This textual content analysis set out to determine the extent to which the theories, principles, and guidelines in 4 standard books of instructional design and technology were also addressed in 4 popular books on web design. The standard books on instructional design and the popular books on web design were chosen by experts in the fields. The results showed that the standard books addressed theories of cognitive information processing, cognitive load, minimalism, motivation, multimedia, and perception. The guidelines from the 4 popular web design books were mainly from cognitive information processing, perception, and minimalism theories. Two of the web design books gave theoretical foundations for their guidelines. All the standard books, however, gave a theoretical foundation for their guidelines. The 4 standard books did not make use of color illustrations but all the web design books made abundant use of color illustrations. Minimalism was addressed in only 1 of the 4 standard books. All the popular web design books addressed minimalism. Two of the popular books addressed affordance theory, which was not addressed in any of the standard books. It was recommended that books on instructional design should include sections on web design because designing courses for distance learning that would be delivered via the web require knowledge of web design. The study would benefit from further investigation to determine if web design courses are included as core courses in instructional design.