By Steve Krug
Review by: Alex
When people think of making their sites appeal to the widest possible audience the first thing which comes to mind is accessibility, making sure it works in as many browsers as possible and that disabled users can access your site. Yes all of the above is very important but when thinking of your visitors one thing people don't even consider though it’s probably the most obvious is Usability. Don't make me think, a common sense approach to web usability is a book which details information about how to make your website usable for the masses. Don't let the size of the book trick you into thinking that it only contains tips and tricks either, this book is a very complete guide to why you need to take usability seriously, for example... when a website loads visitors tend to look to certain areas of the screen first and to make navigating your site usable, it has to be in a way in which people understand. You may think your site works well however if only you and a few friends have viewed it, how will you know what other people think about? Steve Krug may be bold in speaking up about the various points which the book brings up however this book takes to a new level how websites should be usable by the masses, how to conduct studies into evaluating how usable your website really is and actually making the site so anyone can use it, even if the blinding obvious is a mystery to them. The book is split into four sections, "guiding principals", "things you need to get right", "making sure you got them right" and "larger concerns and outside influences". This book is laid out in a simplistic and dare I say it... usable format which uses a mixture of logic and common sense to show people that they may believe their website is usable but may have missed the target by a long shot.
The chapters in the book include the following... Chapter 1 discusses the laws of usability, Chapter 2 mentions how we really use the web, Chapter 3 explains how to best design your pages and content, Chapter 4 mentions why users like mindless choices, Chapter 5 describes the art of not writing for the web and how it improves usability, Chapter 6 explains the importance of navigation and how usability applies to it, Chapter 7 brings up the home page design and how to recover from usability problems, Chapter 8 directs you to why arguments relating to usability in team meetings are worthless and how to escape them, Chapter 9 is one of the most important topics and brings up the necessity of usability testing and how it can be done with ease, Chapter 10 details why your website should include usability and the benefits of including it, Chapter 11 describes how accessibility and CSS applies to usability and the problems which may affect it and the final chapter mentions what to do if your boss asks you to do something which may result in a collapse of usability from within your website.
This book is suitable for the following types of people interested in website development:
- Website designers who want to make their website simple enough for anyone to be able to use.
- People who apply accessibility to their websites but have not yet looked at usability standards.
- Designers and developers who want to make the user’s trip to your site as relaxing as possible.