The Art and Science of Web Design (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When it comes to Web design, style guides are often too boring and predictable to capture the attention of caffeine-riddled Web developers. But not The Art & Science of Web Design; this book strategically equips readers to design sites effectively.

Jeffrey Veen, an established design guru and one of the creators of HotWired.com, has authored a carefully structured look into the undercurrents of Web design. Organized around the key development topics, the book is laden with a historical background of standards, features, and trends. Yet the topics are timeless and core to good Web engineering, so it's space well spent. The mix of expert opinion and historical explanation creates a well-rounded reader experience.

Issues such as interface consistency are explored within the unique paradigm of the Web, with the assistance of a sidebar to explain what "above the fold" means. Performance is discussed with an unusual twist: the current constraint on Web-browsing performance is actually good since it fosters creativity and more elegant design and development. This, beyond the usual design tips, is what makes this book special. Art & Science stays at a reasonably high altitude, dwelling not on the fine details of browser compatibility but rather on the key areas designers need to be concerned about. With his years of experience and knowledge of the legacy of traditional publishing, Veen has provided a great perspective on the dicey work of Web designers. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• Technology history (publishing, presentation model)
• Interface consistency
• Site structure
• Interactivity and self-aware content
• Browsers
• Performance
• Web advertising
• Database-driven content

Product Description

The Art & Science of Web Design will help you understand the Web from the inside. It is structured around core Web concepts that often get only a passing mention in books on Web design. This book is not a reference book or a style guide. It is your mentor, whispering in your ear all the answers to those ubiquitous questions, and reminding us that there are now new rules and new ways to break them.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 1 edition (December 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789723700
• ISBN-13: 978-0789723703
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #799,686 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice to look at, but verbose and messy, November 23, 2001

By	S. Dutton "Sam Dutton" (London, England United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A disappointment, given the author's guru reputation and the five star reviews here at Amazon.

All in all, an incoherent series of essays with no clear message and little practical advice, badly edited and badly proofread (a typo on every other page -- check out the bullet points on page 17) with umpteen unenlightening screenshots and illustrations ("Code", "Word" and "Pictures" in circles joined by a triangle -- hey! they're connected!)

It's too basic for techies (readers are advised to give alternatives when specifying font names...) but too cryptic for the novice or general reader ("Just as a good classification system will spawn prediction in information retrieval, a good integration structure will do the same with services" - -huh?)

The general-reader stuff is padded out with platitudes ("The Web may be growing fast, but its foundation stretches back through years..."), the nuts-and-bolts sections are far too specific to be useful (several pages are devoted to an IE-only method of dynamically resizing headlines, which is pretty questionable anyway) and most of the last chapter is taken up with ASP code for a specific database application.

The author also has an irritating predilection for long-winded tangential analogies (three paragraphs describing how David Copperfield uses diversionary tactics to do his magic) and unnecessary long words like "disambiguate", "heuristics" and "deconstruct".

Far better alternatives are Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think!, any of the O'Reilly Web books or Jakob Nielsen's website (...)

52 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb book by a design master, January 10, 2001

By	Andrew B. King (Ann Arbor, MI United States) - See all my reviews

Jeffrey Veen is on a mission to make the Web a better place. His latest book, "The Art & Science of Web Design," came from a need he saw for a higher-level view of Web design: "I looked around at what Web design books were available, and saw a hole in the market." Veen was Executive Interface Director for Wired Digital, and the man behind Webmonkey, HotWired, and HotBot's designs.

For many of you, reading this book will be an "aha" experience. According to Veen, Web design is no longer logos and layouts, it now takes a multidisiplinary approach, with elements of information architecture, programming, and of course design. Veen says: "The line between design and programming is getting more and more blurry." The rare few who stretch beyond their comfort zones and learn these other disciplines can become design masters. Jeffrey Veen is such a person.

It's a different kind of Web design book. Veen doesn't dwell on technical details, he guides you towards more elegant solutions. He provides ways you can find the best solutions (interfaces etc.) through the use of heuristic usability and pattern matching, rather than the tedious testing promoted by the likes of Jakob Nielsen. It's a new design philosophy really, a more fluid approach with "intelligent content that can figure out how to display itself correctly" created from dynamic publishing systems (databases and scripted templates).

And Veen makes it look easy. Veen's final chapter on "Object- Oriented Publishing" ties it all together with a great example of a database-backed scripted template (using ASP) front-end to a church's sermon respository. He whipped the site up on his hard drive using low-cost tools, and shows how easy it can be to create a consistent look site-wide, lower maintenance costs, and easily add new "views" of your data. The benefit of separating presentation from content is that your site can more easily adapt to changing standards, and formats. Want a WAP feed? No problem, query the database with a different template, or even an XSL style sheet.

The days of large static sites are numbered. Going to "dynamic publishing" using a database gives your company a strategic advantage over your competition, as you can publish content faster, and change designs and formats much more efficiently. Your site comes alive.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big Yellow Face, January 15, 2001

By	Lance Arthur (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

The cover..., not because Mr. Veen does not own a serviceable countenance, but because it doesn't clue the prospective reader in on the wealth of useful Web interface-related junk inside.

"Junk" is used in its most positive form, of course, as related to the effusive collection of diverse material Veen attempts -- and succeeds -- to convey in his color-coded pages. He's all over the place as he gathers together everything there is to say about Web design through copious color illustrations (one on almost every page, for those who count such things) without actually giving step-by-step instructions.

In other words, this is a lengthy, but easy-to-read, explanation of concepts and best-practices rather than a "if you want to produce a mouseover, here's the JavaScript you'll need" sort of book. It isn't about how to do things when considering your Web site design options, but rather why you should do things.

Ultimately, 'The Art & Science of Web Design' manages to provide lots of great examples of both what is right and what is wrong with current thinking regarding the balance of useability and pretty pictures, the so-called "laws" of use (which are sometimes overzealously applied) and one man's rather well-reasoned opinions and well-researched facts concerning how people use the Web, and how Web sites need to adapt to those principles.