Saint_Michael

When comes to web design, there is just way too much information, but what if I told you that the best minds in the web industry got together, wrote some articles over a two year span, and it was put into a book to help make your life easier? Well, there is such a book and it comes from the boys and girls of Smashing Magazine and its called Professional Web Design vol 1., 12 Chapters, almost 250 pages of the best information of 2009 and 2010. In this book, if you don't come out as a better design after reading this book and volumn 2, then you need a career change. This book makes you think of what being a web designer is, as the information though a bit old is still quite inciteful because most of the core ideas and concepts in this book never change, just get a slight update based on who is using them. Some of the topics that Volumn one covers include, portfolio design, user experience (UX) concepts, corportate world, color theory, identifying and working with clients, and networking to name a few. The chapter that I am going to cover is titled "Color Theory for Professional Designers" and it is written by Cameron Chapman. So what does chapter cover that most of us know already? Well Chapman breaks down some various colors and their meanings (Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue, Purple, and Green) in which Chapman breaks it down by warm, cool, and neutral. Chapman then goes over and explains "Traditional Color Scheme Types" which Monochromatic, Analogous, Complementary to name a few. However, I think the most important section in this chapter is the process of creating color Scheme, one thing that Chapman does mention is creating a set of colors can be pretty intimidating, just because there millions of colors and billions of combinations to work with. But she says its not a complicated process and I would have to partially agree as its a norm for most web designers to work with just five colors, but if you feel confident with your color theory, you can work with more. Of course, the best advice she has to provide in which I should do more myself, is develop color schemes daily using the various tools out there. My recommendation is using Adobe Kuler as it is a fantastic tool to create and discover great color Schemes. The other thing is that when it comes to color theory, this chapter barely scratches the surface of which mentions there are litterally hundreds of books out there just on this topic alone. As for the rest of the book, it is just as insightful and worthy to be in anyone's library, and for those getting into the web design business, take a look at this book to give you an idea where to begin and focus your time and energy. For those who are well versed in the web or print, book is just as good if you feel like changing things up a bit or looking for a bit of a refresher. To end, I would like to point out that the book isn't on individual sale, except for Kindle, but you can get it with a bundle package from the Smashing Magazine store at the following address. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ In this bundle it includes this book, and volume 2, and another book titled "Getting the Hang of Web Typograph" so check the bundle out and the rest of the Smashing book series.

In this review, I will be talking about a book, though almost a couple of years old, provides a interesting insight or rather how far HTML5 has come since this book came out. Titled "HTML5 For Web Designers" was written by Jeremy Keith in which he talks about HTML5 and what is about to come and or available and while most of what is in this book is old news by now. This book gives a small idea on how complicated HTML5 has become and I will say this good luck if this is your first language. The interesting part about this book is that it only comes in at roughly 90 pages and yet completely opens your eyes, heck it did for me when Keith talk about the <header> and <footer> tags because they no longer represent their original intentions. Meaning that when it comes to those two tags, they no longer belong at the top and bottom of the website, but rather they can represent the top and bottom of the content of itself. Best way to describe their new usage is by looking at a blog article in which the <header> tag now represents the name of the article, the generated link to the article, who wrote it, and of course when it was published. As for the <footer> tag, the copyright information still applies but you can expand it by including your sources, other links maybe some info on the author themselves. While you could produce the same results with div tags, the problem is though you can only use those two tags once, however, the <header> and <footer> tags can be used a 1000 times and your website will still come out producing valid code. Thus the power of HTML5, of course Keith talks about other topics, such as new ways to deal with audio and video, the <div> killer article and section tags, and even how HTML5 is slowly replacing flash and JavaScript, Granted the drawback to this book is its shortness, but this book is more of a fun read then technical, but I wouldn't have minded if he covered more in each chapter, but alas that is what those other books are for. However, if you check out the abooksapart.com website, this is just one of a series of books that are talking about the latest generation of design, development and concepts of web design, so go check them out after reading this book.

In this review, I will talking about of many books that has been published by Sitepoint over the years, but what makes this book unique besides being free to download [https://www.sitepoint.com/thinking-web-voices-of-the-community/] its practically 12 books in itself as this book was written by several members of the Sitepoint community and thus brings several different perspectives as you read this book. Of course, when I say twelves books in one, most of what is covered can be found in Sitepoint's library itself or any book store on/offline that talks web or computer. You could say that if your interested in computers in some fashion or another, this would be a go to book to figure out where you want to start first. As this book covers three type of people; developers, designers, and programmers and of course the branches from those three main groups is too much for this review but gives you an idea what interests you the most. For me though, the chapter that stands out the most for me is "The Different TCP/IP Protocols" because this relating more towards computer hardware while the rest of the book is gear more towards internet based topics, such as, web design, web programming, graphic design etc. Of course, if you had ever taken a computer hardware course, like yours truly, or spent the time understanding the hardware or build computers from scratch. A lot of this information you should be able to recognize rather quickly. Such as the OSI model, TCP/IP model, how an IP address is broken down, the various protocols that use TCP/IP such as FTP, DHCP and of course the most important protocol of all HTTP. Though i would like to point out when it comes to TCP/IP, you would want more technical books that talk about it and prepare your brains to get all mushy after reading one of those books. Like I said though, this chapter stands out like a sore thumb just because its more technical then the rest of the book. Either way, this book is a fun read and worth getting, not because its free or anything but provides valuable information to help open you up to the world of computers.

In this review, I will be talking about second edition of Jason Beaird's book titled "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design 2ed". it is just one of many free books I have picked up from this great website and I would like to share it with you. In this book Beaird talks about all the various aspects of designing a beautiful website, from layout to color to typography to the usage of images and more. While this is pretty small for what it covers (Five Chapters at 196 pages). He still provides a great source of information, especially with current trends such as Grids, Fluid/Fixed/Responsive layouts, CSS3 and some HTML5 as well. In his first chapter titled "Layout and Composition", he spends his time in this chapter discussing the layout process a designer takes, such as what what the website is about, which questions to ask, should it be symmetrical or asymmetrical, inspiration and more. Definitely worth reading for you UX designers out there because how important this aspect of building a website is important to the boys and girls of UX. Another favorite part of the book lies in chapter two "Color" in which, Jason Beaird talks about the psychology of color, and spends the first seven pages talking about the meaning of primary colors such as red, blue, black, white, yellow, and even purple. Then of course, a topic I have been pondering about for awhile of course is topography and the fact I spend timing looking at fonts more closely, especially since CSS3 including the @font-face into its structure. Even though this is good book, the one fatal flaw its a bit short, especially in the topics that Beaird covers and so this book is gear more towards those getting into design and not those or are well aged in these areas. Of course, if you bought the first edition of the book most of the information is the same, but I find this version to be more polished and the book more reader friendly then its predecessor irregardless of the information that is in the two books. Of course, if your a huge fan of Sitepoint, then its a must have for your collection and I know I have.