The Smashing Book review series

Part 1 Form factor, organisation and colour chapter

I have just recently received my copy of the Smashing Book.  For details of the book, see its page at Smashing Magazine (SM)

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/03/smashing-book-its-out-now/

Overall, based on a quick skim,  I am happy with the book for the price they sold it at.  I believe it is a worthwhile endeavour, but not without its problems.

I am going to try to review it in sections as there is too much in it for a single post. I sat on the commuter train today and looked it over carefully then read one chapter. So here goes. First up, the physical product, book organisation and some actual content review.

The form factor

The book is physically uncomfortable to hold. Normally I don’t think much about margins and bindings on books but the pain in my shoulders made me take note. Just for a self sanity check, I grabbed hold of and read another book for about 10 mins. ( a rather dry tome on technical communication) and though it made me sleepy, it didn’t make me ache.

People over at Smashingmagazine have noted the too small inner margin, the paper grain going the wrong way, the binding that won’t lay flat without cracking. In the comments on the book page, SM have said repeatedly that they want to produce a book in physical form and that a pdf will not be forthcoming. If you are going to be so adamant about this, then it would be good to get these details right. It was actually hurting my arms to hold it in a position where I could actually read it without breaking the binding and having the loose pages disaster happen to my copy.

Also a problem for me, the images are not necessarily on the same page as the text that refers to them.  I just hate this and find it super distracting. I know it is often a result of restrictions based on the physical page size, but it has irked me hugely for the last 50 years and will continue to do so.

The book organisation

If the meaning of this heading is not clear, I apologise.  I am referring to the information architecture of the book -how one knows what is where and how to find things.

Three points stood out for me

1. The table of contents give the chapter titles but not the authors. As I read the blogs of many of the contributors, I wanted to skim through and see who wrote which bit. No such luck. I had to find the chpater title pages and look there for each one. This leads me to point 2.
2. It is always a great pleasure to find a book has which has obvious page edge marking to make chapter title pages stand out easily. All it requires is a colour/colours on the borders of the relevant pages or those little thumb marks running down the edge to enable you to quickly find the chapters. It’s just like good navigation on a web site.
3. My third point also has a web analogy. The index of the book is a very much like a sitemap, except more so. The index in the Smashing Book is not a great example of information organisation. It just isn’t comprehensive enough.

Content review of the section The Guide To Fantastic Color Usage In Web Design And Usability

I turned to this section as it is a topic that I really need to work on personally. Unfortunately, after I had read it, I wasn’t much the wiser. The biological and cultural explanation of colour were skimpy and not what I would call authoritative.  There is some discussion of terminology and to me the cryptic comment that shade is easier to understand than saturation or brightness. There are many screen shots with colour wheels but no explanation of their significance. There is a some advice on using colour consistently.  No mention is made of colour blindness at all, a topic I would have thought important given the rather grandiose title of chapter.

I have started on a the chapter on CSS layouts so that will be the topic of my next review.