Customer Reviews

Web Application Design Handbook: Best Practices for Web-Based Software (Interactive Technologies)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this book because Krug's book (Don't Make Me Think) recommended it and because my main concern was web-based business applications not public web sites.

I was extremely disappointed by Web Application Design Handbook:
1) It doesn't say much more than what any Windows developer has known
for the past 10 years
2) It is full of discussions about software DEVELOPMENT but it is
supposed to be a DESIGN book
3) It is supposed to be a book about WEB design but half of it is
about reports, graphs, diagrams, and maps

The first half of the book concentrates on what was advertised: design/usability of web-based applications. But it doesn't offer many new ideas. Most of the recommendations are well-known to Windows developers. It doesn't give enough attention to what's different about web-based applications.

The amount of useful, thought-provoking information in this book that could help a Windows developer create better web-based applications is no more than 50 pages. Not very good for a book of 600 pages.

The book does not inspire confidence that the recommendations are based on real usability testing. There's a lot of conventional wisdom followed by a lot of suggestions to figure it out yourself with your own usability tests.

The book has a maddening tendency to slip into development issues. Why on earth are there JavaScript code examples in a design book???!!! Why are there discussions about the impact of client vs server-side code on network bandwidth? Not only are these discussions distracting, they are also full of half-truths, oversimplifications, obsolete information, and some outright mistakes.

Almost 2/3 of the book is about topics that are beyond the scope of web application design (ok they're at least straining the limits): reports, graphs, diagrams, maps. That material would be handled better in a separate book, dedicated to those topics. As it is, most of the book is irrelevant to my needs.

If you are concerned with usability/GUI design of web sites or web applications forget this book and get Krug's Don't Make Me Think instead.

What is a web application? This is not such an easy question to answer, and rather than simply muddy the water further or leave the definition as an undirected exercise for the reader as do some of the other web application books available today, Fowler and Stanwick devote a chapter to it. Not only do they deliver a matrix that helps you to figure out where your project fits, they also get to the meat: based on where it fits, what design differences do you need to keep in mind? They then give you worksheets to fill out for yourself.

After you decide where your project falls on the page-to-application continuum, you're ready to start figuring out its data architecture, layout, navigation, and presentation details. The first half of the book deals with these issues, including how the controls work for web applications, the differences between them and the controls used in more standard applications, and when to use which. Also, special topics such as searching, filtering, browsing, which have been honed and refined-and sometimes broken-by the size and breadth of the Web, are here summarized and presented in a way that makes them approachable and usable design achievable. For those with real-world responsibilities, there are excellent discussions of internationalization and accessibility, as well as techniques for appropriate use of HTML and CSS (cascading style sheets).

Web-based software poses some real challenges, especially if it's going to be coded in straight HTML and HTML/forms (even if you use a little JavaScript on the side). Java Applets and Flash pose a slightly different set of challenges. Fowler and Stanwick wade right in, devoting chapters to all the critical things you'll need to know to design a usable application, from the browser framework through advice on input, data retrieval and output, through how to set it up for reasonable user interaction with output.

And then they get to my favorite part, which is an excellent reference on what kinds of graphics you can use and when to use which. This part of the book covers graphs and charts, diagrams, and geographic maps. This is a better coverage of this subject than I have seen anywhere else, and it's only half of this book!

In addition to being an impressive researcher, Susan Fowler is also an expert on the use of graphics in applications. Anyone who's attended a seminar by Edward Tufte or read one of his books knows how badly people misuse graphics. If only more designers of web applications (any applications, actually) will spend time with this book, we'll finally start to come out of that era into one in which meaning is quickly and easily understood from a graphical presentation. I'll be delighted when that happens. Until then, make yourself one of those who knows: read this book.

This is a strange book. Despite the giant word "WEB" on the cover, it's difficult to see this as "best practices for web-based software." Instead, it reads like a guide for designers who've only built desktop software and are being forced against their will to deliver a web-based product.

It's far too long at 658 pages; there are needless sections on general suggestions for designing for the web that are far better written about elsewhere. I understand the authors' desire for completeness, but there's just too much basic HTML here padding out some sections.

