Book Review – Dr. Dobbs

January 14, 2010

Mike Riley reviewed the book over at Dr. Dobbs Code Talk. He had some very nice things to say, too.

I am unabashedly more comfortable with grokking loop, iterator and ORM than I am with terms like color fluting, page folds and RYB. However, it was with these and many other graphic arts terms that author Brian Hogan coaxed me to become more comfortable with effective use of color, image weight and content balance when constructing web pages. He also taught me some helpful designer tricks like the use of grids for graphic element (titles, descriptions, buttons, etc.) placement, anti-aliasing icons the right way, using the right measurements and font weights for the page presentation and the subtle use of photos to enhance the page’s intended message.

Of course he does take issue with the fact that I went with Adobe products in this book, which is something I plan to address in an upcoming post. The short answer is that while on you can do all of the things in this book with Inkscape and GIMP, the workflow is not nearly as smooth, especially if you’ve never done this stuff before, which is what I am assuming with this book.

It’s a good review, and I feel that Mr. Riley learned something from my book, and I’m very proud of that.

2 Responses to “Book Review – Dr. Dobbs”

  1. Can the book still be used if I don’t have Adobe products?

  2. Yes. Only a few of the middle chapters use Photoshop and Illustrator. You should be able to use Inkscape in place of Illustrator. GIMP, however, might be a little more problematic because it’s very very different. The book’s source code has the files you’d generate in those chapters anyway so if you feel you can’t follow along with the examples, you can still read the chapters and then pick things up later.

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