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The title of the book is its chief personal design premise. All of the tips, techniques, and examples presented revolve around users being able to surf merrily through a well-designed site with minimal cognitive strain. Readers will quickly come to agree with many of the book's assumptions, such as "We don't read pages--we scan them" and "We don't figure out how things work--we muddle through." Coming to grips with such hard facts sets the stage for Web design that then produces topnotch sites.

Using an attractive mix of full-color screen shots, cute cartoons and diagrams, and informative sidebars, the book keeps your attention and drives home some crucial points. Much of the content is devoted to proper use of conventions and content layout, and the "before and after" examples are superb. Topics such as the wise use of rollovers and usability testing are covered using a consistently practical approach.

This is the type of book you can blow through in a couple of evenings. But despite its conciseness, it will give you an expert's ability to judge Web design. You'll never form a first impression of a site in the same way again. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• User patterns
• Designing for scanning
• Wise use of copy
• Navigation design
• Home page layout
• Usability testing

Of course, Elizabeth Castro manages to write books that not only speak to those who are already fluent in HTML, but are good for newbies too. She makes it a breeze to create sites that are visually stylish and technically sophisticated without the expense of buying an editor.

Among the topics covered in her new book, HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: using the (relatively newer) structural tags (like doctype and div); correctly using older tags (like p and img) that have been modified in XHTML; writing XHTML so that formatting is done by the style sheets; writing those style sheets (cascading style sheets, a.k.a. "CSS"); creating a variety of layouts; and dealing with tables, frames, forms, multimedia, a bit of JavaScript (including mouseovers), WML (for mobile device displays), debugging, publishing, and publicizing your site.

As with all Visual QuickStart Guides, this one features clear and concise instructions side by side with well-captioned illustrations and screen shots that show both the source code and the resulting effect on the Web page. The index is extremely detailed, making this a great reference.

Also great for reference are the outstanding appendices. The first is an extensive list of tags and attributes, indicating which are deprecated and/or proprietary and on which page they are discussed. A similar appendix shows CSS properties and values; given the future of Web coding, this chart alone is worth the price of the book. Other handy charts cover intrinsic events, symbols and character Unicodes, and an expanded color chart that goes way beyond the virtually archaic Web-safe palette. All of which makes this a definite must-have for every Web designer's bookshelf. --Angelynn Grant

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Hands-On Training is the latest, updated version of the highly acclaimed publication from the leading trainers on Dreamweaver at lynda.com. In this book, readers will find carefully developed lessons and exercises that teach readers modern Web design techniques and workflow with the latest version, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. Now that the software is an integral part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, Web Standard, and Design Premium packages, there is an even greater need for the clear, step-by-step approach this book offers. Readers will learn to define a Web site; lay out pages effectively with Cascading Style Sheets; use tables; create rollovers; work with templates, media objects, and forms; and design for mobile devices. They'll also learn how to use the new features in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, including the new Spry framework for Ajax, Spry widgets and effects, advanced Photoshop CS3 integration, a new Browser Compatibility Check feature, CSS layouts, a new Manage CSS feature, integration with Adobe Device Control for creating mobile content, and Adobe Bridge CS3. Accompanied by a CD-ROM loaded with classroom-proven exercises and QuickTime training videos, this book ensures you'll master the key features of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 in no time.

• 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

Widely praised for its in–depth coverage of Drupal internals, bestselling Pro Drupal Development has been completely updated for Drupal 6 in this latest edition, and there are even more tricks of the trade to help you further yourself as a professional Drupal developer.

Assuming you already know how to install and bring a standard installation online, John K. VanDyk gives you everything else you need to customize your Drupal installation however you see fit. Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition delves deep into Drupal internals, showing you how to take full advantage of its powerful architecture.

What you’ll learn

• Find out how to create your own modules, develop your own themes, and produce your own filters.
• Learn the inner workings of each key part of Drupal, including user management, sessions, the node system, caching, and the various APIs available to you.
• Discover how to optimize your Drupal installation to perform well under high–load situations.
• Gain the knowledge needed to secure your Drupal installation and other best practice techniques.
• Learn to integrate Ajax into and internationalize your Drupal web site.

