Making The Web Work

There are no other books that examine the effectiveness and benefits of having well designed and created web applications. This guide includes case studies that are well-known, global, and emphasize the points and theories discussed. It covers all aspects involved of creating the effective application in concise and easy to understand ways.

If you are in charge of the user experience, development, or strategy for a web site, A Web for Everyone will help you make your site accessible without sacrificing design or innovation. Rooted in universal design principles, this book provides solutions: practical advice and examples of how to create sites that everyone can use.

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it's hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn't read Steve Krug's "instant classic" on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day. In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike. Don't be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design. Three New Chapters! Usability as common courtesy -- Why people really leave Web sites Web Accessibility, CSS, and you -- Making sites usable and accessible Help! My boss wants me to ______. -- Surviving executive design whims "I thought usability was the enemy of design until I read the first edition of this book. Don't Make Me Think! showed me how to put myself in the position of the person who uses my site. After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book. In this second edition, Steve Krug adds essential ammunition for those whose bosses, clients, stakeholders, and marketing managers insist on doing the wrong thing. If you design, write, program, own, or manage Web sites, you must read this book." -- Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards

An accessible, comic book-like, illustrated introduction to how the internet works under the hood, designed to give people a basic understanding of the technical aspects of the Internet that they need in order to advocate for digital rights. The internet has profoundly changed interpersonal communication, but most of us don't really understand how it works. What enables information to travel across the internet? Can we really be anonymous and private online? Who controls the internet, and why is that important? And... what's with all the cats? How the Internet Really Works answers these questions and more. Using clear language and whimsical illustrations, the authors translate highly technical topics into accessible, engaging prose that demystifies the world's most intricately linked computer network. Alongside a feline guide named Catnip, you'll learn about: • The "How-What-Why" of nodes, packets, and internet protocols • Cryptographic techniques to ensure the secrecy and integrity of your data • Censorship, ways to monitor it, and means for circumventing it • Cybernetics, algorithms, and how computers make decisions • Centralization of internet power, its impact on democracy, and how it hurts human rights • Internet governance, and ways to get involved This book is also a call to action, laying out a roadmap for using your newfound knowledge to influence the evolution of digitally inclusive, rights-respecting internet laws and policies. Whether you're a citizen concerned about staying safe online, a civil servant seeking to address censorship, an advocate addressing worldwide freedom of expression issues, or simply someone with a cat-like curiosity about network infrastructure, you will be delighted -- and enlightened -- by Catnip's felicitously fun guide to understanding how the internet really works!

Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability clearly explains exactly how to design great forms for the web. The book provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. It features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. It includes dozens of examples - from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color). This book isn’t just about colons and choosing the right widgets. It’s about the whole process of making good forms, which has a lot more to do with making sure you’re asking the right questions in a way that your users can answer than it does with whether you use a drop-down list or radio buttons. In an easy-to-read format with lots of examples, the authors present their three-layer model - relationship, conversation, appearance. You need all three for a successful form - a form that looks good, flows well, asks the right questions in the right way, and, most important of all, gets people to fill it out. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, this book guides readers on how to define requirements, how to write questions that users will understand and want to answer, and how to deal with instructions, progress indicators and errors. This book is essential reading for HCI professionals, web designers, software developers, user interface designers, HCI academics and students, market research professionals, and financial professionals. *Provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. *Features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. *Includes dozens of examples -- from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color). *Foreword by Steve Krug, author of the best selling Don't Make Me Think!

Take a shortcut to making your website work Want to learn how to drive more business through your website without taking an expensive course or reading a pile of books? "Making Your Website Work" helps you understand what makes a great website through practical tips you can apply to your website and get new clients and sales today. It doesn't teach you all the copywriting formulas, make you learn design rules by heart or generally talk a lot about things in theory. Instead, it describes real website problems that freelancers, digital agencies, ecommerce shops and SaaS companies face - the same problems you have with your website - and shows you how to fix them through practical tips. Among other things, you'll learn: How to spot (and fix) vague and self-centered copy How to sound trustworthy even without testimonials How to structure your homepage to make your message clear Why you should delete your Testimonials and FAQ pages Where to place call-to-action buttons to get more people to click What design mistakes get in the way of your message Who is this book for? This book is for you if you're: A business owner who takes care of their website themselves. You'll learn how to write better copy and how to make sure that your design doesn't kill your message. A copywriter who wants to sharpen their skill and also learn how to prevent designers from murdering their copy later on. You'll learn to spot bad design decisions and discover powerful arguments to use in conversations with your clients and their designers. A web designer who wants to design not only pretty websites but also websites that convert. A business owner who is planning to hire someone to create their website for them. You'll learn how to spot ineffective copy and sloppy design to make sure that the pretty website you're paying for will also convert.

Do you want to build web pages but have no prior experience? This friendly guide is the perfect place to start. You’ll begin at square one, learning how the web and web pages work, and then steadily build from there. By the end of the book, you’ll have the skills to create a simple site with multicolumn pages that adapt for mobile devices. Each chapter provides exercises to help you learn various techniques and short quizzes to make sure you understand key concepts. This thoroughly revised edition is ideal for students and professionals of all backgrounds and skill levels. It is simple and clear enough for beginners, yet thorough enough to be a useful reference for experienced developers keeping their skills up to date. Build HTML pages with text, links, images, tables, and forms Use style sheets (CSS) for colors, backgrounds, formatting text, page layout, and even simple animation effects Learn how JavaScript works and why the language is so important in web design Create and optimize web images so they’ll download as quickly as possible NEW! Use CSS Flexbox and Grid for sophisticated and flexible page layout NEW! Learn the ins and outs of Responsive Web Design to make web pages look great on all devices NEW! Become familiar with the command line, Git, and other tools in the modern web developer’s toolkit NEW! Get to know the super-powers of SVG graphics