The Vine: June 2, 2007
Hi Sars,
I love the practical turn The Vine has taken, and I’m hoping between you and your readers I can get a recommendation for a good book. I work for a magazine that is finally joining the online party. We’re a bunch of print-based dinosaurs, and my boss has suggested we all take a course in web writing and editing. I think that’s a fine idea, but I’m also interested in getting us all a good book on the topic, a reference we can keep on our desks once the class is over. Help with heds and deks for the web, other peculiarities, maybe an overview of search engine practices and Web 2.0 interactivity. I wondered if in your work you’ve come across a book that stands out, and also if any of the readers can help.
Thanks so much,
Is 10 years fashionably late — or just too late?
My idea of a Web-design reference is “IM Glark and speak despairingly,” but I’m sure the readers have some ideas. Readers?
Tags: Ask The Readers workplace
Stephen Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. More about design than writing, but still a must-have on how to display information coherently on a Web site.
I was put in charge of getting a website up for my company (still in development). The web designer I’m working with told me about a site that is a great place to learn what NOT to do, namely http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com. The site itself looks like crap-don’t let that fool you. That’s deliberate-sort of a joke making the website that critiques other crap sites look like crap itself. It has great articles like “Biggest Mistakes in Web Design” and “Does My Website Suck? Two Checklists.” These are must reads. Also, take a look at the “Daily Sucker,” a regularly updated feature where the designer critiques some of the most horrendous sites I’ve ever seen.
Any visual quickstart guide is a good place to start for how-to sorts of info. also, make use of the validators that are out there. ( http://www.contentquality.com/fulloptions.asp?EMSG=%3Cbr%3EYou+must+enter+a+URL+to+check. , http://validator.w3.org/ ) Also, the w3 schools website is a great reference – http://www.w3schools.com/
I was going to recommend web pages that suck, too.
I would HIGHLY recommend any of the articles by Jakob Nielsen, found here: http://www.useit.com/jakob/
Also, if you want a real book, I used to work in tech support and found the “__ for Dummies” books to be useful. They’re funny and easy to understand. I’m not sure how in-depth you want to go, but they’re useful for understanding basic terminology.
I took a web design course as part of my communications program about 3 years ago. We used 2 books: “Design Alliance” by Faimon, and “7 essentials of graphic design” by Goodman. Both are worth checking out, but the Faimon book might be more what you’re looking for.
This isn’t a web 2.0 guide, but your tech people should all read Jeffery Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards. This book is *excellent* on explaining both the whys and the hows of good web practices, semantic code, and web standards. And given the number of times I’ve recommended it, Zeldman should start giving me kickbacks.
Also, semantic code can improve your search engine rankings, and make it easier to do web 2.0 things. But really, the biggest thing is and always will be good content, so the writing course is a good idea.
The best reference I’ve found for transitioning from print to web is the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications. It’s a great place to head when you’re dealing with user interface copy or any other place where Chicago or AP haven’t established guidelines. It’s not going to teach you how to create marketing/promo copy for the web (hint: shorter is always better; people don’t read online), but it will help you figure out how to handle links, navigation, page elements, etc. Good luck.
It may be out of date now, but back when I was starting, the Pocket HTML guide was a great help to me. Also the best Web site you will find for learning “How’d they DO that??” items is http://www.htmlgoodies.com.
You will also need a good HTML editor that will take you from beginner-use to later on when you’re advanced and understand the code, but don’t have the time to write it by hand. Everyone will tell you that if you’re designing for the web, you simply MUST use Dreamweaver, but it can be entirely too overwhelming if you’re just starting out. So I would suggest taking baby steps and start out with the inexpensive and terrific Coffee Cup HTML editor at http://www.coffeecup.com which also offers a free 30-day trial. If you choose to purchase, it’s only $49.00 and you get free upgrades for life (and free support). It also comes with tons of graphics, designs, scripts that you can just click to insert in a page, and much more. I’m on my tenth year using their software and frequent upgrades and I know all there is to know about html and still love the program.
They also have offered a new choice of features in their editor: Code Editor (where you can see the code as the program is creating it) or Visual Editor (which is WYSIWYG, or What You See Is What You Get) which will allow you to just click and drag items as you want them to appear and the code will be created in the background. Both are great.
Hope this helps! (PS, I agree with Suze on the Microsoft Manual of Style for Tech Pubs. I have the 3rd edition sitting next to me right now. I do, however, have to disagree with her about the online reading. Yes, shorter is better, but I read online every day and quite often, as do most people I know. Subjective I guess…and probably can be a direct correlation to the size of my butt and amount of exercise I’m currently doing!) Good luck!