Part 2: "Web Design in a Nutshell" and advice to novice Web designers

Let's talk about your newest book. Your previous book, Web Design in a Nutshell received high accolades. Tell us about Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, Graphics, and Beyond.
Web Design in a Nutshell has been well-received by people who are working at an intermediate or professional level. I found that when I was teaching my beginner web design workshops that my students weren't ready for the Nutshell and I had nothing to offer them. My earlier beginners' book, Designing for the Web, was out of print. I knew I wanted to write a book to replace it, but also improve upon it by incorporating my years of web design and teaching experience.

Learning Web Design is targeted at the absolute beginner, regardless of background. My beginner classes are filled with graphic designers, secretaries, programmers, college grads with liberal arts degrees, and so on. They all seemed to have the same questions and the same feelings of being overwhelmed. In addition to providing all the nuts & bolts information about HTML and web graphic production, the book establishes the big picture and quells some of the common fears.

What makes it different from your previous HTML related books? And from other HTML books?
Well, first, I think it's important to point out that HTML makes up just a portion of this new book. It is a comprehensive overview of everything you'd need to know to get up and running making web pages.

It begins with a big-picture explanation of the medium and its quirks. Without this context, it's difficult to make sense of the ways web pages are actually put together. The next two parts deal with the specifics of building web pages: learning HTML and producing web graphics. I wrap up the book by broadening back out to some higher-level topics such as usability, design dos and don'ts, and introductions to advanced techniques and technologies. What makes it different from other books is its completeness... it doesn't focus on just HTML or just graphics.

Compared to the Nutshell and other O'Reilly books, this book stands out in that it presents the information very visually. There are almost 400 figures in the book! There is also more emphasis on step-by-step demonstrations. When writing the book, I wanted people to be able to get the major lessons just by looking at the pictures. The prose is there to support the pictures, instead of the other way around.

This is the book that I wished I had to give to my web design students. I'm hoping that other web design instructors will find it a valuable companion to their classes. It will also be the perfect book for those learning web design on their own.

When starting a Web design project (new or revamped), what process do you go through to make it happen from start to finish?
When I have time to do freelance web design, I've concentrated on small business and organization sites rather than giant e-commerce sites or portals. I enjoy working on small sites that I can really get my arms around and produce myself.

For these sites, I find that I begin by educating my client on what a website can and can't do for them. I like them to feel involved in the process and to understand the medium. The first meeting is usually a combination of my sharing my web knowledge with them and getting to the heart of their motivations for getting on the Web. We also begin the information design of the site at that meeting by taking an inventory of everything they want their site to contain and do.

I'll transform this list of priorities and wishes into a working site structure. The client's agreement to this structure (or a revised version) forms the basis for the scope of the project.

Then I present two or three "look and feel" studies, and once a general design is agreed upon, I begin to produce the actual pages for the site. If I need any programming or scripting beyond what I can crank out automatically in Dreamweaver, I job that out since I don't do any of it myself (I'm a graphic designer, primarily). Of course, my process is greatly simplified since I have not taken on any projects that require database backends, shopping functionality, or other complicated production needs.

Continued...