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Summary: Help to design for the users
Review: A good book for beginners and experienced web designers. It is focused from the users'point of view. It makes web designers feel in the "user's shoes", good to develop user friendly sites.
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Summary: Great starting point for designing instructional web sites
Review: The printed guide, although lacking the wonderful color images of the on-line guide, is a great tool for introducing the concepts of design for teaching. I use it in my faculty development courses to augment the on-line version. Most of the teachers using it appreciate it as an off line reference for the basic concepts. We insist that faculty become aware of the differences between designing commercial web sites and instructional ones. Great job with this book Patrick and Sarah.
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Summary: An "Elements of Style" for the Web
Review: An elegant, concise antidote for anyone tired of three-foot-thick, fifty-dollar computer books with nothing much to say. Careful, timeless advice on sensible design that repects the user.
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Summary: An indispensable guide to creating useful web sites.
Review: HTML is easy; design is hard. Fortunately, this book eases the way considerably. Lynch and Horton have succeeded in creating "the" web style guide. Focusing on intelligent design and ease of use rather than HTML glitz and confusion, the techniques in this book are aimed towards users who are interested in designing web pages for the long haul. The writing is clear and lucid, and helpful illustrations abound. Keep it close at hand and refer to it often, for this book is meant to last.
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Summary: A concise and structured functional overview of Web Design!
Review: In less than 220 pages, this book covers the functional aspects of Web design in a well structured and concise manner. In that sense, it is tailor made for the project manager with all essential elements and no superfluous details. You will become familiar with: interface design, site design, page design, typography, editorial style, Web graphics and multimedia.
Your specific work environment will dictate if you need additional Web design knowledge. At the management level, this book will probably provide all you need to know. At the Web production level, you will obtain a global understanding allowing you to properly select specific areas to further your level of knowledge.
The technically oriented or the novice should first acquire some basic knowledge of Web Publishing (HTML, Web graphics, servers, browsers, etc.) to make the best use of this book. As a suggestion, the book entitled "Learning Web Design" by Jennifer Niederst (ISBN 0-596-00484-2) is an excellent starting point.
Jean C. Ducharme, PMP
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Summary: Great book for starters!
Review: I recommend this book to anyone who is a designer for the web or publishing industry. I bought this book to start as a class requirement. I didn't know what to expect at first, but as I was reading through the book I found this book to be very helpful. It really covers all areas of basic design and it's useful for all designers, especially for starters. The fundamentals of design is universal and in the book, it explains how design concepts have been around for a long time like in the publishing industry and how it's carried over to the web now. Learn the concepts so that you too can be a sophisticated designer.
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Summary: Thought provoking
Review: This book provides a concise introduction to principles of Website design. I found the first few chapters, about process, interface design, and site design extremely good. But towards the end of the chapter on page design, some of the advice started to get a little questionable. For example, they explain three ways of using tables to create gutters between parallel columns, but never note what a no-no parallel columns are for Web page design, since they require the reader to scroll down, then up, then down again. The graphics and multimedia chapters strayed a little from the concept of a Website design manual. Instead of presenting guidelines for effective use of graphics and other media, they presented detailed, somewhat technical information, about media formats and optimizing media for the Web (particularly in Photoshop). This was interesting information in its own right, but I would have liked to read more about using media effectively. One guideline they suggest is to use background images no bigger than 100 x 100 pixels, omitting advice about how to avoid the dreaded repeating border (use width = 1280). One aspect that makes this book very different from others on the market is that it draws on primarily academic or university-related Websites for examples rather than from commercial sites. The book includes a good list of references and an index.
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Summary: Should be mandatory reading!
Review: This book is a great reference work that anyone who plays in HTML should have on their desk. This book is the missing link in most technical libraries. It addresses appealing, and legible layouts, as expected, but it does so much more. It discusses cross platform compatability issues, and helps you work around the differences, or to at least KNOW what your code will do in other browsers. It also addresses formatting content for the atypical setups, like the for the handicapped, WebTV or even for PDA's and phones!
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