Visual Design for the Modern Web
While the title of this book refers to the "Modern Web", the content of the book uses very outdated techniqes. While it gets a five out of five from me for what to consider in your design, it gets zero out of five for how to implement that design. Of course the what and the how are not equally important and so that doesn't result in a rating of two and a half.
My Rating: 
Pros
- Good coverage of both the analysis and design phases of creating a web site
- Covers all of the essential areas that need to be considered
Cons
- Suggests "sniffing the browser" to resolve browser differences, something that was never the right approach.
- Discusses IE on Mac when IE has been a Windows only browser now for over five years
- Discusses the importance of brand recognition and then uses as examples of good branding a list of companies that I've never heard of.
- Suggests using tables for layout - something that even the person who first thought of it now admits is the wrong approach. Also uses spacer gifs with the table - a really antiquated approach
- Does not understand the difference between HTML and XHTML
Description
- First Edition: Copyright 2008
- 352 page paperback
- Published by New Riders
- ISBN 0-321-51538-2
- Author Penny McIntire
Review
This book reminds me of Joe Burn's book "HTML Goodies". In both cases the author has been thrown in the deep end to teach a subject that they know nothing about and has had to learn as they go. In both cases they have used what appears to work rather than learning the right way to do it. In both cases they have written a book about what they have learnt. In both cases the approach that they have taken to coding is far from being the right way. Joe's book is now looked on as a good set of examples of how not to code a web page. Perhaps Penny's book will end up being looked at the same way.
In some ways this is unfortunate because Penny seems to really understand what needs to be taken into account in both the analysis and design phases of creating web sites and is only let down in the area of how to implement the design. The word "Modern" in the title is certainly a misnomer when you consider that many of the techniques presented were considered to be outdated several years ago.
I will admit that unlike most of the books that I review where I read the book through from cover to cover, I only got about a third of the way through this one and so perhaps the rest of the book is better. Unfortunately the first part of the book contained so much wrong information that I just couldn't bring myself to read any further.
