You know how to design. But you can increase your value as a designer in the marketplace by learning how to make that design function on the web. From informational sites to e-commerce portals to blogs to mobile apps, The Designer’s Web Handbook helps any designer understand the full life cycle of a digital product: idea, design, production and maintenance.

This book is definitely a web designers handbook. To put it simply, the book outlines the different trends and styles of website and what makes them tick. You can think of it as a comprehensive documentation of web design as it is in 2012.

Inside the book the author, Patrick McNeil, gives valuable information and tips about the accepted norms in web design and how to get there yourself. Think of it like this, someone is looking for a new profession or a new hobby. Web Design seems like a good way to go to them but like a good designer they don’t want to put out just anything that pops into their head.They need to look at the trends that have already been established and how they can best compete with everyone else.

As an experienced web designer myself, I found this book particularly helpful and interesting because it gave me the chance to see if there was anything I might have missed in my own learning and a chance to catch up on the latest trends. This book was just published this year (2012) so it is very current. It’s actually the newest book on web design I could get my hands on as the others are dated a few years back. And with the recent changes made in HTML, CSS and gosh, even Internet Explorer, a new and updated book was needed. I mean, blogs are great but to have all of this information in one place is even better.

You can basically thumb through the book, stop and pick up on a title that excites you most, and by all means, dig in. You can trust this author to have a new and exciting look and spin on things. From fixed size designs to control replacement, from sitemaps to WordPress, every aspect of a website is covered here. I can’t stress enough how easy it is to learn and pick up a bunch of new tips on how to tackle your next design project.

If you haven’t caught on by now, Patrick McNeil is the author of the ever popular Web Designer’s Idea book series. The whole series, including this book, is such a terrific asset for web designers. It helps us see in a snapshot the most modern ways to go about designing sites and finding ourselves with happy clientele. I mean, I want to do a great job and get great reviews, don’t you? Taking up this series which, by the way, has just as many pictures as it does words, would be a good idea for any designer. It’s a way to see what you can do and what everyone else has been doing. To learn from your community. The web design community.