In less than 220 pages, this book covers the functional aspects of Web design in a well structured and concise manner. In that sense, it is tailor made for the project manager with all essential elements and no superfluous details. You will become familiar with: interface design, site design, page design, typography, editorial style, Web graphics and multimedia.
Your specific work environment will dictate if you need additional Web design knowledge. At the management level, this book will probably provide all you need to know. At the Web production level, you will obtain a global understanding allowing you to properly select specific areas to further your level of knowledge.
The technically oriented or the novice should first acquire some basic knowledge of Web Publishing (HTML, Web graphics, servers, browsers, etc.) to make the best use of this book. As a suggestion, the book entitled "Learning Web Design" by Jennifer Niederst (ISBN 0-596-00484-2) is an excellent starting point.
Jean C. Ducharme, PMP

It's disappointing to read all the negative reviews of what I think is a very good book. I think many reviewers lack the understanding of just what constitutes a style guide, so I am going to give my best definition of what a style guide is. Style guides, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, are more concerned with good journalistic practices than graphic design, covering such topics as how to treat page titles, the proper attributing of an author, how to construct footnotes, the importance of dating articles, consistent nomenclature, the consistent use of language, and other important but admittedly dry topics. In almost all cases these things will influence graphic design, and some *very* basic, but in my opinion very good, graphic design information is covered. Also covered, to a fairly high level of detail, is information on graphic format and web color, navigation, and basic usability issues. What this book does not cover, and what one should not expect from a style guide, are examples of cutting-edge design, or information on current design trends (or what many of us think of when we thing of "style"). I think all graphic designers would do well to head the advice in this book, and think that most good graphic designers already do, and are probably already familiar with the information presented here. Obviously designers that know the rules usually break them with better results than those that don't. I think most designers will appreciate this book. If you are looking for an example of really cool, award-winning Websites, try the magazine Communication Arts, especially their Interactive Annual. If you are looking for a great book to introduce you to the basics, I haven't found a better book than this.

To sum up:

"Style" means "cool" to most of us. Try Communication Arts Interactive Annual for exaples of current, award-winning "style".

A "Style Guide" is an explaination of common conventions for a given medium. For an example of a good "Style Guide", get this book.

Whether you're new to web design, an old hand, putting together a personal or hobbyist site, or charged with developing a website out of thin are for an employer or organization, this book is an essential resource. (Of course, you can read all the chapters on the affiliated website, but if you want to have a book to hold in your hand, this one's a good choice.) The authors go through the basic elements of site design, weaving in design theory along the way (in a way anyone can understand) and providing examples for the web design conventions they refer to. As a writer and editor, I've relied heavily on Strunk & White. Moving from print design into web design, I've looked for a resource that would serve to help me make the transition. This book fits the bill.

I recommend this book to anyone who is a designer for the web or publishing industry. I bought this book to start as a class requirement. I didn't know what to expect at first, but as I was reading through the book I found this book to be very helpful. It really covers all areas of basic design and it's useful for all designers, especially for starters. The fundamentals of design is universal and in the book, it explains how design concepts have been around for a long time like in the publishing industry and how it's carried over to the web now. Learn the concepts so that you too can be a sophisticated designer.

This book is not only dealing with Design principles. It deals with everything, including the biggest problem of almost 30% of all the websites in the world - fading away. Successful Web site is what the book has been kicking to, to its fullest success I believe.
The authors go around the problems reflecting several aspects and views, digging deep into the details in order to be clear to everyone. My boss reads it as a good source to understant things going around with our Web site :)
Great book, well done dear authors.

This book provides a concise introduction to principles of Website design. I found the first few chapters, about process, interface design, and site design extremely good. But towards the end of the chapter on page design, some of the advice started to get a little questionable. For example, they explain three ways of using tables to create gutters between parallel columns, but never note what a no-no parallel columns are for Web page design, since they require the reader to scroll down, then up, then down again.

The graphics and multimedia chapters strayed a little from the concept of a Website design manual. Instead of presenting guidelines for effective use of graphics and other media, they presented detailed, somewhat technical information, about media formats and optimizing media for the Web (particularly in Photoshop). This was interesting information in its own right, but I would have liked to read more about using media effectively. One guideline they suggest is to use background images no bigger than 100 x 100 pixels, omitting advice about how to avoid the dreaded repeating border (use width = 1280).

One aspect that makes this book very different from others on the market is that it draws on primarily academic or university-related Websites for examples rather than from commercial sites. The book includes a good list of references and an index.

I would not have expected that a thin paperback would have such value inside.

If you are thinking about putting a web site together this book and some page marks are all that are needed to communicate basic style to the person doing the site.

It covers the important stuff and lots of things that I would not have thought of. For example which fonts are good for printing.

