Excellent for design concepts., November 13, 2002

By 

Michael J Woznicki “Michael J Woznicki” (Holland, MA USA) – See all my reviews

  

  

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.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

Good Introduction to Mortised Site Design, January 18, 2005

By 

John Matlock “Gunny” (Winnemucca, NV) – See all my reviews

  

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.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment (1)

Visually stunning but…, April 24, 2004

By 

TheCafeWriter (Chicago, IL USA) – See all my reviews

  

  

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.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

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

By 

B. T. Denyer “Web designer” (San Francisco, CA) – See all my reviews

  

  

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.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

An Embarrassment of Riches, July 9, 2009

By 

David Pepper “Micro-Manager” (Baltimore, MD United States) – See all my reviews

  

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.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment (1)

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

By 

Stefan Leuthold (Zurich, Switzerland) – See all my reviews

  

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.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

I was successfully verified!, June 4, 2010

By 

Joshua Hesseman “Joshua” – See all my reviews

  

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!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

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

By 

Richard Dulkin (Clayton, CA) – See all my reviews

  

11 days ago this product was 9.00 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 9.00 ! That is just unacceptable to have 0.00 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 9.99

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.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

great software, March 18, 2011

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.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

Best book for learning HTML and CSS, February 5, 2006

By 

calvinnme – See all my reviews

  

  

The “Head First” series by O’Reilly does it again. This book manages to take the conceptually easy yet complicated task of learning HTML, XHTML, and CSS and breaks it down so that anyone can figure out what is going on and what needs to be done in web page design using these technologies. Plus, if you learned HTML several years ago and you would like to update your skills to current technology, this is a great choice for a textbook.

The book starts out with the basics of HTML -text, webpage form via HTML, putting your webpage on the Internet and linking to other web resources, and adding images and thumbnails. Next the author tackles XHTML, starting by answering the questions What is XHTML? and Why would I want to use XHTML? The author composes three simple steps to take you from strict HTML to XHTML:

1. Change your DOCTYPE to XHTML 1.0 Strict.

2. Add the xmins, lang, and xml:lang attributes to your <html> element.

3. All empty tags should end in “/>” not “>”.

Next, CSS is introduced, along with the properties that can be controlled via CSS. When you read the CSS chapters you’ll find yourself asking “Why don’t other books just SAY this plainly like THIS book does?”. Eventually, the author has you doing advanced layout and control using all the tools available to you without you ever noticing that you’ve been “studying”. The book concludes with lessons on interactivity and tables. I think it is most interesting that the author saves the subject of tables for the end of the book versus other texts that usually introduce them early on. This is because the author is using the more advanced lessons on CSS to help make the subject of tabular data less confusing. The book’s final chapter is entitled “The Top Ten Topics We Didn’t Cover”, thus acknowledging that this is not an advanced book on webpage design. Each chapter has a “There Are No Dumb Questions” section that answers common questions that may be a source of confusion to the reader.

Since this book is designed to be a textbook and not a reference, you might find it handy to have a copy of O’Reilly’s “HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide” as a reference since it lists virtually all of the HTML tags and their properties.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (3)

The 1st HTML/CSS you should get, December 6, 2005

I’ve been involved with the Head First series as a reviewer from the beginning and, as such, my review might be biased, but I will regret not telling you how good this book is.

The Internet is fast becoming a means of sharing one’s life with friends, colleagues and anybody out there who is prepared to listen. Some start by telling their story using a blog; the more adventurous create their own web sites, and it is that category of person that this book is aimed at. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this book, and the whole series, seems too upbeat and too young for you. This book is for all ages, The Head First series is designed to make learning fun, and though it was originally aimed at the younger generation, I personally think that old age pensioners will be able to learn HMTL the correct way just as easily as their grand children if they use this book – and you will be sooo cool if you have this book on your shelf when they, the grand kids, visit again next time.

The emphasis in this book is on creating web pages the correct way, to make pages that will work correctly in any browser. If you work through Elisabeth and Eric’s book, you will end up with a web site that can withstand anything the W3C’s Markup Validation Service can throw at it. And when your web pages pass the validation, you can put the W3C’s cool “passed validation” logo on your site. A sign of recognition that you know what you are doing.

