Customer Reviews

The Art and Science of Web Design

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

A disappointment, given the author's guru reputation and the five star reviews here at Amazon.

All in all, an incoherent series of essays with no clear message and little practical advice, badly edited and badly proofread (a typo on every other page -- check out the bullet points on page 17) with umpteen unenlightening screenshots and illustrations ("Code", "Word" and "Pictures" in circles joined by a triangle -- hey! they're connected!)

It's too basic for techies (readers are advised to give alternatives when specifying font names...) but too cryptic for the novice or general reader ("Just as a good classification system will spawn prediction in information retrieval, a good integration structure will do the same with services" - -huh?)

The general-reader stuff is padded out with platitudes ("The Web may be growing fast, but its foundation stretches back through years..."), the nuts-and-bolts sections are far too specific to be useful (several pages are devoted to an IE-only method of dynamically resizing headlines, which is pretty questionable anyway) and most of the last chapter is taken up with ASP code for a specific database application.

The author also has an irritating predilection for long-winded tangential analogies (three paragraphs describing how David Copperfield uses diversionary tactics to do his magic) and unnecessary long words like "disambiguate", "heuristics" and "deconstruct".

Far better alternatives are Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think!, any of the O'Reilly Web books or Jakob Nielsen's website (...)

Jeffrey Veen is on a mission to make the Web a better place. His latest book, "The Art & Science of Web Design," came from a need he saw for a higher-level view of Web design: "I looked around at what Web design books were available, and saw a hole in the market." Veen was Executive Interface Director for Wired Digital, and the man behind Webmonkey, HotWired, and HotBot's designs.

For many of you, reading this book will be an "aha" experience. According to Veen, Web design is no longer logos and layouts, it now takes a multidisiplinary approach, with elements of information architecture, programming, and of course design. Veen says: "The line between design and programming is getting more and more blurry." The rare few who stretch beyond their comfort zones and learn these other disciplines can become design masters. Jeffrey Veen is such a person.

It's a different kind of Web design book. Veen doesn't dwell on technical details, he guides you towards more elegant solutions. He provides ways you can find the best solutions (interfaces etc.) through the use of heuristic usability and pattern matching, rather than the tedious testing promoted by the likes of Jakob Nielsen. It's a new design philosophy really, a more fluid approach with "intelligent content that can figure out how to display itself correctly" created from dynamic publishing systems (databases and scripted templates).

And Veen makes it look easy. Veen's final chapter on "Object- Oriented Publishing" ties it all together with a great example of a database-backed scripted template (using ASP) front-end to a church's sermon respository. He whipped the site up on his hard drive using low-cost tools, and shows how easy it can be to create a consistent look site-wide, lower maintenance costs, and easily add new "views" of your data. The benefit of separating presentation from content is that your site can more easily adapt to changing standards, and formats. Want a WAP feed? No problem, query the database with a different template, or even an XSL style sheet.

The days of large static sites are numbered. Going to "dynamic publishing" using a database gives your company a strategic advantage over your competition, as you can publish content faster, and change designs and formats much more efficiently. Your site comes alive.

The cover..., not because Mr. Veen does not own a serviceable countenance, but because it doesn't clue the prospective reader in on the wealth of useful Web interface-related junk inside.

"Junk" is used in its most positive form, of course, as related to the effusive collection of diverse material Veen attempts -- and succeeds -- to convey in his color-coded pages. He's all over the place as he gathers together everything there is to say about Web design through copious color illustrations (one on almost every page, for those who count such things) without actually giving step-by-step instructions.

In other words, this is a lengthy, but easy-to-read, explanation of concepts and best-practices rather than a "if you want to produce a mouseover, here's the JavaScript you'll need" sort of book. It isn't about how to do things when considering your Web site design options, but rather why you should do things.

Ultimately, 'The Art & Science of Web Design' manages to provide lots of great examples of both what is right and what is wrong with current thinking regarding the balance of useability and pretty pictures, the so-called "laws" of use (which are sometimes overzealously applied) and one man's rather well-reasoned opinions and well-researched facts concerning how people use the Web, and how Web sites need to adapt to those principles.

