The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

Trent Lucier writes "Fellow programmers, beware! Graphic designers have been invading our territory. A flood of books have been released aimed at artists who want to learn web development skills. Oh, it starts innocently enough, usually with CSS and XHTML. But soon they are learning JavaScript, PHP, and even SQL! What have we techies fought back with? What material is there for us to boost our artistic right-brain power? Sadly, our motley collection of Gimp tutorials alone will not win this battle. We need something stronger. We need to understand the principles of graphic design. But the shelves have been empty of books that make this topic accessible to tech-minded people. Well, empty until now." Read below for the rest of Trent's review. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design author Jason Beaird pages 180 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 7 reviewer Trent Lucier ISBN 0975841963 summary A book aimed at developers who want to learn how to make websites look more attractive The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird is aimed at developers who want to learn how to make websites look more attractive. The 5 chapters each cover one of the pillars of graphic design theory: Layout, Color, Texture, Typography, and Imagery. Full-color and packed with lots of great examples, the book contains screenshots from dozens of modern websites to illustrate graphic design principles. A cumulative case-study ends each chapter, where the author shows you how the theories he just explained can be applied to a real site he is developing for a client.

Except for some CSS sprinkled here and there, the book contains no code. Don't look for tips on creating 3-column layouts or other stylesheet wizardry, because you won't find it here. The author assumes that you know how to take an image mock-up and convert it into an HTML/CSS document. This is a strong point of the book, since the focus can remain on graphic design techniques and not unnecessary code listings Additionally, there isn't much discussion of tool usage. A few examples use Photoshop, but the book focuses mostly on theory and case studies, not step-by-step program tutorials.

The book starts with Layout and Composition. If you have ever wondered why some websites just look better organized than others, this chapter will explain why. Beaird discusses the concepts of grid theory, and how using the golden ratio to divide page elements can improve the visual appeal. Plenty of examples are given that illustrate the principles of balance, unity, and emphasis.

The Color chapter contains my favorite example, where Beaird uses different versions of the same drawing to describe monochromatic, analogous, and complementary colors. As with the previous chapter on layout, this part of the book does an excellent job of teaching you how to learn from attractive websites, instead of mindlessly imitating them. Color is a hard topic to understand, but there are some good tips here that teach readers how to create an appealing palette for a website.

Relying solely on solid colors and grid layouts can make a website look flat. The Texture chapter discusses ways to use style and make your designs much more eye catching. This chapter is probably the most "Web 2.0" chapter in the book. Gel buttons, gradients, and backgrounds are all discussed.

To the dismay of typophiles everywhere, font support on the web is very poor. There are very few "web safe" fonts that designers can safely assume are on all computers. The Typography section shows readers how to make the most out of this situation by understanding letter spacing, justification, and font usage. Beaird also discusses the sIFR technique (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), which uses Flash and Javascript to display fonts that may not be on the user's computer. The sIFR method is accessible and degrades gracefully. While the book does not discuss the specific implementation details of this method, just bringing it to my attention taught me something new.

Imagery is the subject of the final chapter, and the book ends on a disappointing note. Very little of this section is about the graphic design principles behind imagery. Rather, precious pages are dedicated to discussing various license agreements and tips on finding stock photos. This is useful information, but it should have been relegated to a sidebar at the most. The chapter focuses almost entirely on images as content and not as design elements. If you want to know how to make images in a blog post look pretty, there are some ideas here (drop-shadows, borders). But there is no information about how to work images into a page header or navigation menu. How do I determine if an image matches my color scheme? How can images spice up a design without going overboard? These were just some of the questions I had going into this chapter that were left unanswered. The Texture chapter hinted at these ideas with examples, but I wanted to see a deeper explanation of the underlying principles.

The book is a little short at 180 pages, but that's not as bad as it may seem. Those of us accustomed to reading 800-page tomes on programming tend to forget how much content can be packed into a book when the author doesn't have to waste 300 pages listing code, 200 pages on the API, and 150 pages on an index.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is a good book to kick start your graphic-design journey. The biggest benefit that I got from this book is the knowledge to learn from great designs as opposed to just admiring them in a state of awe. The book could have been a little longer, and some of the topics could have been discussed in more detail. This book won't teach you everything, but it's a good place to start and it will leave you excited about learning more.

Trent Lucier is a software engineer. He is the creator of ChessUp, a tool for creating chess diagrams online.

You can purchase The Principles of Beautiful Web Design from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Give me Edward Tufte

[Timesprout]

Anyday

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Doctor Memory]

Tufte doesn't say squat about web design. He doesn't really get into page or content design at all. He's all about the presentation of data, and how to try to turn it into information. He'll tell you that you should stick to primary colors or simple textures, but he'd try to dissuade you from adding a drop shadow to your graphic (indeed, from even adding a graphic if it wasn't intimately related to the data set you were trying to present).

He's the man if you're trying to present data, but if you want to present text or other non-numeric information, he's not much help.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Timesprout]

That's the whole point. I would prefer a clear and informative website rather than someone elses interpretation of 'beautiful', because we all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Billosaur]

I would prefer a clear and informative website rather than someone elses interpretation of 'beautiful'...

Amen. If you want art, go to an art gallery. I want websites to be clean, functional, easy-to-navigate, and more importantly, I want to be able to find the information I'm looking for without having to hunt through and around annoying graphics and being subjected to vomit-inducing color schemes.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[fbjon]

Humans share a lot of common points in their interpretations of beautiful. These can be learned, and exploited. Don't kid yourself, beautiful is always better than ugly.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Anonymous Coward]

...but if you want to present text or other non-numeric information, he's not much help.

Not true. "The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information" is (generally) about the presentation of numeric data, but the other books are less about data and more about presenting ideas. He's not what you would call a graphic designer, but you can learn quite a bit from him about how to present information

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Anonymous Coward]

beautiful is always better than ugly.

But never better than useful, useable, clear, available, working - in fact, beauty is WAAAAAAAAY down the list

Tragically, this hasn't sunk in for most web designers.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[fbjon]

Of the things you mentioned I would say:

• useful: can be assumed (otherwise you might as well not make the page)
• clear: IMHO intrinsic to beautiful
• available, working: not related to the topic
• useable: in other words,useful and non-convoluted, i.e. clear

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[PhoenixSnow]

I just went to E. Tufte's one day class yesterday. It was not as useful as it'd been hyped up to be. However, I don't think he was just all about numbers. He did have a great deal of knowledge on how to present the information in general. The main component that's lacking in his books/class was understanding of the users as an average person on the street with no scientific background. He actually said, " yeah it's good to know your audience but it really doesn't matter." and he was all about 'high resolution' data. In my opinion, there's such a thing as reducing the resolution (by resolution, he means data/information) for the sake of clarity. From all the books I've read, Robin William's Non-Designer's Design Book is probably the most effective book to teach myself some visual and graphic design. Another good one is Steve Krug's 'Don't make me think'. But it's more web design than graphic design. The old classic 'Design of Everyday Things' is very dry and it probably was really useful when most people didn't know the usability fundamentals. But now, it just seems like everyone already knows the basic principles and it's not adding much more value anymore.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[T3kno]

I would argue that functionality is also in the eye of the beholder. Our brains work differently, which is why we all have preferences in art, music, etc... including functionality. Certain sites, designed by very well paid people make absolutely no sense to me, I for one hate Amazon's interface, but that's me. Obviously they spent a lot of money and research time to develop a site that works for most people, to my eyes it pretty much sucks.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a designer, not an artist. Please, understand the difference.
I am not annoyed, I would like people to say what they mean.
I got these definitions through Omni dictionary.

The fine arts are those which have primarily to do with
            imagination and taste, and are applied to the production
            of what is beautiful. They include poetry, music,
            painting, engraving, sculpture, and architecture; but the
            term is often confined to painting, sculpture, and
            architecture.
  design

                  The approach that engineering (and some other)
                disciplines use to specify how to create or do something. A
                successful design must satisfies a (perhaps informal)
                functional specification (do what it was designed to do);
                conforms to the limitations of the target medium (it is
                possible to implement); meets implicit or explicit
                requirements on performance and resource usage (it is
                efficient enough).

                A design may also have to satisfy restrictions on the design
                process itself, such as its length or cost, or the tools
                available for doing the design.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[EvanED]

Amen. If you want art, go to an art gallery.

What about the website of an art gallery?

And why should these aesthetic presence and ease-of-use conflict?

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[ShieldW0lf]

There are two approaches to setting usability goals. One goal is to make the system as easy as possible for someone who doesn't know what they're doing to use. This approach is best for transient users, such as customers buying big ticket items that won't frequently patronize the site. It's also best when you're presenting internal use stuff to executive clients, because they're usually far removed from the day to day operations of the company and will not be the "power users" of the software. Artists are usually more adept at designing for this goal, because the demands of their job require that they be more closely in tune with other people than the next person. The other goal is to make use of the system as efficient as possible for someone who has taken the time to learn it inside out. I think of it as "make it as easy as possible for someone who has already completed each task three times". This is the best approach for expert systems where the person can be expected to dedicate several hours of each day to using it as part of their job, and it's reasonable to expect them to work at learning. It's also best when you want to make it easy for frequently returning customers to be impulse-sold, like Amazon. Propeller heads are usually more adept at designing for this goal, because the demands of their job require that they be more closely in tune with the underlying system. Most cases end up with some degree of compromise between the two goals, some duplication of user interface into "Expert Mode" and "Novice Mode", and some clutter in the interface to bridge the gap. That would be Amazon.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Ikoma Andy]

That's the whole point. I would prefer a clear and informative website rather than someone elses interpretation of 'beautiful', because we all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That's exactly why WoW send Blizzard into Bankruptcy and everybody plays Nethack now.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[endianx]

That is one of the most common mistakes we software engineers make. Design software to be how we want it, not how the users want it. The users want a slow loading flash page with lots of sounds and a delay due to animation every time you click on something.

Functional pages that present information clearly without use of graphics seem to make users think along the lines of "well, this page looks 'good' like all the other ones, it must not have good information."

A site like this just does not resonate with users today, elegant in its simplicity though it may be.

If you are working on a personal blog or something, you can do it however you want. They don't like your design, screw em, they can go somewhere else. But if you are working on a professional site, you do not have that luxury.

Just my opinion at least. I'm not a great web programming, and certainly not a good designer.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Blakey Rat]

And why should these aesthetic presence and ease-of-use conflict?

Unix geeks think that anything that looks good MUST by extension be badly designed. This doesn't apply in any other field. In fact, pilots are known for judging the quality of an aircraft by its appearance... the best planes just *look* like they belong in the air.

When asked about OS X compositing effects, they assume the only purpose is to look good and not to assist in usability. Anybody who's even glanced at the Expose feature in OS X can dispute that easily.

Heck, even Slashdot itself:

You most likely are not so interested in yourself, and probably would be more interested in the Preferences links you see up top there, where you can customize Slashdot, change your password, or just click pretty widgets to kill time.

When you visit a user page. (And, BTW, web widgets look like ASS if you use the default appearance. They're the opposite of pretty widgets.)

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[endianx]

well, this page looks 'good' like all the other ones, it must not have good information. I meant to say doesn't look good. =X

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[dr.badass]

He'll tell you that you should stick to primary colors or simple textures, but he'd try to dissuade you from adding a drop shadow to your graphic (indeed, from even adding a graphic if it wasn't intimately related to the data set you were trying to present)

I wouldn't say this a bad recommendation, it's just not in line with web design trends, and thus useless to anyone that has to listen to client requests. While I agree with your premise that he doesn't say anything about web design in particular, I would still suggest that anyone doing web design should at least be familiar with his work.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[nick.ian.k]

I don't know, I have a tough time taking Tufte seriously when his site (edwardtufte.com) is a horrible mess in terms of organization. He's got a lot of interesting things to say, he writes well, and I even like his prints, but man...just look at that steamer

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[dr.badass]

The old classic 'Design of Everyday Things' is very dry and it probably was really useful when most people didn't know the usability fundamentals. But now, it just seems like everyone already knows the basic principles and it's not adding much more value anymore.

