I bought this book for a college class I was taking but found that it was far more useful than just fulfilling a class requirement. This book details what is needed in creating a website from beginning to end, including how to be found on search engines and how to make your web site not look amateurish. The authors include plenty of pictures and graphics to illustrate their points, and do not write in "techo-garble" which keeps the average layman at arm's length. I highly recommend this book to ANYONE considering making their own website.

This book was a required text for a class I took on web graphics and layout. I was very impressed with it. I have experience with coding HTML/XHTML and CSS stylesheets, but the books that taught me this didn't focus on the art. That's when this book comes in. It is simply written and I learned an incredible amount from it that makes every webpage I do now more professional. Other reviews complained about the bias towards Photoshop and Dreamweaver. While this is true, the point of the book is not to teach how to use the design tools - it is to teach design. Pick up a book about the graphics and web editor programs you intend on using for how-to. This book is focused on visual layout and aesthetics, and the book does it well. Many examples are given of before-and-after design, along with tips on alignment, fonts, and navigation. It is a great book to have for design inspiration rather than how-to.

I was hoping this book would be the perfect solution for a class I teach that includes basic Web design and HTML authoring skills, and some of the information hits the mark perfectly. One thing emphasized in my class, however, is accessible design for people with disabilities, and this book does not address that issue at all, except for color blindness. Many of the tips and techniques, particularly about the use of frames and design tables, are out of date in terms of accessible design. Many of the ideas, if implemented poorly (which would tend to be the case by novices), would render beautiful but inaccessible (to people with disabilities) web sites. In the book's favor, it does cover cascading style sheets (CSS) for visual layout, but the importance of using that technique for accessible design is not mentioned. That said, this is a beautiful book with many "before and after" makeovers of how simple changes, such as font size and alignment, can increase appeal and usability.

This book is EXCELLENT as a source for explaining concepts. There are LOTS of tutorial books for teaching HTML and specific software programs to generate the code, but THEY don't guarantee because a website 'works' logistically on a server, it WORKS for the intended audience.

If you are looking for a book to tell you all you need to know about HTML, don't look here. But if you have a basic knowledge of the web (well, maybe even if you don't) and just want an excellent book to teach you the fundamentals of web design, this is the perfect choice. I've been searching for months to find a book that could walk me through designing my own family website and this has been exactly what I was looking for. And truly, the book does take you through things step by step. Visually pleasing, full of examples and useful information, this book is beside my computer almost daily. Even after completing it, there are plenty of things to refer back to, including a great chapter on advanced tips and tricks that I used today when I wanted to force a link in my site to open in a new browser window. I have never felt the need to review a book before, but I'm so pleased with this purchase that I just had to make an exception.

Some people (like me) feel like they are being reluctantly pulled into the twenty-first century. Keeping up with the technology that kids are being introduced to in elementary school is a challenge. This book teaches both technical web site building and excellent design skills in a humorous and delightful way. The authors might be designers/technical writers, but they have poetic souls. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and learned alot from it.

Nowadays, everyone seems to have a website, from the largest Fortune 500 companies to the person next door. Some internet service providers even offer on-line software for their customers to create sites. Unfortunately many of these sites are awful. Navigation is often difficult and the graphic design is frequently an obstacle to visitors.

Readers should note that this is a new 2005 edition of an old favorite, and reviews of the second edition may not be applicable.

This book is aimed at helping people not trained in graphic design to put together better web sites. After a curious discussion of search engines, the authors explain what a web page is, how browsers work, and what servers do. The initial chapters are clearly aimed at people who know little about how the Internet works. Subsequent chapters become more technical, and even experienced site makers may find something they either didn't know or ignored. The book shows how the four design principles that Williams has emphasized in her other works (alignment, proximity, repetition and contrast) apply to the design of web sites. A chapter is specifically addressed to designing the navigation for a site. The book then discusses the use of color and typography and finishes up with some advanced design tips and information on getting your site on line and getting people to visit it.

