Customer Reviews

Guidelines for Online Success

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert Ford, creator of the Favourite Website Awards (FWA) and companion website, has teamed with Julius Wiedermann, author of a series of Taschen books on notable websites, together in this work.

The content is basically FWA award-winning websites from 2000 to the present. There are over 200 websites identified with one to three image captures from the site, as well as the following information: agency, designed by, developed by, software, awards, and launched. This is the heart of the book.

The book is attractively designed and presented, and in itself is an excellent example of graphic print design. In terms of look, feel, and content, it is most like a coffee table book.

The table of contents is:
Interface & Design
Marketing & Communication
Technology & Programming
Technical Advice
Content/Content Management
E-Commerce

Websites are distributed among the chapters to illustrate chapter content. But, please do not come away with the understanding that these are dealt with in any particular depth, technical or otherwise. Instead, use the chapter introductions and Dos and Don'ts as a guide to current best practice. Much, however, is common sense, obvious, or well-known practice.

This is a designer's guide, and it does represent a wide variety of styles and nationalities.

But, it is also, almost exclusively, a guide to elaborate Flash sites usually with large corporate budgets behind them. According to my count -- 98% of the sites cited use Flash occasionally to exclusively for presenting content.

So, to an audience of high end Flash designers, the book will identify peers and their award-winning work.

But, is this of value to the humble web designer, working with Dreamweaver for small business websites? I'd say that it is.

This book is a visual delight. It brings together top creative talent with the new technology of the web and shows the result. It is a continually thought-provoking work for creative design. We all can benefit from that.

And, the future of the web is more interactivity. With Adobe Flex/Air and Microsoft Silverlight, the range of tools for a rich desktop experience expands. This book identifies the kinds of user interaction we will provide in future years.

The presentation is nice and the sites they chose are fairly cool or illustrative of each of the categories. However, the copy simply isn't very educational or interesting. The lessons (the do and don'ts) are often either completely obvious or just not relevant. It's as if the two guys had some cool sites they found online which they wanted to put on a book, but then they rushed to write some filler content. Lame.

I am not sure if I will end up keeping this book. Any book showcasing 'cutting-edge' websites gets dated very quickly. As a web designer, I was hoping for a little more explanation on what went into each site, strategy, technology, creative thinking, etc. There is very little information like this inside this book, just a lot of smallish pictures of sites that probably are cool experiences, but you'd have to type in the URL to find out. Sprinkled throughout the book are some Do's and Don'ts by the individuals who developed these sites- these aren't anything earth-shattering. The best part of the book is the actual design of the book. If you want a book that just shows inspirational site design, you can probably find some better ones out there, better yet, why not find sites like FWA (the author's) which are free and you can actually experience the sites.

Great examples and reviews of the best creative sites. Ignore the bad name. It's not a management book. It's a 'food for the mind' book.
Enjoy!

This book looks stunning. Beautiful presented in terms or paper stock, binding and typography. Its just a shame the content isn't in the same league.
States the obvious quite regularly and if you've a couple of year experience in the industry, this book will gather dust on your shelf very quickly.

If your a graphic design though, you'll love the print quality of this book!
Shame, we where very excited about this book arriving on our door...

In my opinion authors are excessively self promoting themselves through the book, and suggestions are often useless and obvious - I was waiting for something more

This book is awesome, both for creatives and technical teams.

Is not for beginners and it doesn't teach you how to build a website, it teaches you how to build online promises and experiences, how to stimulate users through visuals, animations and technical blending.

All in one: it worth's every penny!

One of the most useful web related book I have ever read. Very well organized and its easy to use. It was a great pleasure to read from these top notch guy like Eric Jordan, Pascal Leroy, Michael Lebowitz
Its a must for all the web industry people.

Like the author said in the book, this is not a for Dummies book. It is a book though that is needed more than phyically being skilled to create a site. It's one thing to know how to physically put together a website but its a nother thing to create a website that gets attention. This book is filled with expert advice from various web design gurus across the world.

