[.ca] Art and Science of Web Design, The (ISBN 0789723700)

From Amazon.com:
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

The Veen Factor:
I started making web pages back in the dark ages of 1996. In 1999 I was making streamlined web apps for Franklin that my coworkers and I used to make on the fly calculaitons and data lookups. Eventually, I was a staff web developer at schwab in san francisco and in tokyo, japan. I had heard of Jacob Nielson at useit.com, but only after using thousands of web pages and making hundreds of web pages myself and making dozens of web apps did I come across Jeffrey Veen's book "The Art and Science of Web Design." I cringed when I read that he wrote to avoid using images when you can use text. Everything seemed to be agains the grain and I felt like I was swimming up river as I read what Veen was writing, but only after years of experience have I learned to respect Mr. Veen and his infinite wisdom. A web site is only good if it achieves its purpose, which is access to information. And this occurs only through a site that possesses speed, simplicty, and clarity. Download speed is the most important, and meeting the user's expectations. A simple design that works is worth a bucket of gold. Only after making countless web pages have I finally taken Veen's philosophy to heart - make the web site simple and fast and don't dwell on the unnecessary frivolous pretty gifs and clutter that predominates on so many web pages. Simplicity. Speed. Clarity. I hope that Jeffrey Veen writes another book. I highly recommend this book. It's like Jeffrey Veen is a Web Philospher, and everything he wrote in the book is true, though for those raised on photoshop and obsessed with glossy web pages, it's hard to swallow the truth sometimes - less really is more. Make the site fast and make it simple.

There ARE better books out there:
I was disappointed by Veen's book. It seemed very banal, because, to me, he just appeared to be giving his opinion on a bunch of sites, and what was even worse, some of those "favorites" no longer exist. I would only suggest this book for the most novice of web designers, and not someone who's been "in the game" for a while.

One made for Dog-ears:
Here's a book that's sitting on my desk and it's going to be there for good long time. I mark it up. A few weeks later I come back and look again. Good writers give you that. Yes, even about technical subjects, good writers deliver. This will be one of my dog-eared ones. The graphics are done so well that I almost feel bad about marking it up. Colored tabs on each chapter make it easy to get back to particular sections. Screen shots of leading web sites are used generously when he's trying to make a general point of design. Full scripting to cover the examples under discussion are provided, in part, and then brought together as a whole. Well-developed and simple figures are used to make specific points. Each chapter contains several side-bars and other sections covering related information to the main. The level of writing is aimed for someone with beginning level skills, but goes quickly to the more technical issues without leaving the reader behind. When Mr. Veen is leaving out information, as when he sidesteps error trapping for active pages, he points it out. The writing flows smoothly around what could easily be an unorganized collection of confusing hyper text jargon. I found myself reading through a section to find a quick answer to something I was working on, only to end up engrossed for an hour or more. One of the most valuable parts of this book is the experience Mr. Veen brings to his discussions. "When I started out in this business years ago my first job was, in essence, to be a human Perl script," he states at one point before going on to describe how he, and others, went on to solve the problems of high maintenance sites. In another area he describes the business of information architecture and how it could mean success or failure for sites seeking to make a profit. For those of us who are seeking to make our way in the world of web design, few lessons could provide the knowledge that is presented here in clear and concise language.

For people who loves to think !:
I'm enjoying this smart book by Jeffrey Veen. He knows a lot about the "inside" of web development and gives you an organized vision of the process. Usually we tend to read more about the how to (how to master sofware, etc) than the why, but as I'm seeing, the more you understand the why, more you could master and control your webs and results. For serious web designers!

Comprehensive--but not exhaustive--overview of the Web:
This is what a former college professor of mine from Nebraska probably would have called a "Platte River" book--i.e., "a mile wide and an inch deep." That's a bit of an overstatement, however, as it does go into depth in some areas while it skims the surface of others. But the book couldn't have been exhaustive, as each chapter is worthy of a book unto itself. If you know everything there is to know about the art and science of Web design, then you're probably not looking to buy this book anyway. But if you're interested in the history of the Web and how it evolved, how it fits into our 21st century lives, its potential, its limitations, its assets, and its pitfalls, then this is a book for you. For me, its value was giving the Web a context, and focusing on Web design as a discipline distinct from other media, such as print matter and television. By examining the Web and what it can and can't do, Web designers can put their work in perspective, exploit the Web's possibilities, and stop trying to make it do things it was never intended to. I recommend it to Web designers and developers at all levels, but beware: as a couple of other reviewers have mentioned, the typos are insufferable almost to the point of distraction. You'll want to mark it up and send it back to the publisher for corrections.