Rating: 
Summary: Quite Usable
Review: I already was familiar with Nielsen's views from his Web site. I am an enthusiastic supporter of most of his opinions.There are one or two ideas with which I disagree. For example, I believe that there should be comment forms on sites, and that these should go to high-level executives (I personally answer comment forms for my business). If you are getting overwhelmed with dumb questions, take that as actionable information. Also, Nielsen believes in treating your home page as an orientation page. Because the majority of links to our site do not point to our home page, we cannot assume that the consumer ever will go to that page during a site visit. Those are nits. Everything else in this book is advice that we either have taken or have compromised on taking (not necessarily the right compromises, either). This book is more usable than Nielsen's web site in three ways. 1. Screen shots. Having the screen shots on the pages is like having Nielsen sitting next to you, jabbing you in the ribs and saying, "See what I mean?" 2. Time to absorb. Reading his advice in book format, I have more time to absorb it. I picked up on little details (like using Link Titles) and I became more motivated to implement some of his other ideas. 3. Bookmarks. I don't use bookmarks much on the Web (I can't keep them organized), but I have some of his pages marked, which makes it easy to refer to them. Because of these usability advantages, the book is value added relative to Nielsen's web site.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent (and Timely) Book!
Review: Drawing on Nielsen's popular columns on web usability, thisbook presents a compelling argument for "practicing simplicity" in website design...I especially loved the extensive screen shots from numerous real world web sites and Nielsen's accompanying commentary on each. In the world of e-commerce, where as the author writes, "users experience the usability of a site before they have committed any money on potential purchases," the bottom line should be obvious: web usability has a huge impact on profit and loss. Those involved in web design and development, in my humble opinion as a Senior Web Design/Developer, would profit from reading this very timely and informative work.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic and Insightful
Review: Terrific thoughts and reality check for anyone involved in the biz. Reaffirms experience is not just usability.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic Reference, but a bit outdated
Review: This book is a must for every web developer, although I think it's time for a newer version, as some of the examples and theories are based on pre-2000 studies. Overall you can expect a great insight on correct web-design, colors matching, liquid pages, use of navigation and quick respond to user needs.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good
Review: This was one of the first usability books I bought. It was great, and I couldn't believe someone wrote all of these ideas down. It _is_ a good book. It is well written, and he does a good job of illustrating his examples.
However, for as much usability testing that Jakob must do, he provides little data to back it up. Perhaps hard data was not a requirement for web usability books written in 1999/2000, but it will have a more difficult time standing up to books written more recently.
Rating: 
Summary: Middling writer, lousy prophet
Review: For a book written in 1999, it's already an achievement that's it's not completely useless, but still it's a bit outdated. Most of its prophecies are wrong (email tokens, anyone? Browsers will be out of date?), and its advice is only good if, first, you believe in it, and second, if you have to manage a site the size of Microsoft.
Even so, part of the book is rather useless. Intranet design does not say anytthing new, desining for disabilities misses many standards, and the part on writing for a global audience seems to be written for the kind of user usable web sites are addressed to, that is, not very bright, I guess. That makes half the book probably very usable, but not very useful.
At the end of the day, if you look for advice for improving the design of your SOHO site, or your blog, you'll find next to nothing in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book and easy to use and understand!
Review: This book came out in 1999 and you have to be prepared for that. It's still about 80% useful, which is amazing considering how fast web technology is moving. I love the way the author uses lots of actual pictures of websites to illustrate every point. If he would bring it into the third millenium, I'd probably give it five stars instead of three.
Rating:
Summary: Good conecpts, BAD DESIGN
Review: This man can really tell you how to design a website that will satisify user well. He has researched the field of web design and usability stats and knows his stuff. But don't let the man design a webpage by himself. He's a good usability guy, not a good designer.
Rating:
Summary: What the WWW needed was a stylebook - Nielsen delivers
Review: This book is primarily a stylebook. The web is often mistaken for an electronic book and this is probably one of the reasons it has taken a while to find a guide aimed at web usability. Jakob Nielsen does a great job in creating a style manual for a medium, which has different aims and limitations from printed material. What made Tim Berners-Lee??s innovation successful; the delivery of digital media on all manner of computer platforms; is also its drawback. Not every platform treats HTML tags in the same manner. Nielsen??s main point is that the web is primarily a communications tool, although an interactive one. He states, ??the main goal of most web projects should be to make it easy for customers to perform useful tasks.?? In addition Nielsen points out that your display terminal is not a book. This means a screen that although interactive is harder to read than a book. The prime advantage is the ability to link to other current and active links or content in an immediate manner. The biggest mistake a site author makes is in creating slow, confusing, or cumbersome sites. Make no mistake, the author knows is stuff and is consistent in his tone. This is the first part of a two-book set. By the time you have read both books some of the more obvious points are a bit overdone, but his main goal; to get web designers to change some of their bad habits worked with me.
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