Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity

Book by Jakob Nielsen, New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, 2000.
ISBN 1-56205-810-X.

Buy online:
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Reviews and Articles About the Book

Table of Contents

432 pages, full color.

Preface

1. Introduction: Why Web Usability?

  • Art Versus Engineering
    • About the Examples
  • A Call for Action
  • What This Book Is Not
    • Bad Usability Equals No Customers
  • Why Everybody Designs Websites Incorrectly

2. Page Design

  • Screen Real Estate
    • Data Ink and Chart Junk
  • Cross-Platform Design
    • Where Are Users Coming From?
    • The Car as a Web Browser
    • Color Depth Getting Deeper
    • Get a Big Screen
    • Resolution-Independent Design
    • Using Non-Standard Content
    • Installation Inertia
    • Helpful Super-Users
    • When Is It Safe to Upgrade?
    • Collect Browsers
  • Separating Meaning and Presentation
    • Platform Transition
    • Data Lives Forever
  • Response Times
    • Predictable Response Times
    • Server Response Time
    • The Best Sites Are Fast
    • Speedy Downloads, Speedy Connections
    • Users Like Fast Pages
    • You Need Your Own T1 Line
    • Understanding Page Size
    • Faster URLs
    • Glimpsing the First Screenful
    • Taking Advantage of HTTP Keep-Alive
  • Linking
    • Link Descriptions
    • Link Titles
    • Guidelines for Link Titles
    • Use Link Titles Without Waiting
    • Coloring Your Links
    • The Physiology of Blue
    • Link Expectations
    • Peoplelinks
    • Outbound Links
    • Incoming Links
    • Linking to Subscriptions and Registrations
    • Advertising Links
  • Style Sheets
    • Standardizing Design Through Style Sheets
    • WYSIWYG
    • Style Sheet Examples for Intranets
    • Making Sure Style Sheets Work
  • Frames
    • <NOFRAMES>
    • Frames in Netscape 2.0
    • Is It Ever OK to Use Frames?
    • Borderless Frames
    • Frames as Copyright Violation
  • Credibility
  • Printing
  • Conclusion

3. Content Design

  • Writing for the Web
    • The Value of an Editor
    • Keep Your Texts Short
    • Copy Editing
    • Web Attitude
    • Scannability
    • Why Users Scan
    • Plain Language
    • Page Chunking
    • Limit Use of Within-Page Links
  • Page Titles
  • Writing Headlines
  • Legibility
  • Online Documentation
    • Page Screenshots
  • Multimedia
    • Waiting for Software to Evolve
    • Auto-Installing Plug-Ins
  • Response Time
    • Client-Side Multimedia
  • Images and Photographs
    • Image Reduction
  • Animation
    • Showing Continuity in Transitions
    • Indicating Dimensionality in Transitions
    • Illustrating Change Over Time
    • Multiplexing the Display
    • Enriching Graphical Representations
    • Visualizing Three-Dimensional Structures
    • Attracting Attention
    • Animation Backfires
  • Video
    • Streaming Video Versus Downloadable Video
  • Audio
  • Enabling Users with Disabilities to Use Multimedia Content
  • Three-Dimensional Graphics
    • Bad Use of 3D
    • When to Use 3D
  • Conclusion
    • The Attention Economy

4. Site Design

  • The Home Page
  • How Wide Should the Page Be?
    • Home Page Width
  • Splash Screens Must Die
  • The Home Page Versus Interior Pages
    • Deep Linking
    • Affiliates Programs
  • Metaphor
    • Shopping Carts as Interface Standard
    • Alternative Terminology
  • Navigation
    • Navigation Support in Browsers
    • Where Am I?
    • Where Have I Been?
    • Where Can I Go?
    • Site Structure
    • The Vice-Presidential Button
    • Importance of User-Centered Structure
    • Breadth Versus Depth
  • The User Controls Navigation
    • Design Creationism Versus Design Darwinism
    • Help Users Manage Large Amounts of Information
    • Future Navigation
    • Reducing Navigational Clutter
    • Avoid 3D for Navigation
  • Subsites
  • Search Capabilities
    • Don't Search the Web
    • Micro-Navigation
    • Global Search
    • Advanced Search
    • The Search Results Page
    • Page Descriptions and Keywords
    • Use a Wide Search Box
    • See What People Search For
    • Search Destination Design
    • Integrating Sites and Search Engines
  • URL Design
    • Compound Domain Names
    • Fully Specify URLs in HTML Code
    • URL Guessing
    • Beware of the Os and 0s
    • Archival URLs
    • Y2K URL
    • Advertising a URL
    • Supporting Old URLs
  • User-Contributed Content
  • Applet Navigation
    • Double-Click
    • Slow Operations
  • Conclusion