This book does not require you to have prior HTML knowledge; it takes you by the hand and teaches you everything you need from scratch. But don’t be fooled, I was the review manager for this book and even some of the reviewers with years of HTML knowledge under their belt learnt new things from it. Sure, it isn’t a complete HTML reference book, and it does not intend being one, but it lays the foundations for a solid start to becoming a true HTML/CSS expert.

I think this book should become the standard text book in HTML/CSS courses in schools, colleges and even professional training centers.

I highly recommend it to all. It will make the perfect Christmas gift for your family, all ages !!!, friends and even colleagues who are thinking about or are doing something with a web site of their own.

Have fun.

Like I said, I might be biased, but I am sure an independent reviewer will confirm what I said.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

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

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!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment (1)

One Inch long vitamin and the serving size is 3 pills, June 7, 2010

I wish I could review this effectiveness of this vitamin, but they will never be taken at our house. Completely wasted money, so in the interest of giving others a heads up – The pills are one inch long ( yep, my daughter measured them) and you have to take THREE. I kept getting push back from my teens about how big they were, so tried to take one myself. They are huge and just gritty enough that they don’t go down easily.

Off to find a one serving vitamin or at least one that is easier to swallow…:)

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment (1)

Our son loves this, February 20, 2010

This is a very good vitamin. I’ve looked it up on several vitamin research lab websites to make sure the contents are what they say they are. My son has a hard time with digesting most vitamins and this one is not a problem. Since it has digestive enzymes, he takes them after having a few bites of food and makes sure to take them with meals. He’s been taking them for quite a while and this winter, he has had less illnesses than he usually does. We do eat well, but he seems to burn off the vitamins faster than I can get food into him! I’m not sure about the “acne clearing” components, but his face is less broken out (but this was never a huge problem with him, just small break outs). The nice part about Rainbow Light vitamins are they are food based, gluten free, with no sugars or any junk! Our doctor recommended these as they are what he and his family take.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

great vitamin, October 10, 2007

By 

Robin Mikkelsen (Hawaii) – See all my reviews

  

This multi vitamin has done wonders for my son’s skin. No matter how much he cleaned his face he still had breakouts. After using Active Health Teen his face is really clear.These vitamins have herbs that help clear teen skin problems. I’ll be ordering these monthly from now on.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

Excellent Book!, April 24, 2010

By 

V. Hutson (Duluth, MN) – See all my reviews

  

  

  

This is one of the best books I have found on graphic design. The authors have provided a wealth of information and beautiful examples that guide the reader in the process of designing for print, web, or multimedia. While I do have a background in art–it was not in graphic design so this book has provided me with a lot of valuable information. I also like how the authors have kept the chapters short and to the point. The book contains a total of 16 chapters that cover a wide range of material. Below I have listed the chapters I found the most useful based on my own experience and knowledge–but the book contains a lot of other valuable material that covers brainstorming, the elements & principles of design, color basics,infographics, storyboarding, multimedia components, designing for the web, and printing.

Here are some of the chapters I found the most useful:

1. Chapter 3: I Need to Design this Today. It includes “the works-every-time-layout” that, like the name implies–would work every time. This quick recipe will come in very handy for quick designs.

2. Chapter 4: Layout Sins. It includes “the 13 Amateur Errors,” which covers a variety of typical errors made by many of use that do not have a graphic design background.

3. Chapter 6: What is a Grid? This provides a useful way to help organize your design.

4. Chapter 7: Layout. This covers where to put your type & visuals for impact.

5. Chapter 8: Type. Once again since my art background did not include graphic design I have been winging this area for most of my life. The authors provide a great foundation and good recommendations on what to do.

6. Chapter 10: Adding Visual Appeal. This chapter deals with working with photos and illustrations.

In short, the authors have packed a ton of valuable information in the 273 pages of this book. Their examples are beautiful and the whole book is very visually appealing. Excellent book!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

Excellent Beginning and Intermediate Guide, April 22, 2010

By 

Michael W. Perry “Michael W. Perry, author of… (Author of Untangling Tolkien, Seattle, WA) – See all my reviews

  

  

Back in 1990, Robin Williams wrote a book entitled The Mac is Not a Typewriter that became quite popular. Its purpose was clear. All the little tricks and techniques that worked when people used typewriters needed to change when Macs and PCs replaced typewriters. For instance, on most typewriters, every letter took up the same amount of space on paper, so to distinguish the end of a sentence, a double space after a period made sense. On computers, however, most fonts printed with characters that took up varying amounts of space. A capital “M,” for instance, was wider than a little “i.” When that was true, that same double space looked oddly out of place and had to go.

