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Deliver First Class Web Sites
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Oct 18, 2006 02:18 PM
from the top-quality dept.
from the top-quality dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "Experienced and conscientious Web developers, in their efforts to learn from the mistakes of others and to avoid repeating them on their own projects, tend to accumulate tips and recommendations for the many aspects of successfully creating Web sites. These best practices take the form of bookmarked Web pages, saved articles, downloaded PDF files, scribbled notes on scraps of paper, and hastily created documents that will be better organized one of these days, when the developer's schedule becomes less hectic (sure...). Being difficult if not impossible to find later, these pearls of wisdom are rarely consulted before or during each new Web site project. What the developer needs is a book that brings together as many of these best practices as possible, without being overwhelming. Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists may be the answer." Read the rest of Michael's review.
| Deliver First Class Web Sites | |
| author | Shirley Kaiser |
| pages | 331 |
| publisher | SitePoint |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | Michael J. Ross |
| ISBN | 0975841904 |
| summary | A collection of Web site development best practices. |
Authored by Shirley Kaiser, this book was published by SitePoint in July 2006, under the ISBN 0975841904. The publisher maintains a Web page devoted to the book, where visitors will find the book's table of contents online, a free preview (chapters 6, 12, and 14, in PDF format), editorial and customer reviews, a link to download all of the checklists (also in PDF) for all customers, links and an FAQ for ordering directly from SitePoint, and errata (none reported, as of this writing). The fact that SitePoint is willing to allow readers to post unmoderated comments and ratings of their books, suggests that it has real confidence in the quality of the book's material and readers' evaluations of it.
The aforesaid Web page also offers an online version of the index, but without any of the book's page numbers. At first glance, this might seem rather odd, but it does make some sense: Page numbers online would be of little use without the book itself, which of course already contains the index. Perhaps the index keys are offered to supplement the table of contents in helping the prospective customer learn what topics are covered in the book. In any case, this is the first time that I have seen a book's index online, and it will likely not be the last, if other publishers see the value in following suit.
In the preface, Shirley Kaiser explains that the book is intended to be "...a single source of solid information on best practices for everything from planning, designing, developing, and testing, to launching a web site and maintaining it in the long term. By compiling all this information into checklists, we've turned a vast wealth of detail into convenient, easy-to-scan, simple-to-use chunks organized by topic." A technical reader quickly scanning the book, would likely conclude that the author's goal has been achieved, because the book's 101 checklists comprise over 500 checkpoints, and almost all of them are expanded with at least a paragraph of more detailed explanation; many have accompanying code or images to illustrate the checkpoint.
The book's 331 pages of material are organized into 16 chapters, followed by an appendix that focuses on e-commerce advice. The topics covered in the chapters are: how to get started on a Web development project; planning the Web site with a client; assembling the site's content; managing that content; site usability; color schemes and functionality; information architecture; designing the site's navigation; W3C standards and recommendations; site accessibility; optimization of site performance; search engine optimization; design principles; site testing, including accessibility and usability; launch preparation and execution; post-launch follow-up and maintenance.
In terms of the specificity and usefulness of the checkpoints, they are not all consistently stellar, which arguably would have been an impossible expectation anyway. They range from the obvious (e.g., "Use consistent markup") to the not-so-obvious but equally valid (e.g., "Perform content audits"). Some of the checkpoints may on the surface appear mundane, but they could be a lifesaver further down the road, should a project turn sour (e.g., "Archive a copy of the handover package"). Some of them may seem painfully obvious to any decent developer (e.g., "Check all hyperlinks" and "Test all scripting functions"), but even the majority of those are violated on a daily basis, even by major Web sites, which have no excuse for such sloppiness.
The primary value of this book is how it neatly consolidates a considerable amount of worthy advice culled from the author's research and decade in the trenches of the Internet. The book probably will not replace all of the best practices that any top-notch developer will have assembled over the years — especially as none of it addresses advanced topics — but it could easily serve as a solid foundation upon which to add any supplemental recommendations that the book does not cover. Moreover, the book's material is presented in a fairly concise and quite readable format, making use of what appears to be a font slightly larger than is found in the typical computer programming book.
