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By Pete Czech - 12/20/2001 Usability has long been one of the facets of web design that we as designers have chosen to ignore. Preoccupied with making our sites work, adding "cool" features, and assembling mounds of content has left us forgetting the most important part of the web: the users. Dr. Jakob Nielsen has long been the premiere web usability expert - and his latest effort, "Homepage Usability: 50 Sites Deconstructed" is by far a resource that no web designer should be without. Nielsen, co-founder of the Nielsen-Norman Group, collaborated with Marie Tahir, a user-profiling expert, to produce this 314-page resource. The book has multiple sections - beginning with examination of the role of the homepage, and them moving on to 113 "guidelines" for homepage design - ranging from communicating your homepage's purpose to specifics such as how to best integrate stock quotes, or even proper placement of search boxes. While many of these guidelines may at first appear to be common sense, they were derived from many years of user research - and the authors back up each guideline with solid arguments, examples, and statistics. The meat of the book, however, is definitely the in-depth reviews of 50 top websites - ranging from About.com to Victoria's Secret. The authors provide a comprehensive review of each site, including an analysis of screen real-estate usage using graphs to illustrate how the screen space is used - a topic that is often overlooked by many designers. Each page is also carefully deconstructed and studied point by point, offering analysis of why something does or does not work on that particular page. The book closes with a comprehensive appendix that includes thumbnails of all 50 sites for quick and easy comparison, an index of site names, taglines, and even the title of their homepage window, as well as images of the various logos, search boxes, shopping cart icons, and "smiling ladies" used on each of the sites. The appendix alone is a valuable resource - having all of this information in one place makes it easy for a web designer to quickly develop new ideas. As already stated, this book is a must-have for any serious web designer. The range of topics covered will enable anyone to enhance their web site - whether it is a world-famous site, or a collection of your favorite photos. Users that are interested in delving further into web usability would also benefit from Nielsen's previous title, "Designing Web Usability" - which, while not being the most recent resource on the subject, provides valuable background information on users and their habits when browsing the web. For further information, you can see Dr. Nielsen's website, or the homepage of the Nielsen-Norman Group.
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