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Rating: 
Summary: Visually stunning but...
Review: All the designs are heavily mortised, require a LOT of nested tables, and are mainly geared toward content-heavy sites with extensive menus. (For those of us who think that paying hundreds of dollars of Photoshop is ridiculous when Paint Shop Pro does the same for 1/6 the cost, be warned the templates are Photoshop-centric.) As someone already said, these are visually stunning examples, but very tables-intensive which can be time-consuming to edit/code and may be problematic for impaired site visitors who rely on web-reading technology. For the dozen or so examples (and their variations), decide for yourself if inspiration is worth the cost.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Introduction to Mortised Site Design
Review: As the title says, this is a book on the design of web pages. It is focused on producing designs that reflect many of the modern trends in web design thought. There was a time a few years back when the web sites of all the major companies used Macromedia Flash to animate, that is create movement, on their home pages. For instance, the authors report, quite accurately I think, that such animation has not proven suitable for the majority of web sites. Like Microsoft's "clippy" paper clip "help" thing that used to appear at the bottom of Word/Esce./Etc. a lot of people really don't like moving things.
These authors really like mortised sites. This design philosophy uses tables within tables within tables to provide the view the authors are trying to create. The designs they give in their fifty included templates are of the mortised type. The trouble with mortised sites is that you have to receive all of the information for the site before the browser can begin drawing the tables on the screen. With todays fast processors, this is not usually a problem. But they can get dreadfully slow if you are accessing them over a slow line, especially if they include a lot of graphical images.
The back of the book says this is for Beginner to Intermediate. This does not mean the Front Page level beginner. You'd best have some idea about HTML before you start this one. I'd say it's an intermediate level book, which is reflected in the wording on the back page.
Rating:
Summary: It's the book I would have written
Review: I'm a graphic designer. For years I've explored multimedia and web design on my own, but wasn't sure my approach was right. This book not only confirmed what I did know, but explained the stuff I didn't. The templates alone are worth the price. Yes, I believe every designer worth their salt, print or web, should own PhotoShop and knowing HTML is helpful. But I must disagree with the reviewer who said this book isn't for WYSIWYG/Dreamweaver users. Understanding *why and how* HTML, CSS and nested tables function from a coding standpoint only makes working with Dreamweaver easier. This book is a MUST for anyone wanting to design web pages--for a living or otherwise. THANK YOU CLINT ECCHER for writing the book I'll never have time to write.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, my quest is over!!
Review: I'm an ASP/SQLServer web developer who is short on graphic design skills and overall design approaches. I have been searching for a good book or instructional material on how to make professional looking sites. Since I'm just learning Photoshop and my skills are more on the 'developer' site of the spectrum, it has been difficult to find a 'how-to' book to take my skills into that area without starting from scratch and the basics. After purchasing many other books and being disappointed at their level or depth, I bought this GREAT book on Sunday and had most of a site (based on one of it's excellent templates!) up by Monday after reading it almost cover to cover. The book takes you step by step along the way and the fantastic thing is that you can follow the techniques used to build the templates to see it work 'in action'! I can't say enough about this book. Don't waste your money and time with anything else...if you are like me, this book will finally put the quest for a good website design book to an end once and for all. I feel like I now know the secrets of fine web design and can now approach my projects with great confidence...
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Web Design Book
Review: In the classroom, when I teach web design, unless the courseware comes with templates the students spend the time creating pages from scratch. While this is worthwhile for novices, there are times when you need templates for some web projects. In this book the authors has given you over 200 HTML templates, which are on the cd-rom, to work with. By following along with the book you'll end up creating over 50 pages. You find yourself working with frames, forms, tables, graphics and CSS. The book should have had the design outputs in color to allow you to be able to see what the outcome would like. I did like the 3 case studies included, which take you from a basic web page to a very advanced design layout. The cd-rom included trial version of Photoshop, FireWorks, Flash and HomeSite all of which have newer versions out and should be updated for the next edition. I found the JavaScript Cook to be a very handy and useful tool for creating scripts without an in depth knowledge of the coding techniques. The other handy utility included in the HTML/CSS Developer's resource guide, which makes the creation of CSS easier. With all the helpful tool and tricks the book is certainly a welcome addition to my HTML/Web Design library. Overall a very good value for the money.
Rating:
Summary: This book deserves seven stars !
Review: No book is ever perfect but some books are sure close and this happens to be one of them. This book teaches mortising which is break up sites in smaller chunks for faster downloads. I really appreciate the part about slicing that went a step further to say which slices to be saved in Gif or Jpeg and the rational. Mr. Eccher please be a little more lucid with some of your explanations and it would be nice to show alternatives, for example masking.
Yes this book focuses on photoshop but if you know how paint shop pro some of the design techiques should be lucrative.
Rating:
Summary: Strong, basic coding practices
Review: This book also introduced me to so many things i had no idea about. I think the whole idea of comps and slicing psd. images for use in dreamweaver is superb .It enables one to create visually appealing page designs shapes and layouts.
I have actually used several of the templates on the CD-ROM to layout some projects i have been working on.Those roll-over menus are quite customizable also.They are very impressive do well to check out his site also...
Clint Eccher did a great job. go get it...now!
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