Web Design: The Complete Reference

by Thomas A. Powell
Osborne: £31.99
ISBN 0-07-211977-2

This book has me in two minds. On the one hand, I wish I had had it at hand when I was writing my first Web page, since the collection of information here is comprehensive and would have helped me avoid the errors I made then. On the other hand, looking at it from the vantage point of some experience with putting Web sites together, this book is very much a curate’s egg.

In his introduction, Powell says, “A design book without colour pictures! Who would have thought it could be published?” He defends this by pointing out that he does not want the book to be full of colour screen shots of cool sites while ignoring the problems users encounter at them; this book, he says, “will try to tell the other half”.

Unfortunately, there are times when a high-quality colour picture would really help this book. The extensive discussion of colour would benefit a lot from decent illustrations of, say, what hue and saturation mean, or of contrast problems. The comparison of using GIF and JPEG formats for photographs would be a lot more instructive if the basic monochrome reproduction did not make the four pictures look identical!

Regarding images, in discussing the use of transparent GIFs, he mentions the “halo” problem which results from an image placed on a background colour different to the original. He says that ways to get around this are: not using transparency and matching the image and page backgrounds; alias the image (producing jaggy edges); or use alpha transparency. He does not mention that alpha transparency is only available in the poorly supported PNG format, not GIF; nor does he explicitly give the obvious solution: use the same background colour for image and page and make that the transparent colour!

There are problems with the text, too. This book exhibits some of the worst proofreading I have ever seen. Every so often you encounter sentences that make no sense or else contradict what has just been said. I have to say that the errors struck me as symptomatic of a book which has been thoroughly spell-checked and sloppily proofread, since all the errors are actual words. This is all rather ironic given that Powell points out how crucial it is to ensure your Web pages are free from spelling and grammatical errors.

The basic sections covering the approach to Web design, usability, navigation and so on are an extremely useful collection of material, especially for anyone starting out in Web design. The problems start to appear in some of the more advanced sections. Some of the JavaScript techniques, for example, do not work in Netscape 6 (no surprise there!), but they don’t work properly in IE 5 for the Mac either. A discussion on downloadable fonts at no point addresses the question of how this technology might affect users with slow Internet connections, or how they might respond to it.

Powell refers a number of times to designs degrading “gracefully”, a concept which really should be discussed in some detail in a section devoted to the subject rather than alluded to at various points throughout the book. In particular, there is not enough emphasis on the implications of Flash and Shockwave for users of non-standard browsers. Coverage of degradability would be a lot more useful than the section on the future of Web design, which could be summarised as “HTML isn’t going away, and a lot of people will be accessing the Net by other means than computers”.

Even less useful than that is Appendix A. Throughout the book, Powell inserts rules based on what he has just said, highlighted to stand out from the main text. These are gathered in a list in Appendix A. I can’t believe anyone would use this: some of the items are self-explanatory, but some only make sense when you can read them in the light of the justification in the main body of the book. No, references to the relevant pages are not given, only to the sections.

In the appendix on Fonts, much of the information is also presented in HTML: the Complete Reference. However, the discussion of <basefont> (which I own up to never having used) is confusing. In the section on colours, images and backgrounds, which is not necessarily the first place you would look if seeking information on the <basefont> element, Powell suggests that “Due to poor cross-browser support, avoid using the <BASEFONT> element to set font values in a document…” This entirely justified warning is forgotten by Appendix C, however, where he says “it may be appropriate to change the font size, color, or face throughout an entire document. To do this, use the <BASEFONT> element…”

Even more confusingly, in the earlier section a piece of example HTML clearly shows <basefont> in the <body> of the document, yet in the Appendix he specifies that it should be used in the <head>! (The same author’s HTML: the Complete Reference states: “The <BASEFONT> element must be placed near the beginning of the body part of the page.”)

The worst section of the book by far is the discussion of Web server technology in Site Delivery and Management. In particular, the comparison of server operating systems seems a little as though it has come from another planet. I could not believe that anyone could lump NT in with UNIX in a statement like “Often not as robust as NT or UNIX…”, or fail to mention UNIX’s unparalleled security.

Regarding Linux, Powell says it, “lacks volume of commercial software support found with mainstream UNIX systems…” Is that why Sun are thinking of ditching Solaris for it, and Compaq installing it on some of their Alpha servers?

A friend with much more experience with servers than I looked at this. His response began, “Whoever wrote this garbage…” It does, sadly, read as though Powell believes that if you don’t pay lots of cash for something it isn’t worth bothering about.

To sum up this book, I think it would be incredibly useful for someone who has done no Web design, but possibly his earlier HTML: the Complete Reference would be just as, or more, useful with fewer caveats. For those more experienced, there is some very useful information gathered here, although possibly not worth the cost of the book. Most Web designers could benefit from reading the first half of the book early in their career, but the more experienced will find that only occasional pieces of information are news to them. These snippets are extremely enlightening and useful, but, again, possibly not worth the price of the book.

Whereas HTML: the Complete Reference is something I would have no hesitation in recommending to anyone, I have such serious reservations about this book that I could not recommend it to anyone other than a complete beginner, and even there I would have to say: handle with care.