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Comment on Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates by TheCafeWriter

TheCafeWriter — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:31:59 +0000

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

Visually stunning but..., April 24, 2004

TheCafeWriter (Chicago, IL USA) -

This review is from: Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates (with CD-ROM) (Internet Series) (Paperback)

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.

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Comment on Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates by John Matlock "Gunny"

John Matlock "Gunny" — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:22:22 +0000

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

Good Introduction to Mortised Site Design, January 18, 2005

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) -

This review is from: Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates (Internet Series) (Paperback)

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.

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Comment on Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates by Michael J Woznicki "Michael J Woznicki"

Michael J Woznicki "Michael J Woznicki" — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:52:06 +0000

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

Excellent for design concepts., November 13, 2002

Michael J Woznicki "Michael J Woznicki" (Holland, MA USA) -

This review is from: Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates (with CD-ROM) (Internet Series) (Paperback)

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.

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Comment on Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions Reviews by Stefan Leuthold

Stefan Leuthold — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:36:22 +0000

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

Best organization of principles for designing Rich Internet Applications I have read so far, March 2, 2009

Stefan Leuthold (Zurich, Switzerland) -

This review is from: Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions (Paperback)

This book absorbed me for the last weekend, and I have to say, it is the best book in the field of HCI I have come across since reading Tidwell's Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design. Of course, I like everything that happens to quote Cooper's About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design and Raskin's The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems (ACM Press) - but this one gave me lots of new, practical ideas for the web, and a consistent terminology I can use to think and talk about Rich Internet Applications.

Nicely organized and layouted, well-written, and, in my opinion, thought-through easy-to-grasp structure. I was studying many patterns in the Yahoo! pattern library online and I am glad that Bill Scott finally published a book with the same clarity and logic that I came to like online.

Will become a standard in the company I work for and I am sure our clients will already start to "fear" discussions around the six principles when arguing with our consultants for what should be done and how :-)

Great book.

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Comment on Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions Reviews by David Pepper "Micro-Manager"

David Pepper "Micro-Manager" — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:51:03 +0000

50 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

An Embarrassment of Riches, July 9, 2009

David Pepper "Micro-Manager" (Baltimore, MD United States) -

This review is from: Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions (Paperback)

Scott is a/the genius behind Netflix and Yahoo!'s interfaces, so I got this book to figure out how to make my web interface programming work more professional.

However, much of what I've read here goes against the spirit of the design I was taught to do in grad school. For example, Netflix/Yahoo! make complex designs that are highly functional for expert users, and at-least reasonably usable for intermediate users. These designs feature transitions which use fades, transparent controls which only become visible when a user hovers, and dueling interfaces which allow power-users to move at a different speed than weaker users, etc.

By comparison, my grad program emphasizes designing for readability, learnability and with a singular notion of organizational principles structuring content in such a way that it is accessible to humans, search engines, and user agents (speech synthesis for visually impaired users). In Designing Web Interfaces, this perspective is consistently swept aside in the quest to build "rich interactions" at the expense of these peripheral users.

The result for me of this encounter with "Designing Web Interfaces" has been a renewed appreciation of how hard it is to make interface design choices. So often design is a question of framing, which establishes who the audience is, what the goals are, and what standards to use for a product.

I think at best, this book offers insight into future trends of professional design -- what Scott calls "rich interactions". However, I have a feeling that I'll always be more on the novice/disabled/user-agent user's side, leaning towards standard-based and user-centered designs, no matter what these captains of industry are cooking up.

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Comment on Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions Reviews by B. T. Denyer "Web designer"

B. T. Denyer "Web designer" — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:38:56 +0000

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

Great book for a wide range of users; easy to follow; well-written., February 14, 2009

B. T. Denyer "Web designer" (San Francisco, CA) -

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions (Paperback)

If you are brand spanking new to web design, and have never coded a single site, you may want to hold off on this book for a minute. I'm not saying it is not for beginners, because it is. Those new to HTML and CSS may want to get the hang of that before jumping into incorporating Ajax and JavaScript along with advanced CSS techniques.

Who is it for? I would recommend this book for art directors, project managers, web designers (all levels), interactive designers, DVD menu designers (though not directly related, you can still take away some important aspects or "patterns"), and especially those that design online training modules (we all know how dull they can be.) Like the DVD menu designers I mentioned above, I think Flash designers can benefit greatly, as well. Though the book is not directly geared toward Flash design, the patterns and "anti-patterns" talked about can easily be used when designing for a Flash experience.

The layout of the book is broken up into the 6 "principles" described in the product description of this book. The sections "Make It Direct" and "Stay on the Page" are by far the two largest sections, for they are the most important of the 6. "Keep it Lightweight" is the shortest section/principle, but by no means is rushed or glossed over. It poses some great design ideas to keep it intuitive, discoverable and keep you from designing 'mouse traps.'

In order to get the most out of this book, you would have to have designed a web site before reading this book. If you are a project manager or art director in charge of a team designing a web site (but not a web designer yourself), it would benefit you greatly to have a general understanding of web design, HTML, what Ajax is, CSS, cross-browser compatibilities, and Javascript. If you are just managing a team, you do NOT have to know how to code these languages/techniques, but in order to really benefit form this book, it would be better if you generally know what each does.

