Learn web design the right way

This is an email interview that I did for Matt Mickiewicz over at SitePoint – it’s to go into a newsletter that goes out to SitePoint’s various sales reps and distributors. I’m not sure it it’s going to be used anywhere else online, but I thought it would be useful to publish here anyway – tell you a little more about the book I wrote.

What do you think makes your book different from all the other “beginning web design” books on the market? Why?

I can do better than just think that it’s different – when I was at the beginning of the book-writing process, I did my homework and researched the other beginners books. Without exception, when I flicked through those books I kept discovering advice that was outdated or just plain wrong, despite some of them having undergone rewrites (in second and third editions). It was actually quite shocking and made me realise that the SitePoint book was very much needed – a beginners book that taught the right skills from the start, rather than cutting corners for quick results, thereby teaching bad habits that later need to be unlearnt.

Why should beginners worry about tables, CSS or accessibility?

Firstly, because it’s the right thing to do. Although I would argue that they don’t need to worry at all. The worry comes from learning the wrong way at the beginning (see response to previous question!) and then thinking that accommodating these ideas is going to be difficult – and it can be if you are trying retrospectively fix issues. To answer the question point-by-point, though, tables are not needed for layout these days, and by not teaching that method, it will allow beginners to redesign their sites far more easily and reap benefits of having their sites work on a much wider range of devices. CSS, well, it really is the way to add presentation to a website, and I’d be doing a misjustice if I suggested otherwise. Finally, accessibility: in all honesty, I’ve not covered that a huge amount in the book, but have ensured that all the techniques and approaches are accessible, and have provided the reader with more information about the topic so that they can learn at their own pace. It is a big topic in its own right, after all.

Who do you think is the ideal reader for this title?

My mum. Or my sister. Or maybe even yours? Seriously, I had my sister in my mind when I wrote the table of contents. She is a 40-year-old mother of two tearaways, uses the computer for email, browsing the web, a bit of shopping, but is not a techy by any stretch. She’s now a Mac user because she got fed up with virus problems and wants things to just work. When she has difficulty with anything, she asks questions in non-technical ways, and she learns by the same methods. With that in mind, I set out to write a book that would enable her to build a web site without any prior knowledge, without requiring her to go out and buy any new software but to make use of what’s already there (or free to download) and I didn’t try to force too much information in one go. So that was my model reader – and I’m surethere are many others out there like her. Now we’ve just got to stop these people buying the other beginners’ books and read the good stuff!

How much will readers learn from the book? What will they be able to do once they finish reading it? What’s going to be their next step?

From a complete novice, the reader will learn how to use the tools at their disposal to create a small web site that is standards- compliant, accessible, easy to update (via a blog), can be searched by visitors, looks good (particularly if they have some nice images to use) and that others can contribute to (via the blog, also). By the end of the book, the reader will understand the basics, will have put them all to use and will be in an excellent position to further their skills, having already got CSS-layouts, semantic markup and web standards awareness under their belt. In short, they’ll be better set up for all the other excellent intermediate/advanced books out their than they could ever achieve with the other beginners books. I truly believe this!

In this day and age, why would someone want to build a website as opposed to putting up a page on MySpace or starting a blogger.com account, both of which require a lot less knowledge and work?

I will give you an analogy. It’s a car one (something I’ve used before, but hey ho, it works for me!).I have a 30 year old VW van. I bought it in Aus, drove it all around Australia, then kept it, shipped it to UK and am continually making changes to it – a little tweak here, a little fix there. Now, money permitting, I could go out and buy a spangly, jaw-droppingly good split screen camper van, a real show-stopper. But I would not feel any sense of achievement as it would be someone else’s restoration work.

I feel the same about hand-crafting a site vs getting something off the shelf. The off-the-shelf approach is fine for a quick hit – and I won’t deny that for many people that will do just fine – but if you do it yourself you’ll get the result you’re after, have much more control, get a greater sense of achievement and will truly learn a skill that you can put to good use later. Who knows, it could be the way that you earn a crust one day? I don’t know anyone who makes a lot of money by setting up Blogger accounts for friends, but I know a lot of people who make a good earning – more than I do, I am unhappy to report! – by creating web sites for clients that could not possibly be created using a tool such as those you’ve mentioned. They have their place, but sometimes it’s just not enough, know what I mean?

End of the ‘interview’ …

So, if having read that you feel this is the book for you (or mum/sister/brother/whatever), please head on over to SitePoint and order your copy today. Ah go on, I’ll be your best friend!

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.

I’m thrilled to announce that my book, Build Your Own Website the Right Way Using HTML and CSS, is now out on SitePoint. I received my personal copies today and am really pleased with the end result (it’s surprising how much fun it is to re-read your own work in this format … but it’s a real bummer when you find a typo!).

I’d really appreciate any mention you folks can provide for me – that’s assuming that anyone other than family members reads this blog :-D. If you feel like promoting a book about web standards that you could happily give to your mum and know that she’ll learn the right way, please do link to this page (and if you really want to help promote standards such that Google points people in the right direction, it’d be great if you used words such as beginners’ guide to web standards or similar).

Anyway, that’s my shameless marketing plea over – I really hope you can help in some small way :-)