web_development

Building Web Sites All-in-One For Dummies
$34.99
I just finished reading this book from cover to cover and, sadly, I have to agree with the negative tone of most comments here (up to the time of writing, that is).

- As heard though the grapevine, I concur that the book is published with too many "foolish assumptions" (as the authors themselves call them) in mind. Without any apparent reason, they assume the reader is going to do web designing for a living, repeatedly gearing every subject towards client-designer relations, client satisfaction and the such. There are whole chapters that would make little to no sense without this bias.

- Here comes a major problem for me. The authors' professional work as designers, as well as programmers is, well, not impressive. I guess I can't provide their URLs here, but just try Googling for their names and check them out. Oh, and try "Antonio's Winter Haven". That's good as well.

- They're not ashamed of it, either. Almost every example of web-designing they provide in the book refers to their own personnal or professional sites. In a book 762 pages long, that's a lot of self-promotion.

- In the same vein, well, this may be just me, but I'm also bothered by the authors' constant reference to how "Doug" or "Claudia" (the authors' first names) did this or that. Focus on the reader, will ya?

- The authors are an ex-web designer and a professional photographer, part-time web designer. They repeatedly claim throughout the book NOT to be programmers, which supposedly frees them from the hassle of providing any expertise on the subject. I don't claim, mind you, that they should go into fine detail concerning programming languages. What's more, it is certainly fine that they provide hints as to how to skip the programming part and use instead all the resources that the web provides. What bothers me is the uncertainty they leave you with. What with all the trickery they insist on using to escape the tough programming bits, and after seeing what they have to offer for themselves in the personnal pages they so wildly promote, I wonder if there are many things left unexplained, many resources they don't know about or are unable to handle?

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In general, I can't say I'm unhappy about having bought and read this book. I DID learn many things I needed to know about web designing, web maintenance and so on.

I did not have a problem with tools such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver being used as teaching material for the book. After all, they are the sector standards, so if a piece of software is to be used as example, let it be them. The authors do, in general, offer choices as to what software to use for each particular task (although there does seem to be an obvious bias towards Adobe products).

This just could AND SHOULD have been a better book in so many ways. I very much enjoy 'Dummies' books spirit and approach, but if this is where they're going, I'm opting out. Readers of a book do not need to excel in the field concerned. Authors do.

Web Design & Development
$39.95
I have had the good fortune of both purchasing this book, and meeting the wonderful young author Kelly Valqui as her student at Miami-Dade. She is a wonderful teacher who shares her enthusiasm, knowledge and experience of Web technology in the classroom, unselfishly. This book is an awesome resource for any Web designer's library. It covers HTML, Javascritpt, CSS, other technologies and a lot of insight that is not offered in any other book. I will always be a dedicated reader of Kelly's books.

Web Development and Design Foundations with XHTML (4th Edition)
$89.00
This book is very well laid out and clear to understand with logical excercises. It provides website support with additional learning files. Although not inexpensive, it provides an excellent way to learn XHTML and cascading style sheets. It is the text used for my website development college class.

Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual
$29.99
What's GOOD: A must have for any beginning web site developer. I continue to find this book an excellent resource as I develop my website.

What's BAD: Beware of sources/websites within the book. I did a lot of additional research on hosting solutions as recommended in the book and initially went with aplus.net (who is featured in the book also). After working on my site and looking at some other features I wanted to take advantage of, I canceled the aplus.net hosting solution and went with another provider. Needless to say, it has been 25+ days since the cancellation and aplus.net has not processed the refund (it's still "pending"). Shame on the author and publisher for including references to a company with such POOR business practices.