And the final *seven* chapters deal with the design of data reports, charts, graphs, and even maps. Now, these are important topics, but they are not such significant parts of most web applications to deserve more than half this book's length. And have these authors never read Edward Tufte? It's hard to imagine a collection of uglier, more garishly colored, visually heavy maps and diagrams than what's presented here.

It's a little annoying, too, that most of the diagram images come from *desktop* applications like Excel or Crystal Reports, not web applications. There's a good reason for that: these kinds of data-intense diagrams tend to be for specialist users committed to spending long hours in an application. In most cases, that's a situation that calls for the more powerful capabilities of a desktop application. When's the last time you looked at a scatter plot on a web site?

But between the dull basics of the first chapters and the mind-bending statistical overkill of the last seven, there are some good and useful sections. For example, there are good rules of thumb for form layouts, handling input validation gracefully, and search filtering. There's nothing adventerous or innovative here, of course. Advice tends toward the conservative and reliable list view-to-object view model (the way your email program works), with a few breaks for product comparison interfaces. As in so many of these kinds of books, the authors also include examples of utterly pointless novelty interfaces (zooming lenses, radial tree navigation schemes, photo "data mountains") that are notable for their near-total absence outside the HCI lab.

The strange thing about this book, and others like it, is the almost willful blindness of what *actually* works in web application design, and what *actual* users vote with their clicks to make successful. Innovative, popular, and usable web applications like Amazon.com, Flickr, Craigslist, eBay, Google's Gmail, or the applications built by 37Signals are nowhere to be found. These applications are successful because they embrace the constraints imposed by the web and HTML (and their strengths), and find ways to support users' tasks that make sense in that environment.

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.

My employer purchased this book because we develop a web application and I was dumbfounded how irrelevant and useless this book is. Most of the screenshots are of desktop software. Most of the content talks about very specific features, such as entire chapters on graphing, data reporting, geographic maps, etc. Absolutely nothing was found useful. Try Designing the Obvious, Forms that Work, Web Application Design Patterns, or any other book out there, honestly. It was written in 2004 and is very specific to perhaps more corporate data processing applications.

Waste of money and time!

If you are looking something technological like I was or even theories, this isn't the book. And usually I think the pictures and examples are a good thing, but in this book it seemed that they were there to fill space. Can't recommend. But then again, it might be just because I misunderstood what the book was about and expected something more concrete.

This book helped me a lot as in my day-to day work. I used it as powerful guide for the construction of the "nice and pleasant" presentation layer for our applications. Our customers were happy - and it is the best feedback somebody can give.

I would definitely recommend this book to the wide range of Software Designers, Developers and Managers. Profession GUI always makes a difference!

It has been stated that the majority of people creating maps today have little in the way of formal cartographic education or background. If this statement is true, then this is the ideal reference book for developers assigned the task of building web-based mapping applications.

Although the Web Application Design Handbook is much more than a guide for developing interactive maps, its chapters on mapping will be especially helpful to developers who need to understand when to use geographic maps and how best to accomplish that. Beginning with basic map design concepts such as data formats, appropriate use of colour, scale, projection and dealing with map error; the authors then give the reader something further to consider while looking at the various uses of spatial statistics and discussing data classification and geographic distribution methods. This section then concludes with examples of various types of maps and how each can be used, which if nothing else, should serve to get a developer's creative juices flowing.

Overall this should be an excellent reference for anyone designing and developing web-based applications, and as such, developers would be well advised to make sure they always have their own personal copy handy.

As a technical writer in the computer industry, I can only say that I wish every application engineer would have this book on their shelf so that, inbetween downloading music, videotaping the next cubicle and creating web applications, every once in awhile they could take it down, read a few pages and learn to design better programs. The usability of a web application can make or break a rollout and when it's a badly designed system, it can confuse hundreds of people, require separate training, and just plain waste money. Perhaps managers of web application efforts should get this as a "gift" for their designers.

It is very hard to find books that go beyond ABC. This is one of a few.