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Summary: Don't be fooled by the style, there's valuable info inside
Review: A lot of the negative comments about this book have centeredaround David's writing style. Who cares about how he writes!There's a considerable number of sound design concepts in this book, but most of all is the explanation over how to control whitespace on a webpage. I teach in an art and design department, and I'd hate to tell my students that they could only do a layout using the standard control HTML gives you. This is a book for designers, and teckies won't even get why it's so valuable.
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Summary: Ladies and Gentlemen, you have seen excellence.
Review: There are two rules of conduct while creating a website that somany, many people seem unable to fit together.1. If it has no content, your page, despite all efforts toward the superficial, outward appearance, will be completely useless, and a failure. Another bad shot in the ring. 2. If it looks like hell, no one's going to give a damn. For some unknown reason, the "Techies" are unable to grasp the importance of organization and presentation. In balance, the "Artists" are unable to grasp the importance of content and, well, point. Until these two become a union, the web has yet to see a truly great page. Dave, you did well.
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Summary: INSULTING! WHAT A LETDOWN!
Review: The design principals in Creating Killer Sites has some majorflaws in the teaching of design. The principals taught aren'tfundamental, nor are they what I might consider good or healthy. Instead they are all cheap tricks that you can apply to the design of your site that may or may not achieve your goals. The dogmatic self proclaimed great web designer David Siegels I'm right, your wrong attitude is a direct slap in the face to any designer in which they have a sense of what good design is. And let me clue you in, David dosen't have the greatest of taste. To surrender and design like David is a scary thought. Especially since I find myself deeply disliking his designs and fonts. I found myself to frequently break his deadly sins, and in most cases the decision to do so worked well with the content and concept. This book lacks serious detail on how to prepare images and content to the web. The only redeeming quality of the book is not designed by David Seigel, but by Gino Lee, and Todd Fahrner. David didn't even work on his own web site about the book! Think twice before you make this purchse.
Rating: 
Summary: Some useful info, mostly self-promoting babble
Review: The most useful parts of the book included tips on web sitelayout and design, but it was difficult to wade through theridiculously pompous wording of his ideas. A couple of design "tricks" are useful as well with examples to see how the tricks work, but again, the ego-mania was a BIG turn-off. Going through the HTML of hit top 5% sites is helpful (even if some of those sites are his own!). There are better books out there -- this book certainly isn't the "bible" that many people proclaim it to be.
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Summary: Hmm...
Review: It is amusing that Mr Siegel seem to think that content anddesign are mutually exclusive concepts. He is totally on the side ofdesign and has already declared himself the glorious winner of the "battle". Like Stanford Wallace he thinks he knows what the web is "supposed to be" and the rest of us had better adjust or go away. Thanks Mr Siegel, but I dont want to see the net turn into television. There are hundreds of better design guides online for free, and if you want your mind stimulated spend your money on "Entertaining ourself to death" instead.
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Summary: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly...
Review: David Siegel is obviously a good designer, but not of websites. I surf a lot, and create web sites, and I was bored to tearswhen visiting David's supposed "premier" sites! For a person so concerned about space, he wasted a lot of it in this book by filling it with uninteresting pictures with no real purpose but to boast (see "bored to tears" above). To be completely fair, there were some interesting points made, and yes I will use some of his ideas. But they were points that are made daily in books costing half as much! The good part of the book was the part covering reducing image sizes, the bad was the rest of the book, and the ugly were his web sites. Two "thumbs down" for me. Find a better book.
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Summary: This is design?
Review: I read the book and didn't think much of it. I visited thesite and gagged! I should've checked the site (http://www.killersites.com ) before I bought the book! This site is awful! His "Jimtown Store" site is pathetic ... at best. If this is "3rd generation" ... I guess the rest of the web is on the 5th ... or maybe the 6th.
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Summary: How to design a web site better
Review: You've already seen the reviews above this one,and you're trying to figure out what Seigel hasthat Lynda Weinman doesn't. Yes, this book displays Dave's ego rather dramatically. Yes, it's not very good HTML. (Dave freely admits that.) Yes, it's Mac- and Netscape-centric - the guy's a graphic artist, after all. And yes, it's full of tricks and color/compression information that any web guru should know by now. But the main reason to buy this book is this: you'll learn about *design*, about layout and whitespace and color and fonts and links and intuitive interface, the kind of things you won't get out of "Deconstructing Web Graphics". Half the people who work with HTML today started out with computers and haven't spent a lick of time in an art & design course, and this book will benefit them the most. In another note, Dave finishes the book with a wish list for future HTML and browser additions, including z-axis layers, absolute positioning, multiple layers of transparency, downloadable fonts, and site-wide style and color control - and guess what features Netscape and Microsoft's 4.0 browsers are touting the most? Layers, positioning, stylesheets, and PNG support, all of which are no doubt making Dave a very happy designer right about now. (And, hopefully, giving him plenty of material for a second book.) Plain and simple, the man knows exactly what he's talking about. If he inflates his ego a little along the way, he's probably earned it.
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Summary: The first visually-oriented source for the new visual medium
Review: "Creating Killer Web Sites" and my left-brainhemisphere began communicating before it left the store'sbookshelf. In the broadest sense, I consider myself more of an artist than techno-geek. Siegel balances images and words so any reader can browse, study or become immersed with it's content. I keep it on my coffee table and watch friends select it as if they've found the holy grail! I go back to it again and again as I hone my creative skills on the web--or should I say "kills"?
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Summary: Not a god, but a visionary
Review: Having gone to some of the sites of the naysayers of CKWS, Imake this response - PLEASE REREAD THIS BOOK CAREFULLY!!! It'sincredible how people take personally the opinions (that's right, OPINIONS) of someone without paying attention to the validity of that person's statement. The Web is still extremely NON-COMPELLING due to the lack of original and well designed Web sites. Mr. Siegel didn't write his book to make people feel good, he wrote it to convey HIS IDEAS about good Web design and, to that end, I think he was very successful. It's not a book about techniques, it's a book about aesthetics, something that transcends individual techniques. CKWS will remain a relevant book long after the techniques within it are considered passe'.
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