Summitt New Media Updates

Web Site Design for Professional Photographers by Paul Brooks Rose & Jean Holland-Rose

I have been designing, building, and developing Web sites since the early 1990's. I've even written a couple of books about creating your own Web site. So you ask why did I purchase this book? The answer lies in my returning interest in photography over the past year. I wanted to know how best to display my photographic works via a Web site.
The cover should have told me that this book wasn't worth the thirty dollar asking price. Right there on the cover it stated "Step-by-step techniques for designing and maintaining a successful Web site." I think some idiot intern wrote something similar to that for the cover of one of my books back in the '90's. That book was a best seller too. (I wonder if that intern has now gotten a promotion and works for Amherst Media?)
Anyway, back to the book. The book is only 126 pages long. That's just under 24 cents a page. What a deal!
The book is relatively recent being published in 2003 so the material should be more up-to-date than any of my books from the mid-90's even if it's not cutting edge. So although Dreamweaver is mentioned, the tool of choice for these two authors is FrontPage. Hey, that's cool. I wrote one of the first books about FrontPage. Started writing the book before Microsoft even bought the product. Problem is they don't make it any more. Yes, I know in 2003 FrontPage was still being made. And some people were using it. But why do you think Microsoft quit making it? Because few professional Web developers would touch it by then. The people that were still using FrontPage were pointed at another even simpler product. The professionals were given new products to compete with Dreamweaver. And this book is supposed to be for professionals, isn't it.
But back to the book itself. The authors apparently make a living creating sites for photographers. That's what their bio states. The first chapter, however, talks about doing your own site to save money. Do you see the problem with the logic here?
But wait. I'm doing what I say shouldn't be done. I critiquing the book for what it's not. The authors and publishers say the book is aimed at professional photographers but I can't accept even that. The authors act like the reader has never been around Photoshop. I think this book is at best something maybe a beginner might want to look at and even there I'm not so sure. Even the downloadable site templates are amateurish.
I didn't like this book at all. It was hard to find anything positive about the book. The publisher should be ashamed of themselves.

posted by Paul @ 12:08 PM