This book, published twenty years later, serves the same role for our more technologically sophisticated generation. Most people now know that they shouldn’t doublespace after periods, but they’re confused about all the complexities of laying out documents and web pages with graphics and tables. How can I place that picture so it looks good on a page? What colors go best together? What fonts, out of dozens, should I use for text and headings in this business report? The bad news is that, as our computers allow us to do more, document and web page creation has gotten much more complex. The good news is that books like this one can help clear up that complexity.

But you may be asking, “Why should I pay (retail) for this book?” If all you create in a typical year is a family newsletter at Christmas, then maybe you shouldn’t. Spend the money on presents instead. But if you work or volunteer for a business or non-profit organization, the cost/benefit ratio is different. If you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars printing and mailing a flyer or dozens of hours working on a new web site, then spending to make sure what you create looks good makes a lot of sense. And once you learn how to create attractive documents, that knack will stay with you for the rest of your life.

There’s also a reason why this book costs about twice as much as a typical book. Its two authors don’t simply tell you what to do, they illustrate what they’re saying with numerous well-done illustrations, many in full color. There’s hardly a page in the book that doesn’t have at least one illustration. (A picture really is worth a thousand words.) You’re paying for the added cost of four-color printing and the hundred of hours they spent creating the illustrations. You’re getting their expertise for only pennies an hour.

What if you’re a bit more experienced in laying out documents? Well, I’ve been formatting books for a decade, and I found much that’s useful in this book. One of my ‘things’ is creating books that are visually interesting and not just line after line of words. I spent many hours getting the formatting of my Tolkien chronology just right. But despite all those years of experience, this book has given me lots of new ideas. As ebooks with full-color abilities become more popular, I see it becoming even more useful.

I’ve only got one complaint and that’s a minor one. Most of the pictures in the book are professionally done, but there are a handful that, I suspect, were not taken for publication (the three shots of kids in a pool, for instance). They’re a bit too dark, too light or too fuzzy. That’s not really that bad, since that’s precisely the sort of pictures many us will be working with.

–Michael W. Perry, Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

The Best Graphic Design Book I’ve Ever Seen, December 8, 2010

By 

Bryan Newman “alaskanoutfitting.com” (St Paul, MN) – See all my reviews

  

  

  

About three quarters of the way through this book I looked at my wife and said “You know the only difference between this book and the graphic arts classes I took in college?” She of course answered “What? you managed to finish the book?” (Yeah, that’s the support I get, I did get a degree in another field but that is a different story.) The right answer was that in college we spent hours doing project after project, then spending hours doing peer reviews, which were invaluable. But everything else from several years worth of graphic arts classes could be distilled out and put into this book. Literally this book is a bachelors degree’s worth of information in a book, minus the years of hands on experience.

Now this is not to say that you can replace graphic arts degree with just this book. But this book will give you a great overview of Graphic Design and I can see it being a great help to a beginning web designer or newsletter publisher.

This book has very high quality, both in construction and design. The paper is thick and glossy and the layout is wonderful. I have never seen such a great collection of inspiring design examples. Page after page is visually arresting, and the points and ideas are beautifully illustrated. The writing is great, clear and engaging.

I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for a resource to help on design projects or, like me, looking for a refresher. Absolutely the best graphic design text I’ve seen.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

West Paw does it again, November 1, 2009

Just got the new Bumi and it’s great. My dog loves it and it’s her favorite new toy. She plays with this toy by herself, and also as a pull toy with me. I purchased the large size, my dog is 50 pounds. She has other toys from West Paw and they all have held up to her constant chewing. I recommend West Paw!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment

Indestructable???????, March 3, 2010

By 

Deborah F. Francis “Family Manager” (Noblesville, IN) – See all my reviews

  

I’m returning this to the manufacturer, in pieces. My year old boxer/lab mix chewed it to pieces, although he did have to work at it. It took less than a week. Most toys last an hour or two.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comment