5. Intranet Design

  • Differentiating Intranet Design from Internet Design
  • Extranet Design
  • Improving the Bottom Line Through Employee Productivity
    • Average Versus Marginal Costs
  • Intranet Portals:
  • The Corporate Information Infrastructure
    • Get Rid of Email
    • Intranet Maintenance
    • The Big Three Infrastructure Components: Directory, Search, and News
  • Intranet Design Standards
    • Guidelines for Standards
    • Outsourcing Your Intranet Design
  • Managing Employees' Web Access
    • Hardware Standards
    • Browser Defaults
    • Search Engine Defaults
  • Intranet User Testing
    • Field Studies
    • Don't Videotape in the Field
  • Conclusion

6. Accessibility for Users with Disabilities

  • Web Accessibility Initiative
    • Disabilities Associated with Aging
    • Assistive Technology
  • Visual Disabilities
    • ALT Attributes
  • Auditory Disabilities
  • Speech Disabilities
  • Motor Disabilities
  • Cognitive Disabilities
    • Search Without Spelling
  • Conclusion: Pragmatic Accessibility

7. International Use: Serving a Global Audience

  • Internationalization Versus Localization
  • Designing for Internationalization
  • International Inspection
    • Should Domains End in .com?
  • Translated and Multilingual Sites
    • Language Choice
    • Make Translations Bookmarkable
    • Multilingual Search
  • Regional Differences
  • International User Testing
    • Overcoming the Language Gap
    • How Many Countries Should You Test?
    • Thanking Your Participants
  • Methods of Testing
    • Travel Yourself
    • Add a Few Days to Your Stay
    • Remote User Testing
    • Usability Labs for International Testing
  • Self-Administered Tests
  • Conclusion

8. Future Predictions: The Only Web Constant Is Change

  • The Internet Is Hard
  • Long-Term Trends
    • The Anti-Mac User Interface
  • Information Appliances
    • Drawing a Computer
    • The Invisible Computer
    • WebTV
    • Designing for WebTV
  • Death of Web Browsers
  • Slowly Increasing Bandwidth
  • Metaphors for the Web
    • Different Media, Different Strengths
    • The Telephone
    • Telephone Usability Problems
    • Contact Tokens
    • The Television
  • Restructuring Media Space: Good-Bye, Newspapers
    • Media Distinctions Caused by Technology
  • Conclusion

9. Conclusion: Simplicity in Web Design

Recommended Readings

History of the Book Title

For a long time, the working title for this book was Designing Excellent Websites: Secrets of an Information Architect, but we finally decided that this title was too convoluted (as well as illogical: once you print 250,000 copies of something, it's not exactly a "secret"). For the final title, simplicity rules as that is the core message of the book.
Read
What the World
is Reading:

English cover
English
ISBN 1-56205-810-X

Japanese cover
Japanese
ISBN 4-8443-5562-7

German cover
German
Erfolg des Einfachen
ISBN 3-8272-5779-4 (1st edition)
ISBN 3-8272-6206-4 (2nd edition)

The second edition is a new translation and uses the "standard" blue-green cover. I preferred the German title used for the first edition, so I am still showing a scan of the first edition here. Except for the title, it's obviously recommended to buy the second edition and get the benefits of the improved translation.

French cover
French: France / Québec
Conception de sites Web:
L'art de la simplicité

ISBN 2-7440-0887-7
Review in Journal du Net

Brazilian cover
Portuguese (Brazil)
Projetando Websites
ISBN 8535206566

Italian cover
Italian
Web usability: La pratica della semplicità
ISBN 88-7303-686-4

Finnish cover
Finnish
WWW-Suunnittelu - Käytettävyys
ISBN 951-826-203-9

Spanish cover
Spanish
Usabilidad: Diseño de sitios Web
ISBN 84-205-3008-5

Russian cover
Russian
ISBN 5-93286-004-9

Chinese cover
Chinese
ISBN 7-115-08726-1

Dutch cover
Dutch
Functioneel webdesign:
De kracht van eenvoud

ISBN 90-430-0383-2

Hebrew cover
Hebrew
ISBN 965-361-274-3

Swedish cover
Swedish
Användbar Webbdesign
ISBN 91-47-03612-5

Danish cover
Danish
Godt webdesign
ISBN 87-7843-479-3
Review in PC World Denmark: Good Advice from Nielsen

Serbian cover
Serbian
Dizajn funkcionalnih Web strana
ISBN 86-7991-139-9

 

Note: Editions are shown in the order in which cover scans were received. If you have a translation not shown here, please email a scan of the cover (preferably 200 pixels wide) to info@nngroup.com