Not many books on topics related to the Internet are in their fourth edition. Around since the 1990s, Web Style Guide is an exception, and its contents illustrate why. It offers in-depth examinations of various elements of user experience. Much like traditional style guides like the Chicago Manual of Style, this work provides a comprehensive, one-stop treatment of what designers need to know to make use of websites.

While being comprehensive, this book profoundly offers readers with challenges that take a lifetime to master. For instance, within 35 pages, the chapter on typography contains a summary of the field over hundreds of years. Other chapters intelligently tie to traditional design concepts and illustrate why web design is slightly but importantly different than printed paper.

Understanding how and why things have evolved because of technology especially helped me as a software developer. Some books are too low-level in computer languages to grasp design trends. Likewise, other books on design style focus on artistic trends to the neglect of technological innovation. This book integrates the two and focuses on how the innovation drives the style. For instance, discussion on relatively new retina displays show how assumptions about screen size change visual planning.

Of course, the world has changed since 2016. I write this five years later in 2021 and notice that the last two chapters (respectively on images and video) are already somewhat out of date. I hope the publishers continue to update this guide in a fifth edition sometime to allow it to stay current.

This style guide is written in plain English for designers to take advantage of. Computer programmers still can benefit from understanding what others on the team are explaining. Also, those designers – who are not coders – can and should read this book as it provides a basic understanding of the technological trends driving the team of web designers. Artisans can also grasp how physical constraints can change the process of production.

This book fills a need for a style guide for the web. For the above reasons, editors, developers, graphic designers, and IT managers can all benefit from reading this guide. Websites are often put together in an ad hoc manner that, for better or for worse, imitate each other. Lynch and Horton provide some helpful and reasoned depth to the practice. This has the potential to grow into something evermore timeless, and I hope it succeeds in that task as it moves into its third decade in production. The web is here to stay, and Lynch and Horton make sure that style will be present as well. ( )