Rating: 
Summary: Usability to the limit
Review: Excelent guide to design ANY kind of web site keeping usability in mind. Fundaments most of the things that I used to guess.
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Summary: nielsen is good, but all things in moderation
Review: I've been an avid reader of Jakob Nielsen's alertbox web site for 2 years. One has to remember that Jakob's views are quite extreme - a "usability nazi" if you will - and using his comments to temper over-creativity can create some of the most functional Web sites out there.I believe that any members of a development team, particularly those without Web design experience, should read this book. It's an easy read with many, many real world examples. His breakdown is at times hard to follow if you are looking for specific examples of page elements (ie. is a navigational button part of the "page design", "site design" or "content design" chapter?). Overall, his work is an excellent refresher for any site architect or Web designer. His views, although extreme, can help most Web designers remember that this is very much a user-centric medium.
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Summary: Pre-requisite for Implementation
Review: Virtually all of the content in the book is in some other format on his website . He could have done what Philip Greenspun did with "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing" and make the exact same content available online, but I'll only give Jakob minor points off for that. What is key, and I agree with Jakob on this point, is that people read this book, in order to grasp the concept of web usability, before they actually engage in the implementation of web sites.
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Summary: For Advanced Users
Review: I bought this book without knowing anything about it other than the title and the fact that it was published by New Riders (who I've had great luck with in the past). When you consider that in general I only buy 2-3 books a year and do all the rest of my considerable reading at the library, that's saying something. Jakob Nielson takes the world of web usability and makes it understandable to a complete usability ignoramus like me. After reading this book, I revamped almost all of my websites and yes, I'm getting more orders as a result. I'm also making sure I listen more closely to the negative feedback I get - because after reading this book I know that behind every person who does give negative feedback, there are 100 more who didn't bother to write. The only slightly annoying facet of the book was the way he kept wandering off into the future and what "might happen" and how that "might effect" the web in the year 2005. Well, that's all well and good, but I'm worried about designing in the year 2000. I would warn beginners NOT to purchase this book, however. This book is about *why* to make your website more user friendly. It does not tell anything about *how* to accomplish this. It's really for advanced users, and I would recommend it to any advanced user without reservations.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, very helpful.
Review: I have seen harsh criticisms of this book. I suspect they may come from "artists" who are set on the defensive when Nielsen says something like, "Relish simplicity, and focus on the users' goals rather than glitzy design." His book is based on research. And years of it. When he says something is confusing to a user, it's not because he doesn't like it, or thinks that the users are dunderheads, but rather because he has statistically seen it fail. If you want good tips on usability based on statistics and research, this is your book. If you want to be pandered to and have some one tell you your graphics are king based on anecdotal information, look elsewhere. NOTE- For those of you get the impression that this book limits creativity, think again. Nielsen in NO way tries to limit creativity. He simply adds "usability" to the list of page requirements [meaningful graphic content, navigation, etc.]. For some, this will add a new, bigger, and more exciting "creative" challenge. For others it may be threatening. I doubt ANY BOOK can be a complete authority on any subject. But for usability, this has a LOT of information. It's not a "technical" book, so I found it easy reading. He may be repetitive at times, but lets face it, that's how humans learn (another statistical fact). So enjoy it, the ideas Nielsen shares can improve your site.
Rating: 
Summary: Unfortunate waste of paper
Review: Nielson has once again demonstrated his ignorance when it comes to defining people on the web and what they like. According to Nielson, the average user is uneducated and needs to have their hand held every step of the way. I have more faith in the average user and I believe they are capable of waiting and understanding the intricate works of both text and image. I have to ask Nielson, should every piece of advertising exist in just black and white, Helvetica type leaving nothing to the imagination? Where is the fun in that? I feel bad for the aspiring web designer who is mislead by the information in this book and learns nothing. This book will not help you to build a better website.