Emotional Design, by the same author, is a lot juicier. It almost entirely concerns industrial design as well, but as with any good design book the valuable concepts can be applied elsewhere.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Using the Great Repository of Knowledge Myspace as a guide, they are apparrently one and the same.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[mightyQuin]

Agreed - I like to check out the site map, in a lot of cases it's the uncluttered view that I wanted in the first place.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[Doctor Memory]

I would still suggest that anyone doing web design should at least be familiar with his work Oh, definitely. I think that anyone who produces or evaluates information or ideas (which is pretty much everybody) should skim all of his books. He's kind of like Knuth: when publishers told him it would be too expensive to print his books the way he wanted (Visual Explanations, especially, has lots of little flaps and pieces glued in), he started his own publishing house. The results are books that are distinctive and have that air of quality about them, the kind that elicit a "wow, this is nice" feeling when you pick one up. Or maybe that's just me...

Hmmm, I see he's just published another book. Dag, there goes my lunch money for next week...

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[MidnightBrewer]

Violent fuchsia and purple as a color combination have never really resonated well with the large majority of people, ever. The page may be well laid out, but this is a perfect example of where understanding a little bit of how people react to colors would be helpful. As a graphic designer, I consider the ease of access of information and graphics that compliment rather than dominate to be an essential part of good design. Good designers understand that not everything should be Flash; the right art for the right occasion, and even plain text can be done elegantly.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[MidnightBrewer]

Except that "clear and informative" is also a subjective concept, when you get right down to it. Rather than saying, "I want everyone to bend to my ideas of what a good website is," it's better to look around, see what's successful, and try to incorporate that into your own designs. Just because every movie trailer website out there feels the need to run a full-window Flash animation to impress users hardly makes this the common trend. There are many more big, popular sites that run without any Flash at all and keep users coming back.

If you want a good, free site on how to combine good CSS and design into your page (without Flash!), check out A List Apart. The site itself is a good example of good design combined with well-organized information.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[PhoenixSnow]

I am reading this right now since I can't sleep (I was expecting the book to put me to sleep) and you are right, it's a lot more enjoyable. The author admitted that he ignored emotions in his first book.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[tigersha]

Amen. One of the main problem I have with Unix geeksis that they correctly claim that style over substance is a bad idea but then extrapolate that to the idea that all style is somehow bad or useless. MAybe its all the green screen terminals or something.

Style is good. And a little knowledge of typography can make your written publications (CV or report) WAAAAAY better than the competition that uses Arial because its all they know. Without adding too much flashiness.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[pipingguy]

Are you looking forward to 2007's version of OMG Ponies? I am.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[StarfishOne]

Style is good. And a little knowledge of typography can make your written publications (CV or report) WAAAAAY better than the competition that uses Arial because its all they know. Without adding too much flashiness.

LaTeX all the way ^_^

Ooops.. did I just give a way one of my secret ingredients? ;)

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[nidarus]

I'm sorry, but Debian's site has all of the elegance and simplicity of a program that has a single, 200,000-line function, two-character variable names, and no comments.

If they had some basic typographic sensitivity, sense of color, and some decision regarding hierarchy, the site could've been way simpler, comfortable, inviting, and yes, visually attractive.

Note that I didn't mention flash or any kind of graphics. Lots of annoying animation/images != good graphic design. On top of that, just about any website user survey that was made indicated that users hate slow loading flash sites with lots of sounds etc. Users love simple, attractive designs.

But I agree with your main point: when you're designing a site (or just about anything, for that matter) that you intend other people to use, you have to pay attention to what they want/like. Being an ignorant snob with regards to graphic design (as many programmers unfortunately are) helps no one.

Re:Give me Edward Tufte

[theshowmecanuck]

In fact, pilots are known for judging the quality of an aircraft by its appearance... the best planes just *look* like they belong in the air.

This is a good way to ensure that new ideas get shot down, even if they are good ones... to follow your analogy. :-)

I actually favour your argument, but this example reminds me that there are two sides to the coin. It reminds me of the Boing Company versus Skunk Works competition for the Joint Strike Fighter. The Boing plane was butt ugly, but had some good design points, including a way less complex VTOL mechanism. But the Skunk Works plane looked kewler. Granted there were probably a few other things under consideration for the selection, but I would bet money that at the end of the day, it was how the planes looked rather than what they actually could do.

Slashdot is

[Anonymous Coward]

a great example....

Ah...That explains...

[Anonymous Coward]

the beautiful but crapily (yes that's a technical term) coded websites that are out there!

Re:Ah...That explains...

[MightyMartian]

That's right. Coders will be called in sooner or later to fix up the abortions that web designers create.

Re:Ah...That explains...

[PopeRatzo]

I'd say an artist could learn to become a great programmer much easier than a programmer could learn to become a great artist.

Both require a working brain, but only one requires a working soul.

The life I've lived, the things I've done and have not yet done, qualify me to make this statement.

Re:Ah...That explains...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen! I'm getting tired of seeing all these comments about designers encroaching on the programmer's territory. Yet, what's the biggest complaint about F/OSS? Horribly designed UIs. Designers can become programmers. The converse is very rarely true, though.

Re:Ah...That explains...

[mr_mischief]

Bullshit. Some people are great at both. Some people are great at design. Some are great at programming. Some suck at one or both. Some are mediocre at one or both.

Even within the art realm, some are great at design but not drawing or painting. Others can draw a picture really well but can't ever seem to do a print layout or web page. Some can do both.

Some people can act. Others can sing. Others dance. Some can do it all, and are the leads in musicals.

Some people can shoot. Some can blow stuff up. Some can swim really well. Some can skydive. Some are Navy Seals.

Some people act really well. Some people are really funny. Some people write really well. Some people are good improv comedy actors.

See a pattern? In short, any practitioner of one discipline saying that to shift to another discipline is much easier than the opposite is likely either in the wrong field to start or is just pumping up an ego like a balloon.

Re:Ah...That explains...

[agurk]

Well, I think you got a god point.

For a successful musical lead you need a "star" - a master of all crafts.

There exist some "star" programmer/web designer - and they are very expensive and really only needed in a few settings.

In my real life the most cost effective solution is have the designer sketch in Photoshop, have a ui person critise his work, take an intern or a student to create css and html, an solution architect create a framework and some programmers to create the solution.

Ok, a mediocre designer might also be an mediocre programmer and make mediocre websites, but the top notch people rarely are top notch in all professions.

The webmaster is dead as in a person that is "Jack of all trades, master of none". He is replaced by highly trained professionals and some cheap students.

Re:Ah...That explains...

[maop]

I much rather work with a graphic designer than become one. Would a catcher what to become a pitcher or vise versa?

Re:Ah...That explains...

[PopeRatzo]

Wait a minute, you think being an artist is about drawing a picture or singing or dancing?

Then, you equate these things with how some people can shoot, "blow stuff up".

I think this pretty much proves my point about a soul not being required for certain professions. Honorable professions, mind you, but not requiring anything "special in the heart" as a great man put it or self-knowledge.

I'm sorry somebody took my comment above as flamebait. I didn't mean it so. There are other qualities that programming requires that art does not. It all sort of equals out. Oh, and I did not mean "soul" in the religious sense, obviously.

Re:Ah...That explains...

[mr_mischief]

If you think it takes no soul and nothing special in the heart to do one of the world's most dangerous, dirtiest, hardest, and most thankless jobs because of love for one's country, its ideals, and its people then you don't understand what being a real warrior is about. SEALs, Rangers, and the like are away from home for months and years. They dedicate themselves to mastery of very difficult skills. They must be very intelligent, and must be conditioned to think, move, and act quickly and decisively. Whether or not you are a Christian, any artist should understand what Jesus said about love. The common translation is usually phrased such as, "There is no greater love than this, that a man would give his life for his friends."

While shooting straight and the ability to "blow stuff up" are mere skills, mere skills are what the discussion was about. A programmer can be a designer, in general, as easily as a designer can be a programmer. Either one can be an artist. If you can't see the art in a well-thought and well-implemented program then you have little concept of programming are are being too focused on what you consider to be art.

As for heart and soul as applied to military personnel, give me Washington, Grant, Roosevelt, Churchill, Ivan Sidorenko, James Stockdale, John McCain, Lawrence Joel, Niles Harris, and Pat Tillman as men of heart and soul before most artists. Some people write poetry or paint pictures about love, hardship, heartbreak, loss, and courage. Some people live life so as to inspire that art. I believe it takes more of both to be the inspiration.

Maybe we'll finally see...

[PPH]

...some Cubist web pages.

http://www.satirewire.com/charts/cubist.shtml

Re:Maybe we'll finally see...

[Phisbut]

...some Cubist web pages.

We already have this one page about cube stuff. We don't need a single more, you dog brain student.

Re:Maybe we'll finally see...

[nazsco]

> ...some Cubist web pages.

Already have that. Cubist paintings are the representation of a subject by several views in the same picture. So, if your page has a style sheet for screen, mobile and print, it can be called a cubist web page... well, maybe you'd have to display them all at the same time though

Re:Maybe we'll finally see...

[Snappy (the Gamer)]

Wow! There are many amusing statements on that page, but "Acknowledge the math below or go to hell." probably takes the cake.

sIFR is annoying

[Anonymous Coward]

The sIFR method is accessible and degrades gracefully.

No, it replaces text with Flash objects. This means it breaks right-clicking and other various annoyances. Sure, it works when JavaScript and Flash are unavailable, but it makes things worse when it actually works. Oh, but it lets arty types use their favourite fonts, so it must be good.

Re:sIFR is annoying

[Paulrothrock]

How about a method that uses images and PHP?

Re:sIFR is annoying

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. That's bad in different ways. It doesn't scale properly, you can't select the text properly, it doesn't wrap when necessary, etc.

Perhaps if it was done in SVG, it wouldn't be quite so much of a fuckup. But right now, when you want text, please use actual text.

Re:sIFR is annoying

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

If sIFR is what is used on the 123-Reg website, then it's total pants. On Firefox on Ubuntu, it just slows everything down and doesn't always render correctly anyway.

Re:sIFR is annoying

[drinkypoo]

Actually, sIFR really doesn't work very well. Text typically looks different in different browsers, perhaps appearing in odd locations. And making new faces does NOT work by the directions (they make it sound like you just open the flash file and double click in the box but it usually takes two double-clicks and you have to be sure to get the insertion point out of the box or it shows up on your page.

Re:sIFR is annoying

[treeves]

I don't reply to Anonymous Cowards. But you did, you did.

Don't feel too threatened

[cstec]

Foruntately, artists are too busy creating art to consider either the user interface or usability. In fact, head to the nearest art show and it's practically the opposite. I think most art majors think the plan is to make the whackiest thing you can and then laugh at the viewers who don't get it...

Re:Don't feel too threatened

[Brummund]

Back in the wild 90's, the company I worked for built the web pages for the national railway company. This company has a deep blue color as its major color, and it is not possible to get this color on a 16 color display (as was the norm then) without dithering. In one of the preliminary meetings, the person in charge of corporate design/branding at this company had decided to show up.

The branding manager was outraged by the fact that this color could not be displayed properly on all computers, due to the primitive nature of graphics cards available at the time. 15 minutes into the meeting, I heard someone yell "YOU STUBBORN FSCKER," and our designer just left the meeting. This art guy had blamed our poor web designer for the fact that this was not possible.

Unfortunately, it took me 6 years to realize that web programming was a dead-end. No amount of money can convince me that spending one's life adjusting buttons 1 pixel at a time is something I'm going to look back to with joy when I'm retired.

(On a side note: It is amazing that this web 2.0 crap is hyped like hell. I got a book explaining techinques similar to "AJAX" from 1997, and a few of you might even remember Lotus Corp's InfoBus project.)

Just work your way down the tiers, preferably at tier 2 and downwards, and find happiness. Just remember: Life's too short to move pixels for people with sideburns and a highpitched voice.

Re:Don't feel too threatened

[4iedBandit]

In my experience, programmers/developers design some of the worst interfaces. Doing something interface wise just because you can, or just because it looks cool very rarely makes the interface intuitive let alone useable.

Granted Designers also fail on this point. The only difference is they're concerned with the "look" and have no concept of usability.

Unfortunately programers/designers who have a good grasp os usability are few and far between.

Re:Don't feel too threatened

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember: Life's too short to move pixels for people with sideburns and a highpitched voice.

I have a high pitched voice you insensitive clod! I can't really grow sideburns though, so I guess I'm OK.

Non-Designer's Design Book

[johnrpenner]

'Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
    but rather when there is nothing more to take away'. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

as a technical writer for ten years, i've found the best book on the subject
for people who aren't designers is: Robin William's Non-Designer's Design Book.

it covers the four basic principles of Design:

1) Proximity: Make sure than when you Poke button X, status indicator Y is PROXIMATE to X.

