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My viewpoint: I am a user experience specialist and UI designer with a development background. I bought this book in hopes that it would address some of the complicated data issues I run into on a daily basis. The bad: Despite saying how cheap it is to print in color now, most of the sample images were 1 or more pages away from where it was referenced. I could have gone without the color if it meant I got the referenced image under the text referencing it. (Don't make me think while I'm reading books either, please.) Commerce sites were deemed web applications. In some cases, I would agree. But for the samples given, I would generally disagree. A best practice would be described, then in the next best practice's sample image, that best practice would be broken. Most best practices mentioned in this book can easily be found at Nielsen or Spool's websites. There was very little new to learn here. Also, some best practices given in this book are directly opposed to those given by Nielsen or Spool, without any supporting documentation or testing results. I'd be more apt to give those consideration if they were supported. Almost the entire second half of the book was spent on displaying data (graphs, maps and more) and very little spent on forms for capturing data. Data capture was only lightly touched and did not even begin to touch complicated data capture. If you are beginner, DO NOT PAY ATTENTION to the data base design "tips" given in this book. It was obvious the authors have never heard of data views and you will screw your database design royally if you follow their advice. Do the homework you might need on real database design. The good: If you work with a small to medium-sized website and you are new to, this book could be helpful to you. It does cover most of what would be considered best practice usability guidelines and I did glean a new one or two new things from the book. If you work with Dashboards, you might also find one or new twists in the book. But most of the data display will be beyond what anyone will need for a smaller data-related sites.
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Critical Acclaim For WEB APPLICATION DESIGN HANDBOOK Best Practices for Web-Based Software “Susan and Victor have written the ‘Junior Woodchucks Guidebook’ of Web applications: Everything you need to know is in there, including tons of best-practice examples, insights from years of experience, and assorted fascinating arcana. If you’re writing a Web application, you’d be foolish not to have a copy.” STEVE KRUG Author of Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability “Web sites are so nineties. The cutting edge of Web-design has moved to Web applications. If you are, like many Web designers, struggling to create dynamic, highly-functional Web-based applications, you need this book. It describes how Web applications differ from Web sites, and provides excellent guidance for common Web-application design problems, such as navigation, data input, search, reports, forms, and interactive graphic output.” JEFF JOHNSON Principal Usability Consultant, UI Wizards, Inc., and author of Web Bloopers and GUI Bloopers “User interface designers have been debating among themselves for years about how to design effective Web applications. There were no comprehensive references that covered the myriad topics that emerged in these debates until Fowler and Stanwick took on the challenge and wrote Web Application Design Handbook, the first comprehensive guide to building Web applications. This book tackles design problems faced by every Web development team with uncommon wisdom, clear prose, and detailed examples. Key topics include: modifying the browser interface to meet application security and efficiency requirements, searching, sorting, filtering, building effic