Читать онлайн «Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition)»

Автор Steve Krug

Why most Web design team arguments about usability are a waste of time, and how to avoid them

CHAPTER 9 Usability testing on 10 cents a day

Why user testing—done simply enough—is the cure for all your site’s ills

LARGER CONCERNS AND OUTSIDE INFLUENCES

CHAPTER 10 Usability as common courtesy

Why your Web site should be a mensch

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

CHAPTER 12 Help! My boss wants me to ________.

When bad design decisions happen to good people

Recommended reading

Acknowledgments

Index

PREFACE

About the Second Edition

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. ”

—MICHAEL CORLEONE, IN THE GODFATHER, PART III

Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published nearly five years ago, people have been wonderful about the book.

I get lots of lovely email. You can’t imagine how nice it is to start your morning with someone you’ve never met telling you that they enjoyed something that you did. (I recommend it highly. )

Even nicer is the fact that people seem to like the book for the same reasons I do.

For instance:

> Many people appreciate the fact that it’s short. (Some have told me that they actually read it on a plane ride, which was one of my stated objectives for the first edition; the record for “fastest read” seems to be about two hours. )

> A gratifying number of people have said that they liked the book because it practices what it preaches, in the writing and the design.

> Some people said it made them laugh out loud, which I really appreciated.

(One reader said that I made her laugh so hard that milk came out of her nose. How can something like that help but make you feel that your time has been well spent?)

But the most satisfying thing has been people saying that it helped them get their job done better.

But what have you done for us lately?

It only took about a year after the book appeared for people to start asking me when I was going to do a second edition.

For a long time, I really resisted the idea. I liked the book the way it was and thought it worked well, and since it was about design principles and not technology, I didn’t think it was likely to be out of date anytime soon.

Usually I’d pull the consultant/therapist trick of asking them what they would change, and the answer was almost always, “Well, I guess you could update the examples. ” Some people would point out that some of the sites in the examples didn’t even exist anymore.

Other people would say, “Well, you could talk about the things about the Web that have changed. ” It’s true; some things about the Web have changed in the last few years. Some of the changes were good:

> More good sites to copy from

> Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that actually work