May 23rd, 2006
Web design 2006: State of the art
Worth reading: Jakob Nielsen has made a career out of analyzing Web site design. He, along with co-author Hoa Loranger, just published Prioritizing Web Usability (New Riders), which surfaces many of the major mistakes in Web site design and offers usability guidelines that might save us all from ugly and unfathomable sites. An update /companion to Nielsen’s 2000 book, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, the new book examines Web design in a context with fewer bandwidth constraints and a longer tail of Web design successes and failures, as well as systematic research, to build on.
The 400-page book is copiously illustrated with full color Web page examples and covers everything from typography and information architecture to writing style and multimedia elements. It dispels the common misconceptions and provides practical advice. For example, the authors write: "Splash screens must die. They give users the first impression that the site care more about its image than about solving their problems." Some of the advice seems obvious, but it should be repeated over and over again, like a mantra–"Once again, less is more. People don’t like confronting a sea of choices." The book is retails for $50, but everything is pricey today. You can get it for about $20 less at Amazon. Also, for a book on design, the cover has about as much visual appeal as a brown paper bag. Maybe the authors are trying to make a point. If so, I am missing it…
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
