Bethany Hiitola - Inkscape 0.48: Essentials for Web Designers

Bethany Hiitola is a working writer. She's worked as a technical writer and multimedia developer for over 12 years and spends the rest of her time as a wife, mother, caretaker to pets, and Master of the household. She's written more user manuals than she can count, essays, short stories, academic papers, press releases, and feature articles. All between the day job, nap times, and diaper changes. More details are at her website: www.bethanyhiitola.com.

Without you Matt, this book wouldn't have been possible. Thanks for watching the kids for endless hours, late nights, and into the wee mornings.

Jack Armstrong spent over 40 years in the Silicon Valley computer industry as a researcher, programmer, analyst, designer, and network architect. At Stanford Research Institute he worked in a large scale scientific computing, artificial intelligence and robotics, and the development of ArpaNet, predecessor to the Internet. At Hewlett-Packard's Central Research Labs and Computer Division, he participated in the design of the HP3000 and the development of HTML, serving on HTML standards committees. After years of successfully operating a software and consulting partnership and 10 years with DHL as Manager of Infrastructure Research and Development and later as Principal Architect, he is now semi-retired, developing unique web sites for local and global clients and participating in development, testing, and standard groups to extend the use of XML and in particular, SVG on the Web. When away from computers, he can be found skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California as often as possible.

Richard Carter is the Creative Director at Peacock Carter Ltd (http://www.peacockcarter.co.uk), a web design and development agency based in the North East of England, working with clients including Directgov, NHS Choices, and BusinessLink.

Richard is the author of MediaWiki Skins Design, Magento 1.3 Themes Design , and Joomla! 1.5 Templates Cookbook , and previously reviewed MediaWiki 1.1 Beginner's Guide .

He blogs at http://www.earlgreyandbattenburg.co.uk and tweets nonsense at http://twitter.com/RichardCarter.

I would like to thank the author of the book for dedicating time to Inkscape, which is fast becoming a better alternative to traditional graphic design software. As always, thanks to Alexandra and EJ.

Noreen McMahan lives in Austin, Texas, where she works for Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. as a member of their Single-Source Documentation System (SSDS) team. She is the SSDS training lead, providing both classroom and written instruction in the use of DITA XML, the Freescale component content management system (CCMS), and the tools required for SSDS content development, including Inkscape. She also participates in SSDS software regression testing and user acceptance testing, which are both activities that feed the training.

For several years, Noreen worked as an information developer and editor at Freescale Semiconductor. At one point, she supervised the work of an 8-person editing team. Noreen has over 20 years of experience drawing engineering diagrams for a variety of document types. She is among the early adopters charged with researching scalable vector graphics (SVG) and promulgating the use of Inkscape at Freescale Semiconductor.

Noreen has lived in Austin since she moved there as a graduate student to attend the University of Texas, where she earned her Ph.D. in English and taught technical writing. Noreen has a 25-year old son, Eric Garrison, and two cats, Xena and Gabrielle.

Vic Perez is a guy that loves art. His experience includes painting with oils and water colors, drawing with inks, pencils and prisma colors. He has created a few custom indoor and outdoor painted wall murals, numerous logos, and web designs.

Thanks to Zainab Bagasrawala, from Packt Publishing, the author of this book, and the Administrative Team at the Inkscape forum website.

Do you think that your website could do with more visual appeal? Are you looking to spice it up with attractive designs and effects? Enter Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers the only book specifically tailored to using Inkscape for web design. This book will teach you how to effectively use the fascinating new Inkscape vector graphics editor, which, despite being in version 0.48 and having no dearth of competitors, has already separated itself from the competition. Learn everything you need to know about enhancing your website from site layouts to templates and animations whether you are looking for a new website design or just some eye candy.

The Inkscape graphics editor is powerful, but getting started is often difficult. Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers walks you through the challenge of using Inkscape from a web design perspective in the easiest way possible.

The first book to unlock the potential of Inkscape for web design, it begins with an introduction to the basics of Inkscape and then journeys you through implementing them in your website one by one.

Learn to build your first website design using Inkscape. Create web page and desktop wallpapers with repeating pattern backgrounds and swirling designs. Incorporate icons and interactive maps on your website. Style and graphically manipulate text from simple headings to shadowing, following paths, reflections, 3D effects, and more. Enhance your web pages using flowcharts, diagrams, and site maps and learn how to export them. Spruce it all up using animations.