Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience

Publisher: O'Reilly
Author: Jennifer Fleming
ISBN: 1565923510
Publication Date: Sept 1998
Retail Price: $34.95
Sample Chapter: Crafting the User Experience (excerpt from Chapter One)


Buy this book now!

---

As a book reviewer, I tend to get jaded as the next crop of books appears on my desk.

Oh goodness (yawn), another book on how to master Java in a week (yeah, right).

And in the midst of all these endless tomes comes a gleaming jewel: Jennifer Fleming's book on Web Navigation, Designing the User Experience. Now here's a concept I'd be eager to read about!

Web Navigation introduces the developer/designer to the concept of the user experience, and how the objective of most Web sites is, more likely than not, to provide the user with a positive experience from the first second they arrive to the moment they leave the site. By inducing the designer to put themselves in their user's shoes, Fleming reminds them what it means to visit and navigate a Web site.

Chapters include the Ten Qualities of Successful Navigation, Site Architecture, Interface and Interaction Design, and chapters on Navigation Design for Shopping, Community, Entertainment, Identity, Learning and Information Sites. Fleming takes the reader through the initial process of laying the groundwork and then moves on to forming specific goals for the site. Several real-world examples of each type of site are given, providing the reader with details about the merits of each site's navigation system.

At the end of the book is a chapter with many tips and hints for creating a successful navigation system for your site. Tips cover the use of forms, frames, META tags, graphics, image maps and more. A CD-ROM which is included with the book includes hyperlinks to all the sites mentioned in the book, along with software demos and a "netography" of sites with related subject matter.

So should you spend your hard-earned money on Fleming's book? I'll tell you this much: don't ask me to lend you my copy of this book...it'll be parked next to the rest of my classic Web development books, where it will remain until it is too dog-eared to read. O'Reilly is getting well known for publishing books that become industry standards, and Web Navigation is no exception!

If you'd like to check the book out for yourself, you may want to read this excerpt from Chapter One entitled Crafting the User Experience.

---

Selections include:

• Web Publishing and Programming Resource Kit
• Java For Business
• Designing With Style Sheets, Tables, and Frames
• No Experience Required: Java 1.1
• Java Fundamental Classes Reference
• Learning Perl, 2nd Edition
• Professional Active Server Pages
• Web Client Programming with Perl
• HotWired Style: Principles for Building Smart Web Sites
• Designing With JavaScript
• Drag-n-Drop CGI
• Coloring Web Graphics 2
• Instant Dynamic HTML Programmer's Reference: NC 4 Edition
• XML: Principles, Tools and Techniques
• Professional IE4 Programming
• Secrets of Successful Web Sites
• HTML 4.0 Unleashed
• Raggett on HTML 4.0
• Java Applets and Channels Without Programming
• Programming Web Components
• Instant JavaScript
• Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
• Using HTML4, Java 1.1, and JavaScript1.2
• Web by Design: The Complete Guide
• Designing XML Internet Applications
• XML for Dummies
• Thinking in Java
• JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
• DHTML: The Definitive Reference
• Just XML
• Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience
• Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
• Web Performance Tuning
• The XML Handbook
• Magical A-Life Avatars
• Java Design: Building Better Apps and Applets
• StrikingItRich.com
• The CDNow Story
• NERDS 2.0.1 - A Brief History of the Internet
• Building Better Web Pages
• Poor Richard's Web Site
• Web Design in a Nutshell

Suggest a Book!