Rating: 
Summary: Bad coffeetable book
Review: If you want a book to put on your coffee table that will tell people that you know absolutely nothing about web design then look no further. I bought this book from Amazon and it is one of the worst books I have ordered. Yes, there are lots of full color pictures of websites... so what? I can go on line and see web sites... Where is the in depth design analysis? Not to be found here. Besides most of the sites it exhibits are static 'home page' style sites. Not one of these is a high-volume commerce site - these 'home page' sites are the kind of sites that don't even require an analysis of design past a few minuets to think up what you want to display and how you want to put it on the page - which is all the book talks about from a most puerile point of view. It was a while back when I bought the book so I actually feel very guilty for not posting this review sooner to help dissuade some of you from making a bad purchase, sorry!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting interviews, outdated information
Review: Many of the techniques described in this book are yesterday's techniques. Tables for precise layout? C'mon -- what about Cascading Style Sheets?The video chapter is a particular embarrassment. No coverage of QuickTime 3.0's ability to deliver movies for different bandwidths. And the AFI may use VDO, but no one else does! Realvideo and Netshow are FAR more popular. Read this book for a look at how some designers do things. But don't read it if you're looking for the most current information.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book for graphic-artist-turned-web-designers
Review: Not a reference book for beginners in web design, it is nevertheless very useful for artists who want to get inspirations in web interface design. It does offer some tips and tricks, but the beautiful examples are the ones I tend to look at most of the time.
Rating:
Summary: Coders are beige...Designers are technicolor
Review: PRIOR EXPERIENCE REQUIRED, NOT FOR BEGINNERS Being a coder(living in a beige world,) I was looking for a book that would help me change my first two web sites to look more professional. I have looked at several books that claimed they would be the answer to my needs, only to return them after a very brief review (My thanks to amazon for being understanding on this subject). I don't claim that this book will fill that void, but it does provides all of us coders and faded designers a different perspective, a designers perspective of web site development. This book provides countless snippets of code to support those web sites being featured in each chapter. The designers explain what their goals were for each web site, why they did a particular feature, and in many cases some lessons learned during there development. All of these designers are worth reading. There perspectives on development provided fresh ideas to achieve my goals of creating professional looking web sites. My only complaint is the same complaint I have with all computer books, the cost.
Rating: 
Summary: Koffee table gloss.
Review: Some times it is nice to have a book that points out the obvious. You can be too close to a problem to notice the obvious. Unfortunately this book is too obvious. And it is all fluff with no substance. Wait you say. This is a design book what do you want? Code? I really wanted design. So where is it? Between the pages that tell how to use exotic tools to do what html can? Or is it between the lines that keep emphasizing speed? Or is it that this is one big advertisement for the contributors? Oh well, it makes you look scholarly to have this book on the Koffee table.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful in some parts, lacking in others
Review: Some web development topics are covered nicely, but the book as a whole is somewhat disorganized and in places lacking. Much of the graphic information is Photoshop-specific. Both the reader level and the preface imply that the book is not for beginners to HTML, but fully into the book (Chapter 5), basic tags are discussed. On the bright side, there are a few good tidbits compiled from designers of some impressive sites, and it is a quick read.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful to Learn by Examples
Review: The books explains some basic web design concepts clearly by examples: all are excellent, real-world example. I'm a CS student, not design. the book teach me a new way to think about web design and many useful techniques are included. The brillient examples shock my mind.
Rating:
Summary: Not much depth
Review: There's a lot to love about this book. It profiles a good selection of web sites, all in full color. Some design books feature sites that are so unusual, it's hard to apply them to your daily work, but this book focuses on business sites that make excellent examples. The text covers all aspects of web design, including site conception, HTML, animation, producing large sites, site promotion, business practices, etc. Most of the chapters are interesting to read, and I found useful tips even in areas I thought I knew thoroughly. The book does have its faults though. While the chapters on HTML topics are very well done, the ones on Dynamic HTML, Cascading Style Sheets and Javascript are disappointing. They provide only a very basic introduction, and lack innovative examples. The remaining chapters also vary in their quality. These weak chapters make a 4 star book out of what could have been a 5 star one.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good Overall, Weak on Newer Technologies
Review: There's a lot to love about this book. It profiles a good selection of web sites, all in full color. Some design books feature sites that are so unusual, it's hard to apply them to your daily work, but this book focuses on business sites that make excellent examples. The text covers all aspects of web design, including site conception, HTML, animation, producing large sites, site promotion, business practices, etc. Most of the chapters are interesting to read, and I found useful tips even in areas I thought I knew thoroughly. The book does have its faults though. While the chapters on HTML topics are very well done, the ones on Dynamic HTML, Cascading Style Sheets and Javascript are disappointing. They provide only a very basic introduction, and lack innovative examples. The remaining chapters also vary in their quality. These weak chapters make a 4 star book out of what could have been a 5 star one.
Rating:
Summary: Good book of layout secrets
Review: This book is a collection of articles by some very successful web developers. They share a lot of good information. If you're fooling around with a WYSIWYG editor like FrontPage or DreamWeaver and want to know how to cross over to professional layout design, you'll really enjoy this book. This book isn't for someone just getting into web development, it focuses mostly on the layout aspects, and designs. Every page is full of color photo examples, and bios + development tool list are given for each of the 14 article authors.
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