And I must say that this book is one of the most well made books I own. The tabbed chapters are very interesting. Actually I am not that surprized because it come from Taschen.



Great book, you WILL learn a lot.

One of the latest popular new books in the web-design community is Guidelines for Online Successby Ed. Rob Ford and Julius Wiedermann. Pretty heavily promote through design blogs like Cpluv.com and Reform Revolution to name two. The book has a promising title. As if all the secrets of successful web-design and online project management would be revealed to you by reading this book. The authors and co-writers of the book are big names in the web-and multimedia world. All the reason for me the buy a copy. From the looks of it this wasn't just a paper-bag but a nicely designed 'designers book'. With a cool strap on it an a fresh inspirational cover. For me this is a look and feel I can relate to when it come to a book created for visual, creative people. By the time my copy arrived I was even more pleasantly surprised. The pink flu-wed title on the cover looked even better in reality than it did on the picture at Amazone.com (this is where I could get the best deal money wise for this book). And the book was really a book, big, solid and in a nice format. The strap made it feel like a sketch dummy, again very appealing to people working in the creative industry. When I opened the book I found that the most important topics related to 'online success' where categorized through a tab system. Again very well done. And by flipping through the first pages I was very surprised by the nice and shinny heavy paper that was used. To put it all together. The layout and the materials used for this book a excellent. I love holding it, turning its pages and looking at it. For me as a visual person books do have to be more than just a badly designed paper-bag. And in a book like this, carefully designed I can find my way easily.

But there is one thing about any book that goes a step further the nice look and feel. A book needs to have some depth. The content needs to be just as appealing to me as a reader as the way it looks. Maybe even more appealing on second thought. And this is where this book is moving of the tracks. The contents of this book are not very outstanding our surprising. Don't get met wrong, even with a title like this I was not excepting to learn something from this book I did not already know. But the contents of this book are very poor in some ways. As I mentioned before I am, like most designers and directors a visual person. I like to look at pictures and don't like reading large portions of text. But in this book, visuals (mostly screenshots from websites) are too much leading. And the stories, tips, do's and dont's are in most cases wide open doors. While I was reading/looking through my copy I started realizing a couple of things. First, you need to know what a certain website is all about. How it looked on a computer-screen. How it felt using it before you can relate to it's magic looking at a screenshot of that same website in a book. For me I walked through over 90 percent of all the sites highlighted in this book in the last years. So I had a constant feeling of deja vu.
A real downer for me was the fact that most of the sites in this book are over a year old. I can understand why, production wise. But looking at the old Fantasy Interactive site was very disappointing. Again don't get me wrong the old Fi site was a great peace of work. But it is old. That company was ready for a new site, totally different from this one. And I believe they had a very good reason for it. And that reason was not just the fact that 'they' changed over the years.

I know that every once in while a book like is been released. I believe the first one I had was back in 2000. I couldn't find my copy of it on my bookshelf anymore. And I believe the reason for it is very clear. A book filled with screenshots and wise words is old before its days. And I was hoping Guidelines for Online Success would be different but it is not. On the other hand maybe it is just me, maybe I'm standing to close to the fire. Maybe I'm the nerd that was scanning all the famous web-design portals too many times a week in the last six years. Which could be the reason I'm not to surprised about the contents of this book. Maybe I'm not the audience this book is aiming at. But than who is?

I believe at this point in the web and multimedia history we are standing on the verge of a new period. And this books shows us what the pioneers of web-and multimedia design created in the past. And a lot of those projects are the foundation for where we are at right now. In that respect this is a great book. It is a historical peace which I love to look in to on a cloudy winter evening close to a burning fire place. Reminiscing about those days, the early days of web and internet creation. And I have to forget all about the prestigious title. On the other hand looking at the past can be very helpful if you are looking for (online)success in the future.

The Man
http://www.theman68.blogspot.com/