Photoshop Tricks

5 Comments for this entry

• M. Duffield
  August 6th, 2010 on 3:37 pm

  Review by M. Duffield for Head First Web Design
  Rating:
  As a member of its target audience, I found this to be a tremendous book. It’s perfect for web developers who know (X)HTML and CSS but are clueless when it comes to the design process itself. The only thing to beware of is the large number of errors that should have been caught in the editing process.

  I do a decent amount of PHP/MySQL and Javascript/AJAX work, so I have to already know how HTML & CSS operate. I don’t need to be told what a div element is, or what a style declaration looks like. I am the least creative person on the planet, though, and this book feels like it was written specifically for me. I can’t think of higher praise than that. It takes you through the process of building a site – not just what a good webpage looks like, but how a whole site is structured and fits together and ways to make that come alive through design. I never felt confused, but never felt like the authors were moving too slowly, either.

  This is my third book by Head First (I also have the HTML and AJAX books), so I already knew that I liked the Head First writing style – perhaps a little light on technical side, but the lessons get driven home. The reader simply retains material from these books, and that is tough to find in most technical books on the market.

  Again, the only thing to watch out for is the sloppy editing; there were a few too many editing errors for my taste. I still gave the book five stars, though, because it was just that good.
• Ira Laefsky
  August 6th, 2010 on 3:51 pm

  Review by Ira Laefsky for Head First Web Design
  Rating:
  Head First Web Design is a invaluable tool in planning and building web sites and follows the excellent pedagogical principles of other books
  
  in the Head First series. It is also unique in teaching the entire life cycle of building a usable, information-rich, beautiful, navigable, and accessible web site, and not being confined to illustrating the graphical layout of beautiful web pages. It illustrates, the sketching, information design, navigation, and customer interaction issues involved in developing a sophisticated, content-filled web site and prepares the developer to perform a well-managed design and implementation process. The guide does assume that the prospective web designer have familiarity with HTML, XHTML, and CSS, but that is an entirely reasonable assumption for any web designer and is well served by the HTML/XHTML volume in the Head First Series. This is an excellent and most necessary book for the design of sophisticated information architectures, and usable beautiful web sites that serve both the user and the organization that commissioned them.
  
  –Ira Laefsky
• S. Wichmann
  August 6th, 2010 on 4:25 pm

  Review by S. Wichmann for Head First Web Design
  Rating:
  Don’t let the cover deter you… there’s a wealth of knowledge beneath it. As a somewhat practiced web-developer, I found this book to be quite a fresh and at times rather humorous approach to a subject many of us tend to marginalize in our work: the design process. From devising color schemes to navigation and content hierarchies, the book covers a lot ground and contains some pretty good exercises (though none too technical) for both novice and experienced web designers/developers. Naturally, it does a great job of illustrating how implementing good design practices in your work will translate into (and improve) your coding. I particularly found the chapter on Accessibility to be rather useful, as it is another thing a lot of us tend to forget about when creating websites…On that count, I am guilty as charged.
• Franco Arda
  August 6th, 2010 on 4:52 pm

  Review by Franco Arda for Head First Web Design
  Rating:
  Head First brought us another a masterpiece in the usual brain-friendly way. After studying this book you’ll ‘master’ pre-production, information architecture, navigation, color, and even accessibility.

  WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR? If you can answer ‘YES’ to all of these;
  
  1) you’re comfortable with XHTML & CSS but don’t have experience with web design.
  
  2) do you consider yourself a web developer (PHP, Ruby on Rails, .NET) and want to become a better web designer?
  
  3) do you need to understand web design for a course or your line of work?

  TABLE OF CONTENTS (in brakets are my comments)
  
  1 Building Beautiful Web Pages (know your audience, design for your users)
  
  2 Pre-Production (start with paper, pencil, and a big fat pink eraser)
  
  3 Organize Your Site
  
  4 Layout and Design (some golden rules incl the Golden Ratio)
  
  5 Desinging With Color (the color wheel & more … excellent!)
  
  6 Smart Navigation
  
  7 Writing For The Web (…is different!)
  
  8 Accesibility
  
  9 Listen to Your Users
  
  10 Evolutionary Design (keeping your site fresh/design updated)
  
  11 The Business of Web Design (great basic stuff for those turning ‘pro’)
• kate bait
  August 6th, 2010 on 4:57 pm

  Review by kate bait for Head First Web Design
  Rating:
  as a beginner new to web design, html, etc., and having just finished head start’s html and css with xhtml and finding it to be very well organized, informative and a great introduction to learning css, i was looking forward to head start’s web design book as a logical next step to building my knowledge of web design. as Angela Tate stated in her review, “there is little within the Head First Web Design to justify its nearly 500 pages.” i am halfway through the book and would have to agree. i am so frustrated that i’ve come so far in the book and feel like maybe i’ve learned 5-7 tid bits of information that i could keep on mini post it notes. the excerises also feel rather contrived. you find yourself asking, is it necessary to actually do this and what am i going to get out of it? it’s feels more like information was created to fill a need for exerices, or a side note space had to be filled so a side not was written. structure drove the content, rather than the content driving structure. i didn’t feel that way about the exercises or any of the information in the previous book…