Rating: 
Summary: Jakob is not all he's cracked up to be
Review: HAve you seen this guy's site, useit.com? That says it all concerning his abilities. He loves to see his name and pictures in print, and that is very obvious from checking out his site.
I would not buy his books, nor listen to any of his advise. At best he can offer tips for designing handicapped accesible sites, but that's about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Home Breaking
Review: This is an excellent book about the design of homepages that could have benefited from paying attention to some of the authors' own points about design.
Nielsen and Tahir are consultants who advise their clients about the design of homepages on web sites. The book is a collection of screen shots of fifty different homepages with a description of the purpose of each web site and a chart showing the allocation of screen real estate amongst topics like navigation, content and advertising. Most of the authors' real estate is used for number-coded comments about each homepage. In addition, based on their analysis of what does and does not work on the sites, the authors provide a list of guidelines for homepage designers.
This useful book calls attention to common mistakes that have been made in the design of homepages by major companies, many of them in the Fortune 500, like Microsoft and Ford. Indeed, one complaint I had is that none of the web sites analyzed were sites for individuals and small companies. Given that, after seeing half the pages, one already has a pretty big dose of knowledge about large company mistakes, it might have been pleasant and useful to look at how to improve the web sites of small timers.
One of the things that the authors urge is consistency in the design of homepages so that users will be able to find their way around homepages more easily. For example they urge that any search box be placed in the upper right or left hand corner. They also weigh in against animation on a homepage. One of the dangers of hewing to the authors' consensus rules is that homepages may develop such a sameness that users won't differentiate between them.
One problem with the book is that although the authors are concerned about easing the way around the homepage for users, they haven't eased the reader's way around their comments. The numbered circles keyed to the comments are organized right to left and top to bottom on the page. But readers will look at one area and then another on the page with the screen shot and will have a hard time coordinating the instincts of their eyes with the numbered comments.
There are also some curious appendixes. I suppose it might be useful for comparison to have all of the logos laid out on a two page spread, but what is one to make of an appendix called "Smiling Ladies" with a selection of graphics from the homepages, not all of which are smiling ladies.
This is a good reference book for professional designers of big web sites. The homegrown webmaster will probably find something like "The Non-Designer's Web Book" by Robin Williams, (the third edition of which is planned to be published in February of 2005) more useful.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe more webmasters should read his books.
Review: In his first book, "Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity", published two years earlier (December 1999), Jakob Nielsen presented a comprehensive stylebook for presenting web pages. Although a tough read for one sitting, it was one of the few books that presented an overall methodology to an organization's web presence. Since that book presented a lot of information most of which I believe was passed over in search of techniques that directly related to the reader; he stated in his first book that he would follow up with a more illustrative volume.This book narrows the field down somewhat by only concentrating on homepages. The first part of the book consists of a chapter on "Homepage Guidelines" which encompasses the first 52 pages. The following 250 pages or so show screen shots of various homepages from large organizations. Some examples are Citigroup, ExxonMobil, FedEX, General Motors, and Microsoft. There is some satisfaction however in seeing some large company with a richly funded web program stumble or just plain get it wrong. It makes my mistakes a little more tolerable. The first page of a typical "deconstruct" is a screen shot of the company's homepage. This is followed by a description of the company, a short critique, a color map of the page showing areas devoted to content of interest, self promotion, advertising, navigation, filler, browser controls etc. A breakdown of the actual percentages is illustrated with a pie chart. The third page shows the homepage with numbers representing each of the points (mostly mistakes) that the author is trying to highlight. Yes, as other reviewers stated some of the mistakes he points out can be a bit repetitive, such as logo placements, taglines, and redundant navigations buttons, in general he (along with Marie Tahir) he gives you specific examples with which you can learn from. Both his books have helped me, if only in thinking of web pages as one avenue of communication. Is your webpage communicating to others in a straightforward, consistent matter in the least amount of time as possible? Two main themes do shine through in both his books; make the file size small and the presentation clear so that users have to spend the minimum amount of time navigating your site, and don't over sell your links. Once users click to a link and it is not what they expected they just might not come back to your site in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Invaluable book for web designers & directors
Review: First off, this is weird critiquing a critique book. ;-) At the beginning of Homepage Usability is a big list of informative guidelines for creating a a useable homepage and a few pages devoted to homepage design statistics -- showing what other people are doing, but that's not this book's raison d'etre. It's the usability critiques -- I found it absolutely invaluable showing these 50 websites next to eachother. Some of the advice seemed unbalanced and a lot was repeated, but the authors really dissected each site thoroughly. At times the authors seemed to dispense anti-graphic design, lowest common denominator advice which may get you fumiing like it did me...but fortunately that is kept to a minimum. Two gripes: One, something that was missing from the book that I would have liked to have seen is perhaps a simple chart or scale showing from 1-10 how "usable" each website is, to complement their critiques. Second, one of the sites that were reviewed was going out of business -- what's the point?
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