Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Deals with content and page design, designing for ease of navigation and users with disabilities. This book presents a series of principles which show: that web users want to find what they're after quickly; and, that if they don't know what they're after, they want to browse quickly and access information they come across in a logical manner.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. 2)
• Errata (p. 4)
• Book Layout (p. 5)
• Guide to This Book (p. 5)
• 1 Introduction: Why Web Usability? (p. 8)
• Art Versus Engineering (p. 11)
• The Competitive Bar Is High (p. 11)
• About the Examples (p. 12)
• A Call for Action (p. 13)
• What This Book Is Not (p. 13)
• Bad Usability Equals No Customers (p. 14)
• Why Everybody Designs Websites Incorrectly (p. 14)
• 2 Page Design (p. 16)
• Screen Real Estate (p. 18)
• Cross-Platform Design (p. 25)
• Where Are Users Coming From? (p. 27)
• Data Ink and Chart Junk (p. 27)
• The Car as a Web Browser (p. 28)
• Resolution-Independent Design (p. 29)
• Color Depth Getting Deeper (p. 29)
• Get a Big Screen (p. 31)
• Using Non-Standard Content (p. 31)
• Installation Inertia (p. 33)
• When Is It Safe to Upgrade? (p. 33)
• Helpful Super-Users (p. 35)
• Collect Browsers (p. 36)
• Separating Meaning and Presentation (p. 36)
• Platform Transition (p. 37)
• Response Times (p. 42)
• Data Lives Forever (p. 43)
• Predictable Response Times (p. 44)
• Server Response Time (p. 45)
• Speedy Downloads, Speedy Connections (p. 46)
• The Best Sites Are Fast (p. 46)
• Users Like Fast Pages (p. 47)
• Understanding Page Size (p. 48)
• You Need Your Own T1 Line (p. 48)
• Faster URLs (p. 50)
• Glimpsing the First Screenful (p. 50)
• Taking Advantage of HTTP keep-Alive (p. 53)
• Linking (p. 53)
• Link Descriptions (p. 55)
• Link Titles (p. 60)
• Use Link Titles Without Waiting (p. 60)
• Coloring Your Links (p. 62)
• Link Expectations (p. 64)
• The Physiology of Blue (p. 64)
• Outbound Links (p. 66)
• Peoplelinks (p. 66)
• Incoming Links (p. 74)
• Linking to Subscriptions and Registrations (p. 76)
• Advertising Links (p. 77)
• Style Sheets (p. 81)
• Standardizing Design Through Style Sheets (p. 82)
• WYSIWYG (p. 82)
• Style Sheet Examples for Intranets (p. 83)
• Making Sure Style Sheets Work (p. 84)
• Frames (p. 85)
• [NOFRAMES] (p. 85)
• Frames in Netscape 2.0 (p. 86)
• Borderless Frames (p. 87)
• Is It Ever OK to Use Frames? (p. 91)
• Frames as Copyright Violation (p. 91)
• Credibility (p. 92)
• Printing (p. 94)
• Conclusion (p. 97)
• 3 Content Design (p. 98)
• Writing for the Web (p. 100)
• The Value of an Editor (p. 100)
• Keep Your Texts Short (p. 101)
• Web Attitude (p. 101)
• Copy Editing (p. 103)
• Scannability (p. 104)
• Why Users Scan (p. 106)
• Plain Language (p. 111)
• Page Chunking (p. 112)
• Limit Use of Within-Page Links (p. 115)
• Page Titles (p. 123)
• Writing Headlines (p. 124)
• Legibility (p. 125)
• Online Documentation (p. 129)
• Page Screenshots (p. 129)
• Multimedia (p. 131)
• Auto-Installing Plug-Ins (p. 131)
• Client-Side Multimedia (p. 132)
• Waiting for Software to Evolve (p. 134)
• Response Time (p. 134)
• Images and Photographs (p. 134)
• Image Reduction (p. 135)
• Animation (p. 143)
• Showing Continuity in Transitions (p. 145)
• Indicating Dimensionality in Transitions (p. 145)
• Illustrating Change over Time (p. 145)
• Multiplexing the Display (p. 146)
• Enriching Graphical Representations (p. 146)
• Animation Backfires (p. 146)
• Visualizing Three-Dimensional Structures (p. 146)
• Attracting Attention (p. 147)
• Video (p. 149)
• Streaming Video Versus Downloadable Video (p. 150)
• Audio (p. 154)
• Enabling Users with Disabilities to Use Multimedia Content (p. 155)
• Three-Dimensional Graphics (p. 156)
• Bad Use of 3D (p. 156)
• When to Use 3D (p. 159)
• Conclusion (p. 160)
• The Attention Economy (p. 160)
• 4 Site Design (p. 162)
• The Home Page (p. 166)
• How Wide Should the Page Be? (p. 174)
• Home Page Width (p. 174)
• Splash Screens Must Die (p. 176)
• The Home Page Versus Interior Pages (p. 178)
• Deep Linking (p. 179)
• Affiliates Programs (p. 179)
• Metaphor (p. 180)
• Shopping Carts as Interface Standard (p. 188)
• Alternative Terminology (p. 188)
• Navigation (p. 188)
• Where Am I? (p. 188)
• Navigation Support in Browsers (p. 189)
• Where Have I Been? (p. 191)
• Where Can I Go? (p. 191)
• Site Structure (p. 198)
• The Vice-Presidential Button (p. 198)
• Importance of User-Centered Structure (p. 202)
• Breadth Versus Depth (p. 203)
• The User Controls Navigation (p. 214)
• Help Users Manage Large Amounts of Information (p. 217)
• Design Creationism Versus Design Darwinism (p. 218)
• Reducing Navigational Clutter (p. 221)
• Future Navigation (p. 221)