My only complaint with this title is the way that SitePoint continues to include a growing number of advertising pages, at the end of the book, with the bulk of each page black (sometimes even a bit smeared), and containing absolutely no details about the books being advertised. When SitePoint first began publishing books, if memory serves, they would only include one or two such over-the-top pages — possibly because they had so few titles to advertise at the inception. But now they are truly overdoing it. In Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists, no fewer than a dozen pages are wasted on this unwanted advertising. It would have been far more effective and efficient to simply list the 11 books' titles with a brief summary of each. Whoever decided to waste all that paper and ink, clearly did not read and understand some of the most basic checkpoints presented earlier in the book concerning type size and page content.
But overall, Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists is a much-needed book that brings together a wide range of valuable Web development best practices.
Michael J. Ross is a computer consultant, freelance writer, and the editor of PristinePlanet.com's free newsletter."
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Deliver First Class Web Sites? (Score:1)
(http://www.jasonmurphy.org/)
The Secret to Web Design (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Secret to Web Design (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.pattensoap.com/)
For example, I've had a photographer once who wanted tons of high res pictures one below the other blanketing the first page of his site (like 100 of them). He thought it would be "cool".
That vision would not meet the objective the photogrpaher had of showing his work off and growing his business. It would have just irritated people and turned them off to his site.
Frankly, my company overcharges for our sites, but we can do that because the client gets the results they wanted. They are willing to pay for our insights and vision for them even though they don't always see it right away. The clients vision of the design doesn't always line up with the objective for the site.
Its your job as the expert to guide them. I don't go to the mechanic and tell him how to get to the fan belt. He is the expert and that is why I pay him, I might have ideas on how to do it, but he is the one who knows, not me.
Experienced and conscientious Web developers? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.l3.net.nz/)
Surely by definition, a conscientious web developer would be exactly the person who wouldn't, in fact, have all their heuristics and guidelines lying around on pieces of paper/mental notes/etc?
Not to discount the book, but I know in at least the case of the firm I work for, we wikify such matters, and they're regularly converted to a more formal procedures manual. Is this unusual for web development?
samples (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://dotpavan.googlepages.com/home)
Re:samples (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.robsartin.com/blog/)
not to be flamebait or anything, but atleast I was not impressed with his sample creations [www.ross.ws].
That was actually the sample page for the reviewer, so we've established that he likely needs this book very badly. The author of the book is Shirley Kaiser and the SKDesigns portfolio [skdesigns.com] is better, though there are a distressing number of client porfolio example that are no longer online with the SKDesigns' design and can only be viewed as screenshots. The SKDesign site, however, shows a well structured approach to design with attention to web standards (and my pet requirement, accessibility) and is not visually disruptive.
Why buy a book? (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday March 21 2007, @11:19AM)
Use memorable URLS (Score:1)
You know, foo.com/contact, foo.com/about, not foo.com/bar.xyz?asda1=324324324324324324&fds=3247
First rule of good web design (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday November 09, @01:18PM)
Nothing short of an excessively annoying car commercial which perpetually runs on local radio stations makes my hand move faster than to get away from a site where Flash is required to see what's there.
What a great way to sell a book! (Score:1)
Does Slashdot at least get pay-per-click referrals?
"First Class"? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 14 2004, @05:03PM)
My suspicion, based on lots of other similar examples of advice on building web sites the Right Way, is that "first class" means flashy and entertaining. Maybe I'm wrong, but experience here says to expect the worst.
Not that I'm objecting to that. There's a demand for entertainment on the web. But there's also a demand for informative sites, and the design criteria for information and entertainment are very different.
Most of the web sites I've been involved with are of the informative type. For such sites, the canonical "first class" site is google.com, not (for example) yahoo.com. For a more complex site, news.google.com works pretty well.
But I didn't get a feel from the review or the author's web site what their criteria for "first class" might be. Unless I get a clear idea what sort of web site is being pushed, I probably won't be spending my money on any book of advice.
(I might also obsever that most entertainment sites are really in need of good advice on how to do the job right. But I probably don't need to tell that to anyone who visits them often.
