Review: Designing Web Usability

Jacob Allred
#reviews#web-dev

Just gave up on Designing Web Usability. I mooched the book on the recommendation of dozens of smart people that stated this is the definitive usability guide for the web.

Lies! This book was out-of-date when it was published. The guy rants for like 10 pages on the virtue of using blue colored links. Another 10 pages on using fluid-width designs (instead of today’s norm of fixed-width with additional style sheets — or an alternate theme — to help out devices with limited capabilities). Another 10 pages — with charts and graphs! — outlining how quickly people upgrade their browsers and condemning the use of new browser capabilities.

If you are a complete newbie to the web and have no common sense (like the fact that people want pages to load fast), then yes, get this book. If, on the other hand, you aren’t a complete idiot, skip the book and spend your time coding.