The Art & Science of Web Design

Chapter One: Foundations

The Web has function, it has interactivity, it has behavior... and it is spreading like a California brushfire fanned by winds of a new networked economy.

The Web may be growing fast, but its foundation stretches back through years and decades of electronic publishing history. In this chapter, we'll look back at how the intersection of traditional publishing and early databases influenced the way the Web was built. Why is that important? Because we need to deconstruct the basic philosophy of Web design: how the integration of structure, style, and behavior form the basis of our thinking about development on the Web today. Then, from the theoretical to the concrete, we'll look at how that underlying theory applies to the technologies that make up the Web, as well as the collaboration of Web teams, and the interconnection of the people and the technologies they use. Through that lens, we can look at today's Web interfaces.