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.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 62 Ratings

This book deserves the 5-star rating it's been getting! - 2010-02-04
Reviewer Rating:
For a person who has been doing some web designing for not that long, this book was a real eye opener. I liked that the chapters got to the point and took you through the material without assuming *too* much, but also without sacrificing thoroughness.

Sections II (HTML) and III (CSS) were the most informative, for me. Clear explanations that take you step by step through some concepts that were new to me. Section III was the least useful, for me: designing web graphics using Photoshop seemed a bit daunting, I simply use GRSites for making all the graphics which works well, but I'm sure I'll come back to this part of the book go over it slowly eventually. Section I and IV were good too, in that they give useful overviews of web design in general, and the mechanics of getting your site hosted, and other details that I didn't realize initially were even relevant.

Well written!

The perfect book for the beginner - 2009-11-13
Reviewer Rating:
I felt the need to express how well written this book is for the beginning web designer. The author doesn't bog the reader down with overly complex examples of code. I've been designing web pages using Dreamweaver for a few years now and never bothered with the code. I've always created my content in Photoshop and just dropped the images into the software. After reading through this book, I am not only able to simplify my web pages through code editing, but also, was able to optimize my graphics content.
Right now, I am now trudging through a book to learn JavaScript. I am getting through the book, but not nearly as easily as I did the Learning Web Design book. To be fair, the subject is a bit more complex, but the way that the JavaScript book is written causes me to have to constantly look up unexplained technical terms and syntax of the code examples to figure out why they work. I never had to do that with the Learning Web Design book.

Best Discussion of the WHY of CSS positioning and layouts. - 2009-10-14
Reviewer Rating:
This is an excellent book on Web design and covers everything from where to start, to how the browser does request/response protocols (in a very comfortable visual way) to Web Graphics.

However, the price of the book was worth the section on CSS!

I have been beating my head against a wall trying to understand how CSS layouts actually work and how positions, floats and web page flow works. It seems very inconsistent and confusing. But the CSS section has great examples to describe how CSS 2.x works, how block and in-line elements flow, how element types effect eachother in the flow and it has GREAT exercises and experiments to help the reader understand what is happening. The author also goes into the quirks between browsers and how the different browsers handle CSS differently.

This book doesn't do like so many other books and just give one patterns to copy without an understanding of what is happening. To me, this book would be worth it for just the CSS Section.

I have also enjoyed the section on Web Graphics and how browsers handle them. Great book.

Best HTML & CSS book by far. - 2010-02-04
Reviewer Rating:
I've spent time reading through several other popular books that cover HTML & CSS and this book gives just the right level of detail. I chose this book above all others. You want to learn XHTML & CSS? This book does it beautifully. While other books assume you're an absolute beginner and painstakingly cover off topics that are way to basic; others go off tangent and describe SEO & web marketing. These are totally separate subjects that have no place in a book about HTML. I had unanswered questions about the HTML Div tag for example. This was the one & only book that covered off how ID & Class attributes worked when assigned to Div tags. I was struggling to grasp the difference between these two attributes. This book finally cleared this up for me. Now when I look at my XHTML code in Dreamweaver CS4 I know exactly what's going on.

I never really understood which settings were best when optimizing images for the web. Usually I'd just play around with the settings and have an educated guess. This was the only book that explained what dithering actually does while preparing photos in photoshop. Most other tutorials teach you to simply "play around" and see what happens when saving images for the web. Here you're given an absolute clear explanation of exactly when & where to use dithering along with all the other image optimization settings. The entire subject of XHTML & CSS is covered exactly the way a professional web developer needs. The visuals are perfectly spot on too. While getting my head around HTML elements had been a little confusing, the chapter here included the exact right diagram to help with the explanation. I was absolutely clear how tags are written as an element and how they get nested together. It's one of the few books that's written in a concise manner.

It's clear that this author has worked closely with students and taught classes. She's covered off the key subjects perfectly with just the right amount of professionalism. I felt as if I was being taught in her own class. The first book that gets it absolutely right!

Best web design book yet ! - 2010-01-23
Reviewer Rating:
I have dabbled in a bit of web design before, but never knew exactly what I was doing. I just copied and pasted code from other forums and figured out what I needed to change to make things work. I recently took a web/interactive design course at my university, and this was the required text for the class. This is one of the only required texts I have read all the way through. The first half of the book teaches basic HTML and the second half of the book expands on that to teach you about CSS. DEFINITELY a MUST if you are a beginner web designer or need a good reference book. I have checked out other HTML/CSS books, and none of them really made sense to me. This book has several pictures, tutorials, tips, and recommended links that really helped me understand the fundamentals of web design.

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