Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design (Paperback)

by Vincent Flanders (Author), Michael Willis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Unless you're abnormally gifted, the best way to learn a craft thoroughly is to learn not only its central tenets but also its pitfalls. Here, authors Vincent Flanders and Michael Willis teach you good Web design by pointing out ugly, misguided, and confusing sites--any site that fails to deliver good graphics and clear, well-focused content. As the authors show you all sorts of corporate and personal pages, they help you determine your target audience, design your site and its navigational elements and content, and solve problems concerning graphics and text. You also learn about using tables versus frames and get an introduction to hot technologies such as plug-ins, cascading style sheets, XML, databases, VRML, Java, streaming video and audio, videoconferencing, and chat. Finally, the authors address maintenance and marketing issues, teaching you how to set up an appropriate domain name, update your site, register your site with search engines and directories, and use reciprocal links and banner ads. The authors address cross-platform issues and Netscape/Microsoft incompatibility issues where appropriate. This is a full-color book, with enthusiastic, amusing writing as well as helpful screen shots and tips on Web-design software. The companion hybrid CD-ROM includes utilities for creating GIF animations, style sheets, and HTML pages and for creating, compressing, and optimizing Web graphics.

Review
In my opinion, Flanders and Willis were brave souls to trust that their offbeat style would successfully carry over to print. Yet, it is hard to deny that the approach works. I would even be roused to say that the book is superior and far more handy than the Web site. While they basically have the same content, the book is much more user-friendly. Accessing and understanding the information is easier because it is better organized. The bottom line is that the content of the book is excellent, and the authors’ offbeat style makes the book enjoyable.

Judging from their cover art and photographs, you might think that the authors are morons. You would be quite wrong. They aren’t morons, they’re oxymorons -- they look and sound like nutty, capitalistic hippies. And that’s fine. They wallow in the fact that they are Internet rebels and I greatly enjoy their bizarre style. The result of their bold approach is ridiculous but purposeful...Read more from this review--John S. Rhodes, Dr. Dobb's Journal -- Dr. Dobb's Journal

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Sybex Inc; Pap/Cdr edition (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078212187X
• ISBN-13: 978-0782121872
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #367,360 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good romp, January 22, 2000

By	sfsurfergirl (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

What better way to learn & appreciate good site design than by looking at what is faulty/sucks? The writers are opinionated as hell, but that's part of the fun in reading this book. It's slick, comes with a CD-Rom and offers useful stuff for your own site. But if you're looking for something less "humorous", the better choice would be Desiging Web Usability, by Jakob Nielson.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful (and fun) book on web design, September 27, 2000

By	John "John" (PHOENIX, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

Of the 3 or 4 web page design books that I've purchased this one is the best by far. Be examining the common mistakes people make when putting together a web site the authors illustrate good web page design principles. They use examples from actual commercial sites on the web, telling you what's wrong with them and what they did right. The writing style is light and the book is full of humor (what did you expect with a title like that). However, don't let this fool you into thinking that the book doesn't have any "meat" in it. While the authors are designers by background, they also seem to know a lot of the technical aspects about the web. They cover the latest technologies (as of 1998) and tell you how to use them. More importantly, they tell you when not to use them.

These guys definitely feel that it's best to avoid "bleeding edge" techniques. They are also advocate the principle of keeping things simple. Many the sites that they think "suck" are one with an overuse of animation, strange colors, or flashy techniques. They also point out sites that may look good on one browser at one resolution but may look terrible when viewed on another -- then they show you how to avoid this problem.

It appears as though their target audience is someone that is designing a site for commercial purposes. This book was not specifically intended for the person putting together a family web page. That being said, I think that anyone that's designing for the web will learn a great deal by reading this book.

My only criticism for this book is that it probably needs to be updated. It is currently a couple of years old and some technologies have change since it was written.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A waste of your precious money and time, July 20, 1999

By A Customer

This book is simply a waste of your money. I bought this based off of the other reviews on amazon.com. This book just gets too repetitive. All this book tells you is to keep the size of your web pages down.

MAYBE this book might be a useful resource for a person who is also purchasing an HTML book and if they have NO experience whatsover. Even if you have made 2 pages you already know everything in this book.

This book does one thing that is annoying: It blabs and blabs about all the boring unimportant stuff, and when it comes to something important like choosing colors combinationg, it gives you a link to some site and says "this is a good resource". If it is so good, why isn't it in the book????

Sure it shows you what is wrong on some pages, but most of it is common sense. What I believed this book would have is how to layout your page, what kind of colors and graphics to use and such to make your page look professional. This book doesnt do any of that. A lot of the book's content is on their website.

If you have any sense go for a different book. If there is a book out there called "BOOKS THAT SUCK", boy does this book belong in there. This is definetaly a huge dissapointment. Instead of reading this, go out and look at other websites and practice making em. You will land out far ahead.

The only instance in which this book might be OK is if you are completely new to web page design. If you have any experience this book wont help you make professional loooking pages. Look elsewhere for that.