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"The Web is an amazing expression of hypermedia, personal storytelling, and the interconnectedness of everyone on the planet. It's also an incredibly difficult place to make a living." [Jeffrey Veen: The Art & Science of Web Design]

"Page design sometimes gets the most attention. After all, with current Web browsers, you see only one page at a time. The site itself is never explicitly represented on the screen. But from a usability perspective, site design is more challenging and usually also more important than page design." [Jakob Nielsen: Designing Web Usability]

Many businesses, from the smallest through to large enterprises, have found themselves with a Web site that doesn't work well - if at all. It is easy to be taken in by the hype of dot con artists; the reality is that a successful Web site requires careful planning, skilful design, and ongoing maintenance. Balance between presentation and content is crucial, and failure to appreciate how different browsers render the same Web page can lead to disaster.
 
Those with a serious interest in Web design and management issues will welcome the arrival of some particularly useful resources.

Web Project Management
 
Managers and executives may not need to have an in-depth technical understanding of the process, but should be familiar with the various facets of constructing and running a Web site. There are plenty of books about design and programming, but not many about the management side.
 
Web Project Management fills that gap; it "is for those responsible for making a Web site happen, for delivering a site, and for seeing the job through". The primary audience is those involved in large-scale commercial Web site projects, and those who aspire to working in that field. However, any manager or executive who has to deal with a project team will find this an invaluable guide to project management issues. For the people working on a project it provides a proven method for planning, managing, and measuring the progress of a large Web site project. An excellent guide for those who have to present meaningful progress reports, the book shows how business management principles are applied to projects. The method is based on an approach developed by a large agency, Wheel, whereby eight stages are defined:

• Project clarification;
• Solution definition;
• Project specification;
• Content;
• Design and construction;
• Testing, launch, and handover;
• Maintenance; and 
• Review and evaluation.

Each stage is the subject of a chapter in which detailed information is presented. The language is clear, free of padding, and to the point. The technical side of Web programming is not discussed - it is not the subject of the text - which makes this title a valuable resource for both sides of a project: executives and managers who commission the work, and the project manager(s) who will control the work.

Ashley Friedlein: Web Project Management ISBN 1-55860-678-5 Published by Morgan Kaufmann,  324 pp.,  RRP $93.50 incl. GST

The Art Of Web Design

The full title of this book is, The Art & Science of Web Design; use of the word, science, in the title may suggest a high degree of technical discussion, but readers do not need a technical background. In the introduction the author says it "is not a reference manual or even a style guide. Rather, it is a mentor for Web designers or those wishing to be .". Even though technical issues are discussed there is little code used in the text, and then purely to illustrate a point. The conversational style works very well.

This is a book to be read, and once read it makes for great browsing. The author does not offer slick design solutions; he talks about concepts and principles, and puts them into a practical context. There is an interesting discussion of the change from pixel-based design to rule-based design. The thing that sets Web design apart from design for other media - especially print - is the many variables with which a Web document has to interact. Browsers behave differently, and there are many end-user factors (resolution, colour representation, gamma settings, installed fonts, and so on). A rule-based approach to design is essential if the effects of those variables are to be minimised.

Other chapters deal with structure, interface consistency, speed, advertising, and object-oriented publishing. Many useful topics are discussed, and there are interesting side notes.
 
This attractively presented text (although some typos managed to creep in) is a valuable supplement to more conventional design resources and deserves to be part of any professional Web designer's library. Managers and executives who commission Web development work should read it in conjunction with Web Project Management.

Jeffrey Veen: The Art & Science of Web Design  ISBN 0-7897-2370-0 Published by New Riders,  259 pp.,  RRP $95.95 incl. GST

Designing Web Usability

Another New Riders title, Designing Web Usability, is an interesting book. The back cover carries (apart from bar codes and publisher information) just the words: The Practice of Simplicity, which come from the author's constant message: put usability first, practice simplicity.
 
