Jakob Nielsen - Designing Web Usability

Pros: Great collection of analyzed samples, good background information
Cons: Somewhat outdated, repetitive, seemingly anti-progress

A (spider) web and the wings of a wind mill are not that different in shape, at least when squinting ...

Pros: Lots of good common sense backed by facts and examples
Cons: Poor construction; designers will hate what he has to say

Jakob Nielsen (aka jakob) isn’t just another Epinions.com user. Vincent Flanders, author of Web Pages that Suck, calls Nielsen "the godfather of the web usability movement". In 1998, ZDNet rated Nielsen #6 on its "The Web’s...

Pros: Great examples, good screenshots, covers a myriad of areas
Cons: Could have used a chapter on how to structure usability test sessions

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...

Pros: interesting, informative, important
Cons: feels choppy, inconsistent

"Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity" is an outstanding work on usability of the Web. Jakob Nielsen systematically analyzes all portions of a website and explains how to improve it. With large full-color screen shots and...

Pros: Lots of quality information
Cons: Sometimes too preaching

Designing Web Usability is a great reference for people who build web sites. If you're an avid follower of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox-series you won't find many new ideas or concepts in this book, but if you're new to the concept of usability this is a...

Pros: Easily read and not boring.
Cons: Silly flaps on the cover!

This book should be amongst the top 5 books web designers should read and take to heart. Okay, not all of it is correct but I would guess 80-90% should be carried out when designing web sites.

The book is split into 9 well defined chapters,...

Pros: Well written, very clear book with lots of examples.
Cons: Lots of why but no how.

With "Designing Web Usability", Jakob Nielsen has written an excellent book covering most aspects of web usability. Although the book will not help you very much implementing his ideas, I would certainly suggest this book to 90% of the small and large...

Pros: A primer on usability for a layman.
Cons: Twice as long as it should have been

If you have been reading useit.com articles regularly you would not find any new concepts in the book. However it is worth buying for the various screenshots given in the book and Nielsen's crisp commentary on what can be done to improve these sites....

Pros: Screen shots abound
Cons: Funky folded cover

This is one of the best site/page design books I've read. The usability suggestions extend beyond the Web page into so-called "fat client" design of typical applications, but the emphasis is on Web design.

The 400-odd pages are...