Rating: 
Summary: The best book about web usability on the market
Review: This book is clearly one of those must-have items on your bookshelf if you are a professional web designer. Acctually this book is so good that you don't even have to do web design. If you simply design GUI's (Graphical User Interfaces) this book is for you.Nielsen isn't one of those people who plays around with consultancy terms, but he rather puts his ideas accross in plain english which is very, very imporant especially if english is not your mother tongue (in my case for example). Besides the text, the book is colorful and it has a lot of detailed pictures, which in most cases are also broken down to sections later on. And in this case it's true that a picture tells more than a thousand words. The sections and the flow of thigs are also quite well laid out, so it's easy to progress from one step to the next. Nielsen also goes and tells about Intranet design (one whole chapter) besides the regular corporate and informational sites design. When I had read the book, I showed it to a work partner of mine and he got his whole team excited about it. Now all of them have their own copy of the book even though we have a very easy to use virtual library system in our company. Yup, you just got to have it in YOUR bookshelf, not your neighbours. I don't normally write rave reviews on books, but this is a genuine treasure and I really recommend you to take a closer look at it.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: Jakob Nielsen understands what is important in web site design. His useit web usability column, and this book contain important and relevant information on how to create designs that anticipate how an end user will interact with your product. The whole message is summed up on the back cover "The Practice of Simplicity" - but simple from the end user's perspective means rigorous analysis and usability testing from the designers perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile title for new or experienced web designers
Review: Yeah, Nielsen is controversial, and reading past reviews of this book will demonstrate just how much animosity there can be between the "engineer" and "artist" crowds. Experienced web designers won't find much new ground broken here (they probably already read Nielsen's online articles), but it's still useful to have the collected opinions of a widely-recognized authority on usability all in one book. New designers should appreciate the fact that they can learn to avoid a lot of mistakes the "experienced" people discovered the hard way. Nielsen stresses simplicity and elegance of design, and that's something everyone needs to be reminded of (how many times have you hit the "Back" button when you found a page full of animated images and banner ads?). Agree with his delivery or not, a lot of what he's predicted has come true over the years (think about it: why would corporations pay the amount they do for his consultations if they didn't get results?). Personally, I like his somewhat sarcastic style; it's a nice break from the often-smarmy "X for Idiots" paradigm. If you don't mind some egotism now and then, and you're looking for a design/usability reference (as opposed to an HTML how-to, which this definitely is not), then I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Nielsen is the world's authority on Web Usability, but...
Review: Here's this book by the world guru on Web Usability, Jakb Nielsen. He goes into great details into some of the most common errors made on today's web sites, and discusses some of his recommendations. It is a little outdated in some topics, though, given that it was edited on December 1999, but still if you run a professional web site (Webmasters, Technical Producers, Project Managers and Product Managers) chances are you will find lessons to be learned inside its pages. If you want something a little more recent, get a copy of "Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed" which just came out on November 2001.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!!!!
Review: I recommend it to every web designer. It will guide you to discover or at least try and make a site that works for your audience. As a designer myself it influenced me to re-organize my creative thinking. Therefore, designing better web sites that work for users and helps portray your sites or company's goals.
Rating:
Summary: Great overview of Web Design
Review: Jakob Nielsen is definitely one of the top web gurus around today. This book consolidates a lot of his ideas about web design in one resource. Although I do not agree with every single rule or bit of advice that Dr. Nielsen gives in the book, overall I agree with his overall theme of simplicity. His main argument is that a web site can only be effective if the user can accomplish their purpose in visiting the web site quickly and efficiently. It doesn't matter if the user is looking up some obscure resources at the Library of Congress site, or buying CDs at Amazon.com. Both "customers" want the same thing- quality service from the site. Quality means a lot of things to different people. But at a minium, a site needs to be fast, easy to navigate, and meet the users needs. The bottom line is that every user is just a click away from leaving. A few sections of the book that are particularly useful are the ones about writing for the web, designing for an international audience, and establishing design standards. I also like the fact that the book is full of examples from real web sites, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each. The two things I do not think are that great about the book are the price, and the reduncancy of material. Simply put, it is overpriced, and the author rehashes many concepts throughout the book. Having said that, I would still recommend this book to anyone who is heavily involved with web design. You should be familiar with the concepts. If nothing else, this book will generate some ideas on how to make your website more effective.
Rating:
Summary: UI Handbook
Review: Great book for UI guidelines for the web, Mr. Nielson breaks down allot of areas into very readable, manageable sections regarding UI design. Lots of great tips, "rules", etc. Just remember to take into account your own tastes, the way much of it reads it seems as if Mr. Nielson had his way we would be back to reading just plain text pages.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Resource
Review: The book really helps to organize material on the web and understand what makes or breaks a web page . It really helpe me to keep the user in mind while designing artistic sites. The author is not very artistically inclined but he is a great expert on organizing information on the web as well as creating the most ease for users.
Rating: 
Summary: IRONIC - this book is not very usable at all
Review: If this was not a book about usabilty, and just web design, I would not have to give this low of a score to it. Being that Jakob Nielsen is a "web usability expert" I would expect the principles to follow over into print. Not the case. This book has small sidebars on just about everypage. The sidebars sometimes discuss topics which were on a previous page or, worse yet, a topic which has not been addressed in the main body text yet.
Through out the entire volume I found myself reading a paragraph of text, having to stop in the middle of a sentence to read the sidebars before flipping the page, then returning to the middle of the sentence and forgetting what the paragraph was actually about, then I would have to turn back a page.
There is never a reference in the text as to when I should read the side bar. And it is clearly not evident in the main body. It looks as if the sidebars were an after thought by the publisher so that his book didn't look as plain as his website. Add to this problem, the poorly captioned images and you have the most un-usable book I have ever read. And that is Ironic since it is a book about Usability. That being said, the book does have some valid info but it is absolutely not worth the effort.
If you need to read about web usabilty, try "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. He has great information and an excellent writing style. If you still feel you need Mr. Nielsen's insight, then stick to his website alertbox.com
Rating: 
Summary: helpful info, but no surprises
Review: i got this book originally hoping that i'd find something in there i didn't already know... there wasn't much. if you've studied usability on your own, there aren't many surprises. if you haven't, you'll get some important points. there are some good reminders here, but how many of us buy books for the reminders? my biggest gripes are: jakob prefers functionality over form EVERY time, which isn't the real world. you need both. (have you seen _his_ site? yawn!) and jakob prounces his rules as if they are coming straight from the mouth of god. please! there are some good suggestions and reminders and there will be a couple of things you don't know. but if you already have some knowledge of usability, go to the library for this one.
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