Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual
reviewed by Robert Pritchett
Author: Matthew MacDonald http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/836 Booksite: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/creatingwstmm/index.html Published: October 2005. Pages: 559 $30 USD, $42 CND, £21GBP, 26€ EUR ISBN: 0596008422 Requirements: A desire to go a little further beyond a vanity site. Strengths: Takes a cross-platform approach to web design. Weaknesses: None found. Oh, you mean our own web page? Yes, there are still a lot of weaknesses there, but we are working on it. |
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Creating Web Sites: the Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald makes learning website design entertaining and enjoyable. One of the great plusses in this book is that instead of having to bookmark pages in each chapter for online digging, Matthew was kind enough to save them by chapter reference as the last Appendix in the book.
Like sophisticated websites (non .Mac, or ones not tied to Apple’s new iWeb technology), this book has more than one part. There are six divided into 17 chapters and Appendices with two more chapters. These discuss prepping, creating, posting and tools, HTML and Style Sheets, graphics, linking, layout tools like tables and styles, and a whole chapter dedicated to Frames. Part 3 discusses how to generate traffic by attracting visitors, tow-way communications techniques and making money with Google, Amazon and PayPal. The 4th part gets into JavaScripting and DHTMLing, using buttons and menus, audio and video and the last chapter discusses blogging. The Appendices are split between an HTML Quick Reference and the website references.
How visitor-friendly is your website? This book provides “just enough” to flesh things out.