The book operates in a curious area between no knowledge and deep technical knowledge. For example, the authors indicate that the preparation of web sites requires both image-editing and web-authoring software, and that the book is not aimed at teaching the reader how to use such software. Yet very frequently, as they explain design principles, they tell how to use software to achieve the design principles. As a result, even though the book seems aimed at beginners, it will help readers if they have some familiarity with software like Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

This book is deceptively easy and quick to read. And yet there is plenty of information between the covers. Although I consider myself to be fairly competent in creating a website, I picked up a lot of tips that can improve the sites I've created. In fact, I had a long hiatus in the middle of my reading to return to my site to make some improvements based on the authors' recommendations.

There are also a lot of little hints that can prove helpful. For example, I never considered that the apostrophe in my websites was actually just a little line, and that I could put in a real apostrophe by typing in some simple code. Although I've read a lot of web-authoring books, I had never come across this little gem. Now that may not seem very important but when one adds up all the design tips in this book, one has an agenda for good site design.

I do have one complaint. Some of the illustrations are too small to read, especially if one's eyesight is less than perfect. I actually had to use a magnifying glass as I examining some of the illustrations. This certainly sets a poor example for a book dedicated to good design.

This book will prove useful to both beginner and intermediate creators of web sites. And even the most experienced web designers may find something that will make reading this book worthwhile.

I've heard that the books authored by Robin Williams (*not* the actor) on design are pretty good. I got my first taste of that style today when I finished The Non-Designer's Web Book (3rd Edition) by Robin Williams and John Tollett. I can see why they are so popular, and why she's considered a first-rate teacher...

Contents:
Part 1 - Using the World Wide Web: What is the Web?; How to Search the Internet
Part 2 - Making Web Pages: What are Web Pages Anyway?; Things to Know Before You Begin Your Site
Part 3 - Design Issues on the Web: Print vs. Web and How it Affects Design; Basic Design Principles for Non-Designers; Designing the Interface & Navigation; How to Recognize Good & Bad Design
Part 4 - Color, Graphics, and Type: Color on the Web; Graphic Definitions You Must Know; How to Prepare Image Files for the Web; Typography on the Web; Advanced Tips & Tricks
Part 5 - You're Done - Now What?: Test & Fix Your Web Site; How to Upload & Update Your Site; How & Why to Register Your Site
The Stuff at the End: Quiz Answers; Index; Colophon

It's probably best to first figure out the target audience for this book. It's not a book full of HTML syntax and how to code JavaScript routines. If you're looking for that, move on quickly. The main focus is learning how to build aesthetically pleasing pages by using solid design techniques, even if you're not a graphic artist. The assumption is that you're using WYSIWYG-type web page development tools that shield you from hard-core HTML coding. That assumption frees up the reader to concentrate on images, layout, color, font, and all the various things that can make a page look professional or amateurish. The writing is extremely conversational (more so than I've seen in nearly any other book) and maintains a humorous tone throughout. Basically, it's fun to read and the information gets absorbed without much effort.

While it might be tempting to say only beginners should read this book, that might be an undersell. When the authors get into the technical aspects of graphics, even the regular web developer (who is more focused on code than graphical design) would pick up more than a couple things. Again, web developers who focus more on code don't tend to have a good eye for graphical layout. I know I fall squarely in that category. Even the basic tips presented here should help me make some improvements on a number of sites I'm working on. And I'm sure this is much to the delight of my user base...

So... provided you're not picking it up to learn HTML, you should get *something* out of the book. And if you're not a graphical artist by trade, it's a *sure* bet you'll walk away better equipped to catch attention on the web...

This is the new third edition of this book, and I was surprised with how up to date it is. For instance there's a comment about Macromedia Dreamweaver saying that Macromedia was purchased by Adobe, so Dreamweaver information may move to Adobe. (It hasn't happened yet, October 05.)

In many ways this book is like most beginning web design books. That is, it's about the web and how to do a page and authoring software and all that sort of stuff. These areas are very well done, and as a professional designer the pages really look good as well as conveying information.

The real strength of this book is in it's comments on design. Here are some web sites that show really bad design. Bad layout, bad color, bad nearly everything. These then lead to some pages that show good design. Even a few of getting rid of bad design elements and then going to good elements make pages much, much better.

I have just three minor complaints.

Web Authoring -- she likes the simple packages where you don't do any code. Everyone I know sooner or later begins to do HTML.

