Don't Make Me Think ^{2nd Ed.}

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it's hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn't read Steve Krug's "instant classic" on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day. In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike. Don't be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design.

Three New Chapters!

• Usability as common courtesy — Why people really leave Web sites
• Web Accessibility, CSS, and you — Making sites usable and accessible
• Help! My boss wants me to ______. — Surviving executive design whims

• Preface: About the Second Edition
• Foreword: By Roger Black
• Introduction: Read me First
  Throat Clearing and disclaimers
• Guiding Principles
• Chapter 1. Don't make me think!
  Krug's First Law of Usability
• "Don't make me think!"
• Things that make us think
• You can't make everything self-evident
• Why is this so important?
• So why, then?
• Chapter 2. How we really use the Web
  Scanning, satsficing, and muddling through
• Fact of Life #1: We don't read pages. We scan them
• Fact of Life #2: We don't make optimal choices. We satisfice
• Fact of Life #3: We don't figure out how things work. We muddle through
• If life gives you lemons…
• Chapter 3. Billboard Design 101
  Designing pages for scanning, not reading
• Create a clear visual hierarchy
• Conventions are your friends
• Break up pages into clearly defined areas
• Make it obvious what's clickable
• Keep the noise down to a dull roar
• Chapter 4. Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
  Why users like mindless choices
• Chapter 5. Omit needless words
  The art of not writing for the Web
• Happy talk must die
• Instructions must die
• And now for something completely different
• Things You Need to Get Right
• Chapter 6. Street signs and Breadcrumbs
  Designing navigation
• Scene from a mall
• Web Navigation 101
• The unbearable lightness of browsing
• The overlooked purposes of navigation
• Web navigation conventions
• Don't look now, but I think it's following us
• Did I say every page?
• Now I know we're not in Kansas
• The Sections
• The Utilities
• Just click your heels three times and say, "There's no place like home."
• A way to search
• Secondary, tertiary, and whatever comes after tertiary
• Page names, or Why I love to drive in L.A.
• "You are here"
• Breadcrumbs
• Four reasons why I love tabs
• If you love Amazon so much, why don't you marry it?
• Try the trunk test
• Chapter 7. The first step in recovery is admitting that the Home page is beyond your control
  Designing the Home page
• And you have to do it…blindfolded
• The First Casualty of War
• How to get the message across
• Nothing beats a good tagline!™
• Tagline? We don't need no stinking tagline
• The fifth question
• Home page navigation can be unique
• The trouble with pulldowns
• Why Golden Geese make such tempting targets, or "Funny, it tastes like chicken…"
• You be the judge
• Making Sure You Got Them Right
• Chapter 8. "The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends"
  Why most Web design team arguments about usability are a waste of time, and how to avoid them
• "Everybody likes __________."
• Farmers vs. cowmen
• The myth of the Average User
• The antidote for religious debates
• Chapter 9. Usability testing on 10 cents a day
  Why user testing — done simply enough — is the cure for all your site's ills
• Repeat after me: Focus groups are not usability tests.
• Several true things about testing
• Lost our lease, going-out-of-business-sale usability testing
• How many users should you test?
• Recruit loosely and grade on a curve
• Where do you test?
• Who should do the testing?
• Who should observe?
• What do you test, and when do you test it?
• A sample test session
• Review the results right away
• Typical problems
• Some triage guidelines
• Don't throw the baby out with the dishes
• One morning a month: that's all we ask
• Larger Concerns and Outside Influences
• Chapter 10. Usability as common courtesy
  Why your Web site should be a mensch
• The Reservoir of Goodwill
• Things that diminish goodwill
• Things that increase goodwill
• Chapter 11. Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, and you
  Just when you think you're done, a cat floats by with buttered toast strapped to its back
• What developers and designers hear
• What designers and developers fear
• The real solution—as usual—is a few years away
• The five things you can do right now
• #1. Fix the usability problems that confuse everyone
• #2. Read an article
• #3. Read a book
• #4. Start using Cascading Style Sheets
• #5. Go for the low-hanging fruit
• Chapter 12. Help! My boss wants me to __________.
  When bad design decisions happen to good people
• Never say never
• That's all, folks
• Recommended reading
• Acknowledgments
• Editors, designers, patrons, and enablers
• Sounding boards
• Mentors
• Clients, co-workers, clients-turned-friends, and co-workers-turned-friends
• Family
• Other
• Update: The Second Edition

A light introduction to good web-design. Nothing a professional really needs, but it helps noobs like myself (if only I could follow the advice… but that's my stupidity, not yours or the authors).

Nice book, lots of fluff and easy to understand advice.