Rating: 
Summary: Don't design a website without it
Review: It's to-the-point, it's based on real-life experience and it's even hilarious. Flanders and Willis stress the fact that there is only one important issue in webdesign: content. Plain and simple. People ultimately visit your site because there's something they want. So the whole book is about attracting customers, marketing your site, providing convenience for your visitors and make them return. All based on the fact that you provide your visitors with meaningful content. These rules apply even for non-selling websites, as they will show you. They urge you to invest more time in careful planning than in graphical design, more time to market your site than in stuffing it with Flash or five-page stories.The book is served in logical portions, from the very first concept of a website up to the maintenance of your content. It's equally well suited for continuous reading - they won't bore you, they're actually quite entertaining - as it is for random browsing. A must, for novices and for professionals!
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't get it
Review: Like the website that proceeded it, this book and its authors decided too early what the internet was going to be and refuse to accept it's moved in other directions. If you can't stomach your plain text internet being polluted with all these newfangled sounds and music and java and animation, this is the book for you. If you've moved beyond 1992, give it a pass.
Rating:
Summary: This book leads the pack for "Web design books that Suck"
Review: My overall impression of Web Pages that Suck is poor at best. The writing style of the book is choppy and suffers from taking decent copy from a web site and padding it for the book. Judging by the many side bars and paragraphs explaining American cultural references, the authors seem to be writing for amateur web designers in the international market. The design of the book is just as poor as the many web sites is condemns, glaring colors, bad photography (we could do without the see through Elvis suits - ugg) and poor organization make the book look amateurish. If you think that you can learn good design by looking at bad design then 1+1=3. It just doesn't work that way. Save your money or buy another web design book. No one has topped 'Creating Killer Web sites' yet, and if this book is a sign of things to come, then no one will.
Rating:
Summary: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Review: My title covers what is in the book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I read it in one sitting. It was very easy to read. Being a graphic designer and web designer it covered asthestics and functionality beautifully. It covers marketing your site at the end. The only downfall to the book is that most of the websites mentioned have been updated since the book was published. However, they have pictures of the sites that show what they are talking about. Their website is good too and more up to date. I recommend this book highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Helpful Book
Review: Nice book for net design novices (like myself). Have many years of software experience, but have never designed a web site. It's very helpful to see examples of what doesn't work, but it's even more helpful to know why they don't work and what would have been better. The book is supported by a web site that shows new examples of sites that suck daily. Too bad there are so many to choose from!
Rating:
Summary: Very helpful (and fun) book on web design
Review: Of the 3 or 4 web page design books that I've purchased this one is the best by far. Be examining the common mistakes people make when putting together a web site the authors illustrate good web page design principles. They use examples from actual commercial sites on the web, telling you what's wrong with them and what they did right. The writing style is light and the book is full of humor (what did you expect with a title like that). However, don't let this fool you into thinking that the book doesn't have any "meat" in it. While the authors are designers by background, they also seem to know a lot of the technical aspects about the web. They cover the latest technologies (as of 1998) and tell you how to use them. More importantly, they tell you when not to use them. These guys definitely feel that it's best to avoid "bleeding edge" techniques. They are also advocate the principle of keeping things simple. Many the sites that they think "suck" are one with an overuse of animation, strange colors, or flashy techniques. They also point out sites that may look good on one browser at one resolution but may look terrible when viewed on another -- then they show you how to avoid this problem. It appears as though their target audience is someone that is designing a site for commercial purposes. This book was not specifically intended for the person putting together a family web page. That being said, I think that anyone that's designing for the web will learn a great deal by reading this book. My only criticism for this book is that it probably needs to be updated. It is currently a couple of years old and some technologies have change since it was written.
Rating: 
Summary: Does "by looking at bad design" apply to the book itself?
