My web design authors dream team

The other day I was looking at a web design book with ten authors, one for each chapter. All the authors were men.

I write books about web design. I know some other women who do, too. I thought, it would be fun to put together a team of women to write a book about web design. And, of course, as soon as I had that thought, I started ticking off names of women who ought to participate and write a chapter.

Well, okay, it’s my idea, so I get to be one of the authors, don’t I? I could do a chapter on what to include in a web design curriculum or best practices in educating web designers. Or something.

I’ve been looking at the built-in CSS layouts packed with Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 for a classroom seminar I have to give. And I know who did all those layouts. It’s Stephanie Sullivan. She writes for Adobe about Dreamweaver. She co-authored a book about Dreamweaver, she’s a contributor at Community MX. Her personal business site is W3conversions.com. How about a chapter on Dreamweaver from Steph?

Another writer for Community MX is Zoe Gillenwater. Zoe is an absolute genius about CSS. I know this is true because I’ve watched her work on the CSS Discuss list. I also know first hand how brilliant she is because she was the technical editor of my latest book. Her personal site is Pixel Surge. Her chapter? Something about CSS, or maybe Dreamweaver.

Then I thought of Liz Castro. I own every edition of Elizabeth Castro’s best selling book HTML book. The latest is the 6th edition. The book? HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide). She’s written about 10 other books about everything from XML to Blogger. Her personal site is Cookwood Press. She should definitely write a chapter.

The book needs a chapter about blogs, right? How about the co-author of WordPress 2 (Visual Quickstart Guide), Miraz Jordan? She writes the Mactips blog. She’s also published articles in a whole lot of places.

A web design does not live by HTML and CSS alone. No, it needs JavaScript. It needs PHP. It needs AJAX. It needs Dori Smith. Poor Amazon can’t seem to distinguish Dori from Doris, but look for a title about JavaScript, Java, Mac OS, or AJAX, and you’ll know you found Dori. She can add a chapter about programming to my dream team book.

We need something about design strategy in there. Usability, maybe. How about Adaptive Path’s Sarah B. Nelson? Her blog is called Cartographies of Imagination, and since it’s about collaboration, she ought to be a natural contributor to the book.

The book has to have something about design, right? Who else but Robin Williams knows the secrets of design for non-designers? And we can’t forget the graphics side of things. Veerle would be perfect for that chapter. Oh, oh, oh! A chapter on accessibility. By Knowbility’s Sharron Rush, naturally. Sharron blogs at NetSquared now.

But wait. There’s more!

The book still needs chapters from Rachel Andrew, Shelley Powers (we really need more than one chapter on programming), Kelly Goto, and Molly Holzschlag. I couldn’t possibly leave out Molly, she’s written 25 or 30 web design books all by herself. And she worked on the Web Standards Project. Oh, that’s right, there are other female web design writers from the Web Standards Project, like Shirley Kaiser. Oh, my. Help me, I can’t stop. This is waaaayyyyy more than the ten chapters the men needed. Could we add additional quality information about topics the men overlooked? Or a prolog, an introduction, an epilog? Guest footnotes?

I know I’m missing someone really important, too. Who is it?

Cross posted at BlogHer.