Having a stylish and effective web site for your business is now a necessity rather than an option. For many varied, unusual and sometimes baffling reasons, it is very difficult to create a site that satisfies a sense of good style as well as a taste for commerce. Jeffrey Veen is an acknowledged expert in making web sites work and much of that expertise is captured in this book.
I was very impressed with his starting point that simple consistency is a virtue. While fancy displays are impressive at first sight, if it is not backed up by clearly understandable functionality, your captured eyeballs will not bring their brains and wallets along. The basics of page layout and design listed here are rules of thumb that you should violate only in the most unusual of circumstances.
One of the best points he makes refers to the magician David Copperfield. He notes that while the scantily clad women do provide entertainment value, their real purpose is to take your mind away from paying too close attention to the magic tricks. The same thing applies when designing web sites. If the page display proceeds in steps, the result is to render a powerful illusion of speed to the user. Therefore, while the primary concern must be the overall speed of the download, a secondary concern is to organize the page so that it appears to load quickly.
Veen also has all of the proper scorn for the tactics used by some online advertisers. Like him, it has always baffled me that someone would believe that the way to get me to buy something from their site is to mislead me into clicking to it. His disdain for those ads that mimic an operating system message is well deserved, although you would think that the poor return on their long-term click-through rates would tell the designers all they need to know.
The recent dot-com flameout and declining online revenues will have a positive effect on the quality of web designs. Some of the more deceptive and unusual sites will die their well-deserved death as their guerrilla marketing developers lose out in the competition for customers that will stay and pay. To succeed in the long term you occasionally have to be boring and uninspired, which to some means stable and dependable. If that is your goal when using your web site, then you should read this book.

To be fair, Veen's target audience seem to be neophytes of Web design.

I found the historical information intriguing, such as the birth of the Web and the browser makers' role in the chaotic evolution of HTML. I even found the chapter on CSS and Web page "behaviors" useful.

But I found the author's attitude towards some of his own material vexing. After spending a full chapter discussing the importance of "interface consistency" and how this helps users navigate the Web, Veen contradict's himself by saying on p. 71: "Is [the site] usable? Is it consistent with users' external contexts for site-wide navigation? Who cares?"

Additionally, there are a lot of grammatical errors and typos.

So many people seem to be obsessed with Jakob Neilsen that they forget that his is merely one point of view. Jeffrey Veen presents his perspective, which is largely based on common sense and solutions derived from actually designing websites. If you are a professional web designer who builds different types of sites for a broad range of clients, read this one soon. If you are looking for a cookbook of technology, look elsewhere. If you are looking for an intelligent perspective on site architecture, internet advertising, and how to give your sites a strong foundation, Jeffrey Veen's words are well worth your time. Even if you don't agree with him, it will make you really examine how you approach your design process.

The book is helpful and interesting for a print designer just getting into web design. It has lots of insight into why and how sites work, and good solutions to surviving the vagaries of web design for those of us used to designing type within a tenth of a point.

However, I have to wonder about quality control. I'm shocked at the number of typos in this book. There is no reason for any publisher to print a book with 10 typos bookwide, much less 10 typos (at a minimum) per chapter. I doubt if this reflects the author's expertise, but I wonder if it doesn't reflect a particular laziness in attention to detail, both on Veen's part and on the part of the publisher. If this were a textbook, or if it presented hard facts or figures rather than opinion, I'd demand a refund.

Let's hope the book sells well so it can go back to press and all those mistakes can be fixed.

Overall, good ideas that unfortunately need to be taken with a grain of salt.

By his own accounting, Jeffrey Veen is an "internationally sought-after speaker, author and design strategist" but more so, he's good at cobbling together a bunch of rather trite and obvious observations about web design, and packaging them up in an expensive book with his face on the cover.

The writing is sometimes unforgiveably awful: "Good designers are harnessing the technology available to them and using it to encode the process they use to do good design." I just wish Veen had harnessed some of that technology to do good writing.

Add to that bad copyediting: Veen recalls glory days at his "alma matter". And he tells us that the book is not a reference manual or even a style guide. "Rather it (sic) a mentor..." Maybe so, but it a sloppily written and edited mentor.

Now, it's hopelessly out of date as well. Get Steve Krug's book instead.

Based on the title, I was expecting a more thorough treatment of web design. Instead, I found a collection of Veen's experiences and opinions.

I did learn some useful tricks; however, these rules-of-thumb are common knowledge in today's web-design community.

I also found his writing style (including the many typos) distracting.

Reviewed by:
Timothy E. McMahon, M.S.
Principal Web Developer
The McMahon Group

There are hundreds, if not thousands of books on web design and development out there for us to reference. While there are so many authors writing, there are far fewer worth spending your money on. Jeffrey Veen though is one worth the money.

Veen's book The Art and Science of Web Design is a lesson to all of us in web development that the age of specialization is drawing to an end. To succeed in this maturing field, we need to begin integrating our design, programming and usability skills into one cohesive package that provides value to our employers and value to our users.

The Art and Science of Web Design touches on many areas from interface consistency, to rule-based design to browsers. I've read scores of books on web development and without doubt, Veen's book was one of the most enjoyable reads and one of the more informative texts I've purchased.

This is one book worth adding to your personal library.