Customer Reviews

Webworks: Navigation

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Readers who expect this book to fulfill its promise of illustrating "navigation interface design at its best" will be left mostly on their own to peruse too-small pictures on overpriced heavy coated stock.

The editor apparently compiled the book's text from questionnaires filled out by the featured design firms. Those questionnaires seem to have been filled with impressive sounding marketing fluff, which the editor has uncritically passed along. Thus we read, for example, that the Cap'n Crunch web site aims to "drive depth of interaction with Cap'n Crunch and foster a 'life-moment' experience." (Translation: expose children to the Cap'n Crunch brand so relentlessly that they will make their parents buy it by the truckload.)

The book's copious full-color illustrations might still be useful if they focused particularly on navigation, but they do not. For example, two of the sites profiled (Herman Miller and Gigabuys) are alleged to use a bread-crumb trail to aid navigation, but the illustrations either do not show it or render it so small as to be practically invisible. Throughout the book, in fact, the pages are designed with vast amounts of white space that could have been spared to make the illustrations larger and more legible.

Overall, an opportunity wasted.

This book is really not about Navigation at all. It's just a bunch of pictures of sites. I bought this book hoping to find examples of good navigation, and how it was designed, but did not find this at all. There are some neat pictures, and I guess I got a few good ideas, but the title should be different. It's not good if you're looking for in-depth information about navigation.

It gives plenty samples of website and all from famous web design companies. It explains why the layout puts into this way or that way. Also, it shows the clients' objective on each project. It is a good book for entry-level and mid-level web designers.