2) Alignment: Don't start things out on a new Arbitrary Visual Margin, reuse existing Bounding Rectangles to ALIGN things to each other.

3) Repetition: Don't use a different icon for the same thing; consistently use the same Motif throughout.

4) Contrast: If two elements are not exactly the same, make them distinguishably different.

all the best,
j

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[pdabbadabba]

For some reason, I feel like I just discovered engineering in Civ 4...

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[pycnanthemum]

I found the book by Robin Williams to be a great resource as well.

But I specifically remember her listing the design principles in a different and purposeful order:

Contrast
Repetition
Alignment
Proximity

...and I have never forgotten them! :-)

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[Dystopian Rebel]

i've found the best book on the subject
for people who aren't designers is: Robin William's Non-Designer's Design Book.

Yes, this is from the period of his best work, when he was still doing lots of drugs.

Now look at him. His movie "Man Of The Year" was a disappointment.

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[Stamen]

A very simple small book, that covers the basics. All developers that do any sort of UI should read it, and live it.

Proper visual design is easy and algorithmic, a programmer has absolutely no excuse creating a crap UI, when the rules of proper design are so few and so simple.

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[ObligatoryUserName]

Just a comment about the quote that you started out your post with because it is so often misinterpreted: 'Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away'

Engineers seem be reading this as "use as many of the default values as possible". For example, not specifying a background color for a web page and just letting the browser's default value be used (grey in 1996, white today). Failing to specify visual design is not a minimalist design, it is design by abdication of responsibility. Only by luck would it ever produce the desired result, unless you were intending to convey a lack of consideration.

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[mblase]

Heh. I came here just to mention Robin Williams' "Non-Designer's Design Book", and find that someone's beaten me to it. Guess that just goes to show how useful it is.

Seriously, any programmer who has to do ANY work outside of the command line can benefit from this book. It's about general design, not "just" web design, and can improve everything from your paper resume to your personal homepage. You can read it front to back in half an hour. Half the principles are so basic you wonder why you never thought of them yourself, and once you've learned what they are you'll never forget them again.

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[SnapShot]

I agreed with you until you suggested using Motif; especially using it repetitively ;-)

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[maxume]

It fully lived up to my expectations.

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[mr_mischief]

There's also a related title that is more web-specific, so there's an option. It's called the Non-Designer's Web Book. There are also font-specific, scan-and-print-specific, and application-specific books by Williams. She even has her own computer dictionary.

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[Blakey Rat]

I love it when a webpage specifies a dark/black image background but neglects to set the background color to something dark. So the image doesn't load for whatever reason, and suddenly you're confronted with a white-on-white color-scheme!

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[Anonymous Coward]

Just looking at the design of the cover, I wouldn't bother paying for it. Ugly, ugly use of color, layout, and typography.

Re:Non-Designer's Design Book

[fm6]

The thing with The Non-Designer's Design Book is that she didn't have the web in mind when she wrote it back in 1994. It's more for people doing stuff like desktop publishing. True, a lot of what it says is applicable to web design. But if your focus is web design, her more recent Non-Designer's Web Book is probably a better place to start. A very good book if you can overlook some irritating but non-essential technical errors.

hmm...so what?

[caffeinemessiah]

a lot of "techies" don't have artistic ability, but would you really want an artist to design your perl scripts? a plumber can go to his local library and learn about prescription drugs, but you take his medical advice? people are good at different things. no artist is going to replace a techie's job unless they're also geeks, in which case calling them "artist" does not imply "not geek".

Re:hmm...so what?

[DwarfGoanna]

As a design student myself, I'm going to let you in on a secret: graphic design attracts a lot of really uncreative people, and this is why we're continually assaulted with bad graphic design. Don't get me wrong, there is really really good design out there, but only at the very top end do they crossover into "artist" territory. Sad but true. Now, what would be really interesting is someone with technical ability working in concert with an actual fine artist to produce the type of stuff designer largely half ass. Unfortunately, designers have wedged themselves in between the two fields.

Re:hmm...so what?

[L-Train8]

Lots of jobs could benefit from a little artistic knowledge. My father, who remodeled houses for a living, had this problem. He was very handy with drywall and carpet and cabinetry, but he would frequently pick out these garish paint colors that ended up making a room look hideous. I don't need my contractor to be Picasso, but I would like him to be able to pick out some pleasing paint and carpet colors. Likewise, someone with a little design knowledge and solid coding skills can certainly put together a better website than someone with solid coding skills and no design knowledge.

Re:hmm...so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That all sounds great until you actually try to do design with an "artist." Artists tend to have a "creative vision" for the work they are being paid for. This doesn't always cross over into good design, and rarely do they provide ui. There's a difference between artists and designers for a reason.

Re:hmm...so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to Paul Graham.

Re:hmm...so what?

[CastrTroy]

However, once you starting needing a website that needs actual coding, you're probably better off with someone who is a great coder with a little bit of design knowledge, than with someone who is a great designer with a little bit of coding knowledge.

Re:hmm...so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You said:

No design knowledge + solid coding skills = Good website

Little design knowledge + solid coding skills == Better website

I say:

DUH!

Re:hmm...so what?

[scot4875]

I teamed up with a graphic designer/fine arts friend of mine to do just this. He's the creative talent, I'm the person that makes the pages look the way he wants them to.

It's been working out quite well for us. We've been busy enough that we haven't had time to update the website in almost 9 months. :)

Rocket Surgery

--Jeremy

yeah

[User 956]

Oh, it starts innocently enough, usually with CSS and XHTML. But soon they are learning JavaScript, PHP, and even SQL!

I always knew Java was a gateway drug.

Re:yeah

[Brummund]

1. Build timemachine
2. Set machine from 1. to 1995
3. Silence the Netscape jerk that coined the JavaScript name
4. Party like its 1999!

Re:yeah

[Paradise Pete]

The Romans had time machines?

Well, yeah. Obviously the time machines. I mean, the time machines go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the time machine--

Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[clang_jangle]

Aesthetic sense, "good taste", whatever you want to call it, is something which you either have intrinsically or you do not. Most people do not and will not no matter whose "set of guiding principles" are employed.

Just look at the average geek's wardrobe LOL, if it was like math or language we'd all have it down by HS graduation, wouldn't we?

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[TheWoozle]

I don't think so. Where do you think aesthetic sense comes from, exactly? I highly suspect it has to do with your culture and what you learned from your relatives growing up, and not with some innate ability.

I sumbit to you that the reason geeks don't learn to dress trendily in High School has less to do with ability and more to do with motivation. I believe I am a case in point: in high school I was a protoypical geek, but my fiancee has whipped me into shape. I now have the ability to go clothes shopping by myself and assmble outfits which will draw the approval of my SO and all her friends (a skill which will win you BIG points - I recommend it).

Oh, and back to the topic at hand: one thing most web designers need to learn is appropriate use of whitespace.

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[Osty]

Aesthetic sense, "good taste", whatever you want to call it, is something which you either have intrinsically or you do not. Most people do not and will not no matter whose "set of guiding principles" are employed.

That's not necessarily true. With the help of a few rules and theories, you can learn to make aesthetically pleasing (though not necessarily groundbreaking) designs. Even something as simple as color theory and using a tool to select a complementary color pallete is enough for most design-challenged people to make something that isn't eye-gougingly bad.

Just look at the average geek's wardrobe LOL, if it was like math or language we'd all have it down by HS graduation, wouldn't we?

That's more indicative of a lack of caring (or even outright hostility towards "fitting in") rather than that design skills are unlearnable. If that were the case, mildly color blind people would be screwed.

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Every time I learn something new it changes my perception on things. One summer I painted houses and ever since I notice what is or isn't a good paint job and also when someone needs to start thinking about painting. I didn't know a thing about paint and was content doing so until it became something that I was forced to know about. Once it became something I was aware of I became quite proficient at it. I think the majority of geeks are much the same way. Most are very intelligent and can pick things up but usually don't unless it is something that interests them(or in the paint example something they have to know about). So if you think you might want to tidy up your website or if your boss is telling you you have to...

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[fiannaFailMan]

Aesthetic sense, "good taste", whatever you want to call it, is something which you either have intrinsically or you do not. Most people do not and will not no matter whose "set of guiding principles" are employed.

I disagree. I used to be clueless about good graphic design until I teamed up with a specialist artist. Now I wince at the sight of pixealated images, badly-kearned text, bad contrasts, cramped layouts, text bumping against the edge of its container, clashing rather than complementary colours, etc. There are reasons why some things look good and others do not. These are principles that CAN be taught. If they couldn't, art schools would not exist since artists would be born with their artistic ability already programmed into them from birth.

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[BlazeMiskulin]

If you take time to look into it, "aesthetics" actually have their basis in solid mathematics & physics. Balance, proportion, direction, wavelength, pattern... these are all part of the mathematic basis on which "design" are built. When it comes to design (which is distinctly separate from "art"), anyone who is mechanically or mathematically inclined (i.e., "geeks") can learn the formulae which will create a pleasing design. It might not be "artsy" or "cutting edge" or "avant garde" but it'll be pleasing to the eye.

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[Spark00]

what a load of bollox. of course aesthetic sense can be taught. just as writing and music and any other artistic endeavor can be taught. Of course there are some people who are born great at artistic things (just as there are born-great atheletes. But just as for every Micheal Jordan or Wayne Gretzky there are dozens of guys who worked hard, practiced for bajillion hours and had good coaches, the same is true for great artists). really to say that you can't teach it is complete rubbish and is, no doubt, a fiction that bad designers want you to believe so they don't have to work hard, and good designers want you to believe so that you'll pay them lots and not ask questions.

(and in case you wonder - or care - I'm a writer and I work with designers constantly).

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part, this is total crap. The vast majority of people can identify something they find attractive to within a reasonable margin of the society mean, but have no idea how to take a concept and develop it into something that similarly hits close to that mean. There are a few, rare people who have no real ability to discern good from bad and no way of learning it via exposure and teaching, but in general those motivated to become good at creating aesthetically pleasing art can learn to do so.

You don't even have to be able to hear to write good music, or see to create beautiful art. There are a number of fundamental patterns that we find attractive, applying them in a creative and appropriate fashion can most certainly result in something good.

Geeks have been using their geekiness as an excuse for crap graphic design for too long. Most of them *could* do a decent job, if they could be bothered getting over themselves long enough to do some decent reading on the subject, practice even a fraction as hard as they had to when they learning programming, and actually accept feedback from others.

Take a course, read a book, do some mockups and ask people what they think, bookmark attractive sites whenever you see them, have a looka t their font setups, column layouts, etc. Do some case studies of them in your own time so you've got a comprehensive idea of what worked for that site.

You don't need to learn to draw, composition is one of the things digital tech has made mind-bogglingly easy, just get yourself bitmap and vector graphics programs, learn how to use them, and apply yourself a bit.

To do anything else just makes you a slave to graphic designers. Once you know this stuff, you can do a lot of stuf fon yoru own, and when a graphic designer is needed (after all, you'll probably always be an amature), you can work *with* them rather than aginst them. Your changes to make things work better from a UI or code perspective will be made with an understanding of why things are laid out the way they are, and you can talk their language.

Get rid of your misconceptions. You can make beautiful things, just get out there are try. Make the most of things like the golden ratio or anywhere where math or similar things appeal to your strengths.

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[maxume]

Your use of "LOL" puts you in the 'do not' group.

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[geekoid]

Nope, it is a trained skill.

People who want to improve, do.

"Just look at the average geek's wardrobe LOL, if it was like math or language we'd all have it down by HS graduation, wouldn't we?"
If it was important to them, then there wardrobe would look fine. People who look good do so because they care to. No more. no less.

Think about it: Anybody who cared enough could simply look at the pictures of people in a magazine and copy what someone with there body typa and colors are wearing.

Another thing to think about: There are many people who get paid to use there talent* with colors and cloths that produce awfull outfits.

*Talent is a lie. There is no such thing as Talent, only someones drive to perfection with certian skills.

It annoies me to no end when sonmeone see;s my code and says "You must ahve a lot of natural talent." no No NO! I worked hard and practiced and keep practicing. It wasn't some gift just handed down from the heqavens. If it was I would reject it.
-

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[SpecBear]

Think about it: Anybody who cared enough could simply look at the pictures of people in a magazine and copy what someone with there body typa and colors are wearing.

