Customer Reviews

The Web Wizard's Guide to Web Design (Addison Wesley's Web Wizard Series)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I am an experienced web designer who has worked on thousands of pages, and do everything from graphic design to hand coding. I am using this book (and the HTML book in this series) as a reference to teach classes. Why? Because it takes a clear, simple, "top-down" approach that anyone can understand. The underlying concepts of web design are presented accurately in this book. I believe an experienced instructor could use this and expand upon this valuable resource.

That being said, if you are looking for the specifics on HTML coding you should probably look in the HTML book in this series or elsewhere. Also, as mentioned in other reviews, the lack of any significant mention of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a really blatant oversight. CSS makes life a heck of a lot easier, especially when dealing with cross-platform compatibility in web pages. Additionally, I felt it was an oversight not to mention the concept of Include files. Including, for example, a simple navigation bar in all of your pages without having to change every page is a great time saver and can be done with Lasso, PHP, SSI, ASP, ColdFusion and other technologies.

Yet another "how-to-guide" for web design. My wife purchased
the book because she thought she could hit the ground
running with creating a web page for her home business.
Well she hit the ground alright, and the cleanup wasn't
pretty. After many frustrating hours i recommended a
few good Internet sites on basic HTML and web design
which provided a step by step process for design and
gave a clear explanation of HTML "Tags" and formatting.
Save Your Money!!!!!

I ended up returning this book. I hope that the reader from Ohio was an elementary school child, that's what it seems that the audience was for the book.

Don't get me wrong, if you're under the age of 12 this book is great! However, if you're an adult you need something more to sink your teeth into.

I thing that this book is very appropriate in detail for the size. it covers all of the important points of Web design from a design, not technical, prespective. Important subjects like usability,navigation, and optimization are introduced well. And those are often given short-shift from bulkier books.

I suspect that those who weren't happy with it were expecting a hard core technical reference. Who has time to read all that? There are plenty of books that go into detail about Web design and development but this book's strength is its brevity.

For the price, this book can't be beat.

I liked this book and recommend it for instruction.

The author gives a quick overview of the basic strengths of Dreamweaver software in a single chapter, then reviews everything in follow-up chapters, including the WHYs of handling type, photos and graphics, working with tables, creating forms, adding movies/rollovers/sounds/animations. He provided warnings in places were amateurs are likely to get hung up, and proves book exercises and downloadable files to work with in doing assignments.

Great book to use as an introduction into the strengths of Dreamweaver software for creating, editing and publishing web pages.

As a newcomer to web design, I find this book to be a wonderful tool. It provides the basic foundation on which to build your skills. The writer's down-to-earth style creates a pleasant reading experience. I would suggest this book to anyone new to the web design field or to those wishing for a sensible, to-the-point, easy-to-read guide to web design.

This book may not be so bad for an absolute beginner if there were an instructor present for elaboration, follow-through, and correction. The author *does* at least hit on many of the key points one should be aware of.

The book avoids all progress in web design technique worked out since 1996. There is no mention of HTML as a structural language rather than presentational. In the author's world, the efficiencies and power of Cascading Style Sheets just do not exist.

The author shows his print world bias by recommending serif fonts for content (p.59). Not only is this an extreme minority viewpoint on the Web, it is very irresponsible to present this as accepted without presenting the majority point of view.

The author also includes lots of old information and even grossly wrong information. He states that the average user is viewing a screen at 72dpi. A Web design expert should not be totally unaware that we in Windows have always been at 96dpi and even the new Macs (the obvious preference of the author) default to 96dpi.

All right, not worth going on and on here. The book is pretty. Lots of flowing, colorful, Gaelic-style graphics.

Another beautiful book best admired from afar.

I agree with Stan. This book has the same cookie-cutter format as a dozen other books. The author lacks creativity and knowledge in the area of web design.

I feel sorry for anyone who wastes their money on this book.

I love this book---the author has a great writing style and it's easy to follow!

Takes you step-by-step through the process of designing a Web site. Good advice and clear directions at every step.