Learn web design the right way

Sitepoint have had forums for years now - in fact, it’s pretty much where they started before branching into the publishing world. However, now, after many years of being in the book business, it’s come full circle. Kind of … Basically, they’ve set up a new forum specifically covering their various books. I was delighted to find out that the first post in the forum was relating to my book and even more delighted to learn that it was wholly complimentary. Then another posting appeared - also for my book!

Lastly don’t forget that there are many ‘Website’ books out there which probably shouldn’t be on the shelves still; if you want a fast track to correct and compliant code you couldn’t do better than this beginner’s book.
Oh and just in case you’re not convinced, I’ve been using the excellent HTML-reference appendix ever since.

The full review of the book is here.

It’s been a while since I looked at how my book has been doing. It arrived in printed format just over a year ago, so it’s a little off the radar now, if you catch my drift. Today, though, I had a look on Amazon.com for something and my book came up as a recommendation, and I clicked through out of curiosity to see if there any new reviews. I was pleased to see that the reviews are still coming in. Not quite as thick and fast as they do on Sitepoint’s page for the book (9 pages of mostly positive, 4-5 star reviews), but it’s still selling, and with the reviews on both sites looking good, hopefully it will continue to. But I have to say that I was particularly pleased with the 5-star rating

A little while ago I received the sales figures for the book covering the March-December period. I won’t say what the figures are, as I’m not sure if it’s something I’m allowed to state publicly, but at the time I wasn’t sure if the figure was average/good/excellent (I was later informed by on person that what I’d sold with this book was more than what they had sold with two different books, so that was encouraging). Because the book is a beginner’s book, it comes with a lower retail sale price than others published by SitePoint and as such I just missed out on making enough in sales to cover the advance but we don’t do this for profit, right?

I do actually enjoy the writing process and have since contributed to other books (Pro CSS Techniques and Web Standards Creativity), but there’s still nothing quite like having one all of your own and be able to say “I did that”. I’d definitely be interested in doing another complete book at some point, although right now it’s nice not to have to worry about deadlines and have to put other stuff (general life things) aside when there’s a chapter due!

… for the great review and quote!

Thanks for writing this book, Ian. Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML & CSS should immediately be made required reading for every single course on web design or web development across the world.

I added the emphasis there, of course. What a great testimonial!

Well, I could have, and if you feel like writing a better review than this, then please feel free! But I have to repeat something that Kevin Yank posted at SitePoint today regarding some feedback from a total web newbie. Apologies for the rather long blockquote - I found it difficult to remove any part of it! The emphasis on certain words was added by me.

Now, Jess is studying to teach drama and English, so she could easily have taken the path of least resistance, but as we had just received our office copies of Ian Lloyd’s Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS , I dropped one on her desk and hinted that she might find it interesting reading.

Less than a week later, she shot me an instant message one afternoon with a URL in it and asked me, “What do you think?” Bracing myself for the worst, I clicked through and blinked in astonishment at the green check mark that popped up at the bottom of my browser window. The site validated!

It turns out that Jess enjoyed the book so much, she even included an extra page on her site explaining how she had come by her newfound HTML and CSS skills:

And here’s what my happy customer wrote:

I read the book, which assumed no prior knowledge, and was quickly educated in how to use valid HTML and create snazzy web layouts in CSS, in a way that means I can apply my styling to a number of pages using one style sheet—very handy if I want to change something across all my pages.

The result? You’re looking at it. The fact that my first page I created, my homepage, is Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict is an achievement that very, very few first-time webpage builders can claim. In fact, all my webpages pass both HTML and CSS validation 100%, except for the Blogger code in my blog page. But that’s their problem, and another reason why I would ideally use hand-crafted weblogging technology if I were using blogging with students.

I should say, even though I know I’m pushing the boundary between exposition and just plain bragging - this website took me only FIVE days to make. From opening the book through to writing these closing words. That fact even has my head spinning.

And Kevin continued:

I’m still getting used to my girlfriend preaching the gospel of web standards, but I couldn’t be more proud - not only because Jess did such a professional job on her first-ever web site, but also because Ian has produced a book that can engender that level of enthusiam in building web sites the right way from someone with no prior web design experience.

And with that I’m going to sit back and crack open a nice cold fruit smoothie (well, I am at work - it’s a bit early for a lager!).

Buy The Book Here

My book got a mention on Boagworld’s podcast, and I thought I’d transcribe and respond to some of the comments Paul made here:

“It’s called Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way using HTML and CSS. What a nice snappy title! He needs to work on his title a bit.”

Yeah, not my choice of title. It is a bit long-winded, but then if it were called “Beginners Guide to Building a Web Site (with Web Standards)” – or some variation on that theme – the very audience that it’s aimed for probably wouldn’t get it. Would the absolute beginner know what web standards are or why they matter? So while I would love to have had a shorter title (e.g. CSS Mastery, DOM Scripting), those titles only really work for those who know a bit about the topic. Or at least that’s my theory as to why SitePoint went for that title. Anyway, Paul continues:

“The book came about because one day he was hanging around in PC World or whatever, as you do if you’re a geek, and he picked up the books about HTML that were on the shelves, dummies guide on how to build web sites and that kind of stuff, and was horrified at the fact that they all taught horrendous ways to build web sites, very old-fashioned, very out-of-date, not very accessible etc [Marcus – ‘ In schools they do as well’] … Yeah, I know, they still teach table-based design … So basically he decided to write a web design book that taught you from absolute basics, from knowing nothing about HTML, CSS or anything else of how to build a web site but doing it the right way, as his snappy title says”

Well, that’s almost right, but I can’t claim to have had the idea for writing the book, to be honest. What happened was that when I had made a start on the early chapters I wanted to check that I was on the right track, so on a weekend shopping trip I did a bit of ad-hoc research … and that’s when I discovered just how badly a book like mine was needed. It basically gave me a lot of encouragement because in the early days of writing the book, despite feeling proud to have been approached about the book deal, I did have a slight feeling of “does the world need another book about HTML?”. That very unscientific bit of research in Borders and Waterstones really made me appreciate the importance of getting this book right!

“Apparently it’s an excellent book, [I’m not going to argue with that! - Ian] I haven’t got a copy of it, I haven’t seen it. But I’m always getting asked, y’know, ‘how do I get into web design, how do I learn it?’ It seems like this book is a good place to start.”

Paul, you’ve hit the nail on the head there. I realise that it’s difficult for me to get my peers to buy a copy as they won’t learn anything from it, but it is the book that they can reccommend to their friends/colleagues/loved ones safe in the knowledge that they will learn the right way and, at the end of the book, be at a level where they can pick up some of the other excellent web design books out there without feeling that they have to re-educate themselve on the importance of standards, semantics and such like.