Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design
| Vincent Flanders (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Judging from their cover art and photographs, you might think that the authors are morons. You would be quite wrong. They arent morons, theyre oxymorons -- they look and sound like nutty, capitalistic hippies. And thats 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
- Publisher : Sybex Inc (March 1, 1998)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 266 pages
- ISBN-10 : 078212187X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0782121872
- Item Weight : 1.81 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.25 x 0.75 x 10.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,411,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,148 in Internet & Telecommunications
- #16,500 in Internet & Social Media
- #20,037 in Computer Science (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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If you're looking for HTML code, this is not the book for you. If you're an experienced designer, you need this book to remind you that among other things, most still use slow dial-up modems, not broadband, not everyone has nor wants another plug-in, not everyone browses with JavaScript or even images turned on. If you're a novice thinking of starting a site or hiring a web page designer, you need this book to realize not all that is high tech is good.
It goes beyond telling you about what to do by showing you real examples of what not to do. Basically, anything a commercial site puts between their potential customer and what they want sucks. Easily dismissed by some as outdated and useless, this content is actually timeless. Why? Because no matter how far technology allows the average user to go, some designer will push far beyond the limits of the intended audience.
This book will show you the difference between content and techno-gimmicks. Walk the fine line between ego and usability. Learn from others' mistakes before they become your own. A good site does not have to be flashy to be the best at what it does. Also, they will show you sites that don't suck, such as Amazon.com.
Son of Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design
Still stuck in the previous century - waste of time and $.
The design mistakes that Flanders still tries to point out these days on his web site are as dated as his books from the previous century that are now on sale at Amazon.com at reduced price. Even older versions of the `dummies series equivalent' have better information than Flanders books. Flanders books contain pages of endless indexing / navigation and repetitive advice, exactly what he objects to with web design and calls "Mystery Meat Navigation".
From his current website it's clear that this "Guru' is still stuck in the previous century. On his website Flanders still uses rotating animated "new"' tags, not once but 6 times, and that is something that I have not seen for a long time on the web anywhere.
On his mediocre forum web site where she shoots from his hip, depending on his mood as he acknowledges, lacks color and substance and it is a grey and dull as a funeral parlor including a few of his regular forum `contributors' that whine like Statler and Waldorf, the oldies on the balcony in the Muppet show. All moan but no advice.
Noticeable it is a selective small group of around five `contributors', with no links to their own website or work to show for, that make nearly the same comments over and over. One wonders if these `contributors' are not all and the same person that cannot be tracked to their design work.
Worse, Flanders uses `Google Ad Sense' advertisement right in your face.
The worst advice that a consultant can give you is to have this kind of ugly spying advertisement practices on your web site that takes a while to load while figuring out your personal IP address, and by then most users have already clicked away from such a web site.
Warning! Once you have clicked on these nasty ads they follow you on to other sites that you visit. Flanders must be that desperate for the income from advertisement click money? Now don't tell me that this has a design purpose... Don't be sucked in to by clicking on these nasty ads!
The `guru' himself lacks all creativity and knowledge to design a layout himself. Or he is afraid to fail himself or to tight to contract it out to his many designer-forum contributors because he uses a template freely available on the web ([...]) with minor adjustments by "The Master' himself in the site's HTML source code to spy on and to track his visitors.
Validating the coding of FLANDERS website, which he advises his clients to do in his books to make them search engine friendly and to achieve high rankings, produced 17 ERRORS and 15 WARNINGS when tested with the W3C HTML Markup validation service.
[...]
In the W3C CSS validation service his forum web site home page produced 8 ERRORS and a WHOPPING 606 WARNINGS for esthetic mistakes.
(TESTED MAY 2010).
Flanders will probably come up with the excuse that this is all done on purpose.
Overall, it is an entertaining book to read, filled with puns and tons of hilarious commentary. Example, "I realize pornography is a touchy subject for many people."
However, for better and more direct information try reading "Don't make me think" by Steven Krug, "HTML, XHTML, and CSS" by Rob Huddleston or searching "website designs tips" on a search engine.
Here are some tips from the book:
- Content is king not design. Therefore never sacrifice content for design.
- Images and links should have a text alternative.
- Updating your content is insanely important!
- When designing answer this. "Why would anyone want to visit my site a second or third time?"
- Build a relationship with your clients, because it's 5 times easier selling to existing customers than to new.

