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48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to Use Web Templates, January 9, 2007
This review is from: 1 Hour Web Site: 120 Professional Templates and Skins (Bible) (Paperback)
Creating a good web site requires both computer/technical and graphic design/artistic skills. If you have the technical background but are lacking in artistic talent, then templates will provide the "design" elements you are lacking.
The book advertises 120 templates on the accompanying CD, but that is really 40 different templates, each one provided in 3 color schemes for you to choose from. They provide a "home" page and 1 or more "subpage" styles for each template. There is a brief, simple explanation at the beginning of the book about types of designs and which type to use for what purpose. The designs are adequate for informational sites; they are not sufficient if you need interactive forms, shopping carts, flash, animation etc.
The other advantage of using a template is you do not have to learn any other software. The book explains how to open the files in an editor like Notepad, and simply find/replace their content with your content. The files have been set up with easy-to-identify "tokens" to find and replace. This saved me a lot of time because I didn't want to learn any other software. (Of course you can always open these files in your favorite program and edit them that way)
However, it is unlikely that any of the provided templates will suit your needs exactly - so it helps if you know enough html to be able to modify the html code - it will help to understand tables and cascading style sheets. If you use their templates "as is" and just replace content "tokens", you could likely create a home page in an hour.
If you have sufficient computer expertise and just need to get a simple, well designed web site up quickly, this book could be the answer. However, you must be flexible enough to either use one of the templates "as is" or modify the html code to suit your needs. So read the table of contents and check out the template categories, and make sure your website falls within at least one of those categories.
I was able to find a template that was close to my needs, and edit the html to modify it enough to suit my purpose. Since the template was created by a graphic designer, the site looks "professional". So this book suited my needs exactly.
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book worked for me!, February 25, 2007
This review is from: 1 Hour Web Site: 120 Professional Templates and Skins (Bible) (Paperback)
My husband and I used this book to create a web site for our new business. And it really works!
There is a great selection of home page and sub page template styles (on the enclosed disk) to match your kind of business. There are also templates for personal and family web sites.
I must say that it took more than 1 hour. But you have to consider your content - that takes time to create. Plus, once you get inside the web page templates you may be tempted, as we were, to cut and paste button links. One thing leads to another...
To get the web site done, you only need to read the first three chapters plus the chapter that relates to your template.
There are areas for improvement - mostly in the area of adding things to your web site. But then, this is a get-it-done-fast book.
Overall, the book is astonishingly good value.
Jane
Your Story Here
Video Biography Orange County
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Cut and paste: like cheating on a term paper by making the font larger, January 18, 2008
This review is from: 1 Hour Web Site: 120 Professional Templates and Skins (Bible) (Paperback)
As someone else stated, this book, or rather the CD, contains 40 templates not 120. (If you count color variations on a theme, then you have 120 templates.) Deceptive, I think.
The chapters give line by line instructions on how to change the tokens so that you can personalize the templates for your specific needs; however, each chapter gives the same line-by-line instructions. It's basically a cut and paste to make the book have more chapters and pages. It's like trying to use a bigger font on a term paper to make the paper be the required amount of pages and think that the professor won't see that you used a 14 pt. font instead of a standard 12 pt. font.
Errata! Of course out of all the templates in the book, I chose template 920 for which the errata has not been corrected on the publisher's Website. I chose this particular one for the tabs. The publisher's errata corrects the tab error for template 1120. I tried applying some of the corrected tab techniques that I was able to discern from the corrections they gave for tab errors in template 1120 to template 920. I never achieved success! Needless to say, my Web page does not look anything at all like the template in the book. Tsk. Tsk.
Also, the Flash files do not work. I read another reviewer's statement concerning same and decided not to go through what he did since the Flash problems were never resolved.
Moreover, if you truly want to personalize the templates for your needs, you do need to have some knowledge of HTML and CSS. I am using Jennifer Robbins' book "Learning Web Design" alongside "1 Hour" which is helpful.
Let's just say, since I picked a template that doesn't have all the mark up and correct CSS layout, I still haven't finished my Website and I've worked on it for 15 hours thus far. Maybe if you're lucky and pick a template that has everything you need and looks like the example in the book, then you can be up and running in an hour.
Another astonishing fact is that the book is not in color. Another cost-cutting technique in addition to cutting and pasting. Color is a major cornerstone of Web design. At least give us color so we don't have to click on each template on the CD to see what the template actually looks like with color.
Succinctly: The authors and publisher cheated by cutting and pasting the machinations it takes to customize the templates and have not corrected major errata.
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