Comments about O'Reilly Media Designing Web Interfaces:

If you are a web designer or developer with expert coding
experience, then this book can be a handy reference. This book
is full of current pattern options where the authors, Bill
Scott and Theresa Neil thoroughly go through each example into
easy to read detail that include plenty of graphics. They go
into great detail comparing which patterns work well and why
other options do not.

If you are someone starting out with web design, this book can
still be an asset to your library. It doesn't tell you how to
code but it does give insight on how sites are built and why
they are built in a certain fashion.

As a graphic designer coming from the print world and a novice
to the web side of design, I picked up some good insight from
this book. It helps when planning a site and discussing options
when working with a programmer.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Designing Web Interfaces:

Reviewer: Dave Roman, GCPCUG member

This book has 14 chapters, but they are only sub divisions of a different type of classification. The book is about interaction design on the web. They have divided this book up into six principles and since they took this approach I am going to review the principles.

Principle One _ Make It Direct

What does that mean? This is covered in three chapters. They discuss direct in-page editing of content, moving objects around directly with the mouse (drag and drop), and applying actions to directly selected objects.

Principle Two _ Keep It Lightweight

This area discusses Contextual Tools

Principle Three _ Stay on the Page

Here they discuss ways to keep the user on the page including overlays, Inlays, Virtual Pages and Process Flow

Principal Four _ Provide an Invitation

This area talks about providing an invitation to the user in a number of forms. Static invitations are offered on the page using visual techniques to invite interaction. Dynamic invitations come into play in response to what and where the user is interacting.

Principal Five _ Use Transitions

This area could be entitled "Pay Attention" because it IS about getting your attention using movement and transition. They discuss transition patterns like "brighten and dim", "expand and collapse", "Self-Healing Fade", "Animation" and "spotlight".

Then they go to the purpose of transition. What is the reason for using these powerful effects and where they are most effective.

Principle Six _ React Immediately

This is all about what happens immediately after each interaction with the system. There should be an immediate reaction paired with the user's action. The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable time and is called Latency Reduction.

They first talk about lookup patterns and then feedback patterns.

The web is constantly changing, so the authors provide sites to keep you up to date, one of which is http://designingwebinterfaces.com

It's a long book, but does a good job explaining what takes place in an interactive website. This is not a coding book, but more like a combination of the psychology of a web site and how to use this knowledge to make it easier for the user and also make it easier to buy a product or find the information they are looking for.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Designing Web Interfaces:

A very good book!

The authors have done good research. The six principles are various modern UI concepts. The book is full with clear and good examples, useful guidelines are frequent followed after an example, and the matrix for drag-and-drop is really great!