From the Guru of usability.

Jakob Nielsen is the computer industry’s declared “king of usability.” To that I say The King Has No Clothes! If you are a text-centric person, you will really love the Spartan and bare-bones approach philosophized by Dr. Nielsen. However, if you consider yourself someone who is graphically oriented (probably the vast majority of today’s contemporary computer users), you will find this book a complete waste of time and a major disappointment. In a nutshell, Dr. Nielsen eschews anything graphical and advocates systems designs that are Luddite in nature. His design philosophy is antiquated and completely out of touch with today’s systems. Reading this book I am reminded of the classic Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert and Wally are having lunch with a bitter veteran software developer. “When I started programming,” quips the old school veteran, “we didn’t have any of these sissy icons and windows. All we had were zeros and ones – and sometimes we didn’t even have ones. I once wrote an entire database program using zeros.” I am also filled with the sense that perhaps Nielsen may have flunked Crayola 101 in kindergarten and has been on an anti-graphical rant ever since. If you loved the old days of command line DOS operating systems, blue screens and commands requiring acrobatic keyboard maneuvers (e.g., tap your feet and blink twice while simultaneously pressing CTRL-Left Shift-ALT-F7), by all means grab this book. If you enjoy graphical user interfaces, then you’d better pass on this book. ( )

Самая известная на сегодняшний день книга по веб-дизайну. Ее автор, доктор физических наук Якоб Нильсен - признанный во всем мире специалист в области интерфейсов и удобства эксплуатации, - делится с читателем своими знаниями и опытом. Им был разработан ряд методик, направленных на быстрое и экономичное усовершенствование пользовательского интерфейса, включая эвристическую оценку. Он является обладателем 38 патентов США на разработки, ориентированные, главным образом, на повышение удобства работы пользователей с Интернетом. Книга содержит исчерпывающее руководство по построению эффективного взаимодействия с любым пользователем в любой ситуации: от подготовки информационного наполнения и оформления страниц до упрощения структуры навигации и создания профессиональных сайтов. В книге вы не найдете описаний каких-то конкретных программ и кодов на HTML. Она отвечает на самый главный вопрос дизайна: "Что именно нужно сделать, чтобы посетителям сайта было удобно с ним работать?"

Yes, read this, Nielsen's AlertBox material online and Don't Make Me Think. Designing Web Usability is now somewhat dated—some of the blunders it attacks have almost gone—but still seminal. I'd review it worse if it might prompt him to issue a second edition ( )

Along with Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, this text is a must-have for anyone concerned with web usability and navigation. While some sections are a little dated now, the basic message is still desperately relevant... as a random perusal of webpages will instantly prove. ( )