She is a strong recommender of Adobe Photoshop, including the comment that if you don't know it now you will in the future. Maybe, but there are competitors.

She uses a lot of full page graphics. If all of your visitors have broadband, this isn't a problem. But note the big sites like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Adobe, spot graphics only. Full page graphics may have a nice appearance, but only if you have broadband. Over a slow link your visitor may get tired of waiting before he gets to see your pretty graphics.

I used this book for a class, but it's good for a beginner. This book goes into what the internet is as though we don't know. If you are deciding to design web pages and you need a lesson on what the internet is and does, then you have a lot more work to do then this book will tell you. But you can skip those chapters and get to the stuff for general beginners and then it gets good from there. It will talk about design, definitions that are important to know for beginners, how to get photos and video up on your site, and registering your site.
So should you buy or not? Early beginners - YES Beginners - YES Intermediate and advance - NO

I bought this book because it was being used in a class I was taking. It's a nice book and easy to read. Great for people who don't know much about the internet or webpages.

Wait for the third edition, which is due out in late August 2005. Perhaps it will contain more useful information about Cascading Style Sheets, which are almost an afterthought here. The web-safe color chart and explanation is useful, along with the section on typography. There's also a reasonably clear explanation of using Adobe PhotoShop to create repeating backgrounds. But the cute graphics are like jelly beans spilled over the pages.

After having read the Non-Designer's Design Book, I immediately ordered this one. I think it is very good, and as the first, it really boils everything down to the important things. For me it has just the right amount of depth. Sometimes, very important ideas are deceptively simple. From a web design point of view, Robin & John get to these basic, simple yet critical aspects, and you can walk away and use them immediately.

The reason I only gave four stars is that I think some of the technical web stuff is a bit dated. The best example is the discussion on Frames. My understanding is that Frames are now to be avoided if you want to maximize search engine effectiveness. If it were to be updated today, maybe they would change these things.

And, having said all that, I wouldn't get the book for the web primer section. Get it to improve your design. These guys (sorry Robin) know how to design and convey that knowledge to the visually handicapped among us (like me).

Very much worth the money.

"The Non-Designer's Web Book, 2nd Edition" is perfect for those of you who want to build your own site but don't want to use one of the canned templates so many ISP's offer.
Ms. Williams advice is, as usual, right on target and very easy to understand. Her humor is understated and well placed, encouraging the reader to continue in the project at hand. The book has plenty of color illustrations and screen shots, and is peppered with great advice on creating graphics, getting your site listed, basic design principles, and even a few lessons on HTML coding, if you like.
Each chapter concludes with a short quiz to help cement the principles that were just taught, and her coverage (despite what some people have written) of the basics is just what is needed for those of you who have skipped over an idea or two and wonder just what the heck something such as the difference between search engines and directories are.
Starting on page 50 is a Ms. Williams takes you through setting up a page and the associated site, step by step, in a concise, easy to understand way. It covers such things as typing and formatting text, changing colors, creating links and adding an email link, adding graphics, setting up a table, explaining what frames are and how to use them, and finally, adding some HTML code, if you want. These topics are the very basics of web construction, and the author expounds on them in later chapters, but it's especially nice that she distilled them into a short, easy to read section (that is extremely well illustrated) so you don't have to hunt through the rest of the pages later.
Some people have taken exception to the Netscape emphasis. They fail to realize that when the book was written Netscape was still a big player, and that IE's implementation of standards left a lot to be desired. Also, someone has stated that there are big errors throughout the book, but I haven't found any, and the example the reviewer gave (directions to use a page-sized graphic as a background) doesn't exist. In fact, Ms. Williams stresses that's just want you DON'T want to do.
There is a slight Mac-bias, but it is slight, with plenty of screen shots of Windows software along with the appropriate instruction. Given that the design industry is predominately centered on the Mac platform, this preference is easily understood.
All in all, this is one of the best books out for learning the basics of setting up your web site, as the title implies. You won't go wrong with Robin William's books, and this is just one example of why: clear writing, excellent advice, easy to follow instruction.

 
We have been teaching 17-year old kids Web Publishing for many years. The Non-Designer's Web Book (1st -> 2nd Edition) used to be our textbook. We only realised how useful this book was after we replaced it with another textbook last year, now we change it back.

