 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Creating Killer Web Sites Carol Daniels cad@melbpc.org.au |
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Creating Killer Web Sites, The Art of Third-Generation Site Design, Second Edition
This is the second edition of David Siegel's best selling Creating Killer Web Sites, The Art of Third-Generation Site Design. I didn't read the first edition. I was one of those people who chose not to read it, on principle. When the second edition appeared, it was still selling the pants off of most similar books, so I gave in. I felt it was my duty to see what all the fuss was about.
I began reading the second edition with some knowledge about the first, but I knew more about the stir it caused in HTML circles at the time. When the first edition was released it became a best seller almost as fast as Siegel was branded a heretic. His sin was to figure out how to make Web pages do things that HTML wasn't designed to do, and then he wrote about that and told others how to do it, too. The criticism from purists was loud and vehement. What made matters worse was that people flocked to the sites designed by Siegel and his acolytes.
Siegel already knew what it took others a while to understand. The new generation of Web surfers don't much care what HTML was designed to do. They just want to have fun. Part of what makes surfing fun, is visiting good looking sites. No matter what the purists thought, traffic, not good HTML, was now the name of the game.
The second edition comes at a time when HTML specifications and Web browsers have caught up with Siegel's vision. Today design is acknowledged as a valid, even vital element in the development of successful Web sites. Siegel is candid about the need to balance design wow with the Web surfer's desire to see everything now. Wrap it all up and you start to understand what a third-generation Web site is.
"A third-generation site uses typographic and visual layout principles to describe a page in two dimensions. Third-generation site designers carefully specify the position and relationships of all elements on the page, retaining fine control of the layout. Third-generation sites use metaphor and visual theme to entice and guide, creating a whole experience for surfers from the first splash screen to the exit."
From that alone you will realise that this isn't a standard, "this tag does that" HTML book. There's a lot more philosophy and discussion of design metaphors than in most computer books. In fact there's very little emphasis on HTML how-to. The exception is a detailed coverage of image preparation techniques, including using colour and optimising images for the Web. As you'd expect in a design focused book, "optimising" images for the Web is more than "reduce colours and file size so your images will download more quickly". Siegel also covers colour theory, especially the effective use of colour and colour combinations. His painstaking work, tweaking colours and experimenting with different browsers to come up with an equivalent result in most browsers that still fits with his design vision would be seen as beyond the call of duty to most HTML jockeys.
The book's 13 chapters are divided into three parts. Part one introduces Siegel's design philosophy and the context in which he writes (his definition of "third-generation Web sites"), preparing images for the Web, page layout, including the control of vertical space. It finishes with type rendering, and the once controversial use of tables to position type and images on a Web page/computer screen.
Part two takes a wider view, looking at page make-overs, and design metaphors for three common types of sites, personal, store fronts and galleries. Of the three, Siegel's own page is the most interesting read. The gallery example is complex and impressive, but outside the scope of the average Web site developer.
Part three returns to a close up view, with prediction of the future of the Web, the effect of the implementation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Dynamic HTML (DHTML). It includes practical advice for transition straggles, in other words, designing pages for an Internet environment with a hodgepodge of browsers and browser versions each supporting (in their own eccentric way), a different HTML standard.
Conclusion
If you just want to whack up a personal page this book is probably overkill. For serious Web designers and anyone who wants to understand more about how, which and why design works on the Web it's a must read. I read it twice, once straight through and once online visiting the sites featured in the book.
| David Siegel: Creating Killer Web Sites, The Art of Third-Generation Site Design Second Edition ISBN 1 56830 433 1 305 pages Published by Hayden Books |
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,RRP: Despite this book's best seller status, I couldn't find it
listed at any of the major Australian online bookstores. The first edition, which I found still listed at
some Australian sites, sold for $89.95. With a US cover price of US$49.99 and the generally poor condition of
the Australian dollar just now, I'd expect the second edition to retail for at least the same if not more
than the first edition.
Reprinted from the July 1998 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
