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Publisher:
Hayden Books
Author: David Siegel
ISBN: 1-56830-382-3
Publication Date: Sept. 97
Retail Price: $49.99
When David Siegel speaks...people listen. And when he writes, people read. At least I do. I remember when David's most popular and famous book, Creating Killer Web Sites, came out. David was relatively unknown, and his now-famous technique, the single-pixel GIF, was also relatively obscure.
David is known by some as the person who single-handedly bastardized the Web. Well, maybe Netscape had something to do with that result, but David managed to get a few good swings in. His ideas enabled the Web developer to create Web pages which were not limited to flat, boring straight structures, or Web pages which ended up looking like a printed page from a textbook. The single-pixel GIF enabled the developer to be able to control where text and images started and stopped on the page.
With the release of his book, "third-generation Web sites" started appearing all over the Web, and a star was born. His newest book, Secrets of Successful Web Sites, takes a close look at some of the most successful sites on the Web, and shows the developer how to mimic their successes and bypass their failures.
The book covers aspects of 15 successful sites, including National Geographic, Salon, and Woman's Wire. The history of the sites are discussed, as are the design and methodology of the developer. David discusses the goals of the site's creators, the pitfalls of the site, and the eventual outcome. Screen shots of the various sites are included, detailing the methods behind the madness.
The next section of Secrets of Successful Web Sites is a detailed methodology of how to go about creating your own successful Web site, focusing on design, setup, and the phases of development, including strategy, tactics, content development, production, launch and maintenance.
Whether you're a developer of professional Web sites, or just host the "Jim's Hobbies" Web site, you owe it to yourself to do the best job you can. While this book won't give you any "magic spells" which will propell your site into stardom, it will give you tips and techniques which you can apply to your own site to make it more successful and popular. I'm hoping that the developers of the Web will realize that David's "bastardization" has resulted in a the birth of a new medium--namely, the Web, which is not just a poor imitation of print.
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