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James Kalbach, writing on behalf O'Reilly Media, presents a strategic, consumer-driven approach to web navigation in his book, Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience. After giving thorough background on the topic, the author does delve deeper into presentation of websites, and other modern web topics such as social tagging systems. The color pages and relevant, modern, relatable websites allow readers to truly be put into the place of the customer, and gives them the opportunity to ponder how they would like to maneuver a given site.Although I would consider this book a necessary addition to any web designer's bookshelf, the first section of the book is the only one that kept my attention. The simple layout and organization of the book make it a must read for any website designer whether the firm be a large corporation, or a quaint start-up business. It is an easy read, extremely clear and well organized, and does not require much involvement or prior knowledge on behalf of the reader. The book is split into three parts, comprising of the following table of contents:Part I1.Introducing Web Navigation2.Understanding Navigation3.Mechanisms of Navigation4.Types of Navigation5.Labeling NavigationPart II6.Evaluation7.Analysis8.Architecture9.Layout10.PresentationPart III11.Navigation and Search12.Navigation and Social Tagging Systems13.Navigation and Rich Web ApplicationsBeing a beginner at web design and navigation, I was expecting the book to be full of technical jargon leaving me far from interested and unknowledgeable, but the opposite was true. The book is very engaging, offering snapshots of up-to-date, colorful, relevant websites pertaining to the specific navigational tools he is explaining. Designing Web Navigation succeeds at explaining tools for commendable web navigation, but does not go into the JavaScript, Ajax and other topics, which require a lot of previous technical knowledge.
The first section of the book does a fabulous job at breaking down web navigation, what it is, why it's crucial etc., but I would hardly call it a beginner's read. Kalbach gives intricate descriptions of why poor navigation may turn users off from your website, and in turn your company, and how fluid, well-designed sites can make positive experiences for potential customers. I found the background and basic academic explanations of the book extremely engaging, and as it moved into the latter sections, and consequently more difficult concepts, I began to find myself losing interest.Overall, from a novice perspective, I would give Designing Web Navigation 5 stars, considering it's reader and consumer friendly take on web design.
This book IS what is trying to explain. A great web-usability book from the navigation point of view (quite an important one btw). delivered in very well organized and easy to read (may I say 'navigate').A total 'must read' for anyone who wants to make any GUI application more user-friendly, easier to understand, hence more productive and pleasant.
This book was very informative. I received the book just in time for my class.
This is a helpful resource for new and experienced designers, though it is not groundbreaking. It's more of a compendium of approaches. I believe the editing was not very thorough, as I found several typos.
Most examples are presented from an outside point if view; I'd prefer insider explanations (may be hard to get) when taking e.g. There are too many (for my taste) neat but not-so-useful bullet point-type categorizations (e.g. This book provides a great overview of basic navigation concepts (such as "berry picking"), navigation artifacts (menus, tabs, bars, text links etc) and usability research done in this area (often not much, but can't blame the authors for that). about why Amazon.com changed their navigation scheme. "most navigation types fall into three primary categories: structural, associative, utility") and obvious advise such as "when relaunching or enhancing a web site, it's imperative to first determine the problems of the old one". Fortunately this is counterbalanced by a lot of examples (with screen shots). The organization of the book is logical, for the most part (though I do wonder why the well-written sections on "tag clouds" and "faceted browsing" appear in the "Navigation in Special Contexts" chapter). There is some overlap with two other O'Reilly books: "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" and "Designing Interfaces" book, but having read those two books doesn't mean you won't get anything out of this book.
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