Web Design Virtual Classroom [With CDROM]

by Laurie Ulrich-Fuller

This volume is for anyone who wants to learn the basics of building a Web site - whether for personal or business reasons. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 007213111X
• ISBN13: 9780072131116
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 8.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Introduction to thoughtful web design

Laurie Ulrich has written a thoughtful introduction to web design. This book covers the most popular methods of creating websites (Dreamweaver, GoLive, Frontpage, and hand-coding HTML) and helps you evaluate which might be best for you. It goes on to help you understand some of the basic ways each can accomplish specific tasks. Without going into extraneous details (which would require several books to cover), Ms. Ulrich gives a broad and lucid overview of how to make sense of these programs to create well-conceived website design. This is actually her stong point in this book - the conception of how to create the kind of website which will best express and realize the goal you desire. She helps you visualize (with the help of many good examples) what might or might not work for you, and how to evaluate it for yourself. After having read the excellent "Dreamweaver 4 -Virtual Classroom" which she co-authored with Robert Fuller, and several other Dreamweaver books, I had some of the technical abilities to create cool stuff. However I hadn't had any overview of design, and felt a little overwhelmed by the possibilities. "Web Design - Virtual Classroom" cleared a lot up for me, and I now feel a lot more confident about being able to create sites that won't look like a Jackson Pollock hangover.

Good material but could use some work.

In working with computer and teaching web design for over the past three years there is always new ways to learn something you never knew before. This book has provided me with new ideas and techniques but overall there's not anything that makes it standout from the rest of the pack. In the 270 pages topics like design, e-commerce, layout, web tools, text and page building, graphics, color and structure, table, frames and layers as well as multimedia, hyperlinks and lists are usually what come with any design book. Also this book in not in color and the areas like CSS, DHTML and image maps were not included. While the cd-rom does allow you to learn at you own pace overall this book made for the beginner rather than for the true designer

Practical, yet creative advice and experience

Just leafing through this book I got so many good ideas. The CD that comes with the book is good, and it helped to see some of the stuff in action. The advice on good composition and selecting colors was really helpful, because I'm not always sure if my designs are going to be OK with anyone but me. Now I know some of the "rules" and also know when it's OK to break them. The ideas for how different people and businesses can use web sites was also an eye-opener, and it's clear that this author really knows a lot about marketing and graphic design, not just about the web. It's an all-around great book, and I recommend it to everyone who has or wants a great web site.

Author lives up to her reputation for writing great books!

I bought Ms. Ulrich's Using Excel 2000 last year, and found her writing to be very readable, and her knowledge to be extensive. When I saw this book, Web Design Virtual Classroom, I was surprised to see she was writing about a creative topic, and had to check it out --- and I'm very glad I did. The book is great, again in her very friendly, readable style, and the CD is informative too. I would recommend this book to anyone who needs to design a web site for business or personal use, and to anyone trying to figure out which software to use and how to go about the whole web design process. Her insights and practical advice are terrific, and I really learned a lot about a subject I thought I already knew.