Customer Reviews

Designing Large-Scale Web Sites: A Visual Design Methodology

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This book was clearly ahead of its time when it was written, and tackled some important issues. The focus on screen layout, browser technologies and other paradigm issues was, no doubt, of much assistance in its day.

This being said, the book is now almost three years old and -- for the Web -- that pretty much renders it irrelevant. It still focuses on Netscape 2.0 as a "next generation" browser and words like LiveScript are likely to baffle anyone who wasn't around in the good old days.

I would recommend the book to anyone who wanted a bit of a history of the Web, and some very basic initial guidelines as to the thinking and structures of the medium. But be warned: this book contains a <b>lot</b> of information that has changed, and should be followed up quickly with a book like "Secrets of Successful Websites" by David Seigal, which is infinitely superior.

As a conclusion, I believe it is quite irresponsible of the authors to leave this book as it is and not publish an update. This is not nearly as useful as it could be, and I'm sure many have purchased it and found it quite disappointing.

As a former graphic design teacher and curriculum designer and now a instructional technologist who constantly finds myself trying to educate would-be web designers or website clients.....I still find this book very useful in its converage of website design methodology. Even if you discarded all of the pages containing outdated code, what is left is still of value.

I think if you buy this book and already have a good understanding of website and interface design principles, you will be sadly disappointed, particularly because the title is misleading.

However, if you are a non-designer (someone without formal instruction in design theory), this book will be of *great* value. The right audience member for this book is someone suddenly forced to do web design with no training or a descision maker in an organization who needs to quickly understand, in plain English, how the web design process should work and some criteria for evaluation.

This book is still on my shelf since I bought it in 1996 and I frequently "lend it out".

This book provides a project methodology and substantive advice regarding usability and design. The coverage of the considerations involved in creating a large scale web site is thorough. Most of the advice is very solid.

Minor drawbacks are that the design suggestions are warped by a grid ethos, apparently brought about by a too-early exposure to Quark Express.

Another drawback is the constant droning regarding the wonderfulness of Netscape Navigator. This is somewhat understandable as the author is an employee of Netscape. The biased browser information is a little out of date. <P

This book contains information that is soo old its outrageous. It considers a "large" web site to be over 50 pages. I dont consider that as being "large".

Finally a book whose author does not think in terms of "page coolness" but understands that a project on the web is a project in information-space design.

The proposed methodology is clear and fully applicable, albeit still to be formalised.

Disregard the obvious bias towards Netscape (the author works there) and instead of the last chapters dedicated to browser- (ie Navigator) specific HTML tricks get the reference to HTML 3.2 from the Web Design Group (www.htmlhelp.com).

For the rest, the book is a good first step in a number of right directions: usability, User Interface design, information space design. All these disciplines are badly needed in the background of anybody seriously interested in being in the Web business two years from now.

Still wondering about getting some coolness after all?
Don't worry. The book even explains how to get graphic artists and designers do *their* jobs (that's creating nice graphics, not messing with designing web sites) while letting *you* do yours --producing an understandable, navigable, usable and effective web site.
Walter Vannini, Internet consultant