While an excellent book, it is certainly not for anyone intermediate or above. This book has less to do with examples and more to do with user experience, and compatibility issues, most of which are not as prevalent as the used to be, since nowadays compatibility issues are summed up as code for Opera/Firefox (and other standards compliant browsers) then fix for IE. The book doesn't have alot of examples and to be honest there are plenty of websites that cover the same material. So this book is good for beginners, that are concerned with usability and not so much about code. (and don't want to spend hours on the web searching for the same material)

However, it's a good starting point for beginners. This is not a book for intermediate or advanced designers as the material will seem obvious. For beginners he gives a good soft introduction to basic concepts so you'll wind up having an idea of which direction to go after you finish the book. He also introduces you to basic terminology and practices. When you're just starting out, you don't know what to ask because you don't know the terms.

Given all that, I would not pay full retail price. It's not exactly a value packed book. I read it in 3 days, so I'd buy it on discount. It's not worth retail.

By his own accounting, Jeffrey Veen is an "internationally sought-after speaker, author and design strategist" but more so, he's good at cobbling together a bunch of rather trite and obvious observations about web design, and packaging them up in an expensive book with his face on the cover.

The writing is sometimes unforgiveably awful: "Good designers are harnessing the technology available to them and using it to encode the process they use to do good design." I just wish Veen had harnessed some of that technology to do good writing.

Add to that bad copyediting: Veen recalls glory days at his "alma matter". And he tells us that the book is not a reference manual or even a style guide. "Rather it (sic) a mentor..." Maybe so, but it a sloppily written and edited mentor.

Now, it's hopelessly out of date as well. Get Steve Krug's book instead.

Is a four-year old book about one of the most rapidly changing phenomena in the modern world worth reading? Well, it all depends what you already know.

"Guru" is a word often attached to Veen who is known in the Internet community as a consultant and lecturer. In this book he offers his views on what was, at the time of publication, cutting edge issues in web design. After providing a review of the growth of the Web, he urges consistency in construction and a clear articulation of structure in the design of web sites. He feels that the building of top quality websites requires a deep understanding of technique, well beyond simple coding. He explains the real problems of the "browser wars" for designers and users, and the importance of speed in downloading websites. Veen suggests that advertising can be more effectively integrated into Websites and finally suggests a process to allow the creation of websites on-the-fly that will allow the designer to keep up with an ever-increasing pace of use.

Most of the time Veen tries to take a long view of web design, dealing more with what the web should be doing rather then telling the reader "how-to". But when necessary to make his point, Veen can get into code, as he does when describing how to make liquid page layouts or construct a dynamic Web site.

Veen's writing is direct and simple and I always was surprised when I reached the end of a chapter at how quickly it had come. The technical aspects are not overwhelming, even to non-coders, although some knowledge of HTML and script writing, while not essential, will make it easier to comprehend.

A lot of what Veen talks about has already become standard practice. He urges the use of Cascading Style Sheets, which at the time of writing, were the cutting edge. Dreamweaver MX 2004, the most popular full featured program for building web sites not only uses Cascading Style Sheets but also sometimes has to be told when not to use them. And Dreamweaver also has the interfaces for the quick construction of dynamic web sites.

On the other hand, given some of the big commercial web sites that I've seen, a lot of web designers still need to understand the importance of consistency, speed and concern for the user that Veen urges.

If you are a heavy-duty programmer, most of the techniques that Veen promotes will be old hat (or should be) but his philosophical approach to the web might still be useful to you. On the other hand, if you are out there building your own web site, to support some other activity that is your main concern, the goals that Veen suggests for your website are unlikely to have been emphasized in your effort to learn technique. Moreover, learning about some of the more advanced approaches might help you to build a site that's special.

I started making web pages back in the dark ages of 1996. In 1999 I was making streamlined web apps for Franklin that my coworkers and I used to make on the fly calculaitons and data lookups. Eventually, I was a staff web developer at schwab in san francisco and in tokyo, japan. I had heard of Jacob Nielson at useit.com, but only after using thousands of web pages and making hundreds of web pages myself and making dozens of web apps did I come across Jeffrey Veen's book "The Art and Science of Web Design." I cringed when I read that he wrote to avoid using images when you can use text. Everything seemed to be agains the grain and I felt like I was swimming up river as I read what Veen was writing, but only after years of experience have I learned to respect Mr. Veen and his infinite wisdom. A web site is only good if it achieves its purpose, which is access to information. And this occurs only through a site that possesses speed, simplicty, and clarity. Download speed is the most important, and meeting the user's expectations. A simple design that works is worth a bucket of gold. Only after making countless web pages have I finally taken Veen's philosophy to heart - make the web site simple and fast and don't dwell on the unnecessary frivolous pretty gifs and clutter that predominates on so many web pages. Simplicity. Speed. Clarity.
I hope that Jeffrey Veen writes another book. I highly recommend this book.
It's like Jeffrey Veen is a Web Philospher, and everything he wrote in the book is true, though for those raised on photoshop and obsessed with glossy web pages, it's hard to swallow the truth sometimes - less really is more. Make the site fast and make it simple.