Customer Reviews

Taking Your Talent to the Web: Making the Transition

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a professional web designer. It has been my day job for 4 years. I have shelves of books on code, design, communication and marketing. This is my first review of any of them.

Imagine needing some good advice. You go to your friend who is wise, gentle and has been where you are thinking about going. If you are looking at the Web, Jeffery Zeldman is that friend.

This book reveals the love affair a lot of us have with the web. For those of you using the web as a member of the audience this book explains what you see. If you are thinking about the web as a participant, this book explains how it's done and how to get it there. From text on the screen to code and color, dynamic media presentations to effective design this book provides you with a guide to the areas where the web presents it's greatest strengths and it's weakest links.

Taking Your Talent to the Web is not a book you just want, it is the first book you need.

When I bought Zeldman's book I expected to get a clutch of juicy Crimean War Stories about web design. What I did get was a supremely practical guide to using web design painlessly and effectivly. This is a useful book which answers tough, intuitive questions that nobody else knows the answer to (and will never admit it). For instance, what is the best way to make your text look good on the internet if you are handling it from an "Illustrator-type" of image? Why does CorelDraw/Photopaint default to saving images for the web in 96 dpi? There IS a reason, read this book and find out what it is. Want to use CSS? What unit of measure is the best for text? Once you read this book you will KNOW. If you are a beginner or an intermediate web designer, this book is right up your alley. Don't miss Taking Your Talent To The Web--it is a classic from a wise man.-

Zeldman tackles many of the issues facing today's Web designers with humor, intelligence and introspection. "Taking Your Talent to the Web" provides a clear, common sense path to insure successful site conceptualization, development, deployment and beyond. It is truly a must read for Web designers.

This book opened my eyes to issues such as accesibilty, css and xhtml, I now have a site that is fast to load and easy to update. I found this book to be an easy read,[ I am neither a graphic designer nor a trained web designer] I really like Zeldman's writng style and will use some of his points in my classes web design for photographers. The mix of code and ideas was great and for once I just read the book rather than being tempted into turning on my computer and starting work.

I'm not a traditional designer and I'm not new to web design, so I likely wouldn't have ever purchased or read this book if I had not come into the possession of a complimentary copy.

But I do regularly check in with Zeldman's trio of important sites - A List Apart [alistapart.com], The Web Standards Project [webstandards.org], and of course his personal blog, Jeffrey Zeldman Presents... [zeldman.com] and have exchanged emails with the man - so my interest was more in how the author approached and presented the information, rather than the subject of the book itself.

I'm sure he would appreciate the "separation of style from content" approach I took to evaluating his book, which is something he stresses several times in this, as in myriad other of his writings on the web.

The book was enjoyable and I got more out of it than I thought I would (as it is aimed at those new to the field). Refreshing comparisons between the nature of print design and web design, as opposed to beginning with technical discussions of HTML syntax, and the friendly writing style make it stand out in a sea of good, but overly technical, reference books. It is also fun to read, and I often found myself surprised with how many pages I ended up going through in any given sitting.

The positives of the book were the honest discussion about how a designer really doesn't need to know JavaScript, just enough to know how to gank and adapt it to one's own needs; the acknowledgement of technical vs. artistic approaches to the medium; and the inevitable development of a methodology and client interaction inherent in being a web professional.

On the negative side, I would disagree with Zeldman's assertion that CSS is purely supposed to be the responsibility of the designer, not the "HTML technicians."

Additionally, I felt the code samples a bit inconsistent, tough to read interspersed as they were in the text in an orange variable-width font, and felt myself fighting the urge to "clean them up." I could chalk this up to my own personal preferences about coding style - 4 space indentation and uniform lowercasing of HTML and CSS - but I'm sure that, as founder and member of the WaSP, Zeldman himself looks back on his nearly 2 year old code and cringes at times. To his credit, he does have a mini-site dedicated to errata and bugs: http://zeldman.com/talent/

As a follower of Big Z I was not surprised by the humour or the style of his writing, both of which I found enjoyable and comforting for some pretty 'dry' sections as he called them.

Content wise I cannot explain just how good it is, as a web developer, I was hoping to find some of the secrets that zeldman is famed for, but I found much better. You get to understand the why, as well as the how to do things - (or at least where to look to find the how to). Explaining that tables are old hat, but then demonstrating why we must still use them for now is one example of his real life problems and solutions.

I say to anyone who this book really is aimed at - the transitional designer - buy it, read it, eat it, sleep it - what we have here is a MUST have book for anyone building websites - new, old, ginger or bald ....

BIG Z has spoken!

WHY CANT WE GIVE 6 out of 5, like this deserves....

I wonder how can a writer be so penetratingly expressive! Jeffery Zeldman has primarily written this book for people who have been in the print/graphic design industry and want to take their talent to the field of web (as the name also implies), where interactivity is the name of the game. Let me tell you this book is a prefect classic and is a must-have item for people who would like to get web skills under their belt in addition to any existing print, graphic or broadcast design experience or even for present day web designers looking for word of wisdom on across-the-board aspects of web-design industry. You will not only find crisp information but will also get sound advice that even today's experienced web designers might need. Even after reading the things over and over again, the magical expression of Zeldman draws you yet again to read those words of wisdom. I'm stuck to this book since I got it in my hands and just wish I had this book two years back which would have been a great help and inspiration. Anyway, Zeldman has been a beacon all along; courtesy Adobe.com. A straight 5-Stars!!

If you have one book that is different from all your other Web design books, then this one should be the one. I admit I'm a Zeldman fan because of his work with Web Standards [...], A List Apart [...], and Web Design updates [...] and I had high expectations for the book. He has met every one of those expectations and retained his usual writing style that we have come to appreciate. Though not a reference book, you'll find tips that are valuable and worth implementing. Print designers and lesser advanced Web designers will understand what is needed to take the next step or go to the next level in Web design.

this book is essential. the building blocks of web design respect are right in these pages. its so great to see in print what web design firms have been trying to communicate to clients for years.

simple notions like keeping file sizes small even in broadband situations is just one example of good honest truth.

the tone of voice in this book is great as well. zeldman's personal style is refreshing.

if you are thinking about really communicating/expressing yourself on the web, read this book first.

This book actually appeals to many different audiences. It will help the designer understand the left-brain information that a web programmer uses when wading through a thicket of acronyms. Programmers who read this book will understand why the designer tells them that a font or color has to be "just so." Information about project management helps both the designer and programmer understand what the managers are going through to get them all to work together to bring a project in on time and under budget.

The writing flows nicely; the book is enjoyable to read. The humor and conversational style support the material quite well.