April 1997
Designing Killer Web Sites
Timeless Principles of Design
By Clement Mok and Vic Zauderer
The challenge of site design is to combine tools, information, and approach in a compelling way while satisfying the needs and constraints of your client. Two leading designers share their techniques for designing a killer Web site.
Web-Site Usability Engineering, Part 1
By Paul Helinski
As Paul puts it, creating a quality Web site is all about usability. Paul speaks with two luminaries in computer-interface design about quality and usability, and shares specific techniques for engineering usability into your site.
Dynamic Site Navigation
By Ryan Alyn Porter and Jennifer Selph
As they published more material, Ryan and Jennifer found their Web site growing at an alarming rate, making navigation and maintenance difficult. So our authors created NavTool, two CGI scripts that provide visitors with site-wide navigation in a manner that is both flexible and portable.
Distributed Computing with ActiveX
By Ken North
Active Platform is nothing less than Microsoft's proposed standard for open, distributed-object computing. Ken explains.
C O L U M N S :
Webmaster's Domain
Originally designed to handle rich media types within Internet email, MIME is now used to negotiate content within a browser environment. In Lincoln D. Stein's opinion, that fact has gone almost unnoticed by major browser developers.
Doing Justice to the Web
This month, Catherine Sansum Kirkman examines the legal points you should consider when contracting outside developers to create and maintain your Web site.
HTML Coding
HTML validators are tools that verify your HTML code, helping you write well-constructed Web pages in the process. Laura Lemay explains when and how you should use them, and examines three popular validators.
Virtual Worlds
The VRML language not only supports 3D graphics, but also allows you to add sound to your interactive worlds. As Andrea L. Ames shows, you can create both ambient and triggered sounds using the Sound node.
Programming with Perl
This month, Randal L. Schwartz presents a script that will make your Web pages searchable.
Java Alley
The clone method allows you to create a local copy of an object. Even though the clone method is defined in the base class Object, cloning is not automatically available in every class. Bruce Eckel presents some tricks to overcome this hurdle.
D E P A R T M E N T S :
Lab Notes
The latest version of QuarkImmedia includes a design tool that works in conjunction with QuarkXPress to provide a multimedia authoring environment for page designers. R. Shamms Mortier gives you the tour.
Reading Room
Jeff Wilson and Greg Wilson look at Designing Web Graphics and Deconstructing Web Graphics, two must-have books from Lynda Weinman.
Special Report
Despite popular opinion, the acquisition of NeXT Software wasn't the only thing on the minds of this year's MacWorld Expo attendees. According to Michael Swaine, Apple owns an impressive chunk of the Internet market and it was evident at the show.
News & Notes
Java Gets Rad! Tools by Design.
The Home Page
Editor-in-Chief Michael Floyd talks about "Designing a Design Tool."
The Last Page
Michael Swaine tells a sci-fi story, "Just a Matter of Time."
