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Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Author), Scott Bill (Author), Neil Theresa (Author)
Key Phrases: lightbox effect, contextual tools, virtual scrolling, Refining Search, Live Search, Considerations There (more...)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Want to learn how to create great user experiences on today's Web? In this book, UI experts Bill Scott and Theresa Neil present more than 75 design patterns for building web interfaces that provide rich interaction. Distilled from the authors' years of experience at Sabre, Yahoo!, and Netflix, these best practices are grouped into six key principles to help you take advantage of the web technologies available today. With an entire section devoted to each design principle, Designing Web Interfaces helps you:

Make It Direct-Edit content in context with design patterns for In Page Editing, Drag & Drop, and Direct Selection
Keep It Lightweight-Reduce the effort required to interact with a site by using In Context Tools to leave a "light footprint"
Stay on the Page-Keep visitors on a page with overlays, inlays, dynamic content, and in-page flow patterns
Provide an Invitation-Help visitors discover site features with invitations that cue them to the next level of interaction
Use Transitions-Learn when, why, and how to use animations, cinematic effects, and other transitions
React Immediately-Provide a rich experience by using lively responses such as Live Search, Live Suggest, Live Previews, and more

Designing Web Interfaces illustrates many patterns with examples from working websites. If you need to build or renovate a website to be truly interactive, this book gives you the principles for success.

About the Author

Bill Scott is director of UI Engineering at Netflix in Los Gatos, CA, where he plies his interface engineering and design skills. Scott is the former Yahoo! Ajax evangelist and pattern curator for the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library.

He has a long and glamorous history in the IT world, due mostly to his unique understanding of both the technical and creative aspects of designing usable products. His ramblings and musings can be found at http://www.looksgoodworkswell.com.

Theresa Neil is a user experience consultant in Austin, Texas, where she designs rich applications for start-ups and Fortune500 companies. Her work can be seen at http://www.designgenie.org.

Product Details

Paperback: 332 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (July 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0596516258
ISBN-13: 978-0596516253
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #13,173 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

#8 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Systems Analysis & Design
#8 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Graphic Design > Website Architecture & Usability
#9 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Graphic Design > Web Design > Flash

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Theresa Neil

Bill Scott

Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
lightbox effect, contextual tools, virtual scrolling, live preview, secondary menu, periodic refresh, overlay edit, table edit, hybrid selection, edit tags, feedback patterns, progressive disclosure, dragged module, inline edit, lightweight overlays, drag feedback, valid drop target, placeholder target, moments grid, drop invitation, dragged object, scrolled list, spam comments, busy indicator, insertion bar

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Refining Search, Live Search, Considerations There, Google Suggest, Object Selection, Live Suggest, Toggle Selection, The Gap, Detail Overlay, Auto Complete, Inline Paging, Dialog Overlay, Progress Indicator, Static Single-Page Process, Google Maps, Dynamic Invitations, Action Invitation, Always-Visible Tools, List Inlay, Collected Selection, Dialog Inlay, Process Flow, Hover Invitation, Toggle-Reveal Tools, Google Reader

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	75% buy the item featured on this page: Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions 4.5 out of 5 stars (12) $31.49
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	7% buy Designing Interfaces 4.3 out of 5 stars (54) $29.23
	6% buy A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making 5.0 out of 5 stars (8) $23.09

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for a wide range of users; easy to follow; well-written., February 14, 2009

By	B. T. Denyer "Graphic designer" (Midwest, United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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If you are brand spanking new to web design, and have never coded a single site, you may want to hold off on this book for a minute. I'm not saying it is not for beginners, because it is. Those new to HTML and CSS may want to get the hang of that before jumping into incorporating Ajax and JavaScript along with advanced CSS techniques.

Who is it for? I would recommend this book for art directors, project managers, web designers (all levels), interactive designers, DVD menu designers (though not directly related, you can still take away some important aspects or "patterns"), and especially those that design online training modules (we all know how dull they can be.) Like the DVD menu designers I mentioned above, I think Flash designers can benefit greatly, as well. Though the book is not directly geared toward Flash design, the patterns and "anti-patterns" talked about can easily be used when designing for a Flash experience.

The layout of the book is broken up into the 6 "principles" described in the product description of this book. The sections "Make It Direct" and "Stay on the Page" are by far the two largest sections, for they are the most important of the 6. "Keep it Lightweight" is the shortest section/principle, but by no means is rushed or glossed over. It poses some great design ideas to keep it intuitive, discoverable and keep you from designing 'mouse traps.'

In order to get the most out of this book, you would have to have designed a web site before reading this book. If you are a project manager or art director in charge of a team designing a web site (but not a web designer yourself), it would benefit you greatly to have a general understanding of web design, HTML, what Ajax is, CSS, cross-browser compatibilities, and Javascript. If you are just managing a team, you do NOT have to know how to code these languages/techniques, but in order to really benefit form this book, it would be better if you generally know what each does.

This book could also help bridge the gap for some managers by equipping them with the correct terminology of web design. Just speaking the language of user interface design can help speed up the time it takes to turn your directions into an interface that works the way you intended.

