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Amazon.co.uk Review
This guide segments discussions of Web usability into page, content, site, and intranet design. This breakdown skilfully isolates for the reader many subtly different challenges that are often mixed together in other discussions. For example, Nielsen addresses the requirements of viewing pages on varying monitor sizes separately from writing concise text for "scannability". Along the way, the author pulls no punches with his opinions, using phrases like "frames: just say no" to immediately make his feelings known. Fortunately, his advice is some of the best you'll find.
One of the unique aspects of this title is the use of actual statistics to buttress the author's opinions on various techniques and technologies. He includes survey results on sizes of screens, types of queries submitted to search portals, response times by connection type and more. This book is intended as the first of two volumes--focusing on the "what". The author promises a follow-up title that will show the "hows", and based on this installation, we can't wait. --Stephen W. Plain, amazon.com
Topics covered: Cross-platform design, response time considerations, writing for the Web, multimedia implementation, navigation strategies, search boxes, corporate intranet design, accessibility for disabled users, international considerations, and future predictions.
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Had I made this assumption about five or six years ago, I may have been correct.
Sadly, this book is let down by an extremely dated outlook, which belies the author's "future-proof" claim that the principles advocated in this book will remain important regardless of technological progression. Certainly, some of the broader doctrines it advocates will always retain their relevance (such as the importance of creating simple user-centric designs) but these are sadly obscured by some spurious predictions and a seemingly complete lack of foresight towards some of the major advancements in web technology (such as the massive uptake of broadband, and the use of CSS for anything other than styling fonts and table cells).
Such woeful inaccuracies could be overlooked by virtue of the fact that this book was first published in 1999 (not an incredibly long time in any other subject matter, but an entire lifetime in the field of web design). Nevertheless, if an author is willing to retain a book on the market (without any significant overhaul other than a pithy preface) then they must be prepared to face the criticism, comparison and scrutiny that will inevitably ensue. Thus, despite the bet-hedging get-out clauses with which the author laces his final chapter, statements as ludicrous as "we have to wait until approximately the year 2007 for books to go away and be fully replaced with online information", will always colour the reader's judgment towards the book's other less questionable claims.
In summary, you are likely to find free, up-to-date, and much more relevant information from various locations on the Internet (Jakob Nielsen's website - www.useit.com - included); and more concise and less spurious information from books such as Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability". For a snapshot of pre-21st Century web usability however, this may be the book for you!
An excellent source and summary of this book can be found at his website... which is where much of this book comes from
Overall an excellent read, and a must have
Mr Nielsen may be a capable web designer - certainly he covers a number of good design points - but this book is about his opinion on what web design should become in the future and it is not supported by usibility studies. A few times in the book, he casually mentions that 'field studies have come to the same conclusion' over one point or another, but fails to give details of which studies, when they were conducted, on what range of subject etc. thereby stopping readers from deciding whether the conclusion is applicable to the target audience of their current project.
The main thrust of the book, logically enough, is that sites should be designed for the user rather than the designer or his employer. Things should be put where the user expects to find them rather than just where the designer thinks it will look good. Whilst this could be seen to limit artistic design, it is a sensible tenet within a book about usibility. But then Mr Nielsen says (on page 178) 'On all interior pages, the logo should be clickable and linked to the home page. Unfortunately, not all users understand the use of the logo as a link to the home page and it will take a while until this convention is fully established.' Considering his assertion that pages should be tailored to the user and not the reverse, this (and a few similar examples) cast doubt on the author's credibility (a topic that he covers well in the book).
Finally, whilst Mr Nielsen does make a number of very good points concerning designing for the web, most notably that designing for the web is different from designing for print, he falls foul of having the layout lean towards a web based layout, thereby reducing the usibility of the book. Mr Nielsen's tendancy to write in relatively short chunks (1-2 pages) which may be well suited to the web, but when spaced out over 6 printed pages (! ), a single side article can be confusing. Furthermore, the caption typeface is too similar (particulalrly in size) to the text typeface and with the numerous (verbosely captioned) illustrations and plentiful box-outs, following the flow of the text can be hard work at times.
However, despite these faults, this book is well worth a read if you are at all serious about web design, but it should not be taken as gospel.
As a designer, you must read this before commencing on any serious design. Read more
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