Basics of Web Design: Book Review

The Book

Title: Basics of Web Design: HTML5 & CSS3 
Author: Terry Felke-Morris

I read this book for the class LIS 5937: Web Design for Librarians. It was a good class though tedious. Web design is about attention to detail while keeping the big picture in mind. This book shows the reader which tools are available to build professional websites out of a simple notepad.

The Review

I particularly enjoyed this book because the text was laid out in a simple, logical manner. This was a book written about the web, but also written like the web. Hence, there were a lot of bullet points, lists and tables that allowed for easy digestion of the material.

In addition, the sections were laid out brilliantly from an editing perspective. As everyone knows, new information is constantly released on this topic, and books must be revised accordingly. The sections stand alone and could easily be removed, rearranged or edited in isolation.

Finally, I found myself using this text as reference material. The index was superb, and I was able to get to all the relevant information for the project at hand with little hindrance.

I wholeheartedly recommend this text to any novice/advanced beginner who needs a little guidance/an offline reference tool for web design. Quite frankly, all of the information in the book can be found online, but sometimes the structure of a book can help beginners get their feet wet.

The Citation

Felke-Morris, T. (2011). Basics of web design: HTML5 and CSS3. Addison-Wesley