Rating: 
Summary: An essential guide for GUI software developers
Review: This book is an essential read for anyone developing GUI applications. The style of writing and the huge number of examples is very well suited to the GUI software developer.Often books in this area are more suited to usability groups and so are too theoretical for developers to get into. With this book however, Jeff has produced a practical and essential development guide and avoids many of the research details that put developers off. Not to leave out those that are prepared to delve deeper into the usability area, each chapter has concise references and a recommended reading section. There are no excuses.
If you are developing or designing GUI applications you must read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Well organized and full of practical issues
Review: This book is well worth reading. It has hundreds of useful ideas.
For usability issues Steve Krugs "Don't make me think" I still consider the best. Johnsons book is a little too thick to be easily read in one go of a few weeks.
Johnson manages it well to write a book which is both good to read and essentially contains a very long list of single issues.
The entrance into the book I found rather steep. Principles before examples are difficult to grasp.
Finally I found the extensive discussion of the books of his usability fellows valuable.
Rating:
Summary: A designer-to-programmer dictionary
Review: This design book was the only one that made sense to my programmers. As a web designer, I've found it sometimes difficult to communicate the reasoning for specs to the programmers I work with. This book spoke to them in a way that none of my designer-centric books did.
Recommended for anyone who isn't a designer who wants to make more usabable interfaces, yet still a great resource for designers in general, web or software.
Rating: 
Summary: A perfect companion for "official" user interface guidelines
Review: This is an indispensable book for anyone involved in the making of software. In 560 pages, Jeff Johnson presents 82 carefully selected examples of mistakes in GUI software and mistakes occuring in the process of developing GUI software (a GUI Blooper). Instead of just pointing his fingers at the Bloopers which are listed, Mr. Johnson provides a VERY exhaustive walk-through of the mistakes including: Why is this a mistake, what category does it belong to, what could be done to remedy the situation (including examples), common reasons for committing this mistake. As extras, two case stories from Mr. Johnsons career as an UI consultant are provided together with some general remarks on user centred development. My favorite chapter of the book contains examples on GUI mistakes wich are due to poor management. This chapter ought to be required reading for any software manager. The Bloopers are grouped in seven chapters: GUI Component Bloopers; Layout Bloopers; Textual Bloopers; Interaction Bloopers; Web Bloopers; Responsiveness Bloopers; Man-agement Bloopers. This grouping combined with a very extensive index makes this book ideal for reference purposes. The layout of the book is simple and clear - some may say boring. There are a number of drawings with examples of remakes of GUI elements which, although effective, are somewhat poor. For dictionary purposes this book may rightly deserve 5 stars. But due to the fact this book is overly wordy (I would say that 20% of the text is superfluous) and due to a somewhat content weak chapter on Web Bloopers, it will have to do with just four stars.
Rating:
Summary: An Essential Guide. Buy It.
Review: You might be put off by the title - "'Bloopers'? I don't want to know what NOT to design, I want to know WHAT to design." That was my initial reaction. I was looking for a good intro to GUI for a graduate-level course and didn't want to teach by negative example. Well, fret not. Although he uses negative examples, Johnson does it extremely well and buttresses each yang with the yin of positivity - what the design should have done, and why it went wrong. The result is easily the best of the current crop of 'how to design GUIs' texts. It is readable, well-organized, and covers all the basics. I do not agree with the other Amazon reviews which question the negative slant and Johnson's frequent self-references. For me they fit right in and are appropriate. Finally, a usability book which was usability tested, the results used in editing the book, and the whole process reported in an appendix. Marvelous.
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