Dr Nielsen is a well known author and speaker, and has been associated with Sun Microsystems, IBM, Bell Communications and Research, and the Technical University of Denmark. He has written more than seventy-five research papers on usability engineering, user interface design, and hypertext.

The word, usability, is barely mentioned in dictionaries, but "usability test" is defined by ISO: "A test to determine whether an implemented system fulfils its functional purpose as determined by its users" [Nader: Dictionary of Computing]. That is what this title is about. Jakob Nielsen is no ivory tower academic or engineer; he is able to explain his philosophy in plain language and illustrate each point with real-world examples. The book is eminently readable, but demands concentration. The text is not designed for quick scanning to identify salient points, but has to be digested.
 
There are many aspects to Web usability, and each one is dealt with in detail. Even the ubiquitous under construction page is the subject of advice with a good and bad example of how the situation should be handled. 
The design of the book is particularly functional. Plenty of space is given to screen shots (in colour) of annotated example Web pages. Each chapter has its own fly leaf (always a right-hand page) with a detailed list (including page references) of the chapter's contents on the opposite page. It is a really good way of making information easy to find, making the book a useful reference. The overall content is divided logically into chapters:

• Page design;
• Content design;
• Site design;
• Intranet design;
• Accessibility for users with disabilities;
• International use;
• Future predictions; and
• Simplicity in Web design.

Anyone who wants to create a successful Web site, for whatever purpose, should have this book. It is not a stand-alone Web design manual, but a text that deals in technical depth with usability issues. Even though the author deals with technical matters, readers don't need a technical background. As with the two previous titles, an essential resource for Web designers and developers, and worth reading by managers.

Jakob Nielsen: Designing Web Usability ISBN 1-56205-810-X Published by New Riders,  419 pp.,  RRP $79.95 incl. GST

Search Engine Positioning

This title is about marketing issues rather than design. However, it raises matters that should be considered by all stakeholders in any Web development project and emphasises the need to treat positioning as a part of the design process.

What is 'search engine positioning'? "Most people venture onto the Internet to solve a 'search problem'. If the Web site that would best satisfy the intent of their query does not contain any targeted keywords in any of the places where search engines would look for them, that document will not be presented to the searcher." By understanding how the various search engines work, and how search engine proprietors operate, it is possible to raise the ranking of any given site.
 
Search engine positioning is a flourishing business, and the author is promoting a particular application (a demo copy is on the companion CD) and service. However, this title is not a description of that application or a claim to how good it is. The book is about the nuts and bolts of search engines, how they are interrelated, and how to take advantage of their respective features.
 
Each one is described in a common format: facts about the engine; understanding search results; site elements that can cause problems; site optimisation tactics; how to submit a site to the engine; how to build informational pages for the engine; how to know if your site has been listed; how to know if your sites has been spidered/listed; indexing timetable; and responsiveness and help provided.

Of course, what are commonly called search engines are often not that at all, but are directories or hybrids. Yahoo!, an acronym for 'Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle', is not a search engine, but "a directory edited by humans". Yahoo! does use a search facility, Google, that steps in when the directory cannot satisfy a search request.

According to the author, there are just three pure search engines: Northern Light, AltaVista's Raging Search; and fast. Other sites that use spider-based searches and directories include AltaVista, Google, WebCrawler, and Excite. It is common to find partnerships; for example, Excite enables a link to LookSmart's directory service. The book provides fascinating information about such relationships, and how each search site operates. The Web search landscape is in a state of constant change, but the author provides readers with the opportunity to subscribe to a free e-mail newsletter that contains updates to the book.

This is an important resource for anyone involved in Web development and site design at either the technical or management level. General readers with an interest in Web technology should find it fascinating. A must for libraries. A great argument for real books; one might spend weeks searching the Web - with no guarantee of success - for the detailed information in this single text.

Frederick Marckini: Search Engine Positioning ISBN 1-55622-804-X Published by Wordware,  553 pp. + CD,  RRP $109.95 incl. GST

Reprinted from the December 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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