The book is detailed and to the point of the benefits of discoverability and weighing your options in the case of just how intuitive you need to make the interface. This book does not read like a my-way-or-the-highway kind of book. Scott mentions the potential pitfalls, disadvantages and possible alternate scenarios that depend on your interactive goals as set by the audience visiting your site.

A good number of the examples are from Yahoo! and Netflix sites (because Scott used to work for Yahoo! and now works for Netflix), but I never once felt like it was an advertisement for either one. He manages to spread the love around and uses examples from the Gap, iPhone, blogs, Google, Amazon, and others.

In short, the book is an easy read, something that one could go through in a long weekend. There are screenshots and visual examples on virtually every page, so in no way are we left to imagine the event happening. Multiple screenshots are taken when the event happens over the period of several steps. There is even a couple free companion web sites that will show the screenshots in a larger format than the book would allow. While reading the book, you will undoubtedly have many 'ah ha!' moments, or times when you rush to check your previously-designed web sites to see if you need to make a correction to your interface (admit it, we all do.)

I highly recommend this book for anyone that designs interfaces, even if they are for mp3 players, touch screens for electronics, or those interactive lobby displays. We all need some help in the area of user interface design.

***NOTE: there is NO code in this book. This the theory of designing user interfaces for the web, NOT the code.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best organization of principles for designing Rich Internet Applications I have read so far, March 2, 2009

By	Stefan Leuthold (Zurich, Switzerland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book absorbed me for the last weekend, and I have to say, it is the best book in the field of HCI I have come across since reading Tidwell's Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design. Of course, I like everything that happens to quote Cooper's About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design and Raskin's The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems (ACM Press) - but this one gave me lots of new, practical ideas for the web, and a consistent terminology I can use to think and talk about Rich Internet Applications.

Nicely organized and layouted, well-written, and, in my opinion, thought-through easy-to-grasp structure. I was studying many patterns in the Yahoo! pattern library online and I am glad that Bill Scott finally published a book with the same clarity and logic that I came to like online.

Will become a standard in the company I work for and I am sure our clients will already start to "fear" discussions around the six principles when arguing with our consultants for what should be done and how :-)

Great book.

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16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Embarrassment of Riches, July 9, 2009

By	David Pepper "Media Operator" (Baltimore, MD United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Scott is a/the genius behind Netflix and Yahoo!'s interfaces, so I got this book to figure out how to make my web interface programming work more professional.

However, much of what I've read here goes against the spirit of the design I was taught to do in grad school. For example, Netflix/Yahoo! make complex designs that are highly functional for expert users, and at-least reasonably usable for intermediate users. These designs feature transitions which use fades, transparent controls which only become visible when a user hovers, and dueling interfaces which allow power-users to move at a different speed than weaker users, etc.

By comparison, my grad program emphasizes designing for readability, learnability and with a singular notion of organizational principles structuring content in such a way that it is accessible to humans, search engines, and user agents (speech synthesis for visually impaired users). In Designing Web Interfaces, this perspective is consistently swept aside in the quest to build "rich interactions" at the expense of these peripheral users.

The result for me of this encounter with "Designing Web Interfaces" has been a renewed appreciation of how hard it is to make interface design choices. So often design is a question of framing, which establishes who the audience is, what the goals are, and what standards to use for a product.

I think at best, this book offers insight into future trends of professional design -- what Scott calls "rich interactions". However, I have a feeling that I'll always be more on the novice/disabled/user-agent user's side, leaning towards standard-based and user-centered designs, no matter what these captains of industry are cooking up.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Good as a reference book
I was waiting for more from this book. It's nothing more than an reference book on some design patterns.

Published 1 month ago by introfini

5.0 out of 5 stars Super detailed, very informative
I really enjoyed Designing Web Interfaces. If you plan on making a move from being just a visual designer to a user interface designer this is definitely a must read, more details... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Jesse Chapo

5.0 out of 5 stars Web Interfaces
Reviewer: Dave Roman, GCPCUG member

This book has 14 chapters, but they are only sub divisions of a different type of classification. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Frank Mitch

3.0 out of 5 stars A good overview, but could be better
Provides a good overview of the many interface options in use today. However, accessibility is generally not addressed, so you would have to assess this yourself for each option... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Grimmy

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading for a Programmer?
With web interfaces using AJAX, Flash and Silverlight more and more, not only would designers would find this book useful, but also developers. Read more

Published 4 months ago by George

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Practical Interaction Design Guide I've Read
I've read a lot of books about designing functional user interfaces. This one is the best I've read. Read more

Published 7 months ago by E. Wood

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect companion to Designing Interfaces
Three years before this, O'Reilly published "Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design", a kind of innovative book, which used the classic approach of a... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Foti Massimo

5.0 out of 5 stars Web ID at its best!
Since Web UI have started levelling to those of others media, the need for a book about RIA interaction design (ID) has became strongest than ever. Read more

Published 9 months ago by Costa Michele

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book of rich interaction web patterns
With tons of examples and many meaty details, Designing Web Interfaces is just brain candy for designers to read. Read more

Published 9 months ago by Brandon Granger

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