Karl-Peter Gottschalk: Books

Books: Just Arrived.

Tue, 26 Nov 2002 05:02:05 GMT

Flash MX Designer’s ActionScript Reference by Sham Bhangal et al, published by Friends of ED. So many specialist Flash books on the FoED list!

What About Web Editors, And Writers, Though?

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 09:05:01 GMT

Web Editor would have been another reasonable choice of job title, instead of Information Architect, perhaps, but I only saw one vacancy for that job. That was for someone to do writing and copyediting for a New Zealand government web site.
Come to think of it, vacancies for web writers have been hard to find, even in the heyday or bubble days of the Web. There is not enough awareness of how very different web writing is to other forms.
As the Hot Text guys state,

“Writing for the Web transforms our old ideas of audience, structure, and style. When we immerse ourselves in the Internet, we see concepts that we have inherited from years of writing on paper begin to dissolve.”

... And That Is Partly Why I Got Into IA.

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 08:53:47 GMT

Waste of that kind, and so many missed opportunities, is why I was so excited when the first edition of IAWWW appeared in 1997. Someone had been thinking about the same things, and what is more had put a name to it!
Also compelling was the fact that, as someone with experience of magazine editorial and film and advertising production, the concept of IA overlapped with many of the most essential roles in those spheres.
Having worked on a few web sites by then, I saw that someone must assume the editorial role. It was obvious that research, strategy, planning, scoping, storytelling, structure, and so on, were just not being carried out right under the old designer + programmer paradigm.

A Compelling Quote From Information Architecture for the WWW.

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 08:47:05 GMT

On page 320 of IAWWW, second edition, by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, under the subheader Do We Really Need to Hire Professionals?, is this:

We are continually amazed by the scale of business blunders caused by the false assumption that anyone can do this work. In our consulting experience with dozens of Fortune 500 companies, we have seen several situations where literally millions (if not tens of millions) of dollars have been wasted by web and intranet development teams that lack even a single professional information architect.

… and they go on to discuss how various common corporate policies have failed to address the problem, in their opinion.
Cause to stop and think. Millions, for firms that could, possibly, have afforded to take these kinds of losses. What about the smaller guys who cannot take big hits?

Books For Review Just Arrived.

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 03:46:35 GMT

Thanks to the kind folks at O’Reilly & Associates, three new books on the Web have arrived: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference and HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide.
Have just quickly skimmed through Information Architecture, and it looks like this is the one of the three recently arrived IA books that is most oriented more towards the professional than lay people.

Book review: Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web.

Fri, 15 Nov 2002 04:46:03 GMT

Title: Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web
Author: Christina Wodtke
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Published: 2002
Pages: 348
Illustrations: Monochrome
CD-ROM: No
ISBN: 0735712506
Rating: 5

When a client looks at a web site, they only see the visible 10%—the interface. The 90% of the site that makes the thing work is invisible.
When a client comes to you believing all you need to do is come up with a terrific user interface design, the situation is not unlike that of the Titanic and the iceberg.
To avoid that fate, far too common in web projects still, you must somehow convince them that there is an unseen 90% that must be done before pixel hits screen. Even more importantly, you must persuade them to pay for it.
How often though have you begun talking about strategy, scope, structure and that terribly misunderstood thing called content, only to be interrupted with the words that one of their people will take care of all that stuff? Then when it comes to the crunch, and nothing has been done by their people, the client comes by and dumps a stack of company brochures or product catalogs on your desk and tells you to just get on with it?
All this research, thinking and planning that is needed before opening your copy of Photoshop or Dreamweaver has found a name—Information Architecture (IA). The job has been given a title—Information Architect (also IA). The profession is now fighting for recognition, and the books are being published, at an accelerating pace.
Christina Wodtke founded Information Architecture web site Boxes and Arrows and is a partner at a San Francisco user experience agency. As she admits in her inside cover note, she really loves the web and really hates bad web sites.
A conversation about those issues with Jeffrey Veen resulted in this book. And now we have another tool in the arsenal both for learning from, and to use in teaching our clients. This is the second recent book on Information Architecture I have encountered—the first was Jesse James Garrett’s The Elements of User Experience—and both are general introductions rather than in-depth reference books for practicing IAs.
Both books are well suited as recommended reading for insightful clients. Both are also good reads for IAs to remind themselves of how to do it better. But Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web (IABW) contains more of the how-tos and examples that are still in short supply elsewhere. This is the kind of material I learn best from—things other people have done, good and bad.
Christina Wodtke’s aim is for her readers to learn rocket science in a day without being blown up. She does that, with enough real life examples to get you started, without imposing a method or setting strict procedures. The perfect in-depth IA book still does not exist yet, but IABW is a damned good beginning. I read it in a day, and dip into it again and again when thinking.
I am still hungry for more, but Wodtke has given me enough in her book to think about for the time being. I have taken to carrying Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web around in my backpack, along with The Elements of User Experience, and that is not something I do with every book I take a liking to.

