We have had the pleasure to review a few books in the "Before & After Makeovers" series ... I think the last one was on Photoshop CS2 from Dr Taz Tally ... And, I must admit that the title of this book, "Web Design Before & After Makeovers", is a little misleading as I expected to see boring websites transformed into interesting, vibrant, state of the art sites ... not so, instead boring sites are transformed into sites that are still a little boring but the actual underlying code has been tweaked and fine-tuned (mostly with CSS and javascript) and, in my opinion, that isn't boring at all. But then, we all know I'm a geek at heart.

So, if its only the code that is being tweaked what are you going to get out of reading this book? In my opinion, alot, as it seems to be aimed as a refresher for experienced developers and includes section headings like the following

• Page Layout Makeovers
• Navigation Makeovers
• Page Element Makeovers
• Image Performance Makeovers
• Form Makeovers
• Text Makeovers
• Content Makeovers

And, there are more. The author, Richard Wagner, specifically uses Macromedia (Adobe) Dreamweaver and Photoshop in this book but that doesn't mean you couldn't easily port these tips to your own products of choice.

Taking a closer look at a couple of the Chapters, I like the Makeover Essentials section where the author talks about your software suite, for example, your Web Browsers are your Test Suite, Adobe Photoshop your visual Sidekick etc. And, the Form Makeovers section where he talks about smartening up your forms with javascript validation, controlling tab order, CSS transformations etc. All good stuff that a lot of developers just don't use.

There are bits and bobs related to design but I have to admit that the design elements in the book leave a little to be desired. Why? Because there is nothing new, Photoshop buttons for forms and Splash pages spring to mind immediately. Saying that, I have to admit I found the section on image makeovers and cropping to get rid of the rubbish refreshing. I tend to do this but a lot of people don't and its remarkably easy to have better looking images quickly ... and the author's tips in this section are great.

Richard Wagner, the author, is an experienced Web designer and author of several Web technology books, including Yahoo SiteBuilder For Dummies, XSLT For Dummies, XML All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, and JavaScript Unleashed. He is the former Vice President of Product Development at NetObjects and inventor of the award-winning NetObjects ScriptBuilder Web tool. In his non-tech life, Richard is also author of C.S. Lewis & Narnia For Dummies, Christianity For Dummies, and The Gospel Unplugged.

I give the book a definite thumbs up, as there is information galore and the text is well written and well thought out. The author allows his sense of humour to show through and this always makes for a pleasant read. Even though I feel the book is aimed at experienced web developers there is definitely something in there for newbies. Newbies may benefit from brushing up on CSS and JavaScript beforehand.