Who are these people... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://tom.digitalelite.com/)
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
author qualifications? (Score:1)
(http://www.amorphism.net/)
Are SEO guide included? (Score:1)
(http://seodiscussion.blogspot.com/)
Need more keyboard shortcuts (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people perceive "new web technology" as an end in itself, and will rewrite all their software to be web-based without realizing the strengths and weaknesses of the new platform. When this happens, you get is really really bad software. For example, I know some people who work in customer service who were moved off of a telnet based support system to a web gui and lost their minds when a single command line entry became 5 mouse clicks and lots of scrolling with 1 second page loads.
Learn that countries are different (Score:2, Insightful)
One thing that really bothers me about many web sites is this: If I have to enter my name, address etc., I frequently find that the web page designer thinks that all countries are the same.
I may find that I am required to write in which state I live. My country doesn't have states.
Or I may be required to write a 10-digit phone number. My phone number has 8 digits.
Or I may be forced to put the postal code after the city. In my country, the postal code goes before the city.
Dear web form designers: It is not unreasonable to expect that people know how to write their own address correctly. You don't have to check everything for them. (Especially if you don't know what to check for.)
</rant>
1998 called, they want their book back... (Score:3)
(http://www.venganza.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:24AM)
All kidding aside, based on the Table of Contents this seems to be just an updated version of "How to Design A Website", albeit it looks a bit more detailed than those versions of the past. I like that they mention things like "backups" and other useful topics for the serious mom-and-pop sites (at least they will know what a backup is!)
Still, imagine what those books from the 90's would look like to a modern website developer...
The reviewer mentions that "none of it addresses advanced topics" which to me indicates that yeah, it's great for getting started (as the title suggests) but you should read it fast... the content is probably already out of date. In my opinion, the dead-tree versions of "How to Design a Website" are a bit of an anachronism in this day and age [google.com].
Front Page (Score:2)
(http://www.codepunk.com/)
Web design and development are two different things, everyone can design but only a few can develop.
There are plenty of books for web developers (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/~Infonaut/journal | Last Journal: Tuesday July 31, @02:22PM)
This is probably an excellent resource, but at this point it is one of many. The persistent problem is not developers, but clients. Internal or external, it doesn't matter. When marketing managers and O-level executives have a resource that tells them that they need to stop making decisions based on what their favorite colors are, or what websites their kids like to visit, we'll all be better off. In the mean time, at least there's Don't Make Me Think [sensible.com]. But if the decisionmakers who have the pursestrings don't know what they're doing, a lot of the best practices advocated by developers never sees the light of day.
What the developer really needs... (Score:1)
Then someone could create a web service with all of these tips that people vote on (like when the tag appears, you can say "yes this was helpful" or "no, don't show me this again" and the best practices will rise to the top.
The problem with the idea of a best practices book is that it's just one more thing I have to pick up while I'm doing my job. I need something that will happen intelligently and INLINE with my workflow, yet unobtrusively enough that it doesn't get in my way if I DON'T want to use it (like if that for loop is looping through something where the array length might change in the middle of my loop).
Can someone work up something like THAT (that I can use in Visual Studio AND Editplus?)
Why pimp this book? (Score:1)
Come on, we expect more...
Re:Book's available elsewhere cheaper (Score:5, Informative)
(http://people.connexer.com/~roberto)
For some reason Slashdot links to B & N, but if you look at the Amazon listing [amazon.com], you can see that some sellers are offering the book considerably cheaper.
http://slashdot.org/book.review.guidelines.shtml :
Speaking of links, please do not include links in your reviews to online bookstores. Slashdot has an linking arrangement with Barnes & Noble; that's why when bn.com carries a particular book, you'll see a link to it at the bottom of the review.
Re:Book's available elsewhere cheaper (Score:2)
(http://www.gargoyleslanding.com/)
Re:Just avoid AJAX. (Score:1)
Right. This is why my web pages have links to download applications that users can just run on their own desktops. It's great for security, too, because running arbitrary executables is perfectly safe.
AJAX has its place. It's just not every place.
GMAIL? (Score:1)
(http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 09 2006, @07:45PM)