "legacy HTML" were treated in one (perhaps even optional) chapter, and if the remainder of the book tucked all the necessary reminders into (hopefully distinctively designed) sidebars. That puts the information there for those who need it, and Out Of The Way for those who don't.

(4) The book teaches HTML and XHTML at the same time (if you're using HTML write this, but if you're writing XHTML write this instead). That's the web creation version of a language school, somewhere in the middle of China, teaching prospective exchange students Dutch and German simultaneously ("If you're writing Dutch write z, but if you're writing German write s"; or, "Keep in mind that while Dutch the present tense is worden and the past tense is werden, in German the present tense is werden and the past tense is worden ...") -- as a student in such a school you'd go bananas, right? -- WITHOUT even first explaining to the student how to know which language they should be learning in the first place! This lesson (just what is the point of HTML vs. XHTML anyway, and how do I know which to use) comes on page 176.

Of a beginner's book.

Right.

I could go on. Just let me say, if you really are a beginner, get Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML instead. That's what I did. It's brilliant. And then if you're still willing to put up with the other flaws in this book, you'll get a lot out of it.

The other flaws, in short, which make me give this book no more than 3 stars even if you aren't a true beginner:

(5) The book needs proofreading. BADLY. I've rarely read anything in print which is full of so many errors. If you know enough to follow the sentences that are written correctly, you'll know enough to be able to follow the sentences with errors in them (you'll think, "Huh? What was that? Oh, she meant this ... Okay, I'm back on track ...)

(6) The structure of the book is appalling. For example, after spending a few chapters telling the learner to test out their work on-line, the book doesn't mention how to get the pages on-line in the first place until Chapter Twenty One.

(7) "Exercises," particularly in the opening chapters, are often trivial, similar in difficulty to those TV ads which ask "Which football international signed with Real Madrid after scoring 86 goals in eleven seasons with Manchester United? (a) Hugh Grant, (b) Tony Blair, or (c) David Beckham? You'll get all the answers right, but all it will mean is that you read the chapter. When you actually understood the chapter, much less understood it well enough to build upon, has not remotely been determined. After a while even the more active "assignments" get tiring, because they cost too much time and energy to do something so trivial that you'd rather just do it in your head. Fortunately, the exercises later in the book are worthwhile.

(8) Diagrams, particularly diagrams in a series, are often placed a page too late to make their point. So you spend time staring at a diagram trying to figure out why you're missing the point, only to find out (after you've given up and decided you just don't understand this bit) that the diagram you were supposed to be looking at comes on the next page.

(9) The section on web graphics is weak. Be sure you already know how to use at least an intermediate-level photo or illustration editor (Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop) to manipulate, store, and share images before you get to this unit. Once you can do those things, this book will "top off" your understanding by explaining a few tips and really nice tricks about using images in websites, but if the only thing you've ever done is click on the dedicated button in Kodak EasyShare to e-mail a photo to grandma, this book is not the resource to take you to the next level.

So, after all that, what is there that possibly makes this book worth your money? Here are the valuable elements of this book, really great for moving from Beginner to Advanced Beginner or even Intermediate level and beyond:

(10) The book truly takes your web creation skills to the next level. Particularly the lessons on CSS are instructive and inspiring, not remotely difficult but nonetheless laying out the options -- with their corresponding pros and cons -- in a way which gives you the skills to make truly professional-quality choices among those options.

(11) The book contains a veritable encyclopaedia of reference material. For any topic that is introduced, the author lists numerous websites and/or books to consult if you're particularly interested in investigating this aspect of web design further, or even to get a better, interactive, look at the issue under discussion. Any given website creator probably uses two sets of skills and concepts: those used by 95% of the web creators all over the world, and those used by only that particular creator and maybe a hundred other people on the planet. However, even though the first set of skills is used by 95% of all the web creators in the world, they make up only half of the skills and techniques used by that particular designer. What makes the particular site in question stand out is the other half of the tricks the web creators have up their sleeves. How to treat those concepts, which are crucial for that particular creator but totally irrelevant to almost everybody else reading the book? The answer: the "For More Information" references! If this book were a course, these lists would be the "handouts." These are some of the most useful "handouts" I've ever found in a "how to learn" book.

