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Summary: Web Developers: PLEASE READ THIS BOOK!
Review: It doesn't matter how clever you are, how glitzy your site is, how artsy you color your hair, if I can't find what I need on your site then your site sucks. This book is more important than any plug-in for Photoshop, and more vital to your users' experience than Flash. Yes, cool sites are all well and good -- but developers need to learn when and where to draw the line between cool and usable.
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Summary: From a master...
Review: This is without a doubt, the most comprehensive book on the topic available.If you are considering buying this book, just buy it - you won't ever regret doing so. As a CogSci/InfTech major I was left constantly astounded that Jakob covers ALL relevant material and appears to leave nothing out. Truly a reference text that will not age as all the areas covered are timeless in scope and application. Excellent.
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Summary: I JUST WASN'T THAT IMPRESSED...
Review: ...I felt like Nielsen spent more time complaining about what DOESN'T work in web site design, and not much time on what DOES. I also felt like I had to do exactly what he cautions against - I felt like I was navigating through pages of criticism and negativity in order to glean a few precious pieces of design wisdom. While I appreciated the examples, I thought the book on the whole failed to pack the necessary punch to merit more than 3 stars. As far as I'm concerned, "Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites" and "Web Design in a Nutshell" are better bets.
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Summary: Contradictions from the opening chapter to the end
Review: Do yourself a favor, if you're used to Linda Weinman's clear, concise writing, stay very far away from this mess. Mr. Nielsen may know an awful lot about creating web sites and keeping them simple, but he doesn't have a clue about writing a book. Rather than explaining things in layman's terms, he seems overly concerned with expressing his great intelligence to the detriment of the book's continuity and accessibility. Good topic- bad author.
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Summary: One of the best books that I've read this year...
Review: If you've followed Nielsen's Alert Box column for that past couple of years then, yes, you are probably already familiar with most of the content of this book. However, that doesn't stop it from being one of the best books on Web usability available. The book has lots of great advice on a wide range of topics (technology, design, writing style, navigation, search, etc.) but what sets it apart is that it offers real insight into how users think when using the Web.
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Summary: The best book to be the best...
Review: Honestly, I never bough a better book in my life. I am a web developer on a professional level and I have though that I knew everything I need already, but this book changed it all - it told me that there's much more to learn yet! While you're going from chapter to chapter you see so many details to be followed that this book seems to be the bible of web developing. It doesn't say how to create a web site in technological terms, it is all about your style, the way you project a web site, the way you keep your visitors as happy and as less frustrated as possible without even give them a chance to understand it. It is all about the usable and practical web sites. I think this is what all of us, developers, should know. read this book and you'll have no doubts anymore if this is better or this ...
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Summary: Comprehensive Thoughts on Web Usability
Review: I have a few web sites in cyberspace and often browsing others' sites to see creative approaches and web usability is always of great concern to me. While this web does not teach you in detail to achieve high degree of usability in that there is NO CODING. So if you are expecting a book with nice ilustrations of highly usable sites and coding that achieves those effect,.... this book does not do that. It has color illustrations which are useful in appreciation of web pages done by others. I have learnt some bits of information which are totally new (totally unaware of) to me, others I already know as I have been designing sites for a few years. I strongly recommend this to anyone who knows that web usability is an important aspect of web design and would really, really want a book that provides comprehensive coverage of it. You do not need to be an artist of expert in HMTL, Java, Javascript, whatsoever, in order to know what he is talking about. The language is simple. But to put ideas into practice, some basic knowledge of web design (that is, simple coding of web sites) and knowledge of powerful software such as Dreamweaver would certainly help in achieving the ends. As most of you may know, it is tedious to produce certain layouts from scratch, usage of good software cuts down the time and effort tremendously. To me, it is 3-star as most of the things I already know and applied to my web pages... and they appear common-sense to me. Five stars to people who have not put web usability as one of the top factors to consider in web design. To these people, I would say, "It's time to get web usability in perspective. Get this book and you will certainly know what web usability is about after reading this book." Hence, five stars... Well deserved.
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Summary: Web designers must understand the principles in this book
Review: To truly understand how to design useful websites, you must understand the principles discussed in this book. This is *the* book for web developers -- novice or expert.
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Summary: The guide for Professional Web designers
Review: This guide is perhaps the best reference for web designers out there, not because of an enormous selection of sample pages and code snippets; but rather because it takes a look at the most ignored aspect of web design, it's usability. Whether working on personal projects or mainstream web stores and applications, Nielsen's reference is perfect for trying to push simplicity not just for simplicity's sake. He shows ways that simplicity can make pages truely easier to use. One aspect I feel is a bit biased is his take on download times, and his tilt toward low-bandwidth. This is unrealistic in many cases as our target audiences may very well be college lan's or corporate intranets with fast connections. Regardless; his focus is on usability and his words still bust through. Either before your next major project or now as you are in the middle of one, give this book a read, and pass it along to everyone else you work wiht (especially the graphics people who tend to have NO idea about usability) I have began to shift my design somewhat allready due to the ideas in "Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity". I think you should too.
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Summary: advice is a little conservative--still an excellent book
Review: This book is an enjoyable and fascinating read. He gives great examples, and the book is easy to read and well-organized. But sometimes his advice leaves me wondering. Nielson encourages web developers to focus on backward browser compatibility, and on people with the smallest monitors and screen resolutions. Unfortunately, his recommendations are way too conservative and unduly limit a web developer's options. About 70% of Americans use IE5 and a large number at work use 17 inch monitors (I can't quantify that). Now Netscape 4 provides pathetic support for style sheets, and IE 4 isn't much better. Under Nielson's paradigm, web programmers would end up spending 80% of their time just making sure that things working perfectly fine in IE5 would also work passably well in browsers that are not used very often anymore. It would mean a race to the bottom, and cause web programmers not to embrace genuine developments such as CSS. Nielson's advice about user interface and web design are excellent and insightful; But most of his advice about web programming are outdated at best and amateurish at worst. It's too bad Nielson didn't spend more time talking about possibilities opened up with XML. In summary: this book is well worth reading, but don't pay attention to the user statistics and don't buy into his idea of writing for old browsers.
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