I am a hardcore .net developer. But, site design has been kind of my downside. Came across this book and had a glance at the book contents. It looked impressive and bought it. Actually, after reading it, I am glad I bought it. It covers everything that you need to consider when building a website. Not just "How" to do it, but also the "Why" of doing it. It also covers the nitty questions which you have been thinking about how they do it in the site. Explains in a simple and direct way. Jacob Sanford has done a real good job in his first book. If you are a .Net developer and would like to sharpen your design skills, this is the book to buy. It's worth it.

Let me get the bad out of the way first, so I can tell you why I think you should still consider buying this book.

1. Spends a bit of time on superfluous issues. For some of you, this might be a godsend, however, as development is often more than just coding these days.

2. Some fairly long code samples that fluff up the book without adding a huge amount. One illustration of CSS versus tables would be sufficient.

3. Not a lot of highlighting in code to point you to the points that have changed.

4. Some of the explanations are thin for those without a lot of experience in this particular topic.

Now that I got that out of the way, let's look at why this book should be a welcome addition to your shelf.

Reason 1 is it is the only book that focuses on this particular topic. Reason 2 is this topic is extremely important, although more often overlooked.

If you have an ugly, unusable personal site, it is not a big deal, as your mom will still visit. But, with business, it can be devastating. And, now, with accessibility lawsuits, it can be costly, as well.

Let's start from the beginning (a very good place to start, I hear).

The first few chapters are a bit of overview and express the importance of things like CSS, accessibility and good web design. None of these will make you an expert, but they will likely push those of you still in table design over to the dark side (CSS). The arguments for accessibility, including information about recent legal actions against websites, may be the kicker. Chapter 3 also focuses on using PhotoShop for designing a nice looking site. Some of the techniques will not apply to other image manipulation tools, but the basic ideas are useful for all.

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on CSS. In particular, chapter 4 talks about setting up a site that appears "tabled" in CSS and chapter 5 gives you a great overview, and some practical advise, about the CSS Friendly ASP.NET controls.

Chapter 6 talks about navigation and gives great practial advise on the web.sitemap file. This chapter was a godsend to me, as it finally gave me an epiphany on why roles were not working. This was actually a portion that fit #4 on my bad list, but sometimes seeing an example is enough to clue you in. :-)

Chapter 7 is focused on master pages. One of the biggest aids here will be the bits on design. The pages on passing information from master to child is also very useful.

Chapters 8 and 9 focus on themes. If you have a site that can be "skinned" different ways (by user or "site"), these chapters may well be worth the price of admission.

Finally, chapter 10. This is one of the best chapters in the book, as it brings all of what you have learned together. It shows how to use a single code base to work with a wide variety of browser targets, including mobile devices. And, unlike many books, it does it in a very practical, real world way.

There are also bonus appendices on Orcas (Visual Studio 2008) and Silverlight.

Summary: Overall, this is an average book. As the only book on the topic, however, it gets a slightly higher nod. As this is a topic I have tried to drill into people's heads (i.e., building a site is as much about user experience as making things work), I would like to see as many people pick up this book as possible. Someone might come out with a better one at some time, but learning this material is a wise thing.