With lots of visual examples and straight-to-the-point explanations, this really is the Web book for beginners.

Also, although our teachings have been PC-based all along, we have no problem with the book at all.

This very fine book is well written, beautifully illustrated and generally most helpful. However, there are two parts to the book.

1. How to create a web page.
2. How to create an outstanding web page.

The 2nd part is outstanding, but the first part suffers from trying to be all things to all people. There are many web authoring packages, so I decided on the free FrontPage Express and Internet Explorer. The authors admit that they prefer Netscape, and appear to have a preference for the Mac. While they tried to be helpful to people who made my choices they failed. I was unable to finish the first exercise because their instructions on how to create an internal link makes no sense in FPExpress.

If you are comfortable with web design, and want to learn about design, color, balance etc. this is the book for you. But if you, like me, still find the whole idea of creating a web page intimidating you would be advised to find a different book; perhaps returning to this one when you have mastered the basics.

This book was awesome! It is generated toward the beginner with very simple explanations and wonderful pictures so you know exactly what they are saying. But even the experienced web designer can gain from this as you see your own work through more simple eyes.
Lots of ideas, explains from thought through concept, even shows you what NOT to do. Touches bases on color, graphics, search engines, typography. I was very impressed by this book and if you are a beginner this really is the book for you. I was very surprised to the amount of information and the wide range it covers in such a little book!

This is a fabulous story written beautifully by: Eve Bunting. It is about a boy named Danny that gets in trouble with a gang called the outlaws. He ends up running and catching a boat to Alcatraz to hide for a while. He meets a girl named biddy on the boat. He starts taking the tour and he sneaks off and hides. Meanwhile he doesn't know that the outlaws are on there way over to find him. So he is walking around and he sees one of the outlaws and starts running. He gets away from the one but there are three left. They spot him and he starts to run and he sees biddy so he stands by her thinking that it would stop them but it didn't. The outlaws took both of them hostage and held them up in the prison. There is only one person on watch and that is an elderly woman named Mabyline. She has her headphones blaring and the TV going so she can't hear anything. Do they escape or is death there only escape. You will have to read and find out more.

The authors of HTML books tend to fall into three categories: Coders, Tech Writers, and Designers. Robin Williams belongs proudly in the last category, and it shows. Four chapters of sharp and specific advices on design are accompanied by 12 rather watered-down chapters on web basics - with no coverage of HTML itself! Apparently Robin decided to target her book to amateurs and graphic designers who think they can do everything on Dreamweaver and other graphic tools, thus never have to deal with the messy HTML plumbing ...

Not so! Web and browser technology still have many idiosyncracies, and any serious web designer will soon have to master the actual plumbing works - in all its glorious variations. For that, there is no shortcut to a step-by-step study of HTML and CSS - perhaps the Molly Holzschlag book. She, however, is not technical enough to write it.

Robin Williams shine when she lays out realistic (and above-average) examples and explains why they work (or not). Her chapter on typography was outstanding - she analyzes each of Microsoft's near-universal web core fonts, pointing out their strengths and weaknesses, and discourses on the use of Arial vs. Helvetica (one for screen and the other for printing). No other book goes into such detail. I give her four stars for this chapter alone.

The perfect HTML book would probably be Laura Lemay/Holzschlag teaming with Robin (and maybe Lynda Weinman). Failing that, getting both Holzschlag and Robin Williams is not a bad substitute.

So, you want to learn to the craft of web-design and want a beginners guide to help you do it? Well, there are lots of design books out there, and perhaps none of them will tell you everything you need to know. This book is decent; it has a lot of tips that are useful and some good ideas. But most of what it teaches is either common sense or stuff you'll pick up anyway as you experiment with your software.

The book's main strength is in its pictures--there are tons of them, and most of the examples are very good. This will provide the reader with somewhere to start. Unfortunately, the tips are not all that great. Most of what is preached in this book is a matter of personal preference, things like screen resolution and alignment. The authors give good suggestions on how to do things, but they make it sound like it's the only way. It's not.