Edward Tufte: Grandaddy of Information Architecture.

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 02:27:14 GMT

If at all interested in Information Architecture and Information Design, or in simply being a good designer, you must not pass by Edward Tufte’s superb books.
I used to read them all the spare time I had at an ad agency where they were in the collection of a copywriter. I could never find copies locally, but one day I will track them down and buy them all. They are priceless. They are expensive because they are self-published in hardcover by the American author.
The books’ samizdat status probably explains where they are so hard to find in bookstores. But now Edward Tufte has a website.

Accessible AND Informationally Architected.

Mon, 11 Nov 2002 06:32:59 GMT

Copies of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web and Building Accessible Websites have just arrived. Reviews soon, here and at Amazon.

eLearning Becomes A Word.

Mon, 11 Nov 2002 02:24:14 GMT

I have just come across a new book about to be published in the US, on the subject of eLearning, named eLearning with Dreamweaver MX. A copy should be arriving soon. I have not seen any such books here yet, but I guess the trickle is about to start. Do a search on Amazon.com on the word eLearning and a few titles turn up.
Both Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX come with eLearning extensions, or libraries, or you can download them from the relevant Extensions page at the Macromedia web site. I have, but it was pretty obvious that a good reference book on what to do with these extensions was absolutely necessary before you could use them well.
I will be pleased whan Amazon finally sets up an Australian store! Far too few books make it through here. And far too many other kinds of products that you can get even in the east fail to make it to Perth. Luckily Amazon’s current product range just keeps on growing.

Interview with Morville and Rosenfeld on IA.

Wed, 06 Nov 2002 08:54:06 GMT

While wondering what has happened with the long-awaited second edition of famous first IA book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, I came across an interview with them on IA website Boxes and Arrows.
Here is their definition of Information Architecture.

The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system.
The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content.
The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information.
An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

No, I am not unaware that the second edition was published earlier this year in the United States. It is just that I have not seen a copy in any of the local bookstores on any of my regular sorties since publication in August. In fact very, very few O'Reilly & Associates books turn up here at all. I wonder why? They do some fantastic books on essential subjects.

Zeldman Rates Joe Clark High.

Wed, 30 Oct 2002 02:23:26 GMT

Jeffrey Zeldman is writing a list of his favourite web design books, and amongst the first three is Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites. Also on this list is Hillman Curtis’ MTIV: Process, Inspiration, and Practice for the New Media Designer.
Clark’s book is due here any day now. I am looking forward to it even more now.

Book Review: Macromedia Flash MX Express.

Mon, 28 Oct 2002 02:00:49 GMT

Title: Macromedia Flash MX Express
Authors: Leon Cych, Benjamin J. Mace, Glen Rhodes
Publisher: Friends of ED <www.friendsofed.com/>
Published: 2002
Pages: 338
Illustrations: Monochrome
CD-ROM: No
ISBN: 1903450950
Rating: 5

