Product Description

How many times have you visited a Web site and thought that you could do a better job if only you had the knowledge and skills?   Or perhaps you have a great idea for a Web site but don’t know how to get started? What was once exclusively a task for professionals, Web designing, has become more accessible to amateurs, thanks to loads of handy software. With Web Design For Dummies, you will be able to design your own Web site like a pro.

Web design requires many programs to make a Website attractive and fun, including:

• Using Web editors like Dreamweaver
• Image editing tools like Photoshop elements
• Drawing utensils like Illustrator
• Background markup and scripting languages like HTML and CSS

This fun guide covers all of the topics that every aspiring Web designer should know.   This book offers advice on:

• Designing for your audience
• Building a solid framework for easy navigation
• Creating appealing graphics that work with the site
• Choosing the proper type and colors
• Tweaking the HTML to make everything work correctly
• Applying next–step technologies including JavaScript
• Parlaying your skills into paid work

With expert guidance from Lisa Lopuck, a pioneer in interactive media design and the Senior Producer at Disney, you will be creating superb Web pages that will charm and impress all of your visitors!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #220923 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Anyone can throw up a Web page, but Web Design for Dummies shows how to organise, illustrate and lay out Web sites that really work. The main themes are planning, colours and graphics, navigation and usability and optimising HTML code. The focus is on professional rather than personal Web sites, and the book is best suited to those who have already mastered basic Web concepts.

Divided into five parts, the book begins by explaining the Web design process, from assembling a team to planning and sketching out a Web site map. Part two is the core of the book, and covers the nitty-gritty of graphic design. Subjects include how to choose fonts, creating balanced layouts that draw the user to the most important elements, and smart use of colours. There is an explanation of bit map versus vector images, image transparency, slicing graphics, and how to use techniques like anti-aliasing and drop shadows. The third part puts the focus on navigation and usability, including a valuable chapter on testing. Part four peeks into the underlying HTML code, explaining how to control positioning and page margins and sets out the pros and cons of frames versus tables. Finally, there are four chapters of tips, on diverse topics ranging from how to add background music, to what to charge for your work. The bundled CD is disappointing, consisting mostly of product demos.

The strength of Web Design for Dummies is its designer's perspective, right down to the author's affection for the Apple Macintosh. This makes it ideal for techies who need to pick up some design expertise, or for print designers looking to move into Web design. The illustrations are clear and well chosen and the book benefits from the friendly, informal style typical of the Dummies series. --Tim Anderson

From the Back Cover
Build your own eye–popping site design

Create a user–friendly site, design great graphics, and make updating easy

It can take a flock of folks to build, design, and maintain an out–of–sight Web site. Whether you′re designing a site on your own or are a member of a design team, this updated guide will be your best assistant. Here′s the scoop on planning, producing, choosing colors and fonts, managing content — even understanding a dollop of HTML.

Discover how to

• Assess the audience for your site
• Create an effective workflow
• Add sound, video, and animation
• Test your site for ease of navigation
• Build graphics that work
• Use frames, tables, and CSS

About the Author
In 1988, Lisa Lopuck got her first glimpse of multimedia while still at UCLA pursuing her degree in design. She saw a tiny, black–and–white, interactive HyperCard stack designed by The Voyager Company and immediately knew her career path.
Her first job out of school was working at the Apple Multimedia Lab in San Francisco. She then moved on to Skywalker Ranch, working with George Lucas to design educational CD–ROMs. The rest has been interactive history — working with everyone from Kaleida to eBay, writing bestselling books, teaching, and speaking at conferences along the way.
In 1996, she co–founded Electravision, an award–winning Web design agency in San Francisco with clients such as Twentieth Century Fox, National Geographic, Microsoft, and Mall of America. Electravision’s work won awards, including Yahoo!’s Best of the Year, Site of the Day, and Best of the Web. Electravision also created the highly acclaimed online murder mystery series, Suspect, one of the Web’s first online entertainment series.
Recently, Lisa was an Associate Creative Director and Senior Producer at Disney where she managed the production of large–scale, large–budget, multilanguage Web sites for Disney’s theme parks and hotels around the world such as www.DisneyCruiseLine.com and www.HongKongDisneyland.com.
Lisa is now a design consultant helping companies shape their Web creative strategy. She is also an accomplished watercolor artist, and a signature member of the National Watercolor Society. You can see her paintings online at www.lopuck.com, and her Web portfolio at www.lopuck.com/portfolio.

Customer Reviews

For a web dummy who wants to start his own web business?
Very difficult to identify who this book is actually for...a web dummy who wants to start his own web design business is my best shot. Well, if you are such a dummy then I'm afraid a dummy you will remain after reading this book. I found the 'Help' pages in Fireworks and Dreamweaver sufficed; this book added nothing. It will however insult your intelligence.

Not for dummies - or anyone else
Whilst I normally steer clear of this kind of book, I saw it in a local library and thought I'd have a look, thinking there might at least be a few useful tips. Unfortunately, I was not only disappointed on the tips front, but in the general presentation of this book. Like a previous viewer, I was left rather perplexed as to exactly who the book is aimed at. The blurb suggests it is designed for people planning to build professional, rather than personal websites, and yet the content never quite seems to match up. At once Lopuck suggests that when providing designs for clients you should delegate to members of your team (also dummies, presumably?) so that the designs reflect different interpretations of the requirements, and a few pages later, something as mundane as copying and pasting images will be covered.

The book is so riddled with such strange juxtapositions that it really ends up being of very little use to anyone. Real beginners will be sorely disappointed by many of the chapters, which assume either a background in print design, or that the reader is already a member of a web design team (begging the question, why they should be reading a book purportedly for dummies), or perhaps that the reader already owns software such as Dreamweaver, Fireworks or Photoshop. More experienced readers may find a few useful tips, but I should imagine have already covered the key sections of this book elsewhere, and will only be insulted by the more mundane chapters on the vagaries of web adaptive palettes or font types.

All-round information for constructing web sites
Excellent book for information about all apects of web site construction. Although not much on HTML. Also excellent guide to running your own web site development business.