Review: Pompous, self-important, arrogant, and full of fluff and smarm. And all that would be okay if it really presented important information in an effective manner. Good design? Let's talk about good design. On the FIRST PAGE of the text, not three paragraphs into it, these guys ably demonstrate that they don't know a damn thing about design. This is a book that loooooves sidebars--sidebars with illustrations, sidebars with often poor typography, and set off in the most garish and clashing colors they can find. The first chapter opens with a sidebar--different colors, different font, different spacing from the rest of the text. Heading: "IN THIS CHAPTER." We're clearly being set up to read a three-paragraph summary of the high points of the chapter. The the sidebar ends: "the person in marketing who does" -- mid-sentence. Whuh? No "continued" blue sidebar on the facing page. No "continued" blue sidebar on the next page. Then you realize: that sidebar wasn't a sidebar at all--the sentence continues in the NEXT column, black-on-white text in a different font. It's appalling--these yahoos are presuming to lecture on "good design" and they can't get half a page into their first chapter without crashing. Illustrations are sometimes jammed into the text at more or less appropriate points, sometimes set off in more infamous sidebars, color-coded like the last example to tell the reader that they're not part of the main text (although they are), and sometimes hanging half-on, half-off a colored border for no evident reason at all. The text lurches madly from color to color, font to font, layout style to layout style, with no rhyme, reason or underlying logic (this is especially ironic when they're talking about site design and layout, and the need for consistency). There are even grammatical flubs. And, again, that would be OK if the text itself were well-written, well-organized, and packed with useful information. Sadly, none of this is really true. The text is flabby, rambling, poorly put together, and full mostly of "I like this," or "This sucks," and more smug narcissism than is to be found at the Academy Awards. There are good pointers here--if you dig for them, if you fight your way through to them--but isn't the point of good design supposed to be that you don't have to dig or fight to get to the good stuff? ...And even that might be okay, if the fluffy, cutesy stuff were actually entertaining. Listen: "If there are two people who aren't boring, it's me...and my co-author...If you're one of the millions of visitors to the original Web Pages That Suck.com site, you'll know that humor played an important part in its success. [It] is about education and entertainment, or, as we call it, 'edutainment.' People learn best when they're enjoying the process, and humor is a great tool toward this end. We're using humor in this book for the same reason." No matter how cool this guy thinks he is, I'll wager that no one who ever wrote such a manifesto on being funny has the faintest grasp of what humor is or how to apply it. Anything this book wants to do has been done elsewhere, and much better (and without two overweight web designers appearing in Elvis suits open to the navel). Save your money.
Rating:
Summary: More web page deigners should heed this book's advice.
Review: Some reviewers claim this book is outdated. If that's true, then why are there still so many sucky websites? I still see commercial sites with pages over 200kb in size. I still see sites that have navigation like a maze in the dark. If you're looking for HTML code, this is not the book for you. If you're an experienced designer, you need this book to remind you that among other things, most still use slow dial-up modems, not broadband, not everyone has nor wants another plug-in, not everyone browses with JavaScript or even images turned on. If you're a novice thinking of starting a site or hiring a web page designer, you need this book to realize not all that is high tech is good. It goes beyond telling you about what to do by showing you real examples of what not to do. Basically, anything a commercial site puts between their potential customer and what they want sucks. Easily dismissed by some as outdated and useless, this content is actually timeless. Why? Because no matter how far technology allows the average user to go, some designer will push far beyond the limits of the intended audience. This book will show you the difference between content and techno-gimmicks. Walk the fine line between ego and usability. Learn from others' mistakes before they become your own. A good site does not have to be flashy to be the best at what it does. Also, they will show you sites that don't suck, such as Amazon.com.
Rating:
Summary: More web page deigners should heed this book's advice.
Review: Some reviewers claim this book is outdated. If that's true, then why are there still so many sucky websites? I still see commercial sites with pages over 200kb in size. I still see sites that have navigation like a maze in the dark. If you're looking for HTML code, this is not the book for you. If you're an experienced designer, you need this book to remind you that among other things, most still use slow dial-up modems, not broadband, not everyone has nor wants another plug-in, not everyone browses with JavaScript or even images turned on. If you're a novice thinking of starting a site or hiring a web page designer, you need this book to realize not all that is high tech is good. It goes beyond telling you about what to do by showing you real examples of what not to do. Basically, anything a commercial site puts between their potential customer and what they want sucks. Easily dismissed by some as outdated and useless, this content is actually timeless. Why? Because no matter how far technology allows the average user to go, some designer will push far beyond the limits of the intended audience. This book will show you the difference between content and techno-gimmicks. Walk the fine line between ego and usability. Learn from others' mistakes before they become your own. A good site does not have to be flashy to be the best at what it does. Also, they will show you sites that don't suck, such as Amazon.com.
Rating:
Summary: The best book I ever read about making web pages!
Review: The best book I ever read about making web pages! It is actually fun and easy to read give great examples and comes with a great cd-rom of software to make a great webpage!!....A MUST GET FOR A WEBMASTER.
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