Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them
Product Description
The dot.com crash of 2000 was a wake-up call, and told us that the Web has far to go before achieving the acceptance predicted for it in ‘95. A large part of what is missing is quality; a primary component of the missing quality is usability. The Web is not nearly as easy to use as it needs to be for the average person to rely on it for everyday information, commerce, and entertainment.
In response to strong feedback from readers of GUI BLOOPERS calling for a book devoted exclusively to Web design bloopers, Jeff Johnson calls attention to the most frequently occurring and annoying design bloopers from real web sites he has worked on or researched. Not just a critique of these bloopers and their sites, this book shows how to correct or avoid the blooper and gives a detailed analysis of each design problem.
Hear Jeff Johnson’s interview podcast on software and website usability at the University of Canterbury (25 min.)
* Discusses in detail 60 of the most common and critical web design mistakes, along with the solutions, challenges, and tradeoffs associated with them.
* Covers important subject areas such as: content, task-support, navigation, forms, searches, writing, link appearance, and graphic design and layout.
* Organized and formatted based on the results of its own usability test performed by web designers themselves.
* Features its own web site (www.web-bloopers.com)with new and emerging web design no-no’s (because new bloopers are born every day) along with a much requested printable blooper checklist for web designers and developers to use.
Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them
I’m not a web developer. I haven’t done much since I installed
the first American web server back in December 1991. But I was
curious about the bloopers anyway so read the book. I really enjoyed reading the book. Some of the bloopers Jeff has found are down right funny. Others are sutle and easy to ame, but others are obvious, and it is amazing that they are done so often.
Rating: 4 / 5
I looked at the sample pages, and saw fig. 1.2 giving an analysis of a website that didn’t clearly identify its overall goals , etc. But the page in question was so obviously one of those ’search network’ typo-url cookie-cutter sites of domain squatters. It’s not a serious site, and anyone with half a clue in web marketing knows this. So even though I’ve no idea what the rest of the book says, I doubt the writer’s judgment and current state of knowledge. I mean, if he can’t spot a squatter spam site, what else is he oblivious to?
Rating: 2 / 5
In my opinion, the book is a very practical guide for people designing web sites. It has quite good illustrations and explanations. And is very “browsable”. I mean, you can easily go to the topic you are interested in.
I recomend the chapter about forms.
Rating: 4 / 5
While this book does offer some insight to the pitfalls of “all too common” web mistakes, I have to disagree with the author’s conclusions in many cases. In particular, he seems to place blame a lot on web developers as though we are often irresponsible, responsible for poorly written content, lackluster site maintenance and other “bloopers” as he calls them. Fact is, most web developers would love to spend the time “investing” in doing a thorough job. However, in many cases, the client often doesn’t want to pay the additional monies to do a thorough job. While there is enough blame to go around in poor web design, it seemed all to common for the author to blame the web developer for critical mistakes. I also take exception to his commentary at times, in specific, his early mention of Enron and an obvious sarcastic knock against the company. He points to a bold claim Enron still makes on its site as to its size and stature. While Enron may have troubles, it’s still a viable company with many assets and still provides services to many customers. We can do without the authors injection of cynicism and personal feelings about the company to prove his point. Lastly, I found the layout to be a little difficult to read. Often, the author would reference figures that were one to two pages ahead making you have to skim forward to see what he was talking about. The book is a very large format and anyone with a better sense of book design could have done a better job laying out this book. These are only a few points in a long list of what’s wrong with this book. While the author makes some valid points, I found this book a little too much to stomach. Read at your own peril.
Rating: 2 / 5
This is a great book! It reads as a collection of bloopers from many well known sites of what not to do. That’s what I like about this book: it’s fun to read and instructive at the same time. I’ll build a site or be in the middle of one and open up this book to make sure that I haven’t made a blooper. What’s nice is that the author tells you how to easily fix your mistakes. Another thing that I really like is that the book is broad enough in its scope to cover all of the important Web Design issues and the advice is right on. Hopefully, this will lead to better educated Web Designers and a more usable Web.
Rating: 5 / 5