In some quarters of the web design community, Flash is still seen as a great animation tool, but its other nature as a fully-fledged web application environment is barely comprehended.
In other quarters, designers are still using Flash in the most basic way, as a straight-through animation tool, but simple scripting that might nicely spice up an animation remains a mystery, and even tweens are a worry.
For too long in Flash’s early days there were too few, in fact almost no, books about it. Then the long drought became a flood, and there are hundreds now. I am not complaining—the era when those who had puzzled out some obscure mystery were keen to show it off but refused to explain it was a frustrating one.
But now, when a designer wanders into a big city bookshop and claps eyes on all those big thick books on Flash, whose titles link Flash with daunting words like Applications and ActionScript, eyes are apt to glaze over to mutterings of “later, later, one day….”
What has been badly needed is an easy introduction to the latest version of Flash, written with clarity and respect, amply illustrated, structured so readers can easily dip in and out to grab some pearl of wisdom that can be applied to the job in hand, and that invites repeated perusal. What we needed has now arrived, and Macromedia Flash MX Express is it.
Designers are visual people, and they need their books well illustrated with screenshots and examples. Flash MX Express includes so many that it has a 2-column layout—one for text and one for images. Illustrations are annotated and captioned where necessary, and there is a reasonable balance between screenshots made on Mac and Windows computers.
An error common in those big thick Flash books is the authors making too many guesses about their readers, skipping over crucial steps on the assumption that “it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Cych, Mace and Rhodes do not do that there, covering every step of the way through each exercise. You really can jump in and out, grabbing only what you need that day. The authors then gently introduce that designer’s bogeyman, ActionScript, two-thirds the way through, and follow it with introductions into components and video, both new with Flash MX.
Macromedia Flash MX Express is one of the best introductions into Flash MX for those new to Flash or who know they have been underusing its immense capabilities and want to dig deeper now. I hope that Friends of ED uses the same editorial team to write further Express-style Flash books in future.

Book Review: The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web.

Mon, 28 Oct 2002 01:59:08 GMT

Title: The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web
Author: Jesse James Garrett <www.jjg.net/>
Publishers: New Riders <www.newriders.com/>/AIGA <www.aiga.org/>
Published: 2002
Pages: 190
Illustrations: Monochrome
CD-ROM: No
ISBN: 0735712026
Rating: 4

Small book, big subject.
Information architecture is a phrase beginning to be bandied about in web design and development circles, but its speakers are often unfamiliar with the meaning of the term. In one case I witnessed it was greeted with giggles and guffaws of incomprehension.
Yet an industry-wide understanding of information architecture is crucial, especially now that the days of corporate web sites as little more than online brochures, or marketing eye candy, are well and truly over. Web sites, if they are to provide real value to their readers and publishers, must fulfil real business functionality. Above all their functions, look and feel must be aimed squarely at satisfying the reader and her needs, at providing the optimum user experience. According to Garrett, planning is the key.

Five Part Plan.
Garrett divides a web site’s planning into five parts, from top to bottom—Surface, Skeleton, Structure, Scope and Strategy. Bottom comes first, then you work your way to the top, the design and programming of the site itself. Garrett recommends that all sites are planned using this conceptual framework.
But, how many times have you seen a web site built in reverse—look and feel coming first, perhaps with some small concession made to planning the structure and the content to go into it? Practices still vary widely across the industry—Garrett makes an excellent case for adopting a more structured method, supporting it with sound arguments and good examples throughout the book.

An Odd Omission.
I have reluctantly rated The Elements of User Experience at four stars, not five, due to a surprising omission. It would have made so much sense to have published the diagrams and notes about information architecture located on Jesse James Garrett’s website at www.jjg.net/ia/ as appendices.
Books are made to be read in places you might not want to take computers—the bathroom, the bus, the train, in bed. I found myself wanting to relate Garrett’s revelations in the book to the more technical stuff on his website, especially his Visual Vocabulary. I could not do that, unless I also happened to be carrying my stack of dog-eared single-sided web page print-outs—not a pretty sight.
That small complaint aside, The Elements of User Experience should be bought and read by everyone involved in a web site’s conception through to birth—client, creative lead and chief programmer at the very least. It shows why someone must take responsibility for the project’s architecture, even if that person does not go under the title of Information Architect. The time when the title is in common use, no longer laughed at, is when the Web will really begin fulfilling its potential.
From small beginnings good things grow.

Book Review: Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies.

