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Deliver First Class Web Sites
Michael J. Ross writes "Experienced and conscientious Web developers, in their efforts to learn from the mistakes of others and to avoid repeating them on their own projects, tend to accumulate tips and recommendations for the many aspects of successfully creating Web sites. These best practices take the form of bookmarked Web pages, saved articles, downloaded PDF files, scribbled notes on scraps of paper, and hastily created documents that will be better organized one of these days, when the developer's schedule becomes less hectic (sure...). Being difficult if not impossible to find later, these pearls of wisdom are rarely consulted before or during each new Web site project. What the developer needs is a book that brings together as many of these best practices as possible, without being overwhelming. Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists may be the answer." Read the rest of Michael's review.
Deliver First Class Web Sites
author
Shirley Kaiser
pages
331
publisher
SitePoint
rating
8
reviewer
Michael J. Ross
ISBN
0975841904
summary
A collection of Web site development best practices.
Authored by Shirley Kaiser, this book was published by SitePoint in July 2006, under the ISBN 0975841904. The publisher maintains a Web page devoted to the book, where visitors will find the book's table of contents online, a free preview (chapters 6, 12, and 14, in PDF format), editorial and customer reviews, a link to download all of the checklists (also in PDF) for all customers, links and an FAQ for ordering directly from SitePoint, and errata (none reported, as of this writing). The fact that SitePoint is willing to allow readers to post unmoderated comments and ratings of their books, suggests that it has real confidence in the quality of the book's material and readers' evaluations of it.
The aforesaid Web page also offers an online version of the index, but without any of the book's page numbers. At first glance, this might seem rather odd, but it does make some sense: Page numbers online would be of little use without the book itself, which of course already contains the index. Perhaps the index keys are offered to supplement the table of contents in helping the prospective customer learn what topics are covered in the book. In any case, this is the first time that I have seen a book's index online, and it will likely not be the last, if other publishers see the value in following suit.
In the preface, Shirley Kaiser explains that the book is intended to be "...a single source of solid information on best practices for everything from planning, designing, developing, and testing, to launching a web site and maintaining it in the long term. By compiling all this information into checklists, we've turned a vast wealth of detail into convenient, easy-to-scan, simple-to-use chunks organized by topic." A technical reader quickly scanning the book, would likely conclude that the author's goal has been achieved, because the book's 101 checklists comprise over 500 checkpoints, and almost all of them are expanded with at least a paragraph of more detailed explanation; many have accompanying code or images to illustrate the checkpoint.
The book's 331 pages of material are organized into 16 chapters, followed by an appendix that focuses on e-commerce advice. The topics covered in the chapters are: how to get started on a Web development project; planning the Web site with a client; assembling the site's content; managing that content; site usability; color schemes and functionality; information architecture; designing the site's navigation; W3C standards and recommendations; site accessibility; optimization of site performance; search engine optimization; design principles; site testing, including accessibility and usability; launch preparation and execution; post-launch follow-up and maintenance.
In terms of the specificity and usefulness of the checkpoints, they are not all consistently stellar, which arguably would have been an impossible expectation anyway. They range from the obvious (e.g., "Use consistent markup") to the not-so-obvious but equally valid (e.g., "Perform content audits"). Some of the checkpoints may on the surface appear mundane, but they could be a lifesaver further down the road, should a project turn sour (e.g., "Archive a copy of the handover package"). Some of them may seem painfully obvious to any decent developer (e.g., "Check all hyperlinks" and "Test all scripting functions"), but even the majority of those are violated on a daily basis, even by major Web sites, which have no excuse for such sloppiness.
The primary value of this book is how it neatly consolidates a considerable amount of worthy advice culled from the author's research and decade in the trenches of the Internet. The book probably will not replace all of the best practices that any top-notch developer will have assembled over the years — especially as none of it addresses advanced topics — but it could easily serve as a solid foundation upon which to add any supplemental recommendations that the book does not cover. Moreover, the book's material is presented in a fairly concise and quite readable format, making use of what appears to be a font slightly larger than is found in the typical computer programming book.
My only complaint with this title is the way that SitePoint continues to include a growing number of advertising pages, at the end of the book, with the bulk of each page black (sometimes even a bit smeared), and containing absolutely no details about the books being advertised. When SitePoint first began publishing books, if memory serves, they would only include one or two such over-the-top pages — possibly because they had so few titles to advertise at the inception. But now they are truly overdoing it. In Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists, no fewer than a dozen pages are wasted on this unwanted advertising. It would have been far more effective and efficient to simply list the 11 books' titles with a brief summary of each. Whoever decided to waste all that paper and ink, clearly did not read and understand some of the most basic checkpoints presented earlier in the book concerning type size and page content.
