Customer Rating:  
Summary: It's not a religion, people...
Comment: Nielsen's advice is indispensable mainly in the business (E-commerce) website sphere. It isn't as applicable in the "personal homesite" sphere (again, this book and really most of Nielsen's ideas are aimed at professional web designers), and only partially for "all the rest" (governmental, museums, etc).As far as E-commerce (business sites) goes, I agree with Nielsen on every one of his points (one can take them as *general guidelines* for all other types of websites). But it seems exceedingly foolish to react to his perceived egotism. Leave it alone already... take what you need and leave the rest. If Nielsen is a "legend in his own mind," then so are most other people... admittedly he seems a bit outspoken about it, but so what?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good information but extreme
Comment: A terrific resource for a first time website or novice designer. Good advice for a website which caters to the generic, unknown user; extreme in today's virtual marketing campaigns where the design team is completely aware of the user's needs and requirements. Definitely information worth keeping in mind when designing any website.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Users first
Comment: Self-indulgent artistes hate this guy because his ultimate message is "think of the user first." Self-indulgent artistes believe that the incessant display of their own hi-bandwidth graphical prowess is the purpose of websites. That's fine for a college kid's personal site, but it doesn't work if you are desiging for a business. Those of us who have to work in the real world appreciate Nielsen's common sense and excellent priorities. Besides, he may not be perfect, but he's one of the few web gurus who backs up his opinions with empirical data.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Above Artists
Comment: If you enjoyed Roger Black telling you how to design for the web, you're going to love this. You're probably also a beaten house-wife.I have witnessed over and over again, the deep heated desire to control creatives. I believe it largely stems from envy. This guy probably had a problem with sound in movies, color television and graphics on web pages. If you want to really learn something about useability, try Edward Tufte. Nice cover design though. I suspect he objected to that as well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Anyone Involved with Websites
Comment: Jackob Nielsen has pulled together an excellent primer on usability for websites. Perhaps the easiest way to summarize his book is the book's tagline: "The practice of simplicty."Web design has to this point been more of an intuitive art for many designers. Many web managers look at general graphic and layout design and not the functionality that design is suppose to enable. Nielsen takes this intuition and describes exactly what solid, functional web design looks like and what it should do. He uses numerous real world examples and screen shots throughout the book. Scattered throughout are statistics from his research which are helpful as well. Nielsen also explains how website should differ from Intranet sites and also how to "internationalize" your website for foreign users. One particularly helpful chapter focused on how to write for the web. A common theme throughout the book is that web users are impatient and thus prefer to skim rather than read. Thus, when writing web content, you should do so with skimming in mind using lots of bullets, and highlighting key words. He also advocates using Title tags for links so that when a user places a mouse cursor over the link, a little bubble help will appear describing where the link will take the user. The chapter on page design is also particularly helpful in building in designing pages that tells the user where they are, what they can do from there, where they can go from there, and what is offered - all without scrolling. Nielsen has become the Father of Usability on the Internet. This is a great book to give you some practical advice on design. It won't tell you how to do coding, but it gives you the conceptual framework needed to design a site. Even if you do not agree with all of his points, it will at least have encouraged you to think about aspects of design that many haven't considered.
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