[.ca] Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates (ISBN 1584503653)

From Amazon.com:
Clint Eccher has designed professional Web sites for seven years and now makes some of his designs available as templates through his own site (A5design.com) and with his new book, Professional Web Design. You get 50 templates (each of which features home and second-level pages) and careful instructions on how to adapt them for your own use. Along the way, Eccher offers sound advice on good Web design practices; a little bit about HTML, cascading style sheets, and JavaScript; a look at JPEGs and GIFs; and some insight into "comping" (sketching) a site design for the client's approval. For the most part, however, this book addresses just those aspects of Web design that readers will need to know in order to successfully utilize the templates. These are designed as "mortised" sites; that is, they are built with nested tables and sliced GIF/JPEG combinations, the kind of design made easy with the advent of Adobe's ImageReady and Macromedia's Fireworks. Although this is not a how-to about using those applications or about creating such sites from scratch, Eccher does help readers learn how to debug and otherwise adjust the source code in order to successfully implement the designs. In addition to trial versions of the major applications, the CD-ROM also contains the JavaScript Cookbook and HTML/CSS Developer's Resource Guide, which provide lots of cut-and-paste source code for all kinds of features (games, sounds, pop-up messages) that can be added to a Web page. One caveat: despite the templates, this book is too detailed for beginners. For those with some experience, and especially for developers who lack design skills and like the A5design style, this book amounts to an intensive Clint Eccher brain-picking seminar. He offers a few tricks that can be applied to any design (like his tips on how to drastically reduce file sizes) and some good general advice (for example, "Do not get attached to the work" because a client may just decide against it). --Angelynn Grant

Visually stunning but...:
All the designs are heavily mortised, require a LOT of nested tables, and are mainly geared toward content-heavy sites with extensive menus. (For those of us who think that paying hundreds of dollars of Photoshop is ridiculous when Paint Shop Pro does the same for 1/6 the cost, be warned the templates are Photoshop-centric.) As someone already said, these are visually stunning examples, but very tables-intensive which can be time-consuming to edit/code and may be problematic for impaired site visitors who rely on web-reading technology. For the dozen or so examples (and their variations), decide for yourself if inspiration is worth the cost.

Strong, basic coding practices:
Apparently, one of the reviewers doesn't know much about coding sites so that they're compatible with all browsers. Using CSS is NOT the guaranteed way to design. I found this book very helpful in understanding how to design a site that satisfies everyone. I tried using CSS to layout sites, but it, unforutnately, is not supported consistently throughout the internet. While I was impressed by the designs, I want to correct this misunderstanding. I know because I've wasted too much time working with the "latest" technology.

Highly Recommended Book for your Bookshelf:
I have an intermediate knowledge of HTML, some CSS, and javascript. I know a little bit about photo editing (with Paint Shop Pro 7). I was looking for a webpage design book that wouldn't overwhelm me with hoards of technical code, or tons of eye candy and graphic designs I couldn't do without having to take a 12 month course in Photoshop. This book was JUST what I was looking for! It starts by briefly discussing changes in web design over the years as well as refreshing your memory of table and css code that's used throughout the book and in the 50 designs included in the cd. Then, it goes on to explain what mortising is, without boring you with endless babble, and why you should apply it in your designs. At this point, the author has made his case and then proceeds with teaching you how to do it. There's plenty of examples, source code, as well as tips on how to use certain aspects of Photoshop to do everything in the book. (Perfect for me since I had never used PS). 50 designs + source code/files + referrence books + trial software = icing on the cake! Worth every penny! Get this now!

Great! Visual Designs, Bad, Bad Coding Practices:
The designs in this book are visually terrific! However, as a web developer, my advice to you is: The best way to use the book is to use the visual ideas, simplify them and ignore the author's table design and coding practices. They are not STANDARDS COMPLAINT and do not represent "best practices" that have been developed in web design and development. Nesting tables, as this author does, for example, is what everyone USED to do before building sites with valid Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and HTML became the industry standard. Why is this important? Building non-standard/complaint websites costs the client a LOT of money in wasted development time, makes changing or updating sites much more difficult, and creates sites that are hard or impossible for people with disabilities to use. This author builds fast loading pages, but the pages would be even faster if the author used current practices. Use his excellent visuals, but learn to do excellent page coding and development, as well.

Designing at its finest:
This book also introduced me to so many things i had no idea about. I think the whole idea of comps and slicing psd. images for use in dreamweaver is superb .It enables one to create visually appealing page designs shapes and layouts. I have actually used several of the templates on the CD-ROM to layout some projects i have been working on.Those roll-over menus are quite customizable also.They are very impressive do well to check out his site also... Clint Eccher did a great job. go get it...now!