I'm really amazed about this wonderful work. It's useful, it's complete, it's rational and it's thought and written with feeling. Serious planning and developing process are both covered with a great sense of design and functionality.

This book is a great reference work that anyone who plays in HTML should have on their desk. This book is the missing link in most technical libraries. It addresses appealing, and legible layouts, as expected, but it does so much more. It discusses cross platform compatability issues, and helps you work around the differences, or to at least KNOW what your code will do in other browsers. It also addresses formatting content for the atypical setups, like the for the handicapped, WebTV or even for PDA's and phones!

What a horible, horrible book! I teach graphic design and web site design and this book is absolutely terrible! I'll never use or recomend this book to anyone and I'm a design professional.

Lynch and Horton's Web Style Guide is required reading in my course, "The Principles of Television, Multimedia, and Internet Production" at the University of Notre Dame. With their logical, clearly stated approach to a medium that is largely a confusing, inconsistent mess, this book was selected, without hesitation, after careful review of several possible other titles. The Guide also serves as one of the sources for research we are conducting in the qualitative analysis of Internet sites in general. My students, primarily upperclassmen (50% communication majors) who are typical of college students in general in being quite "Internet-savy," have been universally complementary of the book as well; this has been a stong factor in my using the book every year since it was first published. I greatly look forward to the next edition.

The book is what it promises to be -- a "guide". The book gives you basic principles behind web-style. It is NOT a "How-To" web-design book, I wish it had a bit of that.

My favorite part is in the beginning -- "Site Production Checklist" -- save you time, money and cranium!

Very easy and quick to read reminds of some very simple and basic principles often overlooked because the Site has to be made as of "Yesterday". This books promotes the discipline of planning before actually plundging into the trenches.

I recommend this book if you take this book as what it says it is -- nothing more, nothing less.

This book is a good reference book for new web site designers and a good refresher for more experienced designers as well. The chapters flow very nicely and the authors give plenty of attention to the entire thought process of designing a web site without even mentioning HTML, Javascripts, etc. in the first half of the book. Exactly what I was looking for.

What I didn't like, as one other reviewer mentioned, was the fact that almost all the web site examples used in the book were from Yale. My guess would be that if you looked at these sites now (2 years after print), they look different and are laid out differently than as mentioned in the book.

I do like all of the basic design principles that are covered: uses of space, font styles, browser differences, use of graphics, importance of the "above the fold" area of a site, navigation (good section), etc. It was definatley worth the price (under $20) and I will probably read it again within a year after working on some sites. A good reference for us all.

This book is horrible! It has bad design concepts and poor examples. And I want my money back.

I can see this book as a great resource for a broad audience, but especially for those of us who develop editorial content but do not necessarily design web pages. It is one of the most exciting books I've come across in a long time.

To many web designers learn HTML and a little JavaScript, and think they are done learning. Most often don't realize the books that taught them HTML are terrible books regarding style and organization.

This book picks up where these other books fall short. "Web Styl Guides: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites" will not teach you your basic HTML tags, but it will show you how to organize a site. I was fortunate enough to get an online version of this book and I found it to be a excellent book for the new web designer.

I usually give my students and attendees to my lectures a list of books I recommend, this book is on that list.

...far from being the last word in web design, but as a web developer, I found it pretty useful. I thought this book did a pretty good job of talking about some pretty important topics, like the site development process, and then clued me in on some graphic design concepts (like lossy versus lossless compression, and the differences between a JPEG and a GIF image). I would use this as a secondary reference, and keep "Web Design in a Nutshell" as a primary reference. Still worth the read, though.

There are better design guides out there but this one is still worth reading. The authors make some good points, especially if you are someone who doesn't have a print design background. However, there were times that they contradicted themselves. There were even more times that I (a web designer of 4 years) disagreed with them. While some of the tips and techniques they mention DO work, they are not always the best thing to do. Don't read this book thinking that it is THE guide for designing web sites. It will definitely help you, but check out other stuff too.

First, I must point out that Web Developers write Internet code (Java, CGI, ASP) and do not usually design the 'look and feel' for a web site. Web Designers, on the other hand, create an over all feel for a site using such things as Photoshop and Illustrator. Having said that, one must wonder why a designer even cares about dumbing down a site in order to prevent said site from being 'flashy'. The Internet is filled with poorly created sites that don't eat bandwidth. But a bad site is a bad site regardless of whether or not it incorporates Flash animation. I was always under the impression that a designer is an artist - one who holds a BFA or a BA in graphic arts. Hence, one would image that creativity is key - leave the 'basic' stuff to the novice or the college student. Let the web developer worry about bandwidth and functionality of the applications. The fact that this book prevents any creative thought to be placed into designing a site makes it one of the worst, and most ridiculous books I have ever read. If you need to stagger creativity and originality, then you should not be in a medium segmented for actual artists - a designer you should not be. For those who believe this book is the best thing since the invention of the wheel; perhaps you should learn a trade. To follow this book means that your work will be flat, boring, ineffective of the market to which you will be targeting and basically just poorly created.