This book could also help bridge the gap for some managers by equipping them with the correct terminology of web design. Just speaking the language of user interface design can help speed up the time it takes to turn your directions into an interface that works the way you intended.

The book is detailed and to the point of the benefits of discoverability and weighing your options in the case of just how intuitive you need to make the interface. This book does not read like a my-way-or-the-highway kind of book. Scott mentions the potential pitfalls, disadvantages and possible alternate scenarios that depend on your interactive goals as set by the audience visiting your site.

A good number of the examples are from Yahoo! and Netflix sites (because Scott used to work for Yahoo! and now works for Netflix), but I never once felt like it was an advertisement for either one. He manages to spread the love around and uses examples from the Gap, iPhone, blogs, Google, Amazon, and others.

In short, the book is an easy read, something that one could go through in a long weekend. There are screenshots and visual examples on virtually every page, so in no way are we left to imagine the event happening. Multiple screenshots are taken when the event happens over the period of several steps. There is even a couple free companion web sites that will show the screenshots in a larger format than the book would allow. While reading the book, you will undoubtedly have many 'ah ha!' moments, or times when you rush to check your previously-designed web sites to see if you need to make a correction to your interface (admit it, we all do.)

I highly recommend this book for anyone that designs interfaces, even if they are for mp3 players, touch screens for electronics, or those interactive lobby displays. We all need some help in the area of user interface design.

***NOTE: there is NO code in this book. This the theory of designing user interfaces for the web, NOT the code.

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Comment on Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium Student & Teacher Edition[OLD VERSION] by CIT_Student

CIT_Student — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:02:41 +0000

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

great software, March 18, 2011

CIT_Student -

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium Student & Teacher Edition[OLD VERSION] (DVD-ROM)

This is just a great product. I wish there was more instructions on how to use certian features but all in all it was well worth the money.

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Comment on Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium Student & Teacher Edition[OLD VERSION] by Richard Dulkin

Richard Dulkin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:57:37 +0000

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Unacceptable price rise, Michelle at Customer service cares, February 10, 2011

Richard Dulkin (Clayton, CA) -

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium Student & Teacher Edition[OLD VERSION] (DVD-ROM)

11 days ago this product was $279.00 on Amazon. Went and did the "Try and then buy" route to see if I wanted to wade in on this suite. Decided to go ahead with the purchase, but when I went to buy, the price was now $429.00 ! That is just unacceptable to have $150.00 price increase in 11 days. Consequently I am not buying this product.
Update:
Then along came Michelle at customer service, I told her about this, she thought about it and went ahead and rolled back the price to the $279.99
level and I went and ordered it immediately. I have been using this software already, dream weaver, and Illustrator especially. I already use Photoshop and Acrobat 9 and will now branch out into this venue.
I changed my one start rating to 5 stars, first because of the great customer service that Michelle provided and because having used this software already and other Adobe products I know how powerful they are: cutting edge, precise, professional.

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Comment on Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium Student & Teacher Edition[OLD VERSION] by Joshua Hesseman "Joshua"

Joshua Hesseman "Joshua" — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:27:39 +0000

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

I was successfully verified!, June 4, 2010

Joshua Hesseman "Joshua" -

This review is from: Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium Student & Teacher Edition[OLD VERSION] (DVD-ROM)

I gave this product five stars because of the way Adobe treated my student verification. Adobe only gives these student editions to actual students that are attending a two-year degree college that is accredited by the list of organizations specified on the student eligibility page of Adobe's website. I made sure that my college was accredited before I bought the product. Today, I received the product in the mail, so I created a scan with both my student ID and tuition bill, then I opened the box, went to the student verification web page, and filled out my information, including my valid student email address. After uploading and submitting the information, Adobe replied within 30 or 45 minutes with my serial numbers. Now I can't guarantee that they will respond as quickly as they did to me, but what I can tell you is that they will send you valid serial numbers if you send in the above things.

The product itself is pretty amazing! I really like the new Content Aware feature in Adobe Photoshop, and I also like the fact that I can browse my website while in Live view with Dreamweaver. There are many more features to try, so I'm going to sign up for a subscription with [...] to learn those features. Adobe has done an amazing job with this new Creative Suite, and I completely recommend it to anyone that's into web development like myself.

TO STUDENTS: Read the fine print carefully!

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Comment on Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML by zen_reader ""Z-R""

zen_reader ""Z-R"" — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:21:38 +0000

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

Fantastic book, Lousy index, full of blather, November 16, 2007

zen_reader ""Z-R"" (Calif) -

This review is from: Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML (Paperback)

We're using this book in a college course I'm taking. This book contains a massive amount of REALLY good information, which has been buried in a landslide of unnecessary blather. Add to this the complete lack of a sensible, extensive index, and this book leaves me so frustrated, I am nearly ready to drop the class. (see below..)

The vast amount of useful information in the book makes it difficult to remember it all at one time. But it's impossible to refer back and find something a week after I've read it without leafing through an entire chapter or more, page by page, because the index is so brief and incomplete.

With a good, complete index, I'd give this book 4.5 stars for it's excellent content (withholding 1/2 star for all the blather). Without a usable index, the book is nearly worthless to me.

GOOD NEWS UPDATE!! The O'Reilly people have replied to my complaint about the index. They're compiling, and will be uploading a complete, extensive index online in January 2008! Too late for my class, but hey! Someone really does listen. Thanks, O'Reilly!

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