Information Architecture and Web Design in a Nutshell

Information Architecture and Web Design in a Nutshell

Information Architecture is a key foundational aspect of effective web design. Web Design in a Nutshell is a great overall primer on Web Design. Regardless of when they were published, they remain applicable and provide a good foundation on the subjects.


 

Information Architecture, 4th Edition

Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond, 4th Ed.
By Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld, Jorge Arango
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Release Date: October 2015

Information ArchitectureInformation architecture (IA) is far more challenging—and necessary—than ever. With the glut of information available today, anything your organization wants to share should be easy to find, navigate, and understand. But the experience you provide has to be familiar and coherent across multiple interaction channels, from the Web to smartphones, smartwatches, and beyond.

To guide you through this broad ecosystem, this popular guide—now in its fourth edition—provides essential concepts, methods, and techniques for digital design that have withstood the test of time. UX designers, product managers, developers, and anyone involved in digital design will learn how to create semantic structures that will help people engage with your message.

This book includes:

  • An overview of IA and the problems it solves for creating effective digital products and services.
  • A deep dive into IA components, including organization, labeling, navigation, search, and metadata.
  • Processes and methods that take you from research to strategy, design, and IA implementation.

 

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd Edition

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd Edition: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
By Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Release Date: July 2008

Information Architecutre, 3rd Ed.The post-Ajaxian Web 2.0 world of wikis, folksonomies, and mashups makes well-planned information architecture even more essential. How do you present large volumes of information to people who need to find what they’re looking for quickly? This classic primer shows information architects, designers, and web site developers how to build large-scale and maintainable web sites that are appealing and easy to navigate.

The new edition is thoroughly updated to address emerging technologies — with recent examples, new scenarios, and information on best practices — while maintaining its focus on fundamentals. With topics that range from aesthetics to mechanics, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web explains how to create interfaces that users can understand right away. Inside, you’ll find:

  • An overview of information architecture for both newcomers and experienced practitioners.
  • The fundamental components of an architecture, illustrating the interconnected nature of these systems. Updated, with updates for tagging, folksonomies, social classification, and guided navigation.
  • Tools, techniques, and methods that take you from research to strategy and design to implementation. This edition discusses blueprints, wireframes and the role of diagrams in the design phase.
  • A series of short essays that provide practical tips and philosophical advice for those who work on information architecture.
  • The business context of practicing and promoting information architecture, including recent lessons on how to handle enterprise architecture.
  • Case studies on the evolution of two large and very different information architectures, illustrating best practices along the way.
  • How do you document the rich interfaces of web applications?
  • How do you design for multiple platforms and mobile devices?

With emphasis on goals and approaches over tactics or technologies, this enormously popular book gives you knowledge about information architecture with a framework that allows you to learn new approaches — and unlearn outmoded ones.


 

Web Design in a Nutshell

By Jennifer Niederst
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Release Date: November 1998

Web Design in a NutshellWeb Design in a Nutshell contains the nitty-gritty on everything you need to know to design Web pages. It’s the good stuff, without the fluff, written and organized so that answers can be found quickly. Written by veteran Web designer Jennifer Niederst, this book provides quick access to the wide range of front-end technologies and techniques from which Web designers and authors must draw.

It is an excellent reference for HTML 4.0 tags (including tables, frames, and Cascading Style Sheets) with special attention given to browser support and platform idiosyncrasies. The HTML section is more than a reference work, though. It details strange behavior in tables, for instance, and gives ideas and workarounds for using tables and frames on your site. Web Design in a Nutshell also covers multimedia and interactivity, audio and video, and emerging technologies like Dynamic HTML, XML, embedded fonts, and internationalization.

The book includes:

  • Discussions of the Web environment, monitors, and browsers.
  • A complete reference to HTML and Server Side Includes, including browser support for every tag and attribute.
  • Chapters on creating GIF, JPEG and PNG graphics, including designing with the Web Palette.
  • Information on multimedia and interactivity, including audio, video, Flash, Shockwave, and JavaScript.
  • Detailed tutorial and reference on Cascading Style Sheets, including an appendix of browser compatibility information.
  • Appendices detailing HTML tags, attributes, deprecated tags, proprietary tags, and CSS compatibility.