• Avoid 3D for Navigation (p. 222)
• Subsites (p. 222)
• Search Capabilities (p. 224)
• Don't Search the Web (p. 224)
• Micro-Navigation (p. 225)
• Advanced Search (p. 227)
• Global Search (p. 227)
• The Search Results Page (p. 230)
• Page Descriptions and Keywords (p. 231)
• Use a Wide Search Box (p. 233)
• See What People Search For (p. 237)
• Search Destination Design (p. 238)
• Integrating Sites and Search Engines (p. 238)
• URL Design (p. 246)
• Compound Domain Names (p. 246)
• Fully Specify URLs in HTML Code (p. 247)
• URL Guessing (p. 248)
• Archival URLs (p. 249)
• Beware of the Os and Os (p. 249)
• Advertising a URL (p. 250)
• Supporting Old URLs (p. 251)
• Y2K URL (p. 251)
• User-Contributed Content (p. 256)
• Applet Navigation (p. 256)
• Double-Click (p. 258)
• Slow Operations (p. 259)
• Conclusion (p. 259)
• 5 Intranet Design (p. 262)
• Differentiating Intranet Design from Internet Design (p. 265)
• Extranet Design (p. 266)
• Improving the Bottom Line Through Employee Productivity (p. 270)
• Average Versus Marginal Costs (p. 276)
• Intranet Portals: The Corporate Information Infrastructure (p. 276)
• Get Rid of Email (p. 277)
• Intranet Maintenance (p. 279)
• The Big Three Infrastructure Components: Directory, Search, and News (p. 279)
• Intranet Design Standards (p. 280)
• Guidelines for Standards (p. 281)
• Outsourcing Your Intranet Design (p. 284)
• Managing Employees' Web Access (p. 284)
• Hardware Standards (p. 285)
• Browser Defaults (p. 286)
• Search Engine Defaults (p. 288)
• Intranet User Testing (p. 289)
• Field Studies (p. 290)
• Don't Videotape in the Field (p. 292)
• Conclusion (p. 293)
• 6 Accessibility for Users with Disabilities (p. 296)
• Disabilities Associated with Aging (p. 298)
• Web Accessibility Initiative (p. 298)
• Assistive Technology (p. 299)
• Visual Disabilities (p. 302)
• ALT Attributes (p. 303)
• Auditory Disabilities (p. 308)
• Speech Disabilities (p. 308)
• Motor Disabilities (p. 309)
• Cognitive Disabilities (p. 309)
• Search Without Spelling (p. 310)
• Conclusion: Pragmatic Accessibility (p. 311)
• 7 International Use: Serving a Global Audience (p. 312)
• Internationalization Versus Localization (p. 315)
• Designing for Internationalization (p. 315)
• International Inspection (p. 319)
• Should Domains End in .com? (p. 319)
• Translated and Multilingual Sites (p. 320)
• Language Choice (p. 324)
• Multilingual Search (p. 331)
• Make Translations Bookmarkable (p. 331)
• Regional Differences (p. 332)
• International User Testing (p. 333)
• Overcoming the Language Gap (p. 333)
• How Many Countries Should You Test? (p. 335)
• Thanking Your Participants (p. 335)
• Methods of Testing (p. 336)
• Travel Yourself (p. 336)
• Add a Few Days to Your Stay (p. 336)
• Remote User Testing (p. 337)
• Usability Labs for International Testing (p. 338)
• Self-Administered Tests (p. 341)
• Conclusion (p. 344)
• 8 Future Predictions: The Only Web Constant Is Change (p. 346)
• Long-Term Trends (p. 348)
• The Internet Is Hard (p. 348)
• The Anti-Mac User Interface (p. 351)
• The Invisible Computer (p. 352)
• Information Appliances (p. 353)
• Drawing a Computer (p. 353)
• WebTV (p. 354)
• Designing for WebTV (p. 356)
• Death of Web Browsers (p. 362)
• Slowly Increasing Bandwidth (p. 363)
• Metaphors for the Web (p. 365)
• The Telephone (p. 366)
• Different Media, Different Strengths (p. 366)
• Telephone Usability Problems (p. 368)
• Contact Tokens (p. 369)
• The Television (p. 370)
• Restructuring Media Space: Good-Bye, Newspapers (p. 372)
• Media Distinctions Caused by Technology (p. 373)
• Conclusion (p. 376)
• 9 Conclusion: Simplicity in Web Design (p. 378)
• Home-Run Websites (p. 380)
• Half-Minute Baseball Lesson (p. 380)
• User Survey: What Causes Repeat Traffic? (p. 382)
• Better Than Reality (p. 383)
• Best of Times or Worst of Times? (p. 388)
• Mouseclicks Vote (p. 390)
• Recommended Readings (p. 392)
• Books (p. 394)
• Usability (p. 395)
• Hypertext (p. 395)
• Web Technology (p. 396)
• Read My Next Book (p. 396)
• Index (p. 398)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

While everyone wants to design cool web sites, no one wants to think simple and consider whether the design actually accomplishes its goal, which is usually to sell, teach, or entertain. The sole exception is Nielsen, who has made a living speaking and writing about what works and what doesn't work in interactive media. His simple, well-written, and well-illustrated book discusses web usability, page design, content design, site design, intranet design, accessibility for users with disabilities, international use, future directions, and simplicity. Buy more than one copy. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.