Rating: 
Summary: Seriously????
Review: I picked this book up and laughed my way through it. Some of the advice is valid and you can certainly learn a couple of things to avoid, but really I thought some of the points exceeded even the (...) realm of ridiculousness. There is just no possible way to make your site perfect for every glob of living organism on the planet. Granted some sites that were reviewed I confirmed my dislike of them after Mr. JN pointed out the things I probably never would have cared to actually think about. Anyhow for a guy who (...) usability his own book has some errors, and layout problems, whats up with that? Good for some, bad for others hence the 3 stars, but my actual rating is 2.5 stars.
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Summary: nice try
Review: For authors with the ability to note every flaw in a website, they certainly didn't put this book through any rigorous review process. The idea is good and the treament is nice, but the books biggest problem is that it isn't subdivided into problem areas. It's just 50 web pages with the problems of each cited in it's own list. Why 50? Seems arbitrary. (because 20 wouldn't make a whole book?) Want to know the most drastic problem on each page? Want to know where the concept went wrong? Want to know what has the potential to do the most damage or give the most frustration? You're on your own, because whether a button is off by a pixel or the whole idea is bad, the items are just run together in long unprioritized lists. Beyond that... If a site has (say...) 24 problems, 12 of the items will be trite and nit-picky things you'd fix without even wasting your clients time. Got time to read through over 1000 citations to find the 50 pivotal problems? Set aside a lot of time to weed through the dross. Smells like padding.
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Summary: A must for everyone invloved in web design
Review: An excellent book that takes on the top sites in the world and offers them advice on where they might still be going wrong. Can't fault it at all.
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Summary: Useful, but nothing cutting edge
Review: This book is a great resource to get ideas and validate basic web usability/design concepts, however most of what Neilson and Tahir write is nothing new.The dissected screenshots of homepages spark ideas and creativity. It does get a bit repetitive after reading a few homepage critiques. Nice looking book overall!
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Summary: Essential for all web designers and usability experts
Review: This is an important addition to any web/usability professional's library. Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir (of the Nielsen/Norman group) have created an extremely readable analysis of 50 "big-time" website homepages. As a credit to the authors, a random flip through the analysis pages will bring you a gem of wisdom, or a bit of dry, (occasionally sarcastic) aesthetic humor. The first fifty pages (or so) is devoted to homepage guidelines... the statisical review could be very useful for redesigning a homepage around best practices. The final 200+ pages are devoted to critical analyses of specific homepages including staple homepages from Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Yahoo, to a more eclectic selection like the Art Institute of Chicago Museum, Asian Cuisine, and the Florida Department of Revenue. The reviews were about 4-6 pages each with at least two full screen prints. The second screen print also had an enumerated "key list" with a corresponding pithy description on each usabilty issue. There are a few usability 'motifs' that stand out in the analyses. I think you will find the issues cover a wide range of "common" usability problems. Some of critical comments felt a bit like nitpicking or perhaps the author being a bit "hyper-critical", but most were spot on. Slavishly "fixing" every item mentioned in usability critique doesn't necessarily improve homepage usability, fixing the majority will ... and there are plenty of useful tips, and good advice to take back to the design shop.
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Summary: Good solid Nielsen/Norman stuff
Review: This book does a good job at deconstructing 50 home pages and gives the reasons behind the problems found on each page. It contains a summary of all the guidelines, around 130, for home page design, which is a useful tool for rating your own web page against. It also has a star rating for the importance for adherence to the individual guidelines, which helps you prioritise work to improve your home page. There are some guidelines which I felt were objective dislikes rather than real usability problems, e.g. not putting a "powered by xxxx" label on the home page. But this makes it all the more interesting for the user who needs to understand the issues as they apply to them. Overall a great read, with lots of good information. Good solid stuff.
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Summary: Nielsen takes it all off...
Review: His last book on the practice of simplicity was just a tease. Workers charged with the responsibility of making Web GUIs need more than pontification with sparse metrics and predictions of how great monitors "will be" in 2001. Nielsen and co-author Tahir have come down from the mountain and produced a book that is as usable as they come: (1) Take a site (you'll recognize a bunch) and give an overview in terms of what it is trying to accomplish. (2) Show metrics and comparisons on how screen space and controls are used. (3) Begin the fun in earnest with specific recommendations and focused criticism. The devil is in the details, and here is where we come away with the stuff that makes this book a valuable bargain. Opinions and advice Fortune 500 companies pay wads for are ours for the price of a book. You don't have to agree with Nielsen on anything at all. I battle usability questions daily at work and know the trade-offs in every GUI decision. Nielsen is neither right nor wrong -- but he is certainly listened to by any Web worker who must come to grips with these issues. By the way, the construction of the book itself is spectacular. I left it on my desk at work and it sucked people into my cubicle with its shape and color. And, surprisingly, not one of the screenshots of the analyzed Web sites I checked is out of date. There was no skimping on this book at all.