I do. But whenever I see a short fat guy in a magazine, he's dressed like a dork.

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[whoopideedo]

Precisely. Either you are an artist, or you are not. Creativity cannot be taught in schools or books, it can only be developed.

"Engineering cannot be perfect unless it is perfect aesthetically" - Ettiore Bugatti.

Everything in this world must be designed. Nothing just "happens."

Programmers make poor designers. Designers make poor programmers.

The best websites are designed first with the creative vision and talents of a graphic/web/UI designer, and then programmed by an equally talented coder. Neither should try and do each other's job.

But perhaps the single most important aspect a good web developer should posess is an understanding of consumer culture.

The visitors to all these websites we are building are not artists, designers, or programmers themselves. They no not look at your source code nor do they really care how it works.

The only things they are concerned with is, in order of priority:

1. What does it look like.
2. Does it work.
3. Does it tell me what I came for.

You programmers should face it - we live in a visual society. You're kidding yourselves if you think the design is not important. It is in fact the ONLY thing that really matters. Consider the following examples of the value that design has in our lives:

1. Automobiles.
2. Music.
3. Architecture.
4. Technology - Computers, Operating Systems, Cell Phones, etc.

Better yet, tell me one aspect of your life that hasn't been influenced by Design?

"It is no exaggeration to say that designers are engaged in nothing less than the manufacture of contemporary reality. Today, we live and breath design. Few of the experiences we value at home, at leisure, in the city or the mall are free of its alchemical touch. We have absorbed design so deeply into ourselves that we no longer recognize the myriad ways in which it prompts, cajoles, disturbs, and excites us. It's completely natural. It's just the way things are.

We imagine that we engage directly with the "content" of the magazine, the TV commercial, the pasta sauce, or perfume (or website), but the content is always mediated by design and it's design that helps direct how we perceive it and how it makes us feel. The brand-meisters and marketing gurus understand this only too well. The product may be little different in real terms from its rivals. What seduces us is its "image." This image reaches us first as a visual entity - shape, color, picture, type. But if it's to work its effect on us it must become an idea:

NIKE!

This is the tremendous power of design.

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[NotQuiteReal]

I second the motion, with regard to the cultural impact on one's sense of aesthetics.

Consider a lotto winner from random spots on the globe, who can suddenly decorate their new mansion/palace as they deem fit.

Will it be a clean steel and glass uber-modern design?
Simple "contemporary"?
Or traditional European stuff like you'd find in a castle?
How about an intricate middle eastern motif, with lots of flowery rugs?

Each would be different from the others, and you might not like one or more of them. Even then, among a given style, there will be good design and bad design. But if YOU don't like it, is it really "good design"?

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[gnool]

Not true. I myself am an example - the websites I make now are 1000 times prettier and more usable than the crap I used to make on geocities back in the day! I don't see why you can't learn "design" like you can "programming", and i don't see why "design" wouldn't be quantifiable and describable just like "programming".

Re:Aesthetic sense cannot be taught

[whoopideedo]

Very much so true. Show me a website you've done. In ten seconds I can tell you if you have "it" or not.

I don't need to know anything about web, design, programming or anything at all for that matter.

All I need to know is if I like it.

Design cannot be taught in a book. Sure you can learn from it, and it can be studied infinitely, but a true artist is born, not made.

Design and "art" is like quality. You know it when you see it, but it is hard if not impossible to define or quantify.

Do artists get better with practice? Absolutely. But no one goes into art school without talent and emerges with it.

Graphics!?

[asphaltjesus]

I use links you insensitive clod! http://links.sourceforge.net/

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Argh, the flashbacks

[mihalis]

consistently use the same Motif throughout

May I suggest a better rule? Mine would be Never use Motif

Chris

- helpful as ever

Re:Argh, the flashbacks

[CRCulver]

Agreed. Straight-up xlib is a much nicer way of seeing the Web.

Re:Argh, the flashbacks

[mihalis]

Agreed. Straight-up xlib is a much nicer way of seeing the Web.

I guess using other peoples Motif apps is tolerable, I appreciated Netscape on my linux box when it was all I could afford, but programming that stuff was a nightmare.

I actually did prefer my direct Xlib programming experience to my Motif-torture phase.

I remember when I tried to change the app-defaults for Netscape so that the key sequence for for Exit was different. Something like : Alt-Q is format paragraph in emacs (which I'm fairly used to) but exit in netscape, so when typing text into a web page instead of formatting my text I often lost it. Anyway, netscape crashed on me when i changed the app-defaults.

I'm not exactly in love with GTK either, but free GTK compared to $200 for the privilege of real Motif (back in 1997 or so) was definitely a no-brainer.

Can't we just ...

[Anonymous Coward]

.... buy a Mac ? Then install Linux of course..

Great example of what?

[spun]

A way to waste time? Dork herd behavior? What happens when you get a bunch of pontificating windbags all on the same message board?

Slashdot is a great example of something, that's for sure.

I keed, I keed...

Re:Really...

[Rob T Firefly]

who needs the right brain anyway..

I'm left-handed, you insensitive clod!

Best Solution

[organgtool]

Of course the best solution would almost completely abstract the presentation from the data. That would allow the programmers and designers to work independently and do what each does best. However, I have yet to find a method of developing web pages with this level of abstraction. Many people say "simply combine a, b, c, d, e, f...", but that always feels like a hack and never produces pleasant results.

Re:Best Solution

[fiannaFailMan]

Of course the best solution would almost completely abstract the presentation from the data. That would allow the programmers and designers to work independently and do what each does best.

Nice in theory, but you need good communication between the two to get the right results. We once had a 'web designer' who came from a print background and when we had to have data generated dynamically on a web page he asked why we couldn't just use PDF format. He didn't get the concept of dynamically-generated web pages.

Far better to have graphic designers with some web knowledge, and web specialists with some graphic design knowledge. The overlap in skills is where the good results come through.

Re:Best Solution

[CastrTroy]

Graphic designers love PDF because they know it will look exactly the same on every computer. This is the reason the web (or at least HTML) is a graphic designers worst enemy. First of all, each browser will render the HTML differently, depending on quirks in the browser. Second, User settings will change the way a page looks. If I have Firefox show up to always show the address bar, and I see a pop-up, it's usually the wrong size, because the graphic designer thought my browser window would be a certain size. This also happens with extra toolbars. Also, dynamic web pages are even worse, because changing the data will probably affect how the page is shown, at least to some degree. Graphic designers cannot deal with this. Last is colours. Every computer I have ever seen shows colors slightly differently, such that stuff that looks perfectly find on one monitor, will look completely terrible on another. Colours that show up differently on one monitor will have no discernable difference on another.

Re:Best Solution

[jobin]

This is what stuff like smarty is for. That's just for PHP, but it's an example that decent systems to separate the hard logic from the presentation do exist.

Some related websites...

[Cr4wford]

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/ - covers pretty much everything web design related

http://www.sheriftariq.org/design/index.html - articles on some design elements

http://www.adampolselli.com/getthelook/ - guides that basically hold your hand to achieve various styles

http://webtypography.net/intro/ - typography applied to the web

http://www.alvit.de/handbook/ - list of links related to web design/graphic design/etc.

You can also try enrolling in a class at a community college or something...that way you can learn, practice, and receive feedback from a teacher/peers.

When Graphics Designers attack code...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I respond with my own watercolors. Horrible watercolors. Of clowns. Its the only poetry I have found that can convey the nuances of how horrible their code design is in the language an artist can understand.

One book does not good design make

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but one book is not going to turn you from a web developer to a web designer. Just as those other books
don't turn graphic designers into web developers.

I took 4 years of Graphic Design course for my BS in Graphic Design, with the intention of doing nothing but Web Design.
But I have a good technical background in perl, php, mysql, css, etc... so I bill myself as a Web Designer with development skills of moderate level.

Just to be fair

[spun]

Web designers will be called in sooner or later to fix the artistic abortions that coders create. And then user-interface designers will be called in to fix the usability mistakes of both.

Re:Just to be fair

[tholomyes]

Damn, I usually try to build the site the other way around. I find it much easier to design and *then* code.

Re:Just to be fair

[spun]

The user interface should drive the design decisions, and the coding should be as separate from both as is possible. Brenda Laurel's book The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design is a priceless resource for good interface design principles that transcend any particular interface paradigm. She analyzes human-computer interaction in terms of Aristotelian Poetics. Hey, if it applies to every other art-form since the beginning of human history, it's probably good enough for interface design.

Discount Web Design!

[davido42]

When in doubt:
- add more popups
- blinky lights are exciting
- if your page loads in less then 10 seconds, it must not be very interesting

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/

What happened to web design?

[MeanderingMind]

This is the first time I've heard mention of Web Design since the 90s. Maybe I'm oblivious, but I was beginning to think people forgot it existed.

Back in the days of tiling backgrounds, embedded Midi files, and blue/red hyperlinks there was a term coined. "Web Design" was a buzzword for anyone who knew how to take a few gifs, some HTML, and make a crappy website. I even had a webpage dedicated to Chocobos from Final Fantasy, each page with it's own Chocobo Midi and prominent image, background a tiling of starry gifs.

At first, Web Design was a skill anyone who knew how to move beyond grey background, black text, and web rings could claim to have. Before long, it became pretty evident what constituted a well designed webpage and what didn't. 56k was the name of the game, which severely limited how much crap you could throw on a page before it simply took forever to load.

Whether by skill or by the 56k barrier, web pages were much simpler then than now.

Somewhere towards the end of the 90s we forgot about Web Design. We knew how to make web pages, there wasn't a point in talking about it anymore unless it was your job. There were no more secrets, only skill and good aestetic sense.

Then came broadband and dynamic content.

Something about these things has created the burgeoning hordes of extremely poorly designed web pages. I've seen this all before 15 years ago, people cramming far too much into websites, distilling purpose and functionality in a sea of confusion. Only this time, load times hardly suffer thanks to cable and DSL. Apparently we have goldfish like minds, forgetting the past all too easily.

Or maybe it's just that the internet has grown so quickly that the people persent for the horrors of the 90s are a minority. With a new generation of internet addicts, the lessons of the past are buried.

Perhaps I'm just an old geezer at age 23 ranting and raving about the kids no my lawn, but I'm trying to figure out why web pages like Google are the exception and not the rule. Why Slashdot is better organized than ebay and Amazon. Why keeping your customers lost in a swampy morass of a website is good.

It seems to me the message is there. Every web designer worth their salt knows simplicity is paramount, that extraneous options and features only clutter, that 20 equally flashy and complicated things will only bewilder. Somehow, this message is being ignored.

Perhaps it's that management has finally stopped assuming web designers know what they're doing and are going "hands on". Maybe web designers no longer know what they're doing, coming out of lackluster art or cs majors with only a little skill and a lot of "education". Maybe I'm just picky.

In any case, I think I'd take missarranged Beatles Midis over some of the crappy websites we're force fed these days.

Re:What happened to web design?

[mblase]

This is the first time I've heard mention of Web Design since the 90s. Maybe I'm oblivious, but I was beginning to think people forgot it existed.

If you've spent any amount of time on MySpace, nobody's going to blame you.

Re:What happened to web design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe it's just that the internet has grown so quickly that the people persent for the horrors of the 90s are a minority.

That's it. Those who don't know history repeat it. *cough*myspace*cough*geocities*burp*.

There's a...

[jlawson382]

...Myspace joke in here somewhere, I just KNOW it!

Re:There's a...

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG ponies!!!! LOL!!!!

Filler for lameness filter.

Usability vs. Visibility

[shidoshi]

I've been somebody who, for many years, has loved web design from both the visual and technical sides of things. How well a website works is obviously important, but just as important is how it looks. There are many people out there who disagree, and say that usefulness is key and how "pretty" a page is isn't important, but they're completely wrong. (In my opinion, of course.)

The reason they're wrong is that web design isn't either/or, no matter what some may say. There are obvious examples of design over use - countless, countless examples - but that doesn't mean that making a website visually attractive kills the chance to also make it work like a charm.

For me personally, one of my favorite projects web design wise has been my personal forums, where I've put just as much important on how they look as well as how they work. Forum design is, to put it bluntly, god-awful across the internet. If message forums don't just stick with the defaul theme, they slightly modify it to make it look average AND ugly.

