Jakob Nielsen, love him or hate him*, preaches a core set of web-usability values are that are so ridiculously simple, they are practically irrefutable. Make a search box big enough to type a full word into, make pages accessible to users with disabilities, make your pages load quickly, avoid marketese – hire an editor. This just makes sense.

Some very smart people dislike Nielsen. He shits on Flash. He says users don’t read (they “scan”). They say he thinks users are stupid. I encourage his detractors to read his book Designing Web Usability. You will probably still dislike him, but you will be able to do so with a new depth and fervour. You will also avoid making a bunch of really stupid web-design mistakes.

Nielsen’s latest book, co-authored by Marie Tahir, landed in my lap courtesy of my travelling friends just in time for me to cancel my Amazon pre-order. Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed is as much a criticism of the way brain-dead PR departments of Forture500 companies present themselves as it is a criticism of web design issues.

The book itself is a thing of beauty – it is a large format, glossy, colourful, and elegantly designed print worthy of prime real-estate on your nerdy coffee table. The writing has a smart and straightforward style that contrasts nicely with the marketing-tripe-writing on many of the criticised homepages. The leading chapters are worthwhile reading for anyone interested or involved in web development.

The chapters that follow, a criticism of 50 popular website homepages interested both for it’s criticism of common design blunders and for the eye candy on being able to flip through 50 popular homepages at once. The appendix reads: “Throughout this project, we frequently had the pictures of all 50 homepages spread out on our office floor. We found it quite powerful and visually stunning to be able to see all of the sites side-by-side.” (see an old aov post where I put together the top 50 sites at the time)

For a good overview and introduction to the book, read the interview with the authors at the publisher (New Riders) website.