But overall, Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists is a much-needed book that brings together a wide range of valuable Web development best practices.
Michael J. Ross is a computer consultant, freelance writer, and the editor of PristinePlanet.com's free newsletter."
You can purchase Deliver First Class Web Sites from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Authored by Shirley Kaiser, this book was published by SitePoint in July 2006, under the ISBN 0975841904. The publisher maintains a Web page devoted to the book, where visitors will find the book's table of contents online, a free preview (chapters 6, 12, and 14, in PDF format), editorial and customer reviews, a link to download all of the checklists (also in PDF) for all customers, links and an FAQ for ordering directly from SitePoint, and errata (none reported, as of this writing). The fact that SitePoint is willing to allow readers to post unmoderated comments and ratings of their books, suggests that it has real confidence in the quality of the book's material and readers' evaluations of it.
The aforesaid Web page also offers an online version of the index, but without any of the book's page numbers. At first glance, this might seem rather odd, but it does make some sense: Page numbers online would be of little use without the book itself, which of course already contains the index. Perhaps the index keys are offered to supplement the table of contents in helping the prospective customer learn what topics are covered in the book. In any case, this is the first time that I have seen a book's index online, and it will likely not be the last, if other publishers see the value in following suit.
In the preface, Shirley Kaiser explains that the book is intended to be "...a single source of solid information on best practices for everything from planning, designing, developing, and testing, to launching a web site and maintaining it in the long term. By compiling all this information into checklists, we've turned a vast wealth of detail into convenient, easy-to-scan, simple-to-use chunks organized by topic." A technical reader quickly scanning the book, would likely conclude that the author's goal has been achieved, because the book's 101 checklists comprise over 500 checkpoints, and almost all of them are expanded with at least a paragraph of more detailed explanation; many have accompanying code or images to illustrate the checkpoint.
The book's 331 pages of material are organized into 16 chapters, followed by an appendix that focuses on e-commerce advice. The topics covered in the chapters are: how to get started on a Web development project; planning the Web site with a client; assembling the site's content; managing that content; site usability; color schemes and functionality; information architecture; designing the site's navigation; W3C standards and recommendations; site accessibility; optimization of site performance; search engine optimization; design principles; site testing, including accessibility and usability; launch preparation and execution; post-launch follow-up and maintenance.
In terms of the specificity and usefulness of the checkpoints, they are not all consistently stellar, which arguably would have been an impossible expectation anyway. They range from the obvious (e.g., "Use consistent markup") to the not-so-obvious but equally valid (e.g., "Perform content audits"). Some of the checkpoints may on the surface appear mundane, but they could be a lifesaver further down the road, should a project turn sour (e.g., "Archive a copy of the handover package"). Some of them may seem painfully obvious to any decent developer (e.g., "Check all hyperlinks" and "Test all scripting functions"), but even the majority of those are violated on a daily basis, even by major Web sites, which have no excuse for such sloppiness.
The primary value of this book is how it neatly consolidates a considerable amount of worthy advice culled from the author's research and decade in the trenches of the Internet. The book probably will not replace all of the best practices that any top-notch developer will have assembled over the years — especially as none of it addresses advanced topics — but it could easily serve as a solid foundation upon which to add any supplemental recommendations that the book does not cover. Moreover, the book's material is presented in a fairly concise and quite readable format, making use of what appears to be a font slightly larger than is found in the typical computer programming book.
My only complaint with this title is the way that SitePoint continues to include a growing number of advertising pages, at the end of the book, with the bulk of each page black (sometimes even a bit smeared), and containing absolutely no details about the books being advertised. When SitePoint first began publishing books, if memory serves, they would only include one or two such over-the-top pages — possibly because they had so few titles to advertise at the inception. But now they are truly overdoing it. In Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists, no fewer than a dozen pages are wasted on this unwanted advertising. It would have been far more effective and efficient to simply list the 11 books' titles with a brief summary of each. Whoever decided to waste all that paper and ink, clearly did not read and understand some of the most basic checkpoints presented earlier in the book concerning type size and page content.
