Foreword to Hello Web Design by Tracy Osborn

Whenever I dipped my toe in the waters of the semantic web, I noticed there were two fundamentally different approaches. One approach was driven by the philosophy that absolutely everything in the universe should be theoretically describable. The other approach was far more lax, concentrating only on the popular use-cases: people, places, events, and that was pretty much it. These few common items, so the theory went, accounted for about 80% of actual usage in the real world. Trying to codify the remaining 20% would result in a disproportionate amount of effort.

I always liked that approach. I think it applies to a lot of endeavours. Coding, sketching, cooking—you can get up to speed on the bare essentials pretty quickly, and then spend a lifetime attaining mastery. But we don’t need to achieve mastery at every single thing we do. I’m quite happy to be just good enough at plenty of skills so that I can prioritise the things I really want to spend my time doing.

Perhaps web design isn’t a priority for you. Perhaps you’ve decided to double-down on programming. That doesn’t mean foregoing design completely. You can still design something pretty good …thanks to this book.

Tracy understands the fundamentals of web design so you don’t have to. She spent years learning, absorbing, and designing, and now she has very kindly distilled down the 80% of that knowledge that’s going to be the most useful to you.

Think of Hello Web Design as a book of cheat codes. It’s short, to the point, and tells you everything you need to know to be a perfectly competent web designer.

Say hello to your little friend.