It's true that you have to follow certain rules of style as you build a website. Color, contrast, and spacing are all very important, and if your site's an eyesore or is hard to use, people won't frequent it. But, all in all, it's called 'design' for a reason. It's your baby, do what you want with it.

That is the main weakness of the book--it's just a little too rigid in its so-called rules. For those who want a book on web-design that is easy to understand, this will prove useful. But there's nothing here that a little experience won't teach you.

Forget this book! There's a better solution. I bought this book based on my experience reading the author's Non-Designer's Design Book. I would strongly recommend buying that. The Web book though, is trying to give you overall information on a variety of software that really benefits no one particular user. A lot of the generic tips are good, but included is a lot of information on specific products, such as Photoshop, that are promoted as the ultimate for Web design. Photoshop is very expensive, and I already have Corel Draw and PhotoDraw. Most beginners would not run out and buy Photoshop anyway.

Aside from the scattered info about various software, there are also too many mistakes. As is pointed out in many other reviews here, Netscape is not preferred, and has not been the leading browser for a long time. Page 208 has a serious mistake recommending loading an entire page size graphic in order to get a horizontal block across a page. A color filled table is the correct approach. This was unfortunately typical of many errors that I found.

I have to admit that I was looking for a more design oriented book since I have some Web authoring experience. After reading the book I believe I can offer a better solution to someone looking for both design and Web building information. First, buy Ms. Williams Non-Designer's Design Book. Second, decide on which Web authoring software you might want to use. Third, buy or scavenge all the written information you can about that software. This way you will have the design information, and you'll have specific information about what YOU will actually be using. Many of these books give tips peculiar to Web design. For someone that's an absolute Internet novice, start with a book that tells you what that's all about first. They're plenty of them out there.

I enjoyed the non-designers print book, but the web book was disappointing. Specifically, it was a few years too late in what it was suggesting for me to be able to recommend it as anything but basic or background reading.
A lot of the tricks and work-arounds presented were useful a while back but have now been replaced by common Javascript actions (eg, pre-loading images). Similarly, the author writes as if the browser wars were still being fought, when IE has pretty much won (I agree it's sad, but it's true).
A lot of the history and background information presented is still true, but this book is a fair way behind even common practice, let alone the cutting edge. The book may be useful for novices, but there are much more up-to-date texts out there.

Computer? Check. Design program? Check. Good design sense? Uhh...

For those of you who are still "uhhing", we heartily recommend a copy of this useful tome to cure what ails you. Williams and Tollett offer useful and sound advice for winning the woeful website design war.

The authors start out with a very rudimentary and, in our opinion, superfluous lesson on what the web is, and how to use a search engine among other novice topics. After all, the title says the non-designer's web book, not the non-internet user's design book; we think the basics could have been skipped or the user referred to another beginning internet user’s book. But soon the meat of the book is reached, and boy is it juicy. Williams and Tollett spend considerable time expounded on color theory, good vs. bad design, and other useful topics. (We especially appreciated the tip on how to load large files-very helpful.)

If you are a beginner, we recommend you buy this book, as it will enhance your efforts to become an all-star web designer. If you are an intermediate or advanced user, get this from the library. After you absorb the few new tricks in the book, you find little worth its purchase price.

A caveat: if you are not a Mac and Photoshop user, you will have to take the extra step of translating the tips onto a useable format for you system and software. Including information for those millions of us on Windows and FrontPage or other software would have given this book the five stars we wished to bestow upon it....

P.S.: We must admit that we used The Non-Designer's Web Book in the process of building our site until it (the book, not the site) was dog-eared and coffee cup stained.

Given that designing a cool site is NOT simple--nor fun in my opinion--this book does as good a job as possible of getting you from zero to art designer/typographer/webmaster. Using this book, along with the GoLive Quickstart book, (price) worth of classes & 17 calls to Adobe, I managed to make a Yahoo Site of the Week in just under 9 months. And I was already pretty handy with Photoshop!

Along the way, several people told me "You could just as easily learn HTML and not have to deal with user-friendly software". I suspect they were right.

Still, a great job, all things considered. Besides, how many books would they sell if they said "It ain't easy but this will help".

