Amazon.com (ISBN 0125531427, Paperback)

The Elements of Hypertext Style is a guide to creating the best and most appropriate Web pages for your intended audience. It's not a primer on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the basic tagging scheme for creating Web pages, or a technical guide to optimizing graphics for the Web. Rather, it covers the essential graphics and text elements of Web pages and gives advice on how you can use these elements to improve your own Web pages. Author Bryan Pfaffenberger writes about how to add visual clues, interactive and navigational elements, links, transparent .GIFs, animations, and tables to your site. You learn about other issues that might not have occurred to you, such as copyright infringement and working with your Internet Service Provider. For the artistically challenged Pfaffenberger provides many examples of successful Web sites and explains how to determine your site's structure, create a design grid, maintain a balance of consistency and freshness, and use the best type, color, and contrast for your image and message. He also offers tips on working within the confines of HTML and provides a few HTML-specific hints for such tricks as writing rules and controlling the size of graphics. The appendices include an HTML reference and a listing of colors and their matching hex numbers. This is a good book if you're new to design concepts and are ready to plan and create a successful Web site.