Customer Reviews

The Elements of Intranet Style

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

For non-tech specialists, this little book is an appropriate follower to Strank and White. It certainly helped our team stop arguing about technology and focus on what our site was supposed to do, plus it really helped us decide on how it should look and how people could move around to find what they wanted to find and that sort of thing. The Predictible Problems section and the User Forward ideas saved me at least a couple of sleepless nites. Thanks for making the book available. Only the fact that I wanted still more data from the writers stopped me from giving the 5 stars that the book probably deserves.

Excellent! Finally a useful (and enjoyable) text on intranet style that is clear and packed with required information on making a killer intranet from scratch. In my field, I deal with professionals that have all sorts of cyber experience, and using The Elements of Intranet Style I can speak intranet to the expert as well as the novice. Big pluses include the "Must know's and Must no's" section that warns of copyright pitfalls and security issues headaches. Overall this book is an excellent, low cost bible dedicated to the rapidly growing intranet. A must!

Thanks to this book, I finally appreciate some of the differences between the Internet and an intranet in terms of corporate communications policies, screen design, infrastructure, project management and security requirements. As a layman, the technical glossary has been helpful to me in my current job and projects and I refer to it several times a week. Good insight on the people side (politics, etc.) of corporate intranet projects. My thanks to the authors.

I am helping to design an intranet for my company, and I have read a couple books on the subject to help me in this endeavor. This was by far the worst of the bunch. I found this book glib, outdated, and utterly useless. The only good thing I can say about it was the color graphics were nice (like a comic book). It was written for the complete technical idiot by someone who clearly has little understanding of the real issues being faced by intranet designers today.

The best book I have found sofar is connected to a specific intranet software - it is called Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server - Building Knowledge Sharing Applications, by Kevin Laahs, Emer McKenna adn Don Vickers. While the tone of their writing is amusing in a nerdy kind of way, it is also very hands on and teaches you the wider 'softer' issues of intranet design while also getting into the solid technical details.

I know the authors' bias to Netscape is not right, but their ability to give a good overview of issues both communication and technical for a typical corporate teams set-up are great. Plus their discussion on security is almost visionary, if not prophetic. It certainly got our attention at my company which was thinking we weren't so big or vulnerable to really have to worry about heavy duty security. Thanks!

I was VERY disappointed after buying this. It claimed to be like William Strunk's ageless "The Elements of Style" but instead it is already dated beyond belief.

The visible frames and garish colors they recommend remind me of Naugahyde furniture from the 1950's.

If anyone follows the advice in this book their intranet sites will turn out to be laughingstocks. It is this kind of self-proclaimed "expert" bluff that results in technical budgets getting cut. Any company falling victim to this charade will fall years behind their competitors.

Their stated prejudice against Microsoft and computer industry professionals is mean and disappointing. Their technical mistakes are unforgivable (for instance, on page 100 HTML is defined as "Hyper Test Markup Language" although the glossary correctly identifies it as "Hypertext Markup Language).

And I don't even want to get started on their demeaning remarks about older persons and minorities. (I don't think they even realized how insensitive these remarks are.)

It reads as if it were written by people that did not fully grasp the subject matter. Certainly they have no practical experience in the field. The book even states that a lack of technical experience is desirable!

This might serve as a primer for total newbies, except I think they would be better served by any one of Jakob Nielsen's books on the subject.

Written on about an eighth grade level (I estimate), it is insulting beyond belief to all business users, whether they are in a technical position or not.

My money is lost, but you can save yours. I would give it zero stars if that were an option.

I was given this book as a gift and was overcharged. I would not recommend anyone reading this book. Reviewing the negative comments below, I found myself in total agreement, but rather than restating the obvious lackluster performance this book turns in, I'd like to help point the reader, you, in other directions. Purchase "The Web Style Guide" if you need a good introduction or look at it "FOR FREE" on the web, I personally recommend it to all of my clients. The list goes on, but you can also check out photo.net and useit.com for more good stuff.

This was a great book 10 years ago - but it is totally useless today - please don't waste your Money.

James W. Candler

(Author)

I found this book very easy to read, and completely understandable, its emphasis on the "User Point of View" is remarkable, it is well structured and concrete; the section: "Bottom line" at the end of every chapter is very helpful.The cons is that it touches very briefly technical aspects of the Intranet.

This book is not only wonderfully written but clarifies the many mysteries of the intranet. It helped me tremendously especially since the business that I work for has recently established an intranet. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to set up their own intranet or simply wants to learn more about it. Brown and Candler have defined style!