The Smashing Book

Smashing books #1

by Smashing Magazine

Genres: Design, Website Design, Nonfiction, Web, Reference, Programming, Business

313 pages

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Andy Staple · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost all web designers read or at least know of the Smashing Magazine Blog. Being one of the top sites for designers/developers to learn and get inspiration, this book has a pretty tough job to be as useful as the blog itself.

First off, the books design and printing is great. Probably the best of any of my books with its full color pages and tons of images all in full color.

The collaboration of many authors is also another thing I do enjoy about the book. You get many perspectives so the book isn't just one persons opinions.

The direction the book takes is where I can't exactly rate it 5 Stars. It has great content as you'd expect, but it just seems tuned to more of a beginning designer than someone who has been in the business more than a year or so. That is the one thing that I can't say I enjoy. There are literally hundreds of books about Fixed, Fluid, and Elastic designs. I think spending 40 pages on that is a bit much for a book that needs to cram in a ton of information from front to back.

Don't get me wrong, I will suggest this book for anyone interested in web design, and even current designers.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A smart collection on web design principles. I wish I had read this in the summer. It would be suggested reading for some of my classes. The book covers a great deal of subjects including color and usability.

[Michał Hawełka · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book didn't age well - the technical parts (and screenshots) show that they're from another age of the Web. The general UX principles stand the same, so at least those parts of the book are worth reading.

[Renaldo Creative · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome website and wonderful book about programming. This book helped me improve my website back in the day. Most of the information is dated now but you can still learn from it.

[TJ Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember enjoying this back in the day

[Anindito Rahardyaksa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even a door knob is a good design

[Guilherme · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abandoned reading for now. The content seems to be great, like the articles from the web site, but even more in depth.

However, I must say that it is not pleasant to read this book. The people from Smashing Magazine are great web designers, but their print design skills do not come even close.

I have to break open the book because the text is too near the inner margin. The chosen font is a small sans-serif typeface, which is not good for reading (compare with a book from Sitepoint, for example). The paper is kinda glossy and the pull-out quotes from the text are meaningless (sometimes you read the quote only to find the source right next to it).

They really have never worked with book design before, you can tell. this really hurts the content which, again, is great.

Oh yeah, there's a typo in the Table of Contents (first page of the book):
"Typography: Rules, Guidelines ans Common Mistakes". Oh, the irony...

[Shaun · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must-read for any person who manages a small team of developers or who wants to start their own software development company. Most of the concepts relayed in this book would not be possible inside larger organizations. In fact, the book itself does a great job of proving that you should embrace being a small company while you can because of the many opportunities and advantages it affords you. It also shows how you can take a lot of wasted time and effort out of how you operate to be more efficient. Best of all, it's a light read (if you got into the book as much as I did, you'll read it all in one evening).

[Ricardo Rocha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, is the word that comes to mind after reading this excellent book from Smashing Magazine Blog, never I enjoyed reading a technical/theoretic book like in this one. We cant stop felling the need to get our hands dirt wile reading this book. A truly great work made possible with the help of the design community, I do recommend all developers/designers out there to read this book, it's a great experience exchange relation.
Hope I can see more books like this one in a near future.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein sehr informatives Buch über Webdesign, Usability und Optimierung. Hat mir viel Spaß gemacht, die für mich wichtigen Punkte heraus zu filtern. Ein Punkt Abzug, weil für mich einfach nicht jedes Kapitel brauchbar war. Empfehle das Buch aber dennoch jedem, der irgendwie mit Web zu tun hat. Wer das Buch nicht kaufen will, bookmarkt einfach die Webseite Smashing Magazine.

[Derek Bridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book on topics mostly related to web usability, with an interesting history: growing out of the Smashing Magazine blog (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/). On the downside, rather a lot of it is quite high-level: something with more practical detail, enabling more of it to be put directly into practice, would have been preferable to me.

[Waylon Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED the book, content and illustrations. However the quality of the book itself was a little weak. But the book was a great book and a mist on any designers shelf who takes pride in their skill set.

[Budi Susanto · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like all, but specially I give 5++ stars for chapter "Usability Principles for Modern Websites", "Performance Optimization for Websites", "Learning from Experts - Interviews and Insights"...thanks to Smashing for sharing those knowledges.

[W.G.T. Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slightly smaller in size than I had expected. The content is without a doubt absolutely brilliant and is a great source for web designers. Would recommend it for anyone in web development to have it by their table side.

[Alex Blackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little outdated now (as technology books usually get), but still has some relevant tips that don't change (about usability and such). A great read for the budding developer/designer and a very good addition to my bookshelf.

[Stef · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really beautifully put together I am a visual learner and Smashings designs really bring the pages to life. Great information in here- I would recommend this book to any web designers collection as a really great resource book.

[sonofabit]

EXCELLENT book from Smashing Magazine. full color, informative, concise, helpful and worth every penny!

[Raphael · Rating 5 out of 5]

the interviews chapter was definitely the highlight

[Alexander Kluge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice.

[iu65x · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you need to know more about UI, & in particular web UI: this is THE book

[Mai Moustafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice

[Dan Oersnes]

Great inspiration fo designers, webbbers and content developers...

[Benjamin Lupton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing their blog posts don't cover, long and not concise.

[Matt Aune · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's simply smashing!

[Artur Sabirov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Многое уже писалось на ихнем блоге. Один раз полистать сойдет.

[Juan Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely a must-read book for any person who wants to dig in the art of making professional websites.

[Davood Torabzadeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

It change your way of thinking about web design

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of solid web-design fundamentals, though of course many of the technical specifics are out of date.

[Cuong Nguyen Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on web design. Bought for 500,000 VND but not make the most use of it at all :(

[Tri Ahmad Irfan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful resources for everyone passionate about the web. :)