Message forums are about reading the posts presented there, but they're also about the community, so the design of the forums should reflect that. Here's a screenshot of the new theme I have in progress - it's far, far from done, but gives an idea of my kind of sense of forum style. First off, avatars are 600x150; a bit larger than the previous 600x120 avatars we were running. Some see that kind of thing as a waste, but our large avatars were one of the things that made our forums stand out, be remembered, and the way the board was coded, you could turn off avatars and still have the forum work perfectly and look very nice. Users will be able to select their own background color for their posts; it makes things more colorful, and personal, but it also then lets a user quickly scan a thread and find their own posts, due to knowing what color they're looking for. Items such as thread title, page navigation, and search box will be part of a bottom-of-the-window-pinned navigation bar, extending on the previous navigaion bar we had; this helps to reduce the clutter in layouts, and give the forum another unique visual aspect, but it also presents important navigation and UI items in one consistant, always available on-screen location, instead of scrolling up and down the page to hunt them down every time.

Not that I'm trying to toot my own horn here - my point is that with just a bit of thought, web design can be both visually appealing and enhance the user experience, but that idea seems to be lost on people far too often. And, obviously, the same design elements and planning I'm using for my new forum skin wouldn't work for other types of websites, but we need to better understand what each type of website needs and requires, and work from there. Nobody would make sense in saying that every type of website needs to be visually stunning, but those saying that sites don't need to be fancy or appealing are just as wrong. A website being visually unique, pleasing to look at, providing quality design at the same time it presents quality UI, those are all important factors that too often go overlooked.

Re:Usability vs. Visibility

[ADRA]

When I mouse over the '90%' (image size?) I get it flashing between 90% visible and not. Probably something small to fix like making sure the 90% is visible when IT is the focus.

Re:Usability vs. Visibility

[WedgeTalon]

I would be interested in seeing more of that forum design you have going on there, if you don't mind sharing. It looks very interesting. (Though, to be honest, I'm not completely sold. I would have a big concern that it would space content too much and end up making the page a chore to read. All the more reason I'd like to see more if it! I'd love to be wrong.)

I HATE it when that happens ....

[Gorshkov]

To the dismay of typophiles everywhere, font support on the web is very poor. There are very few "web safe" fonts that designers can safely assume are on all computers. The Typography section shows readers how to make the most out of this situation by understanding letter spacing, justification, and font usage. Beaird also discusses the sIFR technique (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), which uses Flash and Javascript to display fonts that may not be on the user's computer. The sIFR method is accessible and degrades gracefully. While the book does not discuss the specific implementation details of this method, just bringing it to my attention taught me something new.

And to the dismay of people who want to actually READ these pages, now long is it going to take some of you people to realise that not everybody can read your gorgeous 8 pt font, because we have a) crappy monitors, b) bi-focals, c) big monitors with large type, etc?

I'm sorry, folks. I don't care what graphic design principals you're following. Overriding the users font settings when there is no overriding reason for it (and there seldom is), just because it "looks purdy", makes it a bad design. Period.

And I swear that if I EVER get my hands on the idiot that started this trend to black type on gray/colour backgrounds, or white text on a black background .............

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[hankwang]

how long is it going to take some of you people to realise that not everybody can read your gorgeous 8 pt font,

I was getting annoyed myself about small fonts on websites including the Slashdot redesign of a couple of months ago. But then I discovered that somehow all major browsers default to 16px font sizes which is HUGE for the majority of people, which forces webdesigners to either specify an absolute fontsize or a relative font size of 70 to 85 percent. But if you do the sensible thing and set your web browser to a default font size of 12 or 13 px, most websites will end up in extremely small print.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Anonymous Coward]

But then I discovered that somehow all major browsers default to 16px font sizes which is HUGE for the majority of people

Actually, it's only huge if you are expecting the teeny-tiny font size that's been trendy amongst web designers over the past decade or so. If you aren't expecting to see something tiny, it's actually a perfectly reasonable font size. If you don't believe me, compare it to the font size in your word processor, mail client and other applications.

which forces webdesigners to either specify an absolute fontsize or a relative font size of 70 to 85 percent.

No, it forces web designers to do no such thing.

But if you do the sensible thing and set your web browser to a default font size of 12 or 13 px, most websites will end up in extremely small print.

Only if the incompetent web designers do what you suggest and reduce the user's chosen font size by 30%.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[hankwang]

If you don't believe me, compare it to the font size in your word processor, mail client and other applications.

Most of the time I use

• xterm: 12x6 font - I'm usually not staring at the commandline for hours, and this is a good compromise between screen real-estate and ease of readability. My email client runs in an xterm.
• emacs: 13x7 font - slightly bigger since I do spend hours working with emacs
• Opera web browser: I prefer about 12 px for regular text. I've set my default to 14 px and it works reasonably with CSS-aware websites that set the font to 80%. This includes presumably knowledgeable sites such as http://alistapart.com/ .

Now you don't know my screen resolution, but the distance between my eyes an my screen is about 40 cm and the 10 pt fonts in the newspaper correspond to roughly 11 px on the screen. Either you have your screen all the way on the other side of your desk, or you also prefer to read books for visually handicapped people and small children.

I agree that it would have been nicer if all web browsers had defaulted to 14 px, with people like me setting it to 12 px and people like you setting it to 16 px, and all websites using a default font size of 100%. But that's not the case unfortunately and setting your default of 125% of your real preference is the best alternative.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Cr4wford]

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/typog raphy/index.html - a guide for font size setting in CSS.

If web designers use the proper font size units in their CSS, such as in the guide above, there shouldn't be a problem--units like em and % allow the font to be resized by the viewer. In Firefox, it's view > text size, or ctrl++ to enlarge, ctrl+- to shrink.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Gorshkov]

If web designers use the proper font size units in their CSS, such as in the guide above, there shouldn't be a problem--units like em and % allow the font to be resized by the viewer.

Both you, and the lad at the noodleincident, are still missing the point ... and proving mine.

What looks good for you - what is a "reasonable" text size in your eyes - is NOT necessarily "reasonable" for me, or my grandmother, or my neighbor, or anybody else.

The web is a DYNAMIC medium - I'm sure you're more than familiar with all the appropriate buzzwords, Web 2.0, and all of that. So why do people insist on trying to control every aspect of what the user sees, and effectively telling them that their preferences are wrong?

A web page is not a static magazine layout. Deal with it, treat your users with some respect, and stop telling them that they're wrong and you know better. Because I can guarantee you that regardless of how pretty your site is, if it can't be read easily, you're not going to sell a damned thing.

In Firefox, it's view > text size, or ctrl++ to enlarge, ctrl+- to shrink.

I'm very well aware of that - and I had to learn that out of need. Just please try to understand that I shouldn't HAVE to. My browser and desktop defaults are set for my eyes, on my monitor, for my lighting conditions. And if you insist on setting the font size when there is absolutly no NEED to be setting them - via pixel or em settings - then the only thing I'm going to do on any site you develop is hit Ctrl-W.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be like you, I really did. I've been using computers for decades, so naturally, I got used to low resolutions that can't fit much on screen at once. And a natural coping mechanism with that is to make everything as small as possible while still being legible. And I did that for years. Until I realised - hey, screens are a lot bigger these days. I don't need to cram everything down to the smallest size possible. So I started using the default settings. And you know what? I could read stuff a lot smaller, but it's a lot faster and easier on the eyes to have it at a sensible size. And despite what you think, that doesn't mean I am visually handicapped.

Why don't you try it for a month? For the first week or so, everything will look weird and too big. But once you get used to it, I think you'll find that you're reading things a lot quicker and easier.

setting your default of 125% of your real preference is the best alternative.

Quiet acquiescence solves nothing. If a website screws up its fonts, complain. I'm a web developer, and I'd hate to think people were silently putting up with mistakes I made instead of telling me about it.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course part of the size problem also goes back to when some computers/browsers incorrectly handled points as pixels. Then of course there is still the problem of varying screen resolutions and sizes (which can be handled to some extent through sensible CSS and/or JavaScript), and of course some people not setting up the proper dot pitch setting for their monitor (which leads back to the pts vs px problem).

Believe it or not, there's still conflict between some print die-hards and the web folks simply because the print guys don't always understand that their nice print layout just dies in on-screen rendering. But I'm willing to bet that the situation is a lot better than when the web was new, and it can only get better.

As for the problem with dark backgrounds - I'm going to guess that has to do with print (provided that the problem doesn't involve readable contrast). Just about everyone hates to waste ink when printing. If a web designer is worth their salt, they should know how to specify different stylesheets for different media. That way no ink is unnecessarily wasted (it should print black text on white, regardless of page colors), and the page looks just as good (if not better) in print as it does on the screen.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a more important question here that you're overlooking: how many people bother to change their default settings? Are those defaults optimal for all users; or were they just set to where they are because the committee of programmers who wrote the browser collectively decided, without doing any research or studies to support their decision, that they should be so?

So let's say one percent of users have bothered to change their default settings, am I suppose to design my site to cater to the whims of that handful of users most of whom probably won't bother to visit my site anyway? Such considerations are the reason why there are accessibility guidelines. It's easy to design a site that will address the needs of all users without having to slavishly adhere to defaults or cater to a slim minority whose preferences will unnecessarily detract from the experience of the overwhelming majority of people who don't need to have their fonts a certain size or their colors set a certain way.

The key word here is design. A real designer can take all these limitations into consideration and come up with something that acceptably meets the needs of all its users. The "design" part is the process, not the result. You design to adapt something to fit the needs of your audience; you don't just design to make something look "purdy."

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Anonymous Coward]

And I swear that if I EVER get my hands on the idiot that started this trend to black type on gray/colour backgrounds, or white text on a black background .............

Yea! White text on a black background, who wants that? *opens mrxvt* Oh look, white on black. (Actually desert, but still light fonts on black)

I'd rather have white text on a black background than the other way 'round; much, much easier on my poor eyes.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Gorshkov]

There's a more important question here that you're overlooking: how many people bother to change their default settings? Are those defaults optimal for all users; or were they just set to where they are because the committee of programmers who wrote the browser collectively decided, without doing any research or studies to support their decision, that they should be so?

Actually, it's NOT a more important question. It's just Yet Another(tm) rationalization. I would bet that most of those that don't change their defaults don't change them because they find the defaults reasonable, and they don't see the need for it. So again, by presuming that you know better than your audience, you're telling them they're wrong, and you know better. Arrogant, ignorant, and egotistical as hell.

So let's say one percent of users have bothered to change their default settings, am I suppose to design my site to cater to the whims of that handful of users most of whom probably won't bother to visit my site anyway?

No - you're supposed to respect the wishes of your audience, INCLUDING those who have decided to NOT make the change.

And to play devil's advocate for a second here - let's assume for the sake of argument that you are right, and that the lusers haven't changed their defaults because they're too stupid to figure out how to. From a usability standpoint, they will STILL tend to be put off by your site with it's finely crafted choice of fonts and sizes .... because what they see when they get there will not be what they are used to, and will therefore seem jarring to them.

Such considerations are the reason why there are accessibility guidelines.

Usually developed by people who a) know about graphic design but not other aspects of UI design, b) arogant "web programmers" who think that their taste is right, every body else's is wrong, and that if they just come and LOOK at your site, and admire it's incredibly gorgeous design, they will be overwhelmed by your l33tness.

It's easy to design a site that will address the needs of all users without having to slavishly adhere to defaults or cater to a slim minority whose preferences will unnecessarily detract from the experience of the overwhelming majority of people who don't need to have their fonts a certain size or their colors set a certain way.

Actually, it's a lot more difficult to design a site that will work well WITH the defaults, than it is to design one that ignores them. Which is exactly the reason so many people come up with bullcrap like this to justify not having to put forth the effort.

The web is NOT A STATIC MEDIUM - STOP TRYING TO PRETEND THAT IT IS

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Gorshkov]

I'd rather have white text on a black background than the other way 'round; much, much easier on my poor eyes.

And you have total, utter, complete freedom to set that as your default if you so choose ..... and wouldn't you be pissed if the people who wrote rxvt decided that they knew better than you, and fixed the font size and colour foreground/background combination to ignore what YOU prefered?

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[dr.badass]

default to 16px font sizes which is HUGE for the majority of people

You mean 16pt., which properly should be just under 1/4 of an inch. In reality, it's usually smaller. How is that huge?

