Customer Reviews

Hotwired Style: Principles for Building Smart Web Sites

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

 

 

I'm giving it 3 stars because the book had a cool design and for the work he put into it. I'm a writer and designer and thought I would post my thoughts.

It makes me feel they should take books down that are outdated. This Book was published in 1997, that seems like Ancient times for the web. I bought the book with out knowing this. Try and keep this in mind.

The book contains some case studies, this makes writing the easiest. Some examples of poorly designed sites. Lots of chatty text and stories. Basically, Jeffrey takes a screen shot of a website and then writes 6 paragraphs of text. He did have some good pointers, but if you are a designer, this book will seem basic and you should know everything by now. For instance-- "Make sure to compress your images"-- Thanks Jeffrey! "This is how much our Hotwired site has changed in the last year" --Great!. "Colors look good on a web page, they make it look beautiful!"-- Good Tip!

This could probably be one of those thumb thru books for you. It's really a strange book, a basic tip book that's hard to understand for Professionals. Remember 1997 guys?

In addition to containing quite a bit of self-congratulatory back-patting, now, in early 2000, I felt a good bit of the subject matter was out of date. In addition, all of the topics covered are available on Hotwired's Webmonkey site and are covered more comprehensively there. Don't buy this book! Instead, surf the Webmonkey tutorials.

This was the first book I ever purchased over the Internet, and I was impressed by how easy and quick the process was. However, this book is also a great example of how this distribution channel can be abused to sell inferior products. Had I come across this book in a real bookstore setting I could have thumbed through it's pages before taking it up to the counter and purchasing it, thus realizing beforehand what a complete joke it is.
If you were to strip the filler out and reduce the type to a normal size and ledding, you would be left with barely enough helpful content to fill a pamphlet.

A quote from Amazon's own review:
"Unlike some Web design books, which emphasize style, this one has plenty of useable examples..."

This is B.S.
A typical "How To" example from this book gives you instructions and HTML code for adding Wired's HotBot search engine to your web pages.

I received it in the mail yesterday. I put it back in the mail today, addressed to Amazon's return dept.

Jay Luker
Andover.Net

Having just completed a course in Web Design, and after mulling over a few dozen books in this field, I find that this book has the best advice on what works. It provides "hip" yet practical advice for laying out images and text for visual appeal and usability.

One thing that has not been mentioned in the reviews here is that the book itself is well designed and laid out: electric, cool, yet tasteful. I enjoy it also as a history of the Web user interface.

I found this book interesting and well-written, but it must be noted that this is NOT a how-to or step-by-step guide with example source code, etc. It is for the competent, experienced web designer looking for ideas or a "case study" which makes for excellent reading.

Want to design a visually attractive, easy to navigate, compelling to read Website? Buy this book. It's got a place of honor in my library along with Robin Williams, Lynda Weinman, David Siegal, Adam & Tonya Engst and Don Sellers.

This book is unique in its emphasis that well constructed sites should be developed for optimal viewing on all platforms and browsers, and that the best sites can be constructed with a minimum of tools and "bells and whistles." By emphasizing the fundamentals of good html, interface design, as well as the limitations of bandwith and screen displays, this is a concise and to the point overview of how to build a Web presence that works. Look elsewhere if you need a dictionary of html tags, definations of what the browser versions are, etc. If you know the basics and want to put them to good use, this book is for you.

This book is about the what and why of Web design, not the how. So don't expect to become a Photoshop expert, or to learn JavaScript (although they are tools that are mentioned). This book tells you why good sites work and bad ones don't and shows how lessons were learned the hard way - HotWired has constantly changed its site as has veered from flaunting its design to providing information - all within constantly changing limitations of the Web. (An interesting observation is that as the Web got more popular, average bandwidth of users declined greatly as more 14.4 modems came online). Don't let the size of this book fool you - there's more good information packed in these 163 pages than in most of those bloated 400 pages Web books that fill up amazon.com's warehouses. Everything in here you can use.

Great job Jeff. This book brings a clarity to web design like no other. It makes it very clear that the web isn't just pretty pictures or complex programming or plain blah interfaces. Each solution is unique, a combination of all of the above in varying degrees. A great book that adds legitimacy to the profession of web design!

Jeffrey's book is exceptional for its clear and practical explanations of how one can optimize web design to aim lower (accomodate lower-end systems) and higher. He contextualizes all the remarks by giving real-life examples drawn from his experience at Hot Wired. He gives examples of what has worked and what has not and why. The writing is superb - without extraneous details that often fill how-to books. This is a high-level how-to, that will help designers conceptualize their sites with clearer vision. If he wants to give you info on how to do something, he just says here is the code to do X. He also displays a sense of humor that is great. I read the book in one sitting and marked certain pages with stickies. I plan to refer to it from here on when I begin my site development. As a final note, I was worried that the book might be "too cool" which is sometimes how I feel about Wired. Instead it seemed only normally cool.

I have about 30 books on the internet, of which perhaps 25% are on web design; this book, despite it's size, it the one book I will never cast aside as out-dated. Veen is not a graphics guru, nor (as far as I know) a table-meister, but his philosophy of web architecture ought to be required reading for anyone who styles themself a "internet content developer".