Who is this book for?

Web developers maintaining and creating sites with Drupal. It is assumed that you already know the basics of Drupal and are able to install and bring up a basic installation. This book takes you deeper into the internals of Drupal and teaches how to tweak and modify it in order to create that perfect web site. Simply put, if you are working with Drupal, you need Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

Related Titles

• Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress
• Pro Drupal Development
• The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right
• Beginning Joomla!: From Novice to Professional

• Learn Flash design from the ground up, or just get to grips with the new features, with a series of step by step tutorials.
• Provides an easy introduction to ActionScript 3.0 coding, but the focus is mainly kept on design.
• Learn from the expertswritten by renowned Flash designers Tom Green and David Stiller.

What youll learn

• The ins and outs of the Flash CS3 interface
• How to use all of Flash CS3's essential features, such as text, graphics, and animation
• How to use video and sound effectively in Flash
• The basics of ActionScript 3.0
• Building Flash user interfaces rapidly using components.
• How to populate a Flash movie with dynamic data such as XML.
• The Basics of creating Flash Lite applications (Flash for mobile devices)
• Using Cascading Style Sheets with Flash
• Optimizing and publishing your Flash movies

Who is this book for?

Summary of Contents

• Chapter 1: Learning the Flash CS3 Professional
• Chapter 2: Graphics in Flash CS3
• Chapter 3: Symbols and Libraries
• Chapter 4: ActionScript Basics
• Chapter 5: Audio in Flash CS3
• Chapter 6 Text in Flash CS3
• Chapter 7: Animation in Flash CS3
• Chapter 8: Video in Flash
• Chapter 9: Using the Flash UI Components to Build Interfaces
• Chapter 10: CSS and Flash
• Chapter 11: Dynamic Data (XML) and Flash
• Chapter 12: Going Mobile in Flash
• Chapter 13: Optimizing Flash Movies
• Chapter 14: Publishing Flash Movies

Unlike other books that are big on potential and theory, ProBlogger provides results based on the authors own experience of what really works through practical, tried and tested advice. Inside readers will learn:

• How Bloggers Make Money
• Direct Income Earning vs. Indirect Income Earning methods
• Why Niches are Important
• Using 20 critical blogging tools
• 20 Ingredients for a successful blog post
• Optimizing advertising
• Which advertising platforms work best
• Expert analysis of Technocrat’s Top Blogs – why they work

and so much more.

Any artist can tell you that you have to know how a medium works to get the most impact from working in it. A basic understanding of how the Web works enables the good designer to create the most effective sites. This book thoroughly discusses the different kinds of graphics that are used on the Web, when to use one over another, how to make the most of text styles, and how to design navigation systems.

The comparisons are the best stuff here--good design vs. bad design, why designing Web pages is different from designing printed pages, and why a site looks terrific on one monitor but terrible on another. Two chapters on properly preparing graphics and setting typography for use on a Web site describe how to avoid obvious mistakes that would make your work look amateurish.

Not limited to design, The Non-Designer's Web Book shows how to get a site up and running, register the domain name, and add it to search engines. After the design is finished and implemented, the site has to be uploaded and updated; this is explained, too.

If there is one fault with this book, it's the lack of information on specific authoring tools. The barest overview of the current crop of tools appears in chapter 3, "Just What Are Web Pages, Anyway?", but a discussion of why you should choose one package over another is absent.

Don't let that fault stop you from buying this book, however. Plenty of magazines regularly have Web authoring tool "shootouts." What the magazines don't do, and what The Non-Designer's Web Book excels at, is tell you how to make well-designed pages. If you're going to build Web sites, for either personal or professional use, but you have no clue where to begin, start with this book. It's easy to read, devoid of confusing jargon, and full of dos and don'ts to help you avoid common snags. --Mike Caputo