New Book: Head First Web Design

For the last year or so I’ve been work­ing with Ethan Watrall and O’Reilly writ­ing a new book for the Head First series—(aptly) titled Head First Web Design. It’s meant to be a follow-​​up to the pop­u­lar Head First HTML and focuses more on the design process, pre-​​production, infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture and usabil­ity, rather than XHTML and CSS specifics. Those that are famil­iar with the series will find the expected Head First ele­ments and style through­out the book, com­plete with exer­cises, code exam­ples, inter­views and bul­let points. The book takes you through the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous sites with each chap­ter focus­ing on a par­tic­u­lar part of the design process. By the end, you’ll have a port­fo­lio of sites that you’ve built along with insights, tips and tricks on how to make your designs bet­ter from start to fin­ish.

This is my first (and hope­fully not last) book and it would never have been pos­si­ble with­out the help of lots of peo­ple. I’d like to thank Ethan for giv­ing me the oppor­tu­nity to audi­tion with him on this project and also the Head First team at O’Reilly for tak­ing a chance on a new author who was barely out of col­lege. David at Launch Books also deserves a shout-​​out for help­ing me nav­i­gate the new and unfa­mil­iar world of tech­nol­ogy pub­lish­ing.

Head First Web Design is cur­rently avail­able on Ama­zon and should be in most major book stores over the next few weeks. Be sure to check out Head First Labs for more infor­ma­tion on the series and to con­nect with other loyal read­ers in the book forums. Also, check back here often as I will be giv­ing away copies of the book over the next few months.

More on Head First Web Design:

• HFWD Flickr Set
• Publisher’s Site
• Down­load a Sam­ple Chap­ter
• Buy from Ama­zon

tagged: books, head first, web design