She Wrote the Book on It: A Survival Guide, for Starters

Joannie Kervran
Microsoft Corporation

May 13, 1998

The following article was originally published in the Site Builder Magazine (now known as MSDN Online Voices).

It was an unseasonably warm day in the Pacific Northwest when Mary Haggard stopped for lunch at her favorite secret barbecue joint to talk of her new book, Survival Guide to Web Site Development, published by Microsoft Press , and based on Mary's For Starters column here in MSDN Online Voices.

What's New and What's More

A comprehensive overview for computer professionals new to the Internet, Survival Guide to Web Site Development provides a continuity of experience, as each chapter builds on the one before, and it goes into far more detail than the original For Starters column -- with greater technical depth, code samples, and a Web site demonstrating those samples.

Why a book? The Web changes so quickly; how can a print medium help?

"I felt I had to put my money where my mouth was," Mary said, "and really do the things I was telling people to do." If she were going to describe electronic commerce, she needed something to sell. That's how Web Men Shopping , an e-commerce site hawking souvenirs from MSDN Online Voices's Web Men Talking column, came onto the Internet.

Survival Guide to Web Site Development also benefits from additional input from numerous Web-industry leaders, including site builders behind Lycos, Intuit, C-Systems, and closer to home, Microsoft.com.

People should read the book while sitting in front of a live Internet connection, she suggested, because it contains more than 300 URLs pointing to additional information both inside and outside of Microsoft -- including such valuable resources as the World Wide Web Consortium and InterNIC .

Survival Guide to Web Site Development is written for anyone in the computer industry suddenly faced with building a corporate Web site. You know the drill: Your boss walks in on Monday morning, before your second cup of coffee, and starts spouting off about how seriously the company needs a Web site. Industry presence. Competition. The panic of not wanting to get there last. Survival Guide provides information on the necessary steps and available technologies -- what they do, and what you can do with them. It's the handbook to get you through a project gracefully and efficiently, with a Web presence that will please your employer to no end.

"It really is the first book I've seen that covers the whole process," Mary explained.

For Starters: Fast Start

Mary was working with Microsoft's product-support group , educating information-technology professionals about Windows 95 and Windows NT, when she got a yen for the Web. She was asked onto a team to oversee "a small site for Web developers," at a time when no one was too sure what a Web developer was. With Mary as the team's program manager, that small site grew and grew, changing from the Internet Toolbox to the Internet Workshop, to the MSDN Online Web site, with more than 25 million unique users each month and a membership program numbering more than 700,000 registrants worldwide.

As the MSDN Online Web site began to take shape, Mary and her colleagues were receiving e-mails asking for more information. We love the site you have now, users said, but what is all this stuff? Print materials were too elementary, and content on the Internet was too technical. The MSDN team took into account all that feedback they'd received in e-mail, at conferences, and in usability studies. People wanted a place to start, and Mary agreed to write a 10-column series, exploring a different site-building topic with each column.

The For Starters column proved instantly popular from its February 1997 debut. In fact, the MSDN Answer team continues to point users to it for answers to their questions. Feedback on the columns was prolific -- and during For Starters' first year, those original 10 topics changed considerably, in response to the e-mails that Mary and the team received from MSDN readers. Manager Andrew Himes and Senior Editor Tom O'Connor took a step back. Why not compile all this information, expand it, and put it in a book? When Mary contacted Microsoft Press, the response was immediate -- and the project began to take shape.

One of the best parts about writing the Survival Guide, Mary said, was how so many people came to help -- the people who reviewed it, wrote code for it, and let her know what they wanted to find.

What's Next

While Mary's For Starters column continues in MSDN Online Voices -- with a new focus on e-commerce -- Mary herself has moved to a new position, overseeing internationalization issues for Microsoft's portal site to the Internet.

For those who have wondered about Mary's column bio, she really did work summers at the Longview Fiber pulp mill in Longview, Washington, USA.

Joannie Kervran is Assistant Editor at MSDN Online Voices and a poet.

Make Mary's day: Buy this book

Mary Haggard's Survival Guide to Web Site Development lists for US$19.99 (CDN$28.99).