Perhaps the biggest transition for authors of web pages is to move from a personal page (essentially a vanity page to please the author) to a page with some serious, professional, academic, or commercial standing intended to interest the reader.Heyward EhrlichThere is as yet no accepted theory of Web Page design. In practice Web pages often reflect a conflict between the desire to present content and the desire to catch viewer attention.
At worst, content rich pages without visual support are boring, while visually attractive pages without substantial content erode web credibility.
Here are some books, periodicals, and web pages on web usability and design:
Books:
The "third generation" school of thought is represented by David Siegel, whose Creating Killer Web Sites caused so much drain on bandwidth as to have led to his remark, "The internet is dead, and I killed it." Actually Siegel insists that web sites insist on functioning visual metaphors to support content and not just "cool" effects. The titles listed here are but a few of the great many now available.
David Siegel. Creating Killer Web Sites. (Hayden, 1996). The book that started "third generation" Web design. http://www.verso.com Siegel's studio site.
David Siegel. Secrets of Successful Web Sites. (Hayden, 1997). Project management. Support web site.
Nick Heinle, Designing with JavaScript: Creating Dynamic Web Pages (O'Reilly, 1997, CD-ROM). When the book first appeared (foreword by David Seigel), Nick was a 17-year old high school student.
Raymond Pirouz, HTML Web Magic (New Riders, 2nd ed. 1998). Advanced HTML. Support Web site.
Anne-Rae Vasquez-Peterson and Paul Chow. Teach Yourself Great Web Design in a Week. (Sams, 1997, CD-ROM). Interesting ideas which are based on universally available 3.0 level browsers.
A more conservative approach to Web design appears in works such as the Yale Web Style Manual, now available in book form.
Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites (Yale, 1999). Based on the online manual at http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/
Molly Holzschlag. Web by Design. (Sybex, 1998). Comprehensive tutorials. Support Web site.
Periodicals
Internet World. See the regular "Deconstructing the Web Sites" feature.
The New York Times: Mondays (Business News) and Thursdays (Circuits) carry business and cultural news of company web sites, web studios, advertising, web usage, web planning, content, media, copyright, and investments.
Web Techniques. Monthly articles on programming and design.
Web pages
- http://www.useit.com.
Jakob Neilson's usability studies. See especially his Alertbox and his "Ten Good Deeds in Web Design," "Top ten mistakes of Web design," and "How people read on the Web."
- http://usableweb.com/
Usable web: more than 400 links on human factors, interface, and design issues.
- http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/hfweb/index.html
A forum for human factors engineers and designers
- http://wdvl.com/Internet/Writing/
Web Developer's Virtual Library: Writing for the Web:
- http:webpagesthatsuck.com
Learn from the mistakes of others. Also available as a book.
- http://www.webreview.com/
Excellent pages on building e-commerce sites, including authoring, design, multimedia, and resources
- webdesign.about.com
Web design at about.com (formerly The Mining co)
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/management/planning/improvingsiteusa.asp
Microsoft web design and usability guidelines
- http://www.ibm.com/ibm/easy/design/lower/f010100.html
IBM Ease of Use Studies
- http://www.notes.net/usability
Lotus Notes Usability Page
- http://www.eastgate.com/HypertextNow/
Mark Bernstein's HypertextNOW columns
- http://www.baddesigns.com/examples.html
Bad designs page
- http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm
Interface Hall of Shame -- don't miss the lists of books and web sites: A Few Sources for Javascripts
- http://www.webcoder.com
- http://www.webreview.com
- http://www.webreference.com
- "http://www.javascripts.com