Rating: 
Summary: Time to drive a stake through the heart of Nielsenism
Review: Jakob Nielsen's bizarre insistence on treating the Web as if the years 1996 through 2000 had never happened is the sort of lapse in his otherwise-cogent thinking that will doom him to irrelevance. He makes points that need to be made, but I worry about any sentence of the form, "*All* Web sites *must*..." There's no way anyone can finish that sentence and have it ring true to me, since the Web is such a hugely multifaceted environment. It's not - and never has been, at least not since Mosaic 1.0 - a purely informational medium. Neither is it a purely commercial environment. It contains both these elements, along with a strong leaving of emotion and an increasing ability to display aesthetic sophistication. With these thoughts in mind, it's purely irresponsible to *demand* that Web sites be designed solely according to the Taylorist precepts of Nielsen's so-called "practice of simplicity." Simplicity is a wonderful thing - even an underrated thing - but there are topics on the Web, as in life, that require complexity, even idiosyncrasy. The implied insult in "Designing Web Uability" is that users are dimwitted drones who can't be expected to deal with idiosyncrasy. And while the review-of-a-review below may seem snarky, the guy's got a point. I don't want to sound elitist, but simplicity in practice demands subtlety - mastery of the sort that generally eludes "Dummies." This book will *not* make you a Web design professional, and if the below example is any proof, it cannot even teach you the basics of aesthetic balance. Nielsen himself admits as much. Usability is a good thing. It is not a religion. Nielsen loses sight of this, which makes him dangerous; half-competent project managers who take up his cause without ever having designed a Web site themselves are more dangerous still. I think it's time for the anti-Nielsen: a loud, proud statement that design is OK, that users are clever, that Flash can be useful, and that emotion is at least equal to commerce and utility in the life of the Web.
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Summary: For the Simple-Minded Web Designer
Review: While this book has a few good points, the majority of it reverts the reader back to the Web design days of 1995. Technology and bandwidth have increased the Web's capabilities, and there are many, easily-navigable Web sites that employ very little from Nielsen's thesis. He seems to be a small-minded man with an affinity for himself, especially considering the "I Love Me" page on his site. Someone so close to the engineering aspect of Web technology does not need to be given that much credit for design.
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Summary: sign of the times
Review: The justifiably vast popularity of Nielsen's book is a sign of the times. The Web is about 10 years old. In the early days it required an unusually talented software engineer to build a working dynamic Web service. Now the knowledge of how to build database-backed Web sites is fairly well distributed. You can adopt the Microsoft religion. You can adopt the Oracle religion. You can adopt the open source religion. Whatever you choose your users will probably get back a page full of HTML (or WML if they are on a WAP phone). If the software engineering aspects of Web service design have gotten easier, what about usability? It has gotten much harder. Mark Hurst of Creative Good has a nice graph showing how in 1993 and 1994 the average Web site was very simple to use and the average user was a hardcore Unix weenie working in a university research lab. Whereas in 2000 the average Web site has almost the complexity of a desktop app and the average user is new to computers. Hurst calls this the "user experience gap". The questions that Nielsen raises are the important ones, by and large. Does he have all of the answers packed into 419 pages? No. The field is too broad for any one person or any one book to be comprehensive. But this book is another important contribution by a guy who has been taking these issues seriously for more than a decade.
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Summary: You think it's all common sense, huh?
Review: Sure, designing web sites is not simple. You know you shouldn't use marquees or pink text against a light green background. You know those things and a few others and you think you don't need a book to tell you how to create a website when all you need is common sense. Wrong! I didn't think there were techniques to this art, but there are. Nielsen doesn't give you these basics mentioned above - not at all. He gives you theories and amazing full colour examples which perfectly exemplify every point he so correctly makes. I bought this book thinking that it would tell me things I've already learned in all these 4 years of webdesigning, but instead I found myslef not able to put it down! I've learned a lot from it and you will too, no matter how experienced a designer you may be.
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