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Principles of Web Design. David K. Farkas and Jean B. Farkas. Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Communication. Ed. Sam Dragga. New York: Longman, 2002. DOI: 10.1177/1050651902238548
David Farkas and Jean Farkas's Principles of Web Design strives to meet the needs of advanced undergraduate students of technical communication and their instructors who "want books that demonstrate theoretical sophistication and a solid foundation in the research of a field as well as pragmatic advice and perceptive applications" (xix). Eschewing the quickly outdated discussions of particular technologies or the overly prescriptive directions often found in Web-design handbooks, Principles of Web Design presents concepts of Web design that apply across design situations and help designers focus on the complexities of the rhetorical situation as they implement their designs. In short, Principles of Web Design is the missing link in a mass of Webdesign handbooks because it explains why designers should do what they should do.
Appropriately, Principles of Web Design begins by describing the World Wide Web (WWW) as a medium. For example, chapter 1 explains the main uses for the WWW and the way it differs from print in its capabilities. This chapter also explains the basic terminology of Web design and provides a brief history of the WWW, thus contextualizing the medium and building a foundation for later chapters by illustrating that the WWW is a convergence of the hypermedia tradition and the technological tradition that led to the Internet (12).
In chapters 2 and 3, Farkas and Farkas reveal that the principles of Web design are grounded in rhetorical theory, and they suggest a design process that closely parallels the writing process as it is commonly taught in composition courses. Although the authors call on the similarities between the process of writing for print and the process of designing for the WWW throughout the book, they also use terminology most often associated with user-centered design. For example, at the beginning of chapter 2, the authors note that the design process is iterative, often with several steps between planning, designing, and building. Although the concepts will be recognized by readers familiar with the iterative writing processes most often taught in composition classes, the language used to describe this process gently moves readers from thinking of...