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Summary: Homepage Guidelines from Gurus
Review: Jakob Nielsen is out to change the Web, one page at a time. His latest book, "Homepage Usability" coauthored with Marie Tahir, takes on the most important page of your site, the home page. Now that Nielsen and the usability community have "defeated bad design" by reducing "user-hostile" design practices they are fighting for good design. What better place to start than your own home page? The authors present 113 homepage usability guidelines that will make your site easier to use, and apply them mercilessly to 50 popular sites. This book is part of a strategic campaign against the "enemies" of usability. The members of the Nielsen Norman group, a veritable who's who of usability and design gurus, realize their Fortune 500 fees are too high for most small to mid-sized companies. They are leveraging themselves accordingly to spread the usability gospel by giving world tours, seminars and tutorials, writing books, granting interviews, and teaching other designers about usability so design teams can help themselves. The home page is a company's public face to the world, and is often the most popular page on a site. Spending more time to get it right is time well invested, as usability improvements can yield two or three-fold increases in conversion rates. The problem is, there is only one home page for each site, so conflicting forces like sales, design, and marketing invariably vie for its attention. The challenge is to design a homepage that allows access to all of your important features without cramming them all onto the page itself, overwhelming new users. >Homepage Usability Guidelines The guidelines are distilled from the authors' combined 14 years of Web usability experience, and countless hours testing actual users. They are grouped by topic area, and show examples from the 50 website reviews. Here are some highlights: Communicate the Site's Purpose Tag lines should be brief and concise. TITLEs should begin with the company name for bookmarkability, followed by a good tagline. Avoid using "online" or unnecessary articles ("the" etc.) Don't include "hompage" or "online" in the title. Limit titles to less than 64 characters. Content Writing Optimize content for easy scanning. Be clear use consistent capitalization. Hire a copy editor. Avoid exclamation marks!! Revealing Content Through Examples Use examples to reveal the site's content, rather than just describing it. Examples instantly communicate what the site is about. Be specific. Search Search is one of the most important elements of the homepage so make it visible, wide, and simple. Provide a wide (25 char) input box on the top right or left of the home page. Use a "Search" button only. Search the entire site by default, users are confused by scoped searches. Don't search the Web, that's what search engines are for. News and Press Releases In order for them to work, you need to craft effective headlines and decks (story summaries). Give specific information, don't tantalize with hype. Headlines should be succinct, yet descriptive, to give maximum information in as few words as possible. Write and edit specific summaries for press releases and news stories that you feature on your home page. Don't just repurpose the first paragraph of the full article. Link headlines, not decks, to the full story. UI Widgets Use them sparingly as they invariably draw users attention. Never use widgets for parts of the screen that you don't want people to click. Make graphic bullets clickable. Avoid using multiple text entry boxes, users confuse these with search. >Homepage Design Statistics The authors also quantify homepage design conventions by tallying up the design stats on the 50 sites reviewed (page width/length, download time, search, wording conventions, etc.). Since most users spend most of their time *off* your site, the authors advise us to follow common Web design conventions. Don't fight your users' mental model unless you have a very good reason, and can back it up with user testing. I found this to be the most useful part of the book, as the authors quantify things that usability experts heatedly argue about. I'd like to see a larger sample size however. Things like search placement (35% upper right, 30% upper left), navigation location (30% left rail, 30% tabs, 18% top), and naming conventions (55% use "About <name of company>," 21% "About Us"), contact info (89% use "Contact Us"), and privacy policy (47% use "Privacy Policy"). A handy table of recommendations based on these statistics sums things up. Some highlights: * Download time at most 10 seconds at average connection speeds, < 50KB
* Page width optimized for 770 pixels, but with a liquid layout
* Page length of one or two screens is best
* Provide a white 25 character simple search box in upper right or left corner
* About us - always include this, helps establish trust
* Body text color - black 12 point (relative units) sans-serif font, on white background for maximum contrast At $10,000 per home page review, Nielsen says this is a 1/2 million dollar book. I wouldn't put the price quite that high, but it is invaluable. You only get one chance to make a first impression, this book will help you ensure it's a good one. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Colorful and brilliant!
Review: This book do exactly what it states - deconstruct 50 of the best websites HOMEPAGES. It does not go into detail about the inner pages or usability errors other then those which appear at the first page. Jakob explanations are clear, written well and to-the-point, and the way the book is presented is admirable. Get this book for the ability to point and fix any usability issue on any homepage you will ever visit/build.
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Summary: Nice book but have usability problems
Review: It's worth the first 53 pages. I don't think anybody cares about if a specific site do or doesn't do something rigth unless it is in a specific example. I found three usability problems in the book itself.
First, the printed format is odd and hard to handle.
Second, when he make the breakdown of the hompage sould have some kind of rating for each point, like Good, Bad or Regular. In this case if your are looking to see what is good or bad in a homepage you don't have to read all of them.
Third, the appendix. Completely useless. It doesn't give you a hint of the meaning in the real state breakdown. If you want to see the logo of one of the company in the book just go to the review of that company or go to their hompage. The search features doesn't say anything about it, it is a collection of different search boxes. The other collection in the appendix are not worthy comment them out.
If you want to take read the book, I recommend going to a public library or to a boookstore and red it there, not worth spend your money, save it for a bouquet to your spouse (or boy/girl-friend).
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