Customer Reviews

Web by Design: The Complete Guide

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

 

 

This book is nicely organized, but weighted down (figuratively AND literally) by repetition and unessential conversational language. Structured like a textbook, the last chapter of each section is a review with quizes and exercises. Various and important topics crucial to web design are discussed, and is written in a nontechnical language very easy to understand, although at times the information seems cursory. The conversational language the author uses detracts rather than enhances the text with the non-computer related analogies she uses. On the plus side, there are plenty and a wide selection of different web page examples with source codes. This book contains important basic design information of which every designer should be aware, but the size (it's big and heavy) of the book could be cut down by 1/3 and still retain all its informational content with examples. If you like an introductory web design book that speaks in a user-friendly voice this book might be worth looking through. But the more advanced web developer who prefers more technical depth would do better to look for another design book.

The title sounds great: ... the complete guide. After reading it for a day, I wonder whether the author was plannig writing an sequel to make it complete. The book is a complete disappointment! It's shallow in every topic. For instance, the chapter on web graphic technology sounds like a paid ad. for photoshop. No real reasons were given on why photoshop is great compared to others, only a handful of quotations from other people. The book skips totally about other tools for graphic design. The chapter on web programming is impossibly pointless. It tries to cover a bunch of web languages in 30 pages, and over half of those pages are taken up by half-page sized screen shots that offer little information.

The book is a complete disaster: it's incomplete, shallow, and full of useless opinions and quotations.

This book seems at first glance to be a great book. The cover is magnificent, it has lotsa great info, and many examples of code.

But when you buy the book, and actually sit down to read it, you discover that the first impression just doesn't hold up. First of all, the author, Molly Something, is completely obsessed with herself. The book contains tons of examples, links and images of herself. Even the examples have herself spattered all over them. The second thing that annoys me is that Molly obviously thinks she is in the front of web-publishing, pushing the boundries and making the best sites. This is simply not true. Although the book clearly shows a good path to follow when developing a web site, Molly isn't clever enough to use them practically, resulting in second class web-sites. The design-studio site is an example of this. Fair enough, but not in any means a great site. She breaks all the rules she has set in the book, like not keeping the colors consistant throughout the site, and having navigational icons without descriptions.

The book has also tons and tons of useless code. It is just not interesting, leave it out!

This is just some of the flaws in web by design. Most annoying is the fact that Molly has to have her life, thoughts and images all over the book, examples and tips. Pardon me, but I want to learn how to set up a style-sheet, not listen to how Molly used to be a party-girl, and how her old boyfriend treated her.

The book does an ok job setting up a strategy for developing a web-site. Not great, not fabulous, just ok. Mix this with the annoying things mentioned above, and you have a book not worth buying.

At first I thought making a website is easy as typing in stuffs that you wanna say and put all sorts of pics that you fancy, but after I have read this book which I happened to have borrowed first from a friend, I learned that there's something else in it (I wasn't really satisfied in just borrowing it so I did bought a copy!). The author really knows her way on how to make even the simplest webpage have its own value to the point that it can make it to the market level. It's like teaching a neophyte in webdesigning to be a real pro! From colors to fonts and graphics and more, I think there's nothing else that you'd miss out on this great book! a must-have for every serious web designer.

I just can't go along with the gushing about this book. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad by any means, but it certainly is NOT a 5 star web design book! It is packed full of page wasting pulp. Really, it's any unbelievable waste of paper. Endless review of previous material, little stupid quizzes, and tons of banal code which is of questionable educational value. You'll find yourself skipping over 20 pages at a time to get to the next useful item. I give it 3 stars.

Molly must have got paid by the pound to write this book. If something can be said effectively in 5 pages Molly will spend 100 pages on it. I've spent a lot of time after reading 3 chapters for an assingment going back and reviewing them, looking at what I highlighted and trying to figure out what the point was. Much of the book consists of examples - full pages of text in some gibberish (not real words) with a few HTML keywords, then the next page shows what it looks like on the screen. There must be 100 pages of comlpete gibberish. There is a big section of color pages in the middle of the book, (a "Color Reference"), but the colors aren't right-someone didn't communicate properly with the printer. I could go on and on but let me cut it short and give you some advice - If this book is required for a course, take another course. If it's a required course, take it at another college. If you have to take it at your college for your major - change your major.

Big, long, with errors (not only typos, but actual HTML errors) and basically obsolete.

Ok, I admit, I bought the book because of the cover, but afterwards I was glad I did.

Web by Design is different from most of the (generally substandard) books available. It doesn't teach you HTML, CGI, Java, JavaScript, or the latest stupid tricks and gimmicks. Instead, it focusses on the fundamentals of EFFECTIVE DEISGN.

It contains a whopping 901 pages filled with quality advice from a professional web designer. You learn how to use graphics effectively, the principals of layout, the science of typography, how color and shape can be used, how to write and structure content, and much, much more. The well-written Web by Design also comes with a 32 page full-color insert on the 216 Web-safe colors and color combinations, as well as reviews, quizes, and its very own website.

Overall, Web By Design is a fabulous book that is perfect for those who have at least some HTML background, as well as experts in graphic design, advertising, and printing who wish to expand their skills into web design.

It's not subtitled "The Complete Guide" without reason.

After perusing and reading a multitude of books covering the various aspects of web design, I can confidently argue that this book presents the best overview of web design theory and practice. Molly Holzchlag synthesizes web technologies and basic publishing theory.

The book is an excellent place to start learning about web design. After reading this book, the next step would be to buy one book covering HTML 4.0 in depth, one covering JavaScript, one covering Cascading Style Sheets, and so on. The book provides a strong foundation, unlike any other book I've read on web design. No book can cover all the design material exhaustively, although they often claim to. Molly Holzschlag's Web Design: the Complete Guide, fills the holistic gap in the published literature, in an easy to follow way.

This book is a great textbook for web design, if you are a novice or possess extensive experience. For the beginner, the book covers all the web technologies and organizes and structures them based on basic publishing theory. For the advanced user, the book keys into details that are often overlooked, yet make a difference in terms of web design quality.

I read a lot of books about web design. None of them ever taught me as much as Web by Design did. Actually they even distracted me from reading books on this subject. Web by Design is completely different... by reading this book you get to feel like a *real* designer feels. Following the rules Molly E. Holzschlag gives you page by page, you will surely have an attractive website up soon; well, an attractive website with clean HTML :)