(Nice redesign by the way. I guess I haven’been to your site in awhile)

Mags are OK, but so long as the ‘design’ doesn’t distract from the content.. and in the case of Mags like .net, it’s all design and nothing much else.

The December issue had a featured interview with Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of products and UE. Half the space taken up by the interview were of photos of her, she may be good looking but a whole page just for a shot of her, what are they playing at, where’s the content? What I’m trying to get at is that the motivation of the .net team is shown clearly through the magazine’s excellent design and layout but it seems they consider that more important than delivering correct, interesting and most importantly, NEW content.

Shane, Thanks for your comment. Admittedly I haven’t been reading .Net for that long so you probably have a little more perspective when it comes to analysing the success of such a publication. I’m not saying that they’re not a good publication, I just think their content is not always that great… obviously there are exceptions, some articles are quite enlightening but when it comes to the technical stuff I find them to be a little below par.

To me, it seems like they’re very good at reporting the news and documenting industry trends – this is where the magazine really shines.

I don’t disagree with you about the lack of knowledge amongst many web developers/designers (those that still use tables for layout etc.) but I equally don’t see this as an excuse to only accommodate to such people… Maybe instead of covering ‘unobtrusive JavaScript’ they could cover something a little more interesting or controversial like, ‘The side-effects of JavaScript abstraction’ or ‘JavaScript and screen readers’…

Thanks for posting Dan’s Twitter profile, I’ve definitely got some suggestions! 🙂

Thomas M, That’s true, all the info is on the web, if you’re only looking for technical stuff then the magazine is DEFINITELY not the place to go! If, however, you’re looking to read up on the latest industry news and trends all nicely laid out (and a free software CD) then buy the magazine. I think some more competition would raise the bar and would force .Net in the right direction…

Having said that Net magazine is probably the best web design magazine out there but that’s only because there is no competition. If you’re a web design beginner stay away from it and use the real Net.

I’ve been reading .NET for a few years now, mostly on and off, and in the last 12 months or so, I’ve become a subscriber. Technically speaking, I don’t get a lot out of the magazine; certainly the unobtrusive JavaScript article didn’t teach me a thing, and neither did most of the other content. Once in a while, however, there is something that I’m not so familiar with, such as a recent article at Yahoo Pipes. In general, I don’t spend more than an hour or so looking through the magazine, but this is fairly typical of all magazines that I now read – the internet has so many advantages over the printed medium that we’re all familiar with.

The iPhone-specific design/development bandwagon is somewhat curious. I remember the web standards movement preaching an attitude that didn’t focus on a particular browser (and we all know which one they were talking about), but develop sites that supported standards and adopt an approach that supported progressive enhancement. We’re now seeing quite a few articles on iPhone development – I believe this is something of a turnaround. Perhaps it’s because it’s an apple product, perhaps it’s because a lot of these ‘cool’ designers/developers have an iPhone. Perhaps it’s because the iPhone is a revolutionary mobile device and it represents the future of mobile web content. I thought the iPhone article was marginally interesting, but it could have covered all the material in a quarter of the size.

I don’t know if you read the magazine a couple of years ago, but its general quality has gone through the roof, believe me.

My biggest point however is that there are a lot of web developers and designers out there who do not follow best practices. I’ve worked with so called ‘professionals’ who still use tables for layout and spacer GIFs, and I bet they’re still doing this in 2008.

I take your point about the readers letters, but written correspondence is a common feature of magazines, and although most of the letters aren’t worth reading, there is the occasional point of interest.

.NET is certainly the best web development/design magazine out there, but there isn’t a great amount of competition. If you’ve got suggestions for improvements, why not contact .NET’s editor, Dan Oliver on Twitter: @danoliver.

There is so much more on offer with just a light search of the web and, if your industrious enough, picking apart some of the better designed websites out there. Reverse engineering is my hobby of choice at the moment.

Glad someone else has notice the obvious lack of motivation from these so called market leading publications. From what I can tell they seem to make more of an effort on their websites but don’t hold me to that.