creative html design.2: Amazon.ca: Lynda Weinman, William Weinman: Books

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Who better to ease you into the detailed world of HTML coding (where even an errant spacebar can gum up your creative masterpiece) than well-known Web design instructor Lynda Weinman? The first edition of Creative HTML Design.2 came out over three years ago and the Web has changed a lot in that time. Novices will appreciate this HTML primer that not only helps in hand-coding Web pages but also in troubleshooting the HTML generated by WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver and GoLive and image/animation applications like Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop and ImageReady.

Creative HTML Design.2 covers basic page structure, images and compression, colour, links, buttons, transparency, typography, organisation, style sheets, navigation, rollovers, forms and other issues. (A good description of the first edition, including a sample chapter, can currently be found at www.lynda.com; this new edition will most likely be detailed there soon as well. They also maintain an errata section, important for any book that includes code.) Lynda Weinman's specialty is her friendly yet tech-savvy teaching style--there aren't many who can walk readers through the minutiae of client-side image map coordinates and not confuse them (or bore them to tears). Brother Gary, an engineer and programmer, presumably provides the finer points of HTML, plus the JavaScript and CGI scripts. The book offers all the good aspects of Weinman's other popular books--text that's affable yet clear, with a view to anticipating problems beginners may stumble into, lesson projects that are neither too complex nor aesthetically amateur, and a book layout that doesn't crowd pages but rather serves up mini-steps and clearly captioned screenshots in easily digested morsels.

With editors that do it all like Dreamweaver and GoLive, why would a non-tech-head Web designer want to learn HTML? As Weinman explains, "The advantage of knowing and understanding HTML is that you are in better control of knowing what is possible and what is not." Even if you use an HTML editor, you will at some point have to go "under the hood" and fix troubled code and even a little familiarity can make a big difference in relieving Web design stress. --Angelynn Grant

Book Description

Stock the newest edition from the international best-selling authors Lynda and William Weinman.
Replace an existing bestseller with a new version and maximize your shelf space and stocking.
Designers learn advanced html and the coding theory and techniques to improve their Web design.
The Weinmans show how to get the most out of todays technologies. Lynda and William Weinman circle back to update this HTML guide and to add their unique creative energy and wisdom to the first edition, best known for its unique quality of combining solid design with coding technique and HTML theory. This second edition will incorporate the significant changes in Web tools and technology since this original edition published in December 1997. Updated content includes coverage of Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, GoLive! and more! In standard Lynda Weinman style, you will find easy reading, straightforward talk - practical "how tos" that reads like you expect her to talk--with just the right amount of coding and technical coverage to provide you with a solid HTML guide.
Lynda Weinman has written several bestselling Web design books, among them, three editions of designing web graphics and creative html design. She also runs Lynda.com and a computer design instructional center in Ojai, California.
William Weinman has written or co-authored books on Web development, and is a Web developer and consultant.

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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4.1 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars On the short list, Feb 28 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: creative html design.2 (Paperback)

Five stars. I recommend <creative html design.2> to any one getting started with the creation of web sites. This book should be on the short list of books to read for creating websites. It covers more than html, and that is good. I benefited from reading it after having taken courses in web design and web programming. Reading it would be also be excellent preparation for taking a web related course. Several of its strengths are: it is co-authored by a graphic designer and techie/programmer (brother and sister), it includes a CD with the files referenced in the book, in includes an excellent html reference section, and there are a number of exercises. As many exercise as there are I would have liked more. The copyright date is 2001. I did not identify any soft spots but would estimate its shelf life will expire the end of 2003. That is the way it is with books about topics such as this. Even then it is should be a solid reference for a number of years.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Beginner's Guide to NOT SO CREATIVE HTML, Nov 9 2001

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Jared D. Matfess "J-Rod" (Ellington, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: creative html design.2 (Paperback)

When I was told that this book was going to be used for my technology class I was kind of excited because I am fairly familiar with the Lynda.com material. I had picked up her Learning Flash 5 CD-ROM and walked away with a feeling that it was money well spent, and that I had come away with a great deal of knowledge about Flash. Now keeping this in mind, when I picked up this title and read through it (mind you unlike some reviewers I read cover to cover), I did not feel like there was too much content that I could walk away with and use in any real world situtation. The techniques she used, produced very amateur-like pages that would not pass for a high school student's work. Mind you, for some of the fundamental HTML concepts the book was good, but for any real world stuff I felt like I was lookig at those pages where you know the person made it in Frontpage 98' without the plug-ins. Any of the cool stuff like the Javascript Rollovers was gone over so rushed and with so little detail, that it would have been better to have omitted it from the book. I am sorry this book just really was not worth the money.. I would look to that HTML Quickstart book over this one any day.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good Combination of Design and Code for Beginners, Sep 27 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: creative html design.2 (Paperback)

I like the idea of combining a designer and a developer to create an HTML book. The "family reunion" at the front of the book is banal and adds nothing to the book, but once by that, it's pretty smooth sailing.

What the book successfully does is to show that creating a good Web site is not a matter of simply knowing the code but correctly preparing the graphics and working them into HTML. They use PhotoShop 6, but I was able to fumble through using an older version of PhotoShop and even Fireworks for readying the graphics. The exercises are helpful and simple enough for beginners.

Some of the chapters, like one on bullets and horizontal rules was a bit overblown even for beginners. However, the bulk of the book is a gentle path to working with HTML and graphics. The online site (Ducks in a Row) is only so-so design wise, and the CD files needed for the exercises aren't always complete but enough to work through the exercises. The chapter on transparencies in GIF files was excellent and contained lots of good information and exercises.

My favorite part of the book lies in the Appendices. The authors compile the tags and their associated attributes in several tables so it is a good reference for later use at a more advanced level. They did not include every Maverick tag and attribute that Netscape and Microsoft like to drop in but stuck with the W3C standard as far as I could see.

Overall, when a beginner is finished with this book she'll be ready for intermediate level material for developing Web sites, and if that is the book's goal, it accomplishes it nicely.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for everyone - REALLY everyone!
The book covers all the topics you may encounter while designing a web page, whether it's a simple personal one, or a complex site. Read more

Published on Aug 1 2001 by napraforgo

2.0 out of 5 stars Am I alone in thinking this is not a useful book?
I did not find this book at all helpful.

One major problem is that all the graphics techniques are for users of Adobe Photoshop 6 only. Read more