Intro
Introduction to Web Authoring Boot Camp
Well, looked here, it's another web design book. As if there aren't already enough of them in the bookstore and sold through Amazon. What can this book possibly offer that I want to know?
Why Another Web Design Book?
It's true, there are tons of web design, coding, authoring, production, styling, programming, analyzing, and ice-cream sundae-making books on the market. Many of them are really good, too, like anything from Peach Pit Press, Site point, and Sam's Teach Yourself. Get one or two of these – a how-to and a reference-oriented book, and you'll have a terrific start to educating yourself on the wonderful world of creating websites and web media. Excellent!
This book is a little different, for several reasons:
• It's free.
• It's open-source, so that it can be openly distributed and used for non-commercial education purposes.
• It's the first put-together open-source book available on web authoring (as of this writing).
• It covers not only the how-tos of building websites, but also treats the whole web- site project – from planning to completion.
• It looks at web authoring as a profession, a workflow, and a great career to get
educated in.
• It's written by a web author who has education and experience in the field and
who also gets to teach this information to students.
Who This Book is For
This book is for new web authors – those who are taking classes, teaching themselves through tutorials and videos, and anyone who wants a glimpse into the world of web authoring – as a profession as well as a workflow practice. It's for you if:
• You want to know what a web author is and does for a living.
• You want to understand the web project planning and preparation steps that happen before coding.
• You want to build usable, accessible, and intuitive HTML websites that anyone can use.
• You want to get step-by-step basics on coding practices and workflow.
• You want to launch well-designed, W3C standards-compliant websites with basic SEO practices.
• You are starting/taking classes in web design/production as career training.
• You want to build your own websites, freelance build for other clients, and/or work with creative talent agencies and employers who hire designers, authors, producers, and other web specialists.
This book is not really for seasoned web authors, although it's a terrific reference tool after you have used it to get your feet wet. Is covers the essentials of planning, preparation, designing, building, and launching of static HTML websites, and refers readers to online sources and more detailed books for advanced web authoring like stylish CSS, HTML5 and CSS3, Java scripting, and other web authoring languages and scripts. It's not for you if:
• You already have a several websites of experience under your belt.
• You already work in the web specialties field and are past beginner-stage.
• You are looking for dozens of specialized tricks, styles, and recommendations for intermediate/advanced CSS.
• You want to build dynamic websites that are server-side and database driven.
• You want detailed workflow and training on HTML5 or CSS3.
How to Use This Book
This book is pretty compact, and is more-or-less a process/workflow book. It combines a conversational tone with explanations, details, examples, and factoids. The goal is to give you what you really need to get started as a kick-butt web author, rather than every detail known to web geek – that's what the Web is for. Occasionally, I'll make a joke or ask you a question, and I expect you to chuckle and to answer. Heh – gotcha!
Each chapter introduces itself, then gets into the nitty gritty of the subject, requirements, tools, and workflow. You are offered examples of code and illustrations, plus occasional exercises to try out yourself. Have a willingness to try what you see and to explore more through other examples and tutorials on the Web.
You can start at the beginning to learn what web authoring is and how to plan web projects in Section 1. You can jump right into basic HTML coding and styling in Section 2.
You can get started creating a web page template or a basic Cascading Style Sheet. You can use the chapters and resources at the end to jumpstart problem-solving or adding bits of dynamic stuff to your sites.
This book also makes a pretty handy virtual paperweight.
Learning Tips
• Take your time. This book is meant to be used, not just read. Look at and try out the code.
• Slow down when you need to so that you don't overload your brain. Focus on a chapter section or three, take a breather, then go back and make sure what you are learning makes sense and that you can use it.
• Take the pieces of code you see and work to assemble them throughout the book as you learn the elements and workflow for HTML coding.
• Share what you learn. Talking about it, and showing someone else what you are planning and doing helps make stuff stick.
• Make sure to stay hydrated and have chocolate somewhere nearby. Learning sticks better with chocolate. Everything is better with chocolate.
• Create something! This book will help you best when you come up with a simple website idea of your own and apply the planning, preparation, design, coding, and validating steps for yourself.