useful for my work. thanks

In short, after examining the Web site which is the basis of this book, I concluded that the book would not be helpful. The authors base their instruction on Web design primarily on books focused exclusively on print design. The Web is not print! They do mention a few good Web oriented tips, but you can get those in other Web design books which are truly Web design books. Furthermore, I was glad to see that they acknowledge CSS at least, but in truth, CSS is far more important to Web design than these uppitty Ivy-league professors let you know. Essentially, the book is a complete wash: mark it as useless, and move on!

This book is amazing, actually! It manages to cover pretty much everything you need to know, from a practical level, to get your web site up and looking intelligent. I think there's a lot of website authors who don't grasp the nature of the beast that is a large scale website, meaning 20 pages or more. This book is vital for that reason. I feel like I know just about all of it, but it's worth its weight in gold because I keep it around as a sort of checklist when I'm doing my designs, or even just planning a website.

How many books talk about how to actually plan your website to make it usable? None do it like this book. It's perfectly written, to the point, and the price is beautiful. Kudos to the authors, this book is a work of art! My highest recommendation.

I expected a much more overview of web design principles. I didn't expect to see things almost anyone knows - web-safe gif palette, jpeg compression and optimization, etc. I expected a book on useful web design concepts. I'm very disappointed.

I like this book, but I am a student, I don't have much money.

If one hopes to get a Hello World! practicum this is definitely not the book to read. This is a great book about conceptual web design: a framework.

Don't be fooled by the title of this book! It's not a style guide for the web. Its based on paper collateral designs and principles and it can not be applied to the real world.

If I were to use this book when creating web sites, I would be the laughing stock of the company. Want to make stylish sites that don't bog down viewers browsers? Take a design class but DON'T pick up this book.

Not to be confused with a real style guide used by graphic designers and web masters, this book should not be used even as a basis of what web desgin should be.

Amidst all the dark reviews I would like to shine a little light on the book. If your looking for an end all/be all book your looking in the wrong place.

The principles in the book are basic solid ones. Limit yourself to these and you truly will have an awful site. Use them as guidelines, enhance them with your unique creativity and you will have a site that looks good, is bandwidth friendly, navigable and sensible.

Expect more from something than it gives and you will always be disapointed!

Wow what a disapointment this book was. Poor use of images and text and bad advice on how to arrange it all that you'll find here. I know that there are better guides on web page design out there.

This book gives you neither deep principles of design or classic web style design. Limited, binding, and totally unrealistic, this book does not prepare new designers for the reality of working in the ever changing world of the Internet.

With technology and design working hand in hand these days, having a 'guide' that forces creativity to be limited will cause a tug of war between making 'safe' designs and making marketable designs that bring in customers. Web pages made with this book will be static and uninteresing. No, I'm not saying that a designer should throw in fancy graphics and hard core, flashy animation or any thing like that. But a 'dead' page is not going to get people to notice your company. Worse still, who in this day and age is going to take a company seriously that has a sloppy web site that looks like an 8th grader did it? Because if you use this book for designing your site, that's what its going to look like.

When you surf a lot you run into sites you don't like: this book tells you why you didn't like them and how they should have been constructed. Teaches sound design technique: how you apply the ideas and with what tools is up to you. Saved me heaps of time. Earned me plaudits from boss and colleagues! Should be required reading!

This book is laughable. As a design graduate with an actual degree, I can tell you that this book is NOT used as a reference to web design in any promient design school. Couple that with the fact that if you've been doing web design for a few years, like I have, you'll see that there is so much changes in both trends and design that you can't limit your pages to the outdated ideas that are portrayed in this book.

This book made too many promises that just didn't pan out. This book does not have any good examples of what decent web design should look like and how it should function.

You can't create solid pages with all the "don't do this" and "don't do that"s that are listed here. Serious web designers and graphic designers should avoid this book.

Style guide? For who? If you feel that this book is the best thing to happen to web design since the GIF then maybe you shouldn't be creating pages online. This book is absolutly terrible.

When I read in this book that you have to break up lines of text because visitors don't like to see a lot of letters on one line, I knew I had wasted my money. For one thing, if you increase the font on your browser, you'll see large breaks in the flow of the text. And its pretty arrogant to think that all the customers/visitors viewing the site will have their browser setting set like yours. Same with keeping all the pages to the right; get a 19 inch or higher monitor, set your desk top to above 8x6, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Creating fluid tables makes more sense.

Follow the do's and don't's of this book and your career as a web designer is doomed. Or at least it should be.