Content area
Full Text
TELECOMWORLDWIRE-17 April 2001-REVIEW:Troubleshooting Your Web Page (C)1994-2001 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com Aimed at new or intermediate users, this book is ideal in that it offers a wide range of quick answers to common problems the average user may encounter whilst in the course of designing a web page. Rather than being a standard 'start at page 1 and read through until you get to the end' book, Troubleshooting Your Web Page is set out in a way that reminded me of the normal 'help' section in most Microsoft software products. For example, the start of the book is simply a list of complaints. These range from the relatively harmless "A GIF animation is choppy" to the almost life-threatening "When I publish or upload my pages, I get an error", by the side of each of these there is a page number telling the user where to go to find the solution. If it is not clear what exactly the problem is then the list is broken down into various more general topics such as 'Colour' or 'Tables', enabling the reader to find at least the correct section that they should be looking in. Once at the correct section we are greeted in every single case with an easy to read flow diagram that, using a process of elimination, guides you to the exact page and fix for any individual problem. The author, Evan Callahan, has clearly done his research well and most of the more basic problems that require a little alteration on the part of the designer seem to be included here. For the more complicated problems that require something a little more complex the reader is simply not told or advised that further troubleshooting is needed. There is even a list of the 20 most likely things that can go wrong with a web page and the corresponding page numbers for the fix on the inside front cover, clearly aimed at grabbing the attention of the curious browser with the web page problem in the bookstore. With the whole world going dot.com crazy the appearance of the personal web site is becoming more and more widespread. Especially with the lowering cost and complexity of having your own presence online, more and more of the less technical users are going to be wanting to get themselves their own plot of virtual real estate. This book anticipates that trend perfectly and I am sure it will cut down the amount of calls received by professional web page designers by their friends complaining and asking advice on their new hobbies page. It is the ideal companion to have by the side of the monitor, just in case the worst happens. In addition to the fixes for problems, there are also a number of handy appendices included towards the back of this book. The first covers HTML tags and gives a summary of the uses of each one, very handy for anyone wishing to take their web page design past the easy 'What You See Is What You Get' text editor stage. The second is a CSS property summary and the third points the reader towards useful web authoring resources. CONCLUSION:This is the kind of book that I would recommend to all novice web designers, it guides anyone easily through fixes whilst teaching about why the problem occurred in the first place. Title:Troubleshooting Your Web Page Author:Evan Callahan Published by:Microsoft Press ISBN:0-7356-1164-5 Price:GBP14.99 Reviewer:Ian Sanderson This book was provided for review by Computer Manuals (http://www.computer-manuals.co.uk). ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))