Fri, 25 Oct 2002 01:03:25 GMT

Title: Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies
Author: John Yunker <www.bytelevel.com/>
Publishers: New Riders <www.newriders.com/>
Published: 2002
Pages: 552
Illustrations: Monochrome
CD-ROM: No
ISBN: 0735712085
Rating: 5

Now that English is becoming a minority language on the World Wide Web, companies wishing to do business on a global basis, and their consultants, need guidance in doing it right. Author John Yunker has accumulated a rare quantity of practical experience at web globalization firm Byte Level, working for clients such as Giorgio Armani, Wal-Mart, SAP and Victoria’s Secret.
Yunker is a fine writer, communicates well, and organizes even better. This beautifully laid-out book contains a mass of unique information on just about all the issues you will encounter in commissioning and producing multi-language web sites, in doing business across borders, dealing with very different cultures, and their laws, and on how to make less than fully globalized software do a reasonable job at handling more than just US English ASCII text.
To better reinforce his lessons, Yunker has provided several Hands On practical exercise chapters on how to globalize in several different languages, case studies and Q&As with major corporate globalizers. Many precious little gems drop out of the book’s pages, as well as sterling advice on how to get right things that many web page designers currently get badly wrong. Common mistakes like creating forms that fail to take into account differing standards in phone numbers, or the variations in how dates and times are expressed around the world.
The issue of globalization has only just come up for my firm. To remain viable, and then grow, our web agency must seek clients beyond its immediate vicinity. And that means suddenly having to cope with a plethora of non-European languages, and very different cultural precepts. Beyond Borders has proven invaluable already by enlightening us on what we are in for.

Book Review: High Score! The Ultimate History of Electronic Games

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 04:18:10 GMT

Title: High Score! The Ultimate History of Electronic Games
Authors: Rusel DeMaria and Johnny L. Wilson
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Osborne Published: 2002
Pages: 328
Illustrations: Colour
CD-ROM: No
ISBN: 0072224282
Rating: 5

This book has become the all-time favourite around the office, despite almost none of us being anything like hard core gamers. Just take a quick flick through High Score’s pages and you will immediately see why.
I haven’t played games for years. I’ve got Riven, two editions of Myst, once owned SimCity 2000 and kept copies of a 3D version of Breakout and a Centipede clone on the Mac for my wife to bang away at after a hard day at work. And a form of Dungeons and Dragons was popular on the mainframe computer stashed away in the Physics department when I was at art school. I rarely played, but I was impressed by the invention, the creativity so evident in games and gaming, although I do have my reservations about shoot’em ups.
Flicking through High Score brought all those memories to vivid life, and reminded me of the good times I had around computer games in the past. The book is an amazing repository of electronic games history, lavishly illustrated with full colour screenshots, storyboards and sketches, packshots, PR photos and developer group portraits, and all those games consoles, cabinets and computers that are now long gone but not forgotten.
There is a legion of fascinating stories, too, about companies once at the top of the field but now vanished, high hopes and dashed dreams, amazing inventiveness, and truly remarkable individuals. I have read and reread High Score many times now, and each read is as rewarding as all the others. High Score! The Ultimate History of Electronic Games is a classic.

Book Review: Constructing Accessible Web Sites.

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 04:08:44 GMT

Title: Constructing Accessible Web Sites
Author: Jim Thatcher, Paul Bohman et al
Publisher: Glasshaus
Published: 2002
Pages: 415
Illustrations: Monochrome
CD-ROM: No
ISBN: 1904151000
Rating: 5

