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The Art and Science of Web Design is attractive and well-written, but it feels like a blast from the past. In the 1995-1996 era, when web development tools were primitive and most web sites were being built by programmers using ASCII text editors, books like The Art and Science of Web Design were commonplace and, indeed, sorely needed. They provided an overview of interactive design principles along with basic information about use of colors, page organization, browser compatibility, managing image file download times, and the like. In the modern era where virtually all non-trivial web sites are built by web professionals using sophisticated tools and templates and are generated dynamically from databases using an application server, these books with pictures of scruffy-looking "creatives" on the cover are just an anachronism.
Because this book was so well designed and produced, and I enjoyed looking at the colorful examples gleaned from web sites world-wide, I did stick with the book from cover to cover in the hope that some useful take-home message would eventually emerge. But The Art and Science of Web Design left me with the same sensation as a copy of Vanity Fair, or for that matter, watching an episode of Friends - a pleasant enough diversion, but ultimately nothing but empty calories. FrontPage and DreamWeaver are mentioned only in passing, more complex web site or e-commerce development packages are not discussed at all, and database-driven content is described only in terms of the author's home-grown FileMaker Pro solution for formatting static HTML pages. It's time for publishers to retire this entire category of books and move on.
-- Ray Duncan ray.duncan@cshs.org
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