by Jakob Nielsen
SUMMARY: This book sets out guidelines for Web developers who
are concerned to ensure that their sites are easy to
navigate and use, impose minimum frustrations on their
visitors, and work with a wide range of browsers,
computers and connection speeds. In championing
plainness over fancy presentation and the word over
the image, Nielsen will not win easy acceptance
among all designers; but he presents statistics to
buttress his opinions on which Web techniques and
technologies make searching, browsing, understanding,
reading and printing easy for users. He includes
survey results on sizes of screens, types of queries
submitted to search portals, response times by
connection type, and more. This is also one of the few
books about the Web which addresses the contribution
of writers.
CONTENTS:
1 Introduction: Why Web Usability?
Art versus Engineering - A call for action - What this
book is not - Why everybody designs Web sites incorrectly
2 Page Design
Screen real estate - Separating meaning and presentation -
Response times - Linking - Style sheets - Frames -
Credibility - Printing
3 Content Design
Writing for the Web - Page titles - Writing headlines -
Legibility - Online documentation - Multimedia - Response
time - Images and photographs - Animation - Video - Audio -
Enabling users with disabilities to use multimedia content
- Three-dimensional graphics
4 Site Design
The home page - How wide should the page be? - Splash screens
must die - The home page versus interior pages - Metaphor -
Navigation - The user controls navigation - Subsites -
Search capabilities - URL design - User-contributed content
- Applet navigation
5 Intranet Design
Differentiating Intranet design - Extranet design -
Improving the bottom line through employee productivity -
Intranet portals: the corporate information infrastructure -
Intranet design standards - Managing employees' Web access -
Intranet user testing
6 Accessibility for Users with Disabilities
Web Accessibility Initiative - Visual disabilities -
Auditory disabilities - Speech disabilities - Motor
disabilities - Cognitive disabilities
7 International Use: Serving a Global Audience
Internationalization versus localization - International
inspection - Translated and multilingual sites - Regional
differences - International user testing - Methods of
testing - Self-administered tests
8 Future Predictions: The Only Web Constant Is Change
Long-term trends - Information appliances - Death of Web
browsers - Slowly increasing bandwidth - Metaphors for the
Web - Restructuring media space: goodbye, newspapers
9 Conclusion: Simplicity in Web Design
Home Run websites - Best of times or worse of times?
Recommended Readings
Softcover, 432 pages
Dimensions: 1.04 x 9.53 x 6.76 (inches) 2.6 x 24.2 x 17.2 (cm)
Price: USA $ 45
Published: 2000
Publisher: Indianapolis; New Riders Publishing
ISBN: 1-56205-810-X
Webpages about this book:
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=156205810X
http://www.useit.com/jakob/webusability/