Basically, what it boils down to is that if you manage to wade through the early chapters of this book (which, though poor and bloated, can't really be skipped lock-stock-n-barrel either), you'll be rewarded increasingly more often and increasingly more intensely with AHA! moments and with ideas that will spark talents and latent competencies that you probably didn't even know you had. And, once you get to the end of the book, you'll have the understanding and skills to create websites which are more functional and more interesting than most of the non-multi-international-corporation sites anywhere on the web. Whether you have the equipment, the budget, the time, or the patience to do so is quite another matter, but fortunately, this book will also help you learn whether you have those things as well, so that the sites you decide to build won't end up stranding for lack of the resources you need to bring them successfully on-line. In addition, you'll also have learned enough about which third-party tools to outfit your fledgling web creation office to get yourself up and running. In short, once you've made it through this book, you'll not merely Know How to create great-looking sites with confidence, but you'll actually Be Able to Do So.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dunno what this long winded guy is talking about, 27 Sep 2008

By	Jay - See all my reviews

I found this book on the internet through a friend who sent me the ebook. I started reading it and then eventually went out and went and bought the book. I found that it had a very clear way of explaining how CSS works a thing which has been keeping me out of designing websites for quite a while. The author delivers a methodical instruction to exactly how all the components of a website are brought together and what the different roles are between CSS and HTML. She also really manages to expound the principles of good design which will allow the reader to write website that will be easily accessible to users with disabilities. I found it quite a joy to read and felt that while this isn't really a book to be read cover to cover it works very well if one consumes it in bite sized pieces ensuring that one fully understands each part before plowing on forward.

In all I really enjoyed learning from this book and would highly recommend it for people out there who know a little about the web and are interested in building their own web pages.

Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

5.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction!, 24 April 2009

By	Stefan Sten Grage "belix" (denmark) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is quite simply a great introduction to web design.

It learns you the important basic principles, without going to much in depth.

Go ahead, and you'll be making standards compliant websites in a couple of months.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 6 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Learning Web Desgin - Highly Recommended
This is an excellent book for anyone wishing to learn (X)HTML, or wishing to bring their skills up to date. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Camion

5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe not for complete beginners but very useful
I borrowed this book from my university and am finding it very useful and have ordered a copy of my own. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Sarah

5.0 out of 5 stars Particularly useful for making the change from HTML to XHTML
I agree, I'm not sure why the first reviewer spent so much time and effort. This is a well put together, beautifully presented book. Read more

Published 9 months ago by Dr. Rajan Bowri

› See all 6 customer reviews...

Listmania!

Beating The Credit Crunch (Surviving Tough Times & Thriving): A list by Nicola Cairncross "TheMoneyGym.com"
business startup: A list by Donald "Joomlanomics advocate"
Beginners guide to web design: A list by Paul M. Davison "paulo72 dot co dot uk"

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Shopping > Amazon
Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Introduction to Programming > HTML
Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages > HTML & XHTML
Books > Computing & Internet > Software & Graphics > Graphics & Multimedia > Image Manipulation & Creation
Books > Computing & Internet > Web Development > Web Design > Web Graphics & Animation
Books > Computing & Internet > Web Development > Web Design > Website Design
Books > Study Books > FE & College > Vocational > Sport & Recreation

Feedback

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.

The Body Shop

Protect and boost your glow with The Body Shop Vitamin C Skin Boost.

›Shop The Body Shop

More From Jennifer Niederst Robbins

HTML and XHTML Pocket Reference

After years of using spacer GIFs, layers of nested tables, and other... Read more
£9.99 £6.49

Boys Smell

Lynx Africa Body Spray and After Shave Gift set

But we make sure they smell good...

›Discover male grooming at Amazon.co.uk

Treat Someone

With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is).

›Learn more about Gift Certificates

	55% buy the item featured on this page: Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics 4.2 out of 5 stars (6) �25.99
	24% buy Build Your Own Website the Right Way Using HTML & CSS 4.8 out of 5 stars (21) �22.79
	9% buy The Web Designer's Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design: The Ultimate Guide to Themes, Trends and Styles in Website Design 4.4 out of 5 stars (8) �11.19
	6% buy Web Design in a Nutshell (A Desktop Quick Reference) 4.7 out of 5 stars (37) �18.89


Amazon Home

International Sites: United States \| Germany \| France \| Japan \| Canada \| China

Business Programs: Sell on Amazon \| Fulfilment by Amazon \| Join Associates \| Join Advantage

Customer Service \| Help \| View Basket \| Your Account

About Amazon.co.uk \| Careers at Amazon

Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics (Paperback)

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Product details

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links

Product Description

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Customer Reviews

Customer Discussions

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight

Start a new discussion

Listmania!

Look for similar items by category

Feedback

The Body Shop

More From Jennifer Niederst Robbins

Boys Smell

Treat Someone

Where's My Stuff?

Delivery and Returns

Need Help?

Your Recent History