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[ESqVIP]

You mean 16pt., which properly should be just under 1/4 of an inch. In reality, it's usually smaller. How is that huge? Actually, he does mean 16px. Both Firefox and Opera set their defaults in pixels, and Firefox's is precisely 16px. Opera seems to check your resolution first, but on Windows' default of 96 pixels per inch it will also default to 16px. Internet Explorer as far as I know offers no precise control on that (it just defaults to "Medium" and offers two options above and below that), but I'm pretty sure that also means 12pt Times New Roman (which, on 96 pixels per inch, translates to 16px). I have no idea about Safari, unfortunately.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[hankwang]

Quiet acquiescence solves nothing. If a website screws up its fonts, complain. I'm a web developer, and I'd hate to think people were silently putting up with mistakes I made instead of telling me about it.

I actually have a website with a small community that had been running with 100% fonts for quite some time. It turned out that several people didn't like my layout and used one of the forum-software-supplied default style because my fonts were too big and setting the browser defaults +smaller makes the rest of the web too small. When I changed the fonts to 82% (14px) I surely got a complaint that it was too small. I ended up giving users the option to switch font size.

At the same time, I set my browser defaut to 14 px rather than 12 px. It really saved me a lot of headache since most websites render in a much more consistant manner without me having to hit the zoom key all the time.

screens are a lot bigger these days. I don't need to cram everything down to the smallest size possible. So I started using the default settings. And you know what? I could read stuff a lot smaller, but it's a lot faster and easier on the eyes to have it at a sensible size. And despite what you think, that doesn't mean I am visually handicapped.

Actually I think you are above 45 years old and are postponing the purchase of reading glasses and instead increasing the distance between your eyes and your screen beyond normal reading distance. :-) Screens are indeed bigger nowadays, but most consumer-grade big 19- or 20-inch screens are still 1280x1024 pixels, just like the 17-inch screens have been for quite a few years, so increasing font size does cost you screen real estate.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually have a website with a small community that had been running with 100% fonts for quite some time.

Well I've been building websites for nine years, and the only people who have ever asked me to reduce the font size are the owners - no user has ever asked this of me.

It turned out that several people didn't like my layout

How many were happy with it?

I ended up giving users the option to switch font size.

Well sure, that works too, so long as 100% is an option.

Actually I think you are above 45 years old and are postponing the purchase of reading glasses

I'm late 20s and my optician disagrees with you.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Cr4wford]

By using the technique I described, I'm not telling my users that they're wrong. I'm using a size that I think is appropriate for the majority of users, and allowing anybody that disagrees to resize it to their taste. If you want to view sites as purely functional pieces of text, then turn off your CSS. A decent designer should allow their website to degrade so that at least all information can be read and navigated if CSS is off.

A lot of web designers/developers (professional ones at that) seem to disagree with you, as they set their font sizes, and they're the ones that have been studying/practicing/testing what we're talking about, so I think they know what they're doing (see http://www.alistapart.com/ for an example). If you're going to ctrl+w any website that sets their font size (that would include slashdot), then you're going to be missing out on a LOT of the web.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[dr.badass]

Both Firefox and Opera set their defaults in pixels

Dang. For a second, I thought that there as at least one thing consistent across all browsers. For what it's worth, Safari uses points, as does Camino, and get this, so does Firefox on Mac OS X, making Firefox inconsistent with itself. I think I'm just going to stay the hell away from the font: property from now on.

Re:I HATE it when that happens ....

[Gorshkov]

By using the technique I described, I'm not telling my users that they're wrong.

By ignoring THEIR preferences .... how are you NOT telling them they're wrong?

I'm using a size that I think is appropriate for the majority of users, and allowing anybody that disagrees to resize it to their taste.

The "majority of users" are more than capable of figuring out for themselves what the appropriate size for them is. You just choose to ignore it.

If you want to view sites as purely functional pieces of text, then turn off your CSS. A decent designer should allow their website to degrade so that at least all information can be read and navigated if CSS is off.

There is a lot more to laying out a website than just font size selection. You're essentially telling me that if I'm too lazy to change MY preferences - MY choices - that I should forgo any site layout or formatting because you know better than me what's appropriate for me?

I'm sorry, but I find that arrogant in the extreme

A lot of web designers/developers (professional ones at that) seem to disagree with you, as they set their font sizes, and they're the ones that have been studying/practicing/testing what we're talking about, so I think they know what they're doing (see http://www.alistapart.com/ for an example).

Oddly enough, I just went there. You DO realize, of course, that the page doesn't resize properly (well - it doesn't resize at all, actually) if you change the size of your browser window? I guess those professionals must know better than me how to make good use of my screen real estate.

Let's remember - the only thing that's necessarily different between a professional and an amateur is that one gets paid for what they do. Competence is implied, but not required.

If you're going to ctrl+w any website that sets their font size (that would include slashdot), then you're going to be missing out on a LOT of the web.

Unless of course, the site in question just happens to have picked the same size that my defaults are set to - in which case I wouldn't have noticed.

But then again, I don't exactly scroll through pages and pages of HTML and CSS to determine if a website is "worthy" of being read.

I just don't bother with that particular site if I have to work in order to do so.

Re: Eye of the Beholder

[andrewd18]

Wow! You're saying that I could get a +1 modifier to my Charisma if I carry a Beholder Eye in my knapsack? That's an extra use of Turn Undead per day!

A few things...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a former art major, pre-PC (1975-1979). I learned programming afterwards; BASIC, assembly, dBASE, Nomad, and various scripting languages. So I'm a "both sides of the brain" kind of guy.

Most modern web site designs suck eggs! Nowhere in this review is the first principle of design even mentioned; "form follows function". Is it mentioned in the book? If you can keep that principle in mind at all times, your web site will work. "What am I trying to do with this site? What am I trying to convey?" should be on your mind as you design your pages.

It's ironic (and IMO stupid dumb idiotic) that someone would study for four (or six) years get paid a presumably good wage to develop an asthetically pleasing and useful web page, only to have the marketing department dumbasses fuck it up with dancing, flashing, gaudy, puke-making advertisements. This is especially stupid if your site's primary purpose isn't advertising!

They must have better drugs these days than they did back in the seventies.

...the book contains screenshots from dozens of modern websites to illustrate graphic design principles.

If they're showing Wikipedia, they're showing a good example. If they're showing the Chicago Tribune or (worse) the St. Louis Post Dispatch they're showing utter crap. Just vbecause a site is popular or useful doesn't mean it's well designed - and without the proper college courses in design you're not going to know the difference.

You're not going to learn design from one book any more than you're going to learn engineering from one book.

Beaird discusses the concepts of grid theory, and how using the golden ratio to divide page elements can improve the visual appeal.

That's the "golden mean", or at least it was for the last 500 years. The golden mean is an artistic concept, while the golden ratio is a mathematical concept. Math seldom translates into good asthetic design.

Gel buttons, gradients, and backgrounds are all discussed.

I hope they are discussed in a very negative way, because they usually impede function. Form follows function. Don't let pretty override useful; not even an a sculpture!

To the dismay of typophiles everywhere, font support on the web is very poor.

Basically uyou have "Aral, Helvitica" (sans-serif) or "Times-New Roman" (serif). That's basically it. Anything else and you're going to have funkly typefaces on many screens.

...letter spacing, justification, and font usage are basically non-existant on the web. Don't even think about it! What works on a printed hardcopy you can lithograph off before dissiminating does NOT work on the web (and vice-versa).

Beaird also discusses the sIFR technique (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), which uses Flash and Javascript to make sure that your page won't work on many computers. Mine, for example; I refuse to install Flash, as it's mainly used for those flashy ads I mentioned. Many folks refuse to enabvle javascript as well. If there's any way whatever to avoid client-side scripting, avoid it!

Imagery is the subject of the final chapter, and the book ends on a disappointing note. Very little of this section is about the graphic design principles behind imagery.

That's like me buying a book on electrical engineering and being disappointed that after reading it I still can't design a plasma TV screen. Again, this stuff takes years of training, and one book ain't gonna cut it.

The chapter focuses almost entirely on images as content and not as design elements.

Images are almost always poor design elements! Use them sparingly.

If you want to know how to make images in a blog post look pretty, there are some ideas here (drop-shadows, borders).

Ugh...

But there is no information about how to work images into a page header or navigation menu.

Yes, that would indeed be a minus.

How do I deter

Re:A few things...

[ObiWanKenblowme]

Instead of writing pages of snide remarks, perhaps you could admit that while this won't turn a programmer into a graphic artist, it might help the programmer avoid some glaring (and apparently common) blunders. It's not about making programmers create award-winning design, it's about making programmers think about design as a necessary element to a project and giving them a concise set of guidelines to follow to avoid bad design.

That's one fine article about amateurs

[someme2]

We need something stronger. We need to understand the principles of graphic design.

No, we don't. At least not if "we" are supposed to be IT professionals.

May be the statement is true for small teams working on internal projects (intranet applications). But seriously, the article has a very hobbyist ring to it.

Everybody working on larger web-based applications is used to cooperating with external designers. There may be different views on who has to produce CSS/HTML (or whatever markup code) from photoshop designs (same issue with who does the "usability"), but in general there is not too much danger that graphic designers somehow take over anything apart from trivial programming tasks (e.g. writing markup code). Unless of course they are looking for a complete carreer change. I've seen that happen. But after being accepted as full-fledged developers, they somehow never got to do any designing any more.
Anyhow, any sufficiently large project will involve a 50-page layout spec, corporate identity definition or a bunch of obnoxious product managers who will see to it, that you - the develevoper - won't get too much say in where anything is located on the screen. And that is okay by me, as division of labor has proven to be a pretty succesful concept over the last, say, ten-thousand years.
I find the whole idea of "graphics designers somehow at war with IT people" a little strange. In the projects I work in/have worked in graphics designers are fellow-suppliers who have to handle the same basic problems of budget & time-constraints that we have. At the end of the proverbial day they usually make good companions for discussing the idiosyncracies of the current project over a few beers.

Re:Really...

[gEvil (beta)]

who needs the right brain anyway..

I'm left-handed, you insensitive clod!

So how's it feel when you let the left brain take over? ; )

Programmers? What programmers?

[rblum]

I'm sorry, but a web designer is not a "programmer". Just because you can sling around a bit of PHP and SQL still doesn't make you a programmer. The problem is that many people suffer from the delusion this would be enough. Unless you know quite a bit beyond that (the equivalent of at least 2-3 years of CS), you're not a programmer.

Re:Programmers? What programmers?

[ADRA]

Thank you so much for your authoritative opinion.

I'll think less of those deluded underlings from now on!

Re:Programmers? What programmers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the hordes who think HTML is a programming language. I once saw a "programming" book called "Extreme HTML", with a really intense looking dude on the cover, no doubt meant to represent the edgy terrain the book would explore.

Re:Programmers? What programmers?

[rblum]

It's not a matter of "underlings". I have the highest respect for web designers - it's a tough job, and I wouldn't be able to do it. But exactly as a web designer would never let me touch his web pages, I'd never let a web designer touch our code.

It's a matter of matching skillsets. And judging from the job interviews I get to see, there are plenty of people who have the misguided belief they're programmers - when they are web designers. It's a waste of time for them and me - so why not use proper labels and stop the confusion between both professions?

It's not about you...

[theshowmecanuck]

...not trying to sound cliche. Unless you are developing a web site for you to look at exclusively.

I do agree with you that a clear, easy to navigate site is important... who wouldn't agree with that? But at the same time, an overwhelming number of the average public are attracted more to graphics containing 'cool' looking web sites than 'Plain Jane' web sites. The web sites that are trying to sell or advertise a product or service to the general public need to appeal to the general public. That is one of the reasons why web sites are redesigned so often, to attract new people. It can't be 'cool' unless it is new and on the 'bleading edge'. As far as 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder': the people creating the site, if they really know what they are doing, know their target audience. They will appeal to what they know the majority of that group finds beautiful. But most people belong in that big general public demographic...

Another reason it needs to be fancy is that it shows the viewers that there is something behind the web site. They will assume that there are people willing to invest time (=money) in the site design, meaning they are looking at something that is likely to be more legitimate (we all make assumptions in life... we have to). When people see a product being advertised on a text only web page and an equivalent product on a 'cool' web site complete with good graphics, they will usually go for the product with a well designed graphics laden site. And I am not talking about some horrible mishmash of graphics put together by someone using their windows front page lite or whatever the hell windows comes with these days. It's basically like the reason you wear a suite or good clothes to a client's site. To make a good impression.