But overall, Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists is a much-needed book that brings together a wide range of valuable Web development best practices.
Michael J. Ross is a computer consultant, freelance writer, and the editor of PristinePlanet.com's free newsletter."
You can purchase Deliver First Class Web Sites from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
It's not necessarily a checklist. It's clean, consistent design based on outstanding communication with your client. You can build the best design in the history of Web design, but if it doesn't match the vision of your client, then you are simply toast.
Surely by definition, a conscientious web developer would be exactly the person who wouldn't, in fact, have all their heuristics and guidelines lying around on pieces of paper/mental notes/etc?
Not to discount the book, but I know in at least the case of the firm I work for, we wikify such matters, and they're regularly converted to a more formal procedures manual. Is this unusual for web development?
Perfecting the art of insanity since 1982
not to be flamebait or anything, but atleast I was not impressed with his sample creations..
For some reason Slashdot links to B & N, but if you look at the Amazon listing [amazon.com], you can see that some sellers are offering the book considerably cheaper.
http://slashdot.org/book.review.guidelines.shtml :
Speaking of links, please do not include links in your reviews to online bookstores. Slashdot has an linking arrangement with Barnes & Noble; that's why when bn.com carries a particular book, you'll see a link to it at the bottom of the review.
Never, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason, no matter how much you are paid, threatened or if everyone else is doing it, use Flash for your opening page.
Nothing short of an excessively annoying car commercial which perpetually runs on local radio stations makes my hand move faster than to get away from a site where Flash is required to see what's there.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I looked through the review for an idea of what the phrase "first class" might mean to the writers, but I didn't spot it. This was a way of getting at the real question: What sort of web site is being pushed here?
;-)
My suspicion, based on lots of other similar examples of advice on building web sites the Right Way, is that "first class" means flashy and entertaining. Maybe I'm wrong, but experience here says to expect the worst.
Not that I'm objecting to that. There's a demand for entertainment on the web. But there's also a demand for informative sites, and the design criteria for information and entertainment are very different.
Most of the web sites I've been involved with are of the informative type. For such sites, the canonical "first class" site is google.com, not (for example) yahoo.com. For a more complex site, news.google.com works pretty well.
But I didn't get a feel from the review or the author's web site what their criteria for "first class" might be. Unless I get a clear idea what sort of web site is being pushed, I probably won't be spending my money on any book of advice.
(I might also obsever that most entertainment sites are really in need of good advice on how to do the job right. But I probably don't need to tell that to anyone who visits them often.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
One thing I'd like to see more of in web development are keyboard shortcuts. (This really only applies to websites built for the backend, not so much the front end.) The problem is that websites tend to be a very cumbersome tool as far as human computer interaction is concerned; after all, web pages were originally intended to view documents! Web developers need to program more javascript shortcuts in to their code. Even just simple stuff, like instead of searching for the next button with your mouse, just being able to press 'n'. Want to view a support ticket? Just press 's' and the ticket number. Worker productivity would skyrocket.
Most people perceive "new web technology" as an end in itself, and will rewrite all their software to be web-based without realizing the strengths and weaknesses of the new platform. When this happens, you get is really really bad software. For example, I know some people who work in customer service who were moved off of a telnet based support system to a web gui and lost their minds when a single command line entry became 5 mouse clicks and lots of scrolling with 1 second page loads.
One thing that really bothers me about many web sites is this: If I have to enter my name, address etc., I frequently find that the web page designer thinks that all countries are the same.
I may find that I am required to write in which state I live. My country doesn't have states.
Or I may be required to write a 10-digit phone number. My phone number has 8 digits.
Or I may be forced to put the postal code after the city. In my country, the postal code goes before the city.
Dear web form designers: It is not unreasonable to expect that people know how to write their own address correctly. You don't have to check everything for them. (Especially if you don't know what to check for.)
</rant>
All kidding aside, based on the Table of Contents this seems to be just an updated version of "How to Design A Website", albeit it looks a bit more detailed than those versions of the past. I like that they mention things like "backups" and other useful topics for the serious mom-and-pop sites (at least they will know what a backup is!)
Still, imagine what those books from the 90's would look like to a modern website developer...
The reviewer mentions that "none of it addresses advanced topics" which to me indicates that yeah, it's great for getting started (as the title suggests) but you should read it fast... the content is probably already out of date. In my opinion, the dead-tree versions of "How to Design a Website" are a bit of an anachronism in this day and age.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin