Text Book Web Sites

I looked at the two web sites for our text books in the class. The first one, Principles of Beautiful Web Design site gives you a basic overview of web design (what the book is about) focusing on the various elements of design: layout, color, texture, typography and imagery. It is an excellent example of an aesthetically pleasing web site. It is easily readable and the points that the textbook author Jason Beaird is trying to convey are easily understood. It is clever in that when you scroll over each element a visual description appears on the page pointing out examples of what makes for good use of that specific element. For instance, layout shows the correct amount of white space on the page with arrows depicting this. Also, shown is the fixed width on the web page through the use of arrows, as well as, how to isolate the graphic of the bookcover (also using arrows). Check out http://www.principlesofbeautifulwebdesign.com/index.php

The second textbook web site I viewed was Creating Websites: The Missing Manual - Missing CD-ROM. This is a good web site as well because it is visually appealing and the information is conveyed in an easily viewalbe format. Each title is a chapter of the book in numerical order. Under each chapter title is a series of hyperlinks with helpful information on the topic. For instance Chapter One "Preparing for the Web" has links to the historical internet sites and broswer sites. This site can be located at http://missingmanuals.com/cds/creatingwstmm/