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Rating: Summary: Excellent choice of featured sites. Review: I've looked at many books that just print screen shots of "the best web sites", and IMHO this is the only one worth buying. This is because a) it is really good value for money, and b) a really good editing job has been done so that only some real class web sites are included. Just flipping through the pages you come across so many ideas - Great for website designers. And, I find the very short comments are usually pretty insightful, and draw your attention to the most salient points. The previous reviewer mentioned that it contains no content about navigation. Well of course not. The title of the book is NOT "Website Navigation", it is "Website Graphics: Navigation" and it is part of a series, the others being "Website Graphics: Typography" and "Website Graphics: Color". But anyway I disagree with the reviewer. You can learn a lot about alternative ways of navigating through websites using this book. Instead of a vertical menu down the left hand side, why not use dials or a street map metaphor. Also there are multiple ways of indicating which page/section the user is in, some of them very creative. Well done to the editors, you have chosen very good sites. I am currently recommending that my institute's library gets the whole set of three.
Rating: Summary: Excellent choice of featured sites. Review: I've looked at many books that just print screen shots of "the best web sites", and IMHO this is the only one worth buying. This is because a) it is really good value for money, and b) a really good editing job has been done so that only some real class web sites are included. Just flipping through the pages you come across so many ideas - Great for website designers. And, I find the very short comments are usually pretty insightful, and draw your attention to the most salient points. The previous reviewer mentioned that it contains no content about navigation. Well of course not. The title of the book is NOT "Website Navigation", it is "Website Graphics: Navigation" and it is part of a series, the others being "Website Graphics: Typography" and "Website Graphics: Color". But anyway I disagree with the reviewer. You can learn a lot about alternative ways of navigating through websites using this book. Instead of a vertical menu down the left hand side, why not use dials or a street map metaphor. Also there are multiple ways of indicating which page/section the user is in, some of them very creative. Well done to the editors, you have chosen very good sites. I am currently recommending that my institute's library gets the whole set of three.
Rating: Summary: Pretty pictures, absolutely no substance Review: If you're looking for design inspiration and you don't care one bit about usability, this may just be the book for you -- it's a glossy collection of various web sites that don't use "traditional navigation" schemes. Each glossy picture comes with a 2-3 sentence description of why the authors' included it. There is absolutely no statistical, or even anecdotal information as to the success of these designs -- success being determined by sales, leads generation, customer satisfaction, etc. The authors *like* the designs and consider them examples of "thinking outside the box". This is a book about being cool, not a book about effective design -- making it useless to professional designers who are held accountable for the profitability of the web site, not just how it looks.
Rating: Summary: Pretty pictures, absolutely no substance Review: If you're looking for design inspiration and you don't care one bit about usability, this may just be the book for you -- it's a glossy collection of various web sites that don't use "traditional navigation" schemes. Each glossy picture comes with a 2-3 sentence description of why the authors' included it. There is absolutely no statistical, or even anecdotal information as to the success of these designs -- success being determined by sales, leads generation, customer satisfaction, etc. The authors *like* the designs and consider them examples of "thinking outside the box". This is a book about being cool, not a book about effective design -- making it useless to professional designers who are held accountable for the profitability of the web site, not just how it looks.
Rating: Summary: The title is wrong. Review: In contrast to what the title says, this book is not really about navigation. Go websurfing for a few days, looking for nice "designer" sites, and print the images on nice glossy paper together with a paragraph of meaningless commentary only stating the obvious. Then you have book like this. It does look nice though. If you're looking for some inspiration in graphics design then it's a nice book which doesn't cost very much. But it doesn't even touch the basic principles of website navigation. No usefull info in here.
Rating: Summary: The title is wrong. Review: In contrast to what the title says, this book is not really about navigation. Go websurfing for a few days, looking for nice "designer" sites, and print the images on nice glossy paper together with a paragraph of meaningless commentary only stating the obvious. Then you have book like this. It does look nice though. If you're looking for some inspiration in graphics design then it's a nice book which doesn't cost very much. But it doesn't even touch the basic principles of website navigation. No usefull info in here.
Rating: Summary: This book is not about navigation. Review: In contrast to what the title says, this book is not really about navigation. The writer went websurfing for a few days, looking for nice "designer" sites. Then printed the images on nice glossy paper together with a paragraph of meaningless commentary only stating the obvious. It does have nice pics though. If you're looking for some inspiration then it's a nice book which doesn't cost very much. But it doesn't even touch the basic principles of website navigation. Don't expect *any* usefull info on that subject.
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