Web Design Before & After Makeovers (Before & After Makeovers)

Books Details :

Author : Richard Wagner
Paperback: 244 pages
Publisher: Wiley (May 8, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0471783234
Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches

Book Description

1. Through stunning four-color images that demonstrate how nondescript "before" situations gradually become astonishing "after" results, this book offers readers simple steps to achieve unique outcomes
2. Readers learn how to incorporate the latest Web-building techniques on their sites, redesign a site for optimum usability, limit user bandwidth needs, keep user experience consistent with CSS, and manage content
3. The medley of makeovers includes: full-site makeovers (user speed, color themes, improved accessibility), page makeovers (page sizing, working with tables), text makeovers (font selection, graphic alternatives), image makeovers (incorporating text with images, file sizing), navigation makeovers (improving navigation bars, menu additions), content makeovers (better Web writing, enhancing the home page message), and an extreme makeover (combining several smaller makeovers into a major site overhaul)

From the Back Cover
Spice up your site and increase traffic!

Ho-hum Web sites don't stop a lot of visitors. With the step-by-step solutions in this book, however, you can make yours create a traffic jam. Add dynamic content to your home page. Make page elements—tables, borders, scrollbars—fit your overall theme. Display several different images in unique ways. Create multi-level or CSS-based menus. Boost value with maps, site searches, and RSS feeds. Choose a few makeovers or all of them, and watch your site come to life!

Makeovers that make your site stand out

1. Homepage makeovers—what belongs where, what doesn't, and how to grab attention
2. Layout makeovers—how to size pages, arrange content, and center pages in the browser
3. Text makeovers—fonts, sizes, headings, and how presentation is everything
4. Performance makeovers—tricks for making images download in a flash
5. Form makeovers—ways to spruce up the most boring part of your site
6. Site makeovers—learn to link without losing your visitors and how to maximize search engine rankings

Companion Web Site

HTML and image files for many of the makeovers in this book can be downloaded at www.wiley.com/go/makeovers

About the Author
Richard Wagner is an experienced Web designer and author of several Web technology books, including Yahoo SiteBuilder For Dummies, XSLT For Dummies, XML All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, and JavaScript Unleashed. He is the former Vice President of Product Development at NetObjects and inventor of the award-winning NetObjects ScriptBuilder Web tool. In his non-tech life, Richard is also author of C.S. Lewis & Narnia For Dummies, Christianity For Dummies, and The Gospel Unplugged. His online home is at Digitalwalk.com.

Spotlight Reviews :

Reviewer: Thomas Lundin (Lakeville, MN USA)
The title of this book is little misleading. I was expecting to see examples of boring web page designs transformed into exciting, clean new page designs. But instead, I saw boring web pages transformed into still-boring but better-working pages.

Many of the makeovers are geared toward the underlying HTML of a page. By applying small doses of CSS and javascript, the page's structure or usability can be significantly improved. And it's in this context that the book provides most of its valuable material.

On the other hand, the tips for design-oriented changes are fairly rudimentary, relying on Photoshop to create buttons, resize images, generate text graphics, etc. But even worse, some of the makeovers retained the horrendous design gaffes of the original pages -- such as white type against a black background (a surefire way to induce an eyestrain headache). So, take the design tips with a grain of salt.

I should also note that the book focuses on the use of Macromedia Dreamweaver and Photoshop as the preferred production tools. While the book notes that other equivalent programs can be used to implement the makeovers, I always find this claim to be a bit of a cheat, because it forces the author to ignore specific power features of the preferred programs in order to satisfy a more general audience.

There are other books that deal more satisfactorily with each of the separate areas this book purports to cover. For instance, "The Zen of CSS Design" is a good resource for exploring the aesthetic aspects of web design. And O'Reilly's "CSS Cookbook" and "Javascript and DHTML Cookbook" provide solution-specific code for web applications.

Of course, those three books I mentioned will set you back more than this one book. And if you're not a full-time web developer, you might not need the depth of information in those separate books. If that's the case with you, then this book will probably serve your needs just fine.

Reviewer: Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States)
I'm always on the lookout for books that can help me improve my lackluster interface design skills when it comes to web development. I found a lot to like in the book Web Design Before And After Makeovers by Richard Wagner.

Contents:
Makeover Essentials; Page Layout Makeovers; Navigation Makeovers; Page Element Makeovers, Text Makeovers, Image Makeovers; Image Performance Makeovers; Home Page Makeovers; Content Makeovers; Form Makeovers; Add-On Makeovers; Site Makeovers; Extreme Makeovers; Index

The focus of this book is to take ordinary pages and redo them using standard CSS and JavaScript techniques that add the polish to make the site look more professional. Some of this is more "under the covers", such as using CSS and div tags instead of tables to lay out your form. But tricks on how to round the corners of your boxes, changing the default look and feel of forms, and more professional spacing and layout are definitely more visible and obvious. The tool of choice for his coding is Dreamweaver and Photoshop for image manipulation. But in most cases, you can pretty easily figure out how to do the same thing in your own toolset (if it differs from him). You shouldn't expect a lot of "how to" on the CSS end. He shows you the CSS that he uses to do the coding, but this is *not* a tutorial on the subject. If you didn't know any CSS, you might struggle a bit. For me, the book was worth it for a Firefox developer tool tip that shows the div layouts of your page. I have a coding project coming up, and I think that will be the tool that saves my hide...

If your page design skills haven't progressed much past 1998, you would do well to spend some time here. Most of the information is not overly complex, and it can make a world of difference in your sites.