Re:It's not about you...

[FLEB]

Visual beauty will only get you so far. The most visually beautiful site that lacks structure and informational layout would simply aggravate anyone who tried to use it. In fact, I would have to say that at least a small amount of interface design and structure is necessary for a site (or any other publication) to achieve beauty. The structured human mind finds beauty in geometry, structure, regularity, and ease. Now, wrap that with only as much graphic flashery as is needed, and you've got something respectable.

Actually, I find myself wary of the sites that are obvious templates, as those tend to be more fly-by-night. Decent layout, but peppered with irrelevant stock photos of power-businessfolk and boilerplate obtuse English phrases that should have been swapped before going live ("We are the company to make your success!"), and pointless Flash with flying dots and squares-- those are the ones to look out for.

Re:It's not about you...

[vanyel]

Visual beauty will only get you so far.

Just as with people, beauty is what gets people's attention. You have to provide something useful, without being too much of a burden, to keep it.

Re:It's not about you...

[bastardoperator]

here is an example of what not to do. Could be a nice site but instead it a screen shot of a nice site.

Re:It's not about you...

[Anonymous Coward]

But at the same time, an overwhelming number of the average public are attracted more to graphics containing 'cool' looking web sites than 'Plain Jane' web sites. This is the exact reason why Yahoo is kicking Google's butt.

Re:It's not about you...

[Anonymous Coward]

'bleading edge'

Did you mean "bleeding edge" or "bleating edge"? To me, it seems either would be appropriate.

Re:It's not about you...

[FLEB]

Well, you've got to start somewhere, I suppose. The usual process where I work is to make 3 mockups in Illustrator, then present them as "sample pages", consisting of a giant image either placed as the background, or centered over a tiled background. It looks like a web page, but nothing happens. Once they select one, then it's down to actually trying to make it work in code.

Re:It's not about you...

[theshowmecanuck]

Yes. :-p

Re: It's not about you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sam Weber: Why does what you said strike me as a massive rationalization?
Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

Re: It's not about you...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are part of the precipitate. So leave, precipitatiously.

Bullshit

[Purity Of Essence]

You want to be a better designer?

1. Open your eyes.
2. Engage your brain.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

There's nothing intrinsic about it. If you are relying solely on your instincts, you are not a designer.

Meh...

[th3space]

I'll browse this if I happen across it on my journey to Borders or similar, but I don't see myself buying it. I do this junk for a living, and - owing to my environment - I use graphics less and less and have begun to apply a more austere design sensibility to the sites that I work on. Of course, I'm doing it in corporate environment whose primary concerns are less oriented around 'flashy' than they are around 'substantive, intuitive and compliant'.

Admittedly, I do spend a good portion of my free time working on graphics with a variety of programs, and I have a very firm grasp on the concept of an attractive presentation, but to what end? I've seen a number of very pretty, very alluring sites that failed miserably on a variety of compliance checks (that's not even counting something like WAI or sec508), because these artists don't have a full understanding of what it is and what it takes to be a professional web designer (developer, et al).

I'm rambling now, and I can't remember what my original point had been...so I'll just say that you either 'got it' or you don't.

A true story about JavaScript.

[Ayanami Rei]

You know why it was called that? Because Netscape thought Java was going to be the future. JavaScript was a way to glue HTML page elements (forms, mouse clicks, page loads, images, links) to an embedded java applet in the page that would do the "heavy lifting" or allow you to control the java applet using native-looking controls couched in action-less forms. And LiveConnect was the magic glue that made it possible. JavaScript used to be called "LiveScript" for just that reason.

And now we have this crazy confusion about JavaScript Java, when they now have little to do with each other.

Let's just call it ECMAScript so no one gets confused.

Re:A true story about JavaScript.

[IthnkImParanoid]

I've witnessed many times the average user's tendency to take an obscure acronym and mash it into a actual familiar word. We should call it ECMAScript not to avoid confusion, but to hear the disturbing support calls related to the user's "eczema".

Re:A true story about JavaScript.

[Brummund]

If you take care of the JavaScript bunch, I'll make the rest use cracker and hacker appropriately. :)

Re:A true story about JavaScript.

[hanzoach]

I have work alot on this script. I think its better called EczemaScript. Its always make me itch.

Web design Graphic design

[Dracos]

One thing for anyone to remember is that Web design is about much more than layout, fonts, and purty pictures. The web is interactive, and therefore user interface principles come into play also. Sadly, most "web designers" and many "web developers" have little more than tangential knowledge of this subject.

The web is not inherently a graphical medium. All "web designers" out there should put a post-it note in their workspace reminding them that HTTP and HTML both contain text in their definitions: not images, video, or Flash.

In my experience, the worst web designers can be divided into two groups: non-artistic people (called programmers in TFA) and print designers.

Programmers I can excuse because they normally don't claim to be experts at any type of visual design.

Print people on the other hand, insist that their artistic training translates intact to the web: it doesn't. The web is interactive and involves many more unknowns (operating system, hardware platform, screen resolution, font size preferences, window size, to name a few) than designing for a X by Y piece of paper. Web pages cannot be treated as a canvas to be painted on. HTML has technical rules, best practices, conventions and "gotchas" that go far beyond what print people learned in their traditional design school. Without a doubt, the least feasable (but sometimes most visually appealing) web designs I've had to deal with were all produced by print people masquerading as web designers.

Re:Amazon's got it cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, hello there 363636-20, nice to see you back spamming slashdot with your referer codes as you do in every fucking book review. I almost feel like I know you.

PS: Suck my hairy balls.

Html is a Great Starting Point

[Bellum Aeternus]

As a classics major in collage, I had the need to set up a small but informative website circa 1996. I had no one to help me, so through the use of view source I figured out how to make a very basic website (it even used frames). From there I learned Javascript, CSS, XHTML, XML, Java, C#, C, and SQL. So, the article is right - Html skills can lead to real software skills. I apologize for never learning/using any LAMP except MySQL but I've always been given Win boxes as servers to work with.

Re:Html is a Great Starting Point

[Anonymous Coward]

As a classics major in collage, I had the need to set up a small but informative website circa 1996.

Christ, I hope your native tongue isn't English.

I had no one to help me, so through the use of view source I figured out how to make a very basic website (it even used frames). From there I learned Javascript, CSS, XHTML, XML, Java, C#, C, and SQL. So, the article is right - Html skills can lead to real software skills. I apologize for never learning/using any LAMP except MySQL but I've always been given Win boxes as servers to work with.

So you're used to defensive programming (i.e. compensating for SQL injection attacks, cross site scripting, writing stored procedures) and using three tier web application design.. right?

Put it this way, I'll bet most of the classically trained CS folks who function as developers in this area aren't quaking in their boots.

Nurses know everything

[Latent Heat]

Nurses know everything and how to do anything. My mom was in a nursing home, and one RN asked me how I was doing. I replied that I had a brush with death because I grabbed an electric heat thermostat I was installing with both hands and got a shock because I thought I had pulled all of the breakers but the box must have been hot from another panel. I was scolded "One hand! You must never grab those things with two hands, always one hand!"

On another occasion, a different nurse told me what I need to get to fix my parents sump pump, that I needed to replace the check valve in the outflow if I was changing the pump.

My theory is that nurses in our area are all farmers or their husbands are general contractors, and they have to work nursing jobs so one person in the farm family can get health insurance. I wonder if they are also good with graphic design?

Seperate people

[gavinpquinn]

I have found on my site http://www.grapheety.com that we have had the most success seperating these tasks all together. Even though I come from a usability background, when I am coding I have a hard time doing it 'the hard way'. We have a designer who works on this project full-time who does all designs graphically, then we compromise on how to implement them. It has been a great relationship.

Re:Amazon's got it cheaper

[mr_mischief]

Hmmm... it looks to me like the review already had a link to Amazon, too. So 363636-20 is not just a spammer but a liar too.

books on design - nonesense

[kookaboorra]

Color is a hard topic to understand, but there are some good tips here that teach readers how to create an appealing palette for a website. like red color makes your website happier or black color makes your site look ugly and etc.? One more thing that irritates me in design is many designers, good designers, create very beautiful things - like different beautiful images, because they do it really good, but they lack of design sense and those beautiful images don't suit the specific website and they easily loose their value. That's why such books on design don't worth killing time.

Graphic Design and good websites...

[okinawa_hdr]

I'd say good design is more about controlling the presentation of your message, and has very little to do with the "graphics". In my experience there is one driving element to good design in print and online: legibility. If your message can be understood by great use of type, then you achieve getting the message across. This applies to both print and web. I don't think flashy graphics help, and can sometimes distract. When we're designing ads for clients, or doing page layout, we stay away from the real flashy stuff and use the type to control the message. You also need to be weary of reader tendencies in how you approach putting the type elements on a page. If you do this one simple thing you may find your stuff looks way more polished. Wanna see awesome type layout online? http://alistapart.com/ That's a classy website.

Re:Graphic Design and good websites...

[kookaboorra]

well, sometimes I see some good graphics where even a word destroys the whole meaning, beautiy and essence of them =)

Misconceptions About Design

[Aqua OS X]

All in all, there are a lot of misconceptions about graphic and interaction design. Design is by no means intended to make something look cool for cool's sake. Graphic and interaction design are disciplines that dedicated toward developing effective communication solutions. Design SHOULD enhance communication and user experience. That is, without a doubt, the whole point of design.

That said, we live in a culture where people are constantly bombarded with visual media, do-it-yourself design books, and easily accessible desktop publishing solutions. As a result, the sheer volume of horrible "designers" greatly outweighs the modest amount of trained professionals who actually know what they're doing.

But as for the parent topic here... the industry is changing and Interaction design is really starting to be recognized as the next big design industry. In 10 years a web or software dev team is not going to consist of isolated designers and isolated developers. CS students are graduating school having visited the design department, and graphic designers are leaving school having visited the CS department. Moreover, collaborative development environments are starting to emerge that allow designers and engineers to work in the same room at the same time.

As a professional you're probably never going to learn it all... you'd be in school forever. However, we can develop environments where experts are effectively able to communicate, comprehend, and collaborate with other experts.

Re:Amazon's got it cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Some posters here have suggested that the book review Amazon poster is a bot, so it couldn't have noticed that /. now links to Amazon instead of B & N as was the custom for several years.

Good

[goldcd]

As somebody with a vague technical leaning, I picked up MySQL and PHP and cobbled together a nice functional site a while back.
I'm proud of it, people seem to like it - but it is DOG ugly.... well maybe not actively ugly, but well minimalist in the extreme.
But I digress. Point I was wanting to make is that form must follow function for the design - but once you've nailed function, you're really going to want to go back and give it a good polishing.

web design

[Ozgur Uksal]

a lot of "techies" don't have artistic ability, but would you really want an artist to design
your perl scripts? a plumber can go to his local library and learn about
prescription drugs, but you take his medical advice? people are good at different things. no artist is going to replace a techie's job unless they're also geeks, in which case calling
them "artist" does not imply "not geek".

http://webdesign.about.com/ ozgur uksal

What's this "WE" shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

>We need to understand the principles of graphic design.
>Sadly, our motley collection of Gimp tutorials alone will not win this battle

Well the primary problem here is that it seems you "techies" are using the gimp to design your layouts. I don't understand the infatuation with the gimp other than it's open source. There's a time and place for open source, but right now the gimp just isn't there. If you "techies" want to get serious about designing useable websites howabout using software that has proven it's supremacy for the job such as Adobe Photoshop.

Re:What's this "WE" shit?

[Alex Belits]

Name a single thing essential to good web site design that is impossible, or significantly more difficult to do in Gimp, but can be done in Photoshop.

I am sure, you can't because you know absolutely nothing about Gimp in the first place, and just spouting second-hand bullshit to make excuses for using your pirated copy of Photoshop.

Ass Backwards!

[JAB Creations]

No, it's GRAPHICS people who threaten web design. ALL Flash pages?! Photoshop slices?! Might I remind people America is not #1 but the 18th in the world for broadband adoption! How many sites are over 300KB in size that will take a minute or more to load on dialup? Web font support is sketchy but CSS is not! You can specify a hundred various web font's if need be and you can even use the * selector for all elements if you're looking to minimize your code. Need to override the * selector? Just adjust the fonts AFTER (below) the * selector. Why are we talking about Flash again? Flash, nothing is more obnoxious then hidden music and long pointless movies when I'm looking for resources online. If you can make nice looking graphics or movies great, go to Hollywood or YouTube or something but that stuff disorganizes a website. Flash can only be good when it's PART of a website. Let's talk XHTML 1.1, application/xhtml+xml (plus editing XML Schemas (to give attributes ill removed items such as tabindex on divisible elements), CSS, JavaScript, JavaScript + Flash interaction, AJAX, accessibilities, and a little PHP and MySQL. THAT is a well rounded Web Design book.

