Web Concept and Design
by Crystal Waters
review by Margaret Gould Stewart

Web Concept and Design reins in the gratuitous use of technology in Web sites. With new technologies, plug-ins and toys being invented at breakneck speed, the process of building a Web site seems to change daily. It's easy to get caught up in the details of HTML and Java. Waters' book helps you avoid technological overload by answering the crucial question: Is this necessary to the message you are delivering?


The book is practical. It doesn't deal extensively with the larger conceptual issues of Web production (should I be doing a site in the first place? Is this the best medium to develop in?), but assumes that you know you want to build a Web site and proceeds to lay out a well-defined, systematic approach to identifying the content, organization, and design of your site. It gives a good overview of the benefits of planning, including identifying the needs of your client or your users.

Since Waters sticks to the basics in terms of the planning stages of a Web site, Web Concept and Design is best suited for a beginning Web designer. Still, it's chock full of good little info tidbits and suggestions for even an experienced Web site developer. For instance, Waters adds many supporting resources to the book such as helpful utility shareware and software, and actual examples on the Web of the concepts she describes.

One of the most useful chapters in the book is on testing your Web site once it's completed. This is one of the best checklists for testing that I've seen. Waters makes you aware of how many easy things you can do to improve the performance for your site for a larger number of people. She takes you through a comprehensive checklist to help you avoid errors, from spell-checking to looking at your site with multiple browsers, to looking at your site with the images turned off:

"Some people prefer to cruise the Web with image-loading turned off," she reminds us. "So how does your site look when there's no images showing? Do your pages come up as blanks with no navigational tools to be found?

"If you haven't put ALT tags in your image codes, now's the time. This tag inserts a line of text if the image doesn't load, so at least people can hopefully get an idea where that link will take them.

"If you have inserted ALT tags, do they make sense? If they are simply the name of a graphic, or one word non-navigation explanations (i.e. "graphic.gif" or "this is an image map"), then they do very little to help out your visitors."

Sage advice.

The author was even kind enough to post the full checklist from the "Test Driving Your Site" chapter on her Web site, Typo, which contains many other useful resources.

Web Concept and Design encourages Web designers to take a step back and remember their audience, what they want, and the most appropriate way to present it to them. This is a lesson we could all use. Because in the end, no matter whether you are a professional Web designer or are setting up your first homepage, it's all about communication.

Margaret Gould Stewart is Creative Director of Tripod.