Count on Jeffrey Zeldman to share his opinion, loud and clear with a sprinkling of dry wit. He continues with his modus operandi (M.O.) in his newest book, Taking Your Talent to the Web. As seen in Zeldman’s work and writings, you can expect this book to be different from any other Web-whatever book you’ve read to gain clear, real world understanding of web-related concepts.
The book uses the Populi Curriculum in Web Communications Design to help transitioning designers become web designers, small-time web pages designers turn pro, and creative professionals expanding their careers to the web medium. You won’t find specific instructions on mark-up tags, style sheets, or interactive web pages. Instead, you gain a high-level understanding of the web and how to approach it. To design effective web pages, he urges the reader to think bandwidth, tell visitors where they are, and consider short attention spans especially in a time when there are many web pages on the same topic that we can go to if we don’t like this one.
It’s easy to get absorbed in the book because you feel like he is talking to you and he puts a smile on your face every few paragraphs with his witty comments. Heck, even reading the table of contents is fun with sections like “I Think Icon, I Think Icon,” “Gui, Gui, Chewy, Chewy,” “Browser Incompatibilities: Can’t We All Just Get Along?” and “Eye and Brain Candy: Educational and Inspiring Sites.” The book is well organized in three parts: Why, Who, and How.
I admit that such titles aren’t clear what the chapter is about and that goes against Zeldman’s own advice to make things easy to find. However, there are standard chapter names to overcome the drawback plus there’s a thorough index and the Obligatory Glossary that includes web lingo and descriptions of roles and responsibilities.
Zeldman says that the designer has a greater role beyond design and to avoid putting limitations on it. Smartly, he covers the much omitted project life cycle, which is a logical path for taking any development project from start to finish. Too often, designers and clients skip the requirements step or think the web project is finished once it goes live. All players including designers and programmers should be involved in creating the requirements. To preserve your hard work and perseverance, create a style sheet to help the client maintain the web site.
Even the smallest web design project encounters problems. When creating a web site for a company with two employees, I unexpectedly ran into requirement challenges. The client wanted a feature that was passe’ and I struggled to tactfully explain why it wouldn’t be a good idea. I wish I had this book back then because it has suggestions in how to handle such issues.
The history of the web details how the web got to where it is today. The latter part of the history is loaded, and deservedly so, with Zeldman’s co-founded Web Standards Project (WaSP) and its fight to break browser barriers to make web creators’ jobs easier.
Zeldman and the web world is aware he knows his stuff and that we’ll listen. Despite this, he avoids “telling you” and instead, “shows you and tells you why.” No beating around the bush, he tells it straight. It speaks to you like a friend or mentor trying to guide you and gently remind you that we’re creating web pages for humans and not machines.
You can read Chapter 3 from Zeldman’s web site.
VITAL STATISTICS:
Title: Taking Your Talent to the Web: A Guide for the Transitioning Designer
Author: Jeffrey Zeldman
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Publication Date: May 2001
ISBN: 0735710732
Format: Paperback
Pages: 448
Price: US$40
