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Title: Web Design on a Shoestring by Carrie Bickner ISBN: 0-7357-1328-6 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A "must have" for the budget-constrained web designer
Comment: Before I review this, I must say one thing. If you have ever seen the movie "This is Spinal Tap" you will laugh when you see the figure on page 30 and remember the bass player saying, "making a big thing out of it would've been a good idea."
Since the dotcom bubble burst, web designers have been expected to deliver whizz-bang websites for pocket change. They are supposed to do the work of five people with a fifth of the budget. This book is intended to help the designer who is trying to work within a tight budget.
"Web Design on a Shoestring" is packed with tips on planning, testing, and building websites when working with small margins. It is full of helpful advice about where to go for low-cost resources, such as image libraries and web hosting providers. Plus there is a special section about saving time and money by designing with web standards.*
I heartily recommend this book to any web designer who is feeling the pinch, and to others who would like to make a few extra bucks for their efforts.
*For more on designing with web standards, I recommend a book by Jeffrey Zeldman, called ... er ... "Designing with Web Standards". Some might say that they were a match made in heaven...
Rating: 5
Summary: Useful information through a realistic lens
Comment: For a long time I've hoped that someone would write a book like this. I've also feared it, because the wrong writer, by taking a superficial approach, would kill the topic ... and I believe this is a subject that cries out for more than one book. Fortunately, Bickner's book does the topic justice.
First a confession. As a web designer with over seven years' experience, I've designed, coded, and produced more than 50 Web sites in my career but never once had the opportunity to work on a big budget project ... not even during the so-called dotcom boom years.
So what Bickner talks about in this book is not a new world to me, it's the world I work and live in. This makes me a writer's worst nightmare, because I feel I know as much as anyone about exceeding expectations with little to no support. I expected to be able to trash this book but instead I found myself learning a lot. The chapters on hosting costs and gotchas and on content management systems were particularly useful.
There's also a risk that a book like this will be too general for its own good, but Bickner seems to know what to include and what to leave out. Her focus is consistent throughout ... it's all about delivering great results even when your budget is laughably small. She writes well and respects the reader's time. I like this book, will keep it on my desk, and recommend it highly.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good ROI on this book
Comment: from a review I wrote for DMXzone.com
The title of this book is both accurate and simultaneously misleading; it does teach how to make web sites on a shoestring, but it also suggests it's going to tell you how to use that copy of FrontPage that you got with MS Office, together with some clipart and animated GIFs in order to make a table-heavy, midi-muzakked "killer homepage".
I believe that, at some point during the writing, it was codenamed "how to make a site on a shoestring that looks a million dollars" which would be more accurate (although a little cumbersome and too big to fit on the book's spine!). It's a book for web designers with a low budget (whether in the public sector, freelancers or - let's be frank - practically everyone these days).
This book definitely does what it says on the cover and more; the sites you'll create if you follow its advice will be better looking than the majority of current web sites out there on the web. Even if you are an experienced developer or designer, there's sure to be some useful tips you'll pick up.
It's nice to see New Riders publishing practising what their author preaches; the book is cleanly and carefully laid-out in black and white (to keep the cover price down, presumably) and lacks the typographic excesses that polluted some previous books like blink tags on a Geocities web page.
This slim book doesn't feel very big, and it isn't cheap at $24.99, but that's much cheaper than most computer software available and will certainly impact as much on your quality and productivity as most labour-saving software packages do. I recommend buying a copy, as it is full of good ideas, links, tips and project management suggestions that is almost certain to save you several multiples of the cover price.
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Title: Designing With Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman ISBN: 0735712018 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 14 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Defensive Design for the Web : How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points by 37signals, Matthew Linderman, Jason Fried ISBN: 073571410X Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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Title: Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization by Andrew B. King ISBN: 0735713243 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 14 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design by Eric A. Meyer ISBN: 073571245X Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 28 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Return on Design: Smarter Web Design That Works by Ani Phyo ISBN: 0201756072 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.99 |
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