Kraus "Design Basics Index"

[devluno]

I spent years trying to find a good overview of and reference for graphic design that I could apply to web design in particular. There are thousands of (mostly expensive) books out there, and they're all useless for this. Then I found this one. It doesn't focus on web design, though it covers it and everything in it is applicable. It's inexpensive and incredibly useful, and tech-accessible.

* Krause, Jim. Design Basics Index: A Graphic Designer's Guide to Designing Effective Compositions, Selecting Dynamic Components & Developing Creative Content. How to Design Books 2004. 359pp.

This is the only book I've seen that covers all the different aspects of graphic design. The book itself is a great example of all the demonstrated principles, which makes it a fun and informative read. Despite the great breadth and depth of what is covered here, each particular concept is presented clearly, concisely, and always in a way that inspires. Not only is this incredibly useful, but but it totally gets you going creatively. For web designers who are not artists, there is surprising little out there that will help us learn what we need to know about the graphic art side of web design. While it's not specifically about that, this book will does the trick well.

Re:Kraus "Design Basics Index"

[Anonymous Coward]

Web Style Guide covers these things well, I don't know why it's so overlooked.

The eye of the beholder

[Anonymous Coward]

Start with clean code: Trent Lucier

gewg_

Looks good

[AoT]

There is a huge leap from "ugly as sin" to "good" and that definitly falls in the ugly as sin category.

For examples of sites that are in between and yet used often, most often perhaps, see:

Google

Craigslist

Wikipedia

Then tell me something has to be pretty.

dev vs design: so sick of this discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

What bothers me the most about the design vs/ developer discussion is that devs tend to think that there is little transferrable process/logic behind the presentation of information, branding, color, etc. Bullshit -- it's real, it's evolved, and is learnable.

There are phenomenal design programs out there that teach logic and creativity as the core of design, not "creative" alone. Programs that heavily emphasize typograhy tend to focus more on logic -- not "art." The Bauhaus, Ulm, and the Schule für Gestaltung Basel are the foundations of modern design education. Grids, typeface development and usage, color, form, flow are all trainable (in good design programs). Sure, these kinds of things are important to "art" -- but they're more important to information conveyance, be it in the form of a website, software interface, or anything else visual.

HTML is not a programming language

[Durandal64]

Could the web "programmers" please get over themselves? HTML and CSS are not programming languages. I don't know why this misconception is so widespread (you'll often see resumés of computer science graduates with HTML, CSS and XML listed under "Programming Languages"), but HTML and CSS aren't programming or scripting languages. HTML is a markup language, hence the "ML" part of the acronym. You can't implement algorithms in them, so knowing them doesn't make you a programmer. It makes you a guy who knows a markup/layout language.

And by the way, SQL isn't a programming language either. It's a query language, hence the "QL". Knowing it doesn't make you a programmer; it makes you a guy who knows a query language.

JavaScript is a scripting language, but the differentiation between programming and scripting these days is getting pretty blurry. But chances are that if you're writing JavaScript, you're writing indecipherable code, since so many JavaScript programmers don't actually have any formal education in computer science; they're over-worked guys who know markup, layout and query languages.

No competition really.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a Fine Arts and Info Tech major with 22 years of computer experience and *no* CompSci under my belt at all...

I don't even *wish* to become skilled at coding databases.

Thus the plan is to accept projects big enough to hire a programmer as well. I'm in your collective corners baby(s)!

Re:Usability vs. Visibility (CHECK IT OUT)

[Anonymous Coward]

Visibility, IMO - This is the shit.

Osaka Popstar

I like blogs, drupal, slash, wp, and hacked up shit like searchlores and the phplab.
But you got to admit bands, make the best fucking eyecandy!

Thanks, Jason!

[PoopDaddy]

I mean... "Trent"

Good presentation designer != good web designer

[jschottm]

It's funny that you mention him, as I'd been looking at his website a few days ago and thinking that while he's clearly excellent at creating visual displays of mathematical data, his (and/or Dariane Hunt's) web design leaves something to be desired.

This is the link labeled Books takes you here:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

First, his navigation isn't consistent.

If you look at the different between the alt tags and the images used in it, the alt tags are almost completely lowercase. On the other hand, the images use all caps. There's also the issue of "Ask E.T." and "ET Writings..."

It's hard to tell due to the anti-aliasing, but to me the kerning looks a little off in some of the buttons.

The "New" icon does not look solidly attached to the "ET Writings..." so it's hard to tell what is new. Skipping the graphic aspect and calling it "Recent Writings..." would be clearer to me.

Drop shadows are used inconsistently, in that the majority (but not all) of the book cover images have them while the page images do not. His right margin is different on the main page than on the subpages, which makes the navigation look out of alignment on the main page.

The site inconstently switches between placing a comma before and/or in a three+ item lists.

But that's all minor nitpicky stuff.

However, there is something badly broken about the navigation bar's using images for everything (besides the fact it's horrible for people with bad vision who need to enlarge the font in order to be able to read). While it does include alt tags for each, all of the spacing is built into the images, not the HTML code, so the navigation looks like:

"Homebookscoursesposters and graph paperfine..."

Then there's what I consider to be the major gotcha of the design - the way he lays out the different books he's written. When I first looked at the page, I thought he'd only written a single book. Then I noticed that there were links to six other pages.

First, this is different than the other categories on his site. Clicking on Fine Art or Posters and Graph Paper, you get a list of each item in that category. While I might argue that a splash page for each category with a thumbnail and abstract of each with a link to a more detailed view might be better, it works. The books page in non-obvious to a casual viewer and breaks from the rest of the site. It also annoyingly jumps around to different locations on each page, rather than remaining in a static position the way a key navigation tool should. In the worst case, it doesn't appear on the first page worth of display, even at 1600x1200 resolution. Users should not have to scroll to find basic navigation.

This leads to another inconsistency - the books section treats his four books, a textbooklet, an essey, and Ms. Tufte's book all as the category of books. The checkout page, however groups his four books together, and the other three scattered in separate locations on the page.

Lastly, his course page looks like it was designed to be a nice poster, not a web page.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses

The four cover images are not the same height and the difference jumps out to me. (Nitpicking again)

More importantly is the two column design looks like a throwback to being limited to a single piece of paper rather than embracing the possibilities that hypermedia offers. The second column is distracting when first trying to read the page, due to the business it adds to the page as well as the fact it contains a number of attention drawing red links. That content could easily have been moved onto a separate registration page, simplifying the main course page and adding useful white space and space where additional information could have been added.

Do I think he's eminently qualified to speak and write on visual design a

How about Jakob Nielsen?

[doom]

endianx wrote:

That is one of the most common mistakes we software engineers make. Design software to be how we want it, not how the users want it. The users want a slow loading flash page with lots of sounds and a delay due to animation every time you click on something.

This is what the designers tell you, at any rate, but with very few exceptions no one knows whether this is true. You need to do some useability studies, ala Jakob Nielsen's recommendations to find out whether people use your site because of the design or inspite of it.

And I would further suggest that the useability study should not be under the control of the web designers, because the designers have an amazing ability to ignore criticism of their wonderful designs.

Welcome to 1999

[mshurpik]

>Fellow programmers, beware! Graphic designers have been invading our territory.

Oh really?

2. Set machine from 1.

[Anonymous Coward]

So...are you implying that if we set the time-machine to 1, then we could go back in time to see Mother Russia before her mountains became all saggy and her vents and geizers were all dripping stank of Mongrels and Huns?

I would go back in time just to stear Madonna back on path, right durring her filming of Material Woman I would fuck her in the ass long and haRD.  I would also go after Wynona Ryder to fuck her in the ass too.

<voice of Captain Jack Sparrow>

Free ass-fucking all around the house!

</voice of Captain Jack Sparrow>

Re:Web design Graphic design

[nidarus]

You raise an interesting point, at least to me (a graphic design student).

Could you give some examples of sites that were obviously designed by clueless print designers?

Web design is not programming.

[sudog]

If someone who by your description is not technically inclined can sit there and become a better web designer than you after reading a book or two, and by your review's splash it would appear that you are a formally trained techie, then you are not programming, nor are you a formally-trained techie.

classic

[way2trivial]

guy in NC, USA robs a armored car for multiple millions, news footage of the bust a few years later included, at the top of the stairs, a velvet elvis....

Re:AWESOaME FP

[Faust]

you're not even trying anymore :(

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be ashamed of yourself. What you describe is far worse than the average ugly forum. Hooray, lets have the entire forum be huge obnoxious images and have the entire thing be unreadable because all the posts are different colored.

while I prefer beauty to ugliness

[alizard]

would you want your bank to have either Salvador Dali or Escher to design the site you use to do your online banking on?

Functionality has to come first. If one can get both beauty and function at the same time, so much the better. But I've seen beautiful websites which were totally useless for their intended functions.

BrowserScript?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Let's just call it ECMAScript so no one gets confused.

ECMA is a standards body. Let's not start calling our programming languages by the body they're listed with. If Ruby, for instance, went for ECMA standardization, why would JavaScript and not Ruby be best called ECMAScript? Precedence is the only reason, and I'm not fond of the ECMAScript, ISOScript, ANSIScript, ASAScript, NISTScript world.

Since WebScript is already taken, how about BrowserScript?

Re:BrowserScript?

[Ayanami Rei]

ECMA is not a very widespread organization that puts its name on internet-related technologes, unlike ISO, IEC, or W3C. It used to mean, at one point, the European Computer Manufacturers' Association, but now it's no longer an acronym, and the Ecma group serves primarily as a steering comittee for IEC.

The only thing we deal with on a day-to-day basis in IT that has its name on it is ECMAScript. They took JScript, Javascript, put it together in one spec, and fast-tracked it to being approved as ISO/IEC 16262. That is the group's claim to fame, so why not name it after it? After all, the ORGANIZATION ITSELF chose the name, so if they wanted to have two scripting languages, well they're out of luck.

I suppose if you have to standardize any scripting language, ISO/IEC 16262 is as good as any.

Re:BrowserScript?

[bill_mcgonigle]

The only thing we deal with on a day-to-day basis in IT that has its name on it is ECMAScript.

This one too. I wonder if it has VBA inside it...

This book is strictly 101 material

[lingista]

On the strength of this review, I recently bought a copy of this book and read it. While I will grant that it's a perfectly adequate book, and might help some people, it definitely did not work for me, for the following reasons:

1. It is extremely basic. If you know anything *at all* about graphic design or web design you will find little here to enlighten you. I've read just a little bit about graphic design, and a little about color theory, and know my way around fonts, and so those chapters imparted no new information to me. Similarly, I didn't need to be told what jpg, gif, and png mean, or what the difference between a 2-column layout and a 3-column layout is.

2. The coverage on every topic is relatively shallow. For $40 (though it's true that you can get it more cheaply on Amazon), I would like to get a bit more than these 160 pages with loads of images and remarkably little text.

3. The author, while doubtless a great guy, is clearly very young and not by any stretch of the imagination an expert in the field. His writing is a mix of collegey triteness and Dummies-guide goofery that ends up saying very little and reads like he's talking down to the reader. Which is unfortunate, because if his intended audience is people who design "web sites that work absolutely perfectly but just don't, well, look very nice", then his target audience is probably people who are way smarter than him and would really appreciate more useful info and fewer embarrassing photos of the author and his own web site.

4. The quality of the images in the book itself is low enough that the illustrations intended to support the points he's making often fail to do so. The paper quality being what it is, many areas that are supposed to illustrate fine use of patterns and shading just look like smudgy abysses.

All that said, I don't want to pan the book completely. The author does know what he's talking about, even though it's essentially all first-semester stuff. And there are lots of nice examples of other people's sites that illustrate design principles. There are lots of tips for using Photoshop that, assuming you own Photoshop but don't know how to use it, might be useful to you. But all in all, I would say this is a book for a rank beginner in designing web pages. If that's you, you might get a lot out of it. It just wasn't me.