Chapter 1. First Principles

Some rules of thumb, and some thumbing of rules.

First Principles

“A blueprint is good thinking written down. You have to do the good thinking part first and the writing down second.”

A blueprint is good thinking written down. You have to do the good thinking part first and the writing down second.

One of the many secrets of good thinking is to learn from those who have suffered before you. Over time, design, architecture, software engineering, and usability have developed many good rules of thumb to help us avoid making the same dumb mistakes our predecessors did.

As you create your own Web sites, you’ll add your own rules to this list. ...

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