The book begins the presentation of its helpful and forward-looking advice with a discussion of the overall process of defining the objectives and users of your Web site, as well as the goals you will use to measure your progress. The authors then use time-tested, traditional print concepts to clearly illustrate how to make your site interface welcoming and efficient. High- quality illustrations show how to design for overall style and professional appeal. The sections on typography and editorial style set this manual apart from many Web style guides with attention to the fine details that separate the good sites from the great.

Multimedia elements and cascading style sheets (CSS)are covered but within the overall context of building a fine site--not with the usual hype. Media compression and delivery are addressed at a high level with concrete suggestions on formats, frame rates and image sizes for a well-balanced approach to multimedia.

One of the great things about using this guide is that the actual site it is based on is available. You can read about a thoughtfully-written topic and then go online to see the concepts in action. Web Style Guide delivers some of the most holistic coverage of site design you'll find. --Stephen W. Plain, amazon.com

For the most part, the information and techniques detailed in this in this book are either outdated, irrelevant, obvious or just wrong, and in some areas, a sick combination of the above is unleashed upon you. Which is unpleasant.


Excellent web design overview   January 3, 2004
 8 out of 9 found this review helpful

This book provides an excellent overview of basic design guidelines, for anyone working or wanting to work within the industry. Its common sense, no nonsense style makes it easy to read, yet extremely informative. It covers everything you need to design effective web sites. This includes typography, grid systems, navigation design and content. Its nicely illustarted with examples of good and bad web design.

This is the book to buy if you are studying web design. Forget about Tay Vaughn, borrow Jakob Neilsen from the library, buy this book. You'll refer to it again and again.


Excellent short and sweet without compromising   August 19, 2000
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

A very good write up on designing and laying out a website. No extra detailed complaints about how bad some websites are and just enough to get the message across without boring me to death.

I am building my own amatuer website and this helped a great deal. Explaining the reason for doing something and then telling you how to go about it. I don't mean how to do it technically but being aware of the limitations of the web as a communication medium.

This book is short enough so that you can whiz through it and get down to the more time consuming stuff of actually building the site. Yet detailed enough to provide the relevant information.

I bought "Designing Web Usability" by Jacob Nielsen too. Sure, it looks prettier compared to the black and white of "Web Style Guide" but they say similar things with "Designing Web Usability" just being a book with more colourful examples. I would imagine most netheads would have surfed enough sites by now so that colourful examples are not strictly necessary.