Two new words have joined the vocabulary of web designers in recent years—usability and accessibility. You will often come across them used in tandem.
Usability really became an issue when Jacob Nielsen infamously denounced Flash as 99% bad. Accessibility became a priority for web developers working on government projects after Section 508 was brought into law in the United States.
Accessibility became an issue in Australia during Maguire vs SOCOG in 1999, when a blind man filed a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) that neither Olympic Games tickets purchasing information nor the souvenir programme were available in Braille. Most importantly he alleged that the SOCOG website was not accessible, and to make it so would have been well within SOCOG’s IT partner IBM’s budget. SOCOG was found to have discriminated against the complainant and damages were awarded against the organization.
Accessibility is now a civil rights issue. It is also not that difficult to implement on a website, once you learn how it can be done. This excellent book, Constructing Accessible Web Sites, teaches you all that and more. It is the first on its subject, and will not be the last, but it is damned a good beginning.
All eight co-authors have been pioneers in the field of accessibility, and Glasshaus deserves praise for having assembled such a team. They cover more than website accessibility—their expertise extends to the accessibility of web design tools themselves. An apt reminder that the web is as much about reading as writing, for writers as much as readers, a real medium of two-way communication.
All websites can now be made accessible to varying degrees, even Flash websites since Flash MX, as Macromedia Senior Product Manager for Accessibility Bob Regan demonstrates in Chapter 10. So there are no excuses for failing to add increased accessibility, and usability for that matter, to that new project you are just about to commence.
Ensure you have a copy of Constructing Accessible Web Sites at hand when you begin. And also take a look at another equally essential reference on the subject due out any day now, Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites.
Accessibility is the newest and most necessary website building skill. There are no excuses now, with such excellent books on the subject becoming available.

Let Us Not Forget Glasshaus.

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 02:55:54 GMT

Glasshaus is the sister imprint to Friends of ED, located in the same city, and they have a new title out too. Content Management Systems is about excatly that, and the first book on the subject that I have come across.

Some New Ones From Friends of ED.

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 02:51:53 GMT

The oddly named Friends of ED in sunny Birmingham, England, have become known as THE Flash book specialists and this latest list of new releases shows why.

Is This The Typography Book I Have Been Searching For?

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 02:44:19 GMT

I LURVE type and great typography, and yet there have been almost no books on the subject that I could recommend without reservation. The best so far has been Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style, but it is far too hard to get, was last revised in 1997, and has minimal coverage of practical digital typographic issues.
Now, the book I have wanting all these years may be about to appear at last. The Complete Manual of Typography by James Felici has been announced for publication in September. I am really looking forward to seeing this. Felici reportedly writes a column on type for the Adobe website. I haven’t found it so far though.

More Books Coming Soon From New Riders.

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 02:28:52 GMT

Publisher New Riders is in the process of publishing some books that address essential New Media issues that have been rarely if ever addressed in book form until now.
Here is a list of some upcoming New Riders books that look intriguing.

Thinking About Corporates and the Web.

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 10:22:00 GMT

While boning up on how to write comparative book reviews well, I came across Bamboozled at the Revolution by Scott Rosenberg, at Salon. The subtitle is The media titans still don't get it. Absolutely true.

YA Accessibility Book Due Out.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 11:39:01 GMT

Author and accessibility expert Joe Clark is, to say the least, a complete obsessive. I have just discovered he has a new book due out late this month, Building Accessible Websites, and given his obsessiveness no doubt it will be the best book on the subject.
Click on the title of this post to read about it at Amazon.com.

Information Architecture Classic Being Revised.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 10:38:31 GMT

The one book in my collection from London, that I considered so precious I carried it by hand from that side of the globe to this one, is Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. I received my copy of it just after it was published in February 1998.
Now the guys are working on the second edition, due out this month in the US. You can download chapters 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 from the O’Reilly & Associates website.
Wish me luck, though, in trying to obtain a review copy. The book’s Oz distributors can be prickly to say the least.

Phillip Kerman's ActionScripting Classic Updated.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 05:27:31 GMT

Phillip Kerman’s classic on Flash ActionScripting has been updated for Flash MX. The new version is named ActionScripting in Flash MX.
In the back of the book is notice about another exciting-looking book on Flash MX matters, also published by New Riders. Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript by Branden Hall and Samuel Wan is due out in September.

Towards The Accessible, Usable Web.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 05:20:50 GMT

I have received review copies of some books by Glasshaus, the new imprint for web professionals that is a spin-off from Friends of ED and Wrox Press in Birmingham, England. They are excellent books, and in some cases quite unique, so it is a mystery as to why none of the local bookstores have any of them in stock.
I like Glasshaus’ current books so much, in fact, that I am going to make a special effort to review all their books.

Accessible Web Sites
Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation
Practical JavaScript for the Usable Web
Usability: The Site Speaks For Itself