Given that designing a cool site is NOT simple--nor fun in my opinion--this book does as good a job as possible of getting you from zero to art designer/typographer/webmaster. Using this book, along with the GoLive Quickstart book, [expensive] classes & 17 calls to Adobe, I managed to make a Yahoo Site of the Week in just under 9 months. And I was already pretty handy with Photoshop!

Along the way, several people told me "You could just as easily learn HTML and not have to deal with user-friendly software". I suspect they were right.

Still, a great job, all things considered. Besides, how many books would they sell if they said "It ain't easy but this will help".

This book is strictly for beginners. Lots of good information but Robin Williams has a very BIG Mac bias and repeatedly bashes any Windows program. Also her Photoshop tips are for an old version and aren't very helpful.

As a technical team leader, this was one of my first stops to try and become visually aware - an important skill to have if one is in the web-publishing business. This book should be mandatory reading for all those web-application programmers out there who are absorbed in the technology, but who sometimes forget that human-beings need to be able to use the tools that they are developing. (This review refers to the 1st edition of the book).

I really learned a lot from this book. Prior to reading it my knowledge of the web was very limited...for example, I had heard of "frames" on a web page before, but I didn't really know what "frames" were. I also learned about different types of graphic files (TIFF, GIF, JPEG) used on the web, "web-safe" colors, guidelines for good web design, web navigation, etc. The book is loaded with clever illustrations and the each topic is explained clearly. It was great to learn so much from a book that was also enjoyable to read.

Robin's other book, Non-Designer's Design Book, was great at introducing simple design techniques. This one, however, takes it a step further, by introducing and talking at length about color, and of course, web design. I love this book! I am about to order the second edition, which I hope will be better because it's been updated to be more current with technology.

Robin's writing style is simple, to the point, and interlaced with humor.

I am one who knows computers and the various programs to make pages, but I have no artistic ability. This book and Robin's other books have helped me to understand many simple design techniques to make my pages look much better.

Now in an updated and expanded second edition, The Non-Designer's Web Book offers the aspiring web designer a complete instruction guide for such World Wide Web basics as how to use it, including searching for information and building web pages. Robin Williams and John Tollett effectively collaborate to explain the difference between print and web design, basic design principles for the web, various approaches to interface and navigation design, and what makes an effective or ineffective web design. The Non-Designer's Web Book shows when to use different graphic file formats, how to prepare images (including simple animations), tips and techniques by expert web designers, and how to get ready-made graphics. After a website is finished, Williams and Tollett show how to text and repair a website, upload and update a website, register and promote a website. The Non-Designer's Web Book is an invaluable, easy-to-follow, highly recommended manual for the novice webmaster.

I would only recommend this book to someone who is a beginner or one who can not differentiate between good and bad design. I had hoped that this book would spend more time relating traditional graphic design rules to the web. I was disappointed. My take-aways from this book are limited to a couple alignment rules and a interesting idea for hiding large image downloads. If you understand how to use fonts and organize information on a web page, don't bother.

Unfortunately I was required to purchase this book for a Web class that I'm currently taking, even though I'm already an accomplished Web designer. I found a few errors in the book and also didn't care for the opinions expressed in it.

If you're thinking of purchasing a book to learn how to design Web pages, look elsewhere. There are plenty of other great books out there. But this isn't one of them.

This is a great book. I cannot remember when I have gotten so much useful information from a single source. I am a novice at web site design and development and this book answered most of the questions I have been trying to find answers for. And it does it in straight-forward, plain English. I keep re-reading and I like it better each time. The book is well laid out with plenty of white space and illustrations next to the text-no flipping pages to find a picture of what you are reading about. If I have any criticism it is that, as a PC user, I felt a little neglected at times.

... there is a new, second edition of this book for 2000. I'd hate for you to order the older version without realizing that there was a more current one - especially with the speed with which the internet changes!

I am a technical writer and I took a web design class using Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator before I read the book. This book covers everything that we skipped in our classes which was the basics. This book explains what I needed to know from definitions of technology, to searching the internet, to web authoring tools (Dreamweaver vs. HTML), to site design, to good vs. bad design. This book made something that is usually presented very badly and made difficult, into something very simple that everyone could use. They are great writers and the book is handy even if you know HTML, it